"It is not my invitation," he said pointedly. "And Martinian, my partner, has indicated he will not go."

"He is an old man. You aren't. And you have nothing to keep you in Varena at all."

He had nothing to keep him. At all.

"He isn't old," he said.

She ignored that. "I have made inquiries into your family, your circumstances, your disposition. I am told you are choleric and of dark humour, and not inclined to be properly respectful. Also that you are skilled at your craft and have attained a measure of renown and some wealth thereby. None of this concerns me. But no one has reported you to be cowardly or without ambition. Of course you will go to Sarantium. Will you carry my message for me?"

Crispin said, before he had really thought about the implications at all, "What message?"

Which meant-he realized much later, thinking about it, reliving this dialogue again and again on the long road east-that the moment she told him he had no real choice, unless he did decide to die and seek Ilandra and the girls with Jad behind the sun.

The young queen of the Antae and of Batiara, surrounded by mortal danger and fighting it with whatever tools came to hand, however unexpectedly, said sofdy,'You will tell the Emperor Valerius II and no one else that should he wish to regain this country and Rhodias within it, and not merely have a meaningless claim to them, there is an unmarried queen here who has heard of his prowess and his glory and honours them."

Crispin's jaw dropped. The queen did not flush, nor did her gaze flicker at all. His reaction was being closely watched, he realized. He said, stammering, "The Emperor is married. Has been for years. He changed the laws to wed the Empress Alixana."

Calm and very still on her ivory seat, she said, "Alas, husbands or wives may be put aside. Or die, Caius Crispus."

He knew this.

"Empires," she murmured, "live after us. So does a name. For good or ill. Valerius II, who was once Petrus of Trakesia, has wanted to regain

Rhodias and this peninsula since he brought his uncle to the Golden Throne twelve summers ago. He purchased his truce with the King of Kings in Bassama for that reason alone. King Shirvan is bribed so Valerius may assemble an army for the west when the time ripens. There are no mysteries here. But if he tries to take this land in war, he will not hold it. This peninsula is too far away from him, and we Antae know how to make war. And his enemies east and north-the Bassanids and the northern barbarians-will never sit quiet and watch, no matter how much he pays them. There will be men around Valerius who know this, and they may even tell him as much. There is another way to achieve his… desire. I am offering it to him." She paused. "You may tell him, too, that you have seen the queen of Batiara very near, in blue and gold and porphyry, and may. give him an honest description, should he ask for one."

This time, though she continued to hold his gaze and even lifted her chin a little, she did flush. Crispin became aware that his hands were perspiring at his sides. He pressed them against his tunic. He felt the stirrings, astonishingly, of a long-dormant desire. A kind of madness, that, though desire often was. The queen of Batiara was not, in any possible sense, someone who could be thought of in this way. She was offering her face and exquisitely garbed body to his recording gaze, only that he might tell an Emperor about her, halfway around the world. He had never dreamed of moving-never wanted to move-in this world of royal shadows and intrigue, but his puzzle-solving mind was racing now, with his pulse, and he could begin to see the pieces of this picture.

No man-or woman-may know.

No woman. Clear as it could be. He was being asked to carry an overture of marriage to the Emperor, who was very much married, and to the most powerful and dangerous woman in the known world.

"The Emperor and his low-born actress-wife have no children, alas," said Gisel softly. Crispin realized his thoughts must have been in his face. He was not good at this. "A sad legacy, one might imagine, of her… profession. And she is no longer young."

I am, was the message beneath the message he was to bring. Save my life, my throne, and I offer you the homeland of the Rhodian Empire that you yearn for. I give you back the west to your east, and the sons to your need. I am fair, and young. ask the man who carries my words to you. He will say as much.

Only ask.

"You believe…" he began. Stopped. Composed himself with an effort. "You believe this can be kept secret? Majesty, if I am even known to have been brought to you

"Trust me in this. You can do me no service if you are killed on the way or when you arrive."

"You reassure me greatly," he murmured.

Surprisingly, she laughed again. He wondered what those on the other side of the doors would think, hearing that. He wondered what else they might have heard.

"You could send no formal envoy with this?"

He knew the answer before she gave it. "No such messenger from me would have a chance to bespeak the Emperor in… privacy."

"And I will?"

"You might. You have pure Rhodian blood on both sides. They? acknowledge that, still, in Sarantium, though they complain about you. Valerius is said to be interested in ivory, frescoes… such things as you do with stones and glass. He is known to hold conversation with his artisans." "How commendable of him. And when he finds that I am not Martinian of Varena? What sort of conversation will then ensue?"

The queen smiled. "That will depend on your wits, will it not?"

Crispin drew another breath. Before he could speak, she added,'You have not asked what return a grateful, newly-crowned Empress might make to the man who conveyed this message for her and had success follow upon it. You can read?" He nodded. She reached into a sleeve of her robe and withdrew a parchment scroll. She extended it a little towards him. He walked nearer, inhaled her scent, saw that her eyelashes were accented and extended subtly. He took the parchment from her hand.

She nodded permission. He broke the seal. Uncurled the scroll. Read.

He felt the colour leave his face as he did so. And hard upon astonishment came bitterness, the core of pain that walked with him in the world.

He said, "It is wasted on me, Majesty. I have no children to inherit any of this."

"You are a young man," the queen said mildly.

Anger flared. "Indeed? So why no offer here of a comely Antae woman of your court, or an aristocrat of Rhodian blood for my prize? The brood mare to fill these promised houses and spend this wealth?"

She had been a princess and was a queen and had spent her life in palaces where judging people was a tool of survival. She said, "I would not insult you with such a proposal. I am told yours was a love-match. A rare thing. I count you lucky in it, though the allotted time was brief. You are a well-formed man, and would have resources to commend you, as the parchment shows. I imagine you could buy your own brood mare of high lineage, if other methods of choosing a second wife did not present themselves."

Much later, in his own bed, awake, with the moons long set and the dawn not far off, Crispin was to conclude that it was this answer, the gravity of it with the bite of irony at the end, that had decided him. Had she offered him a mate on paper or in word, he told himself, he would have refused outright and let her kill him if she wanted.

She would have, he was almost certain of it.

And that thought had come in the last of the darkness, even before he learned from the apprentices as they met at the sanctuary for the sunrise prayers that six of the Palace Guard in Varena had been found dead in the night, their throats slit.

Crispin would walk away from the babble of noise and speculation to stand in the sanctuary alone under his charioteer and torch on the dome. The light was just entering through the dome's ring of windows, striking the angled glass. The mosaic torch seemed to flicker as he watched, a soft but unmistakable rippling, as of a muted flame. In his mind's eye he could see it above burning lanterns and candles. given enough of them it would work.