"My dear lord," the Strategos said, unable to keep his voice entirely steady, "may I ask that all those here be cautioned that this information is to go no further yet? I can make use of the advantage of time."

"Oh, my dear," said the wife at the Emperor's side, "they will have been preparing for you since long before this child fled her throne. Ask her, if you really need to."

Gisel ignored that, both the child and the fled, and saw that Valerius was looking at her, and she realized belatedly that he was actually waiting for an answer to the question he'd asked of her. I trust you will approve? Formality, a coyrtesy, she thought. Such things mattered to him, it seemed. Worth knowing. He would always be courteous, this man on the Golden Throne. Even as he did exactly what he chose to do and accepted-or courted-any consequences that might fall to others.

"Do I approve?" she repeated. "My lord, of course I do," she lied. "Why else did I sail to Sarantium?"

She sank low in obeisance again, mainly to hide her face now and what was in her eyes. She was seeing the burial mound again, not this elegant, lamplit palace room, was remembering civil war and famine, the festering aftermath of plague, was savagely lamenting the absence of a single living soul she could trust. Wishing, almost, that she had died in Varena, after all, and not lived to hear this question asked of her as she stood utterly alone in a foreign land where her answer-truth or lie- carried no weight or meaning in the world.

"I really do not feel well," said Pertennius of Eubulus, spacing his words with care.

They were in a modest room on the upper floor of the secretary's home. Pertennius lay prostrate on a dark green couch, one hand over his eyes, the other on his stomach. Crispin, at a small window, stood looking down on the empty street. The stars were out, a wind was blowing. There was a fire lit on the hearth. On a desk against the wall between couch and window was an assortment of documents, books, writing implements, papers of different colours and textures.

Scattered among these-Crispin had seen them as soon as he'd entered the room-were his own early sketches for the dome and wall of the Great Sanctuary.

He had wondered how they came to be here, and then remembered that Leontes's secretary was also the official historian of Valerius's building projects. In an unsettling way, Crispin's work was part of his mandate.

Why a bison? Pertennius had said, standing unsteadily in the street outside his door. Why so much of you on the dome?

Both, as it happened, shrewd questions. Crispin, no admirer of the dry-as-dust secretary, had come inside and up the stairs. Challenged, intrigued, both? Probably a waste of time, he realized, glancing over at the recumbent secretary. Pertennius looked genuinely ill. If he'd liked the man more, he might have been sympathetic.

"Too much wine of an afternoon can do that to you," he said mildly. "Especially if one doesn't normally drink."

"I don't," said Pertennius. There was a silence. "She likes you," the secretary added. "More than me."

Crispin turned away from the window. Pertennius had opened his eyes and was looking at Crispin. His gaze and tone were both quite neutral: a historian noting a fact, not a rival making complaint.

Crispin wasn't deceived. Not about this. He shook his head, leaning back against the wall by the window. "Shirin? She likes me, yes, as a link to her father. Not as anything more." He wasn't actually certain that was true, but he thought it was, most of the time. Think of her fingers slipping your tunic up from behind and then sliding back down along your skin. Abruptly, Crispin shook his head again, for a different reason this time. He hesitated, then said, "Shall I tell you what I think?"

Pertennius waited. A listening sort of man, privy to much: in his profession, by his nature. He really didn't look well. Crispin suddenly wished he hadn't come up here. This — wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having. With an inward shrug and a flicker of irritation that he was being placed in this situation-or had placed himself in it-he said, "I think Shirin is tired of being beset by men every time she steps out-of-doors. It makes for a difficult life, though some women might think they want it."

Pertennius nodded slowly, his head heavy on his shoulders. He closed his eyes, struggled to open them again.

"Mortals seek fame," he said sententiously, "unaware of all it means. She needs a… protector. Someone to keep them away."

There was truth to all of this, of course. Crispin decided not to say that a secretary and historian was unlikely to prove sufficient deterrent as an acknowledged lover to achieve that protection. Instead, he murmured, temporizing, "You know there are those who have commissioned love spells from the cheiromancers."

Pertennius made a sour face. "Fob.!" he said. "Magic. It is unholy."

"And it doesn't work," Crispin added.

"You know this?" the other man asked. His eyes were briefly clear.

Aware, suddenly, of a need for caution, Crispin said, "We are taught by the clerics that it doesn't, friend. "Irritated again, he added, "In any case, have you ever seen Shirin wandering the streets before dawn against her will and desire, her hair unbound, compelled to where some man waits in his open doorway?"

"Oh, Jad!" said Pertennius, with feeling. He groaned. Illness and desire, an unholy mix.

Crispin suppressed a smile. Looked out the partly open window again. The air was cool. The street below was empty and silent. He decided to leave, considered asking for an escort. It was not particularly safe to cross the City at night alone and his own house was a distance away.

He said, "You'd do well to get some sleep. We can talk another-"

"Do you know that they worship bison in Sauradia?" said Pertennius abruptly. "It is in Metractes's History of the Rhodian Wars.

Again, Crispin felt a flicker of alarm. His regret at being here grew more intense. "I remember Metractes," he said casually. "I was made to memorize him as a child. Dismally dull."

Pertennius looked offended. "Hardly so, Rhodian! A fine historian. A model for my own histories."

"I beg your pardon," Crispin said quickly. "He is, ah, voluminous, certainly."

"Comprehensive," said Pertennius. He closed his eyes again. The hand came back up to rest over them. "Will this feeling pass?" he asked plaintively.

"In the morning," Crispin said. "With sleep. There is little else to be done for it."

"Am I going to be sick?"

"It is certainly possible," Crispin said. "Do you want to stand by the window?"

"Too far. Tell me about the bison."

Crispin drew a breath. Pertennius's eyes had opened again, were on him. "There is nothing to tell. And everything. How does one explain these things? If words would do, I wouldn't be a mosaicist. It is as the roebuck and the rabbits and the birds and the fish and the foxes and the grain in the fields. I wanted them all on my dome. You have the sketches here, secretary, you can see the design. Jad created the world of animals as well as mortal man. That world lies between walls and walls, west and east, under the hand and eye of the god."

All true, not the truth.

Pertennius made a vague sign of the sun disk. He was visibly struggling to stay awake. "You made it very big."

"They are big," Crispin said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.

"Ah? You've seen one? And Rhodias is up there too? My dome, you said. Is that pious? Is it… proper in a sanctuary?"

Crispin had his back to the window now, leaning against the ledge. He was about to answer, or try, when he realized there was no need any more. The secretary was asleep on the green couch, still in his sandals and the white garb of a wedding guest.