"One ventures to guess," added Eudric smoothly, to no one and to all of them left in the sanctuary, "that she must have had some word of Agila's vile plot and elected to save herself rather than be present at the holy rites for her father. Hard to blame a woman for that. It does raise some. questions, naturally." He smiled.
Pardos would remember that smile. Eudric went on, after a pause, "I propose to restore order here and then establish it in the palace-in the queen's name, of course-while we ascertain exactly where she is. Then," said the yellow-haired Chancellor, "we shall have to determine how next to proceed here in Varena, and indeed in all of Batiara. In the meantime," he said, in a voice suddenly cold that did not admit of contradiction, "you are under a misapprehension of your own, good cleric. Hear me: I did not ask you to do something, I told you to do it. The three of you will proceed with the ceremony of consecration and of mourning, or your own deaths will follow upon those you have seen. Believe it, Sybard. I have no quarrel with you, but you can die here, or live to achieve what goals you have set for yourself and our people. Holy places have been sanctified with blood before today."
Sybard of Varena, long-shanked and long-necked, looked at him a moment. "There are no goals I could properly pursue," he said, "were I to do as you say. I have offices to perform for those slain here and comfort to offer their families. Kill me if you will." And he walked from the raised place before the altar and out the side door. Eudric's eyes narrowed to slits, Pardos saw, but he said nothing. A smaller Antae nobleman, smooth-chinned but with a long brown moustache, stood beside him now, and Pardos saw this man lay a steadying hand on the Chancellor's arm as Sybard passed right by them.
Eudric stared straight ahead, breathing deeply. It was the smaller man who now gave crisp commands. Guards began mopping with their own cloaks at the blood where the woman and the mute had died. There was a great deal. They carried their bodies out through the side exit, and then those of Agila and his slain men.
Other soldiers went out into the yard, where frightened people could still be heard milling about. They were instructed to order the crowd back in. To report that the ceremony was to proceed.
It amazed Pardos, thinking of it after, but most of those who had rushed out, trampling each other in terror, did come back. He didn't know what that said about people, what it meant about the world in which they lived. Couvry came back, Radulph did. Martinian and the two women did not. Pardos realized that he was glad of that.
He stayed where he was. His gaze went back and forth from Eudric and the man beside him to the two remaining clerics before the altar. One of the clerics turned to look back at the sun disk, and then he walked over to it and, using the corner of his own robe, wiped at the blood there and then at the blood on the altar. When he turned around and came back, Pardos saw the smeared blood dark on his yellow robe and saw that the man was weeping.
Eudric and the one beside him took their seats, exactly as before. The two clerics glanced nervously over at them and then raised their hands once more, four palms outwards, and then they spoke, in perfect ritual unison.
"Holy Jad," they said, "let there be Light for all your children gathered here, now and in days to come." And the people in the sanctuary spoke the response, raggedly at first and then more clearly. Then the clerics spoke again, and the response came again.
Pardos rose quietly then as the rites began, and he moved past Couvry and Radulph and those sitting beyond them towards the eastern aisle and then he walked past all the people gathered there beneath the mosaic of Jad and Heladikos with his gift of fire, and he went out the doors into the cold of the yard and down the path and through the gate and away from there.
At the moment a man and a woman she had loved since childhood were dying in her father's sanctuary, the queen of the Antae was standing fur-cloaked and hooded at the stern railing of a ship sailing east from Mylasia through choppy seas. She was gazing back west and north to land, to where Varena would be, far beyond the intervening fields and forests. There were no tears in her eyes. There had been earlier, but she was not alone here and visible grief, for a queen, required privacy.
Overhead, on the mainmast of the sleek, burnished ship, whipped by the stiff breeze, flew a crimson lion and a sun disk on a blue field: the banner of the Sarantine Empire.
The handful of Imperial passengers-couriers, military officers, taxation officials, engineers-would disembark at Megarium, giving thanks for a safe journey through wind and white waves. It was late to be sailing, even for the short run across the bay.
Gisel would not be among those leaving the ship. She was going farther. She was sailing to Sarantium.
Almost everyone else on board had been present as a screen, a mask, to deceive the Antae port officials in Mylasia. If this ship had not been in the harbour, the other passengers would have ridden the Imperial road north and east to Sauradia and then back down south to Megarium. Or they might have taken another, less trim craft than this royal one, had the seas been judged safe for a fast trip across the bay.
This ship, expertly manned, had been riding at anchor in Mylasia waiting for one passenger only, should she decide to come.
Valerius II, Jad's Holy Emperor of Sarantium, had extended an extremely private invitation to the queen of the Antae in Batiara, suggesting she visit his great City, seat of Empire, glory of the world, to be feted and honoured there, and perhaps hold converse upon matters of moment for both Batiara and Sarantium in Jad's world as it was in that year. The queen had had conveyed to the ship's captain in Mylasia harbour-discreedy-her acceptance six days ago.
She had been about to be killed, otherwise.
She was likely to die in any case, Gisel thought, looking back over the white-capped sea at the receding coastline of her home, wiping at tears that were caused by the wind at the stern, but only by the wind. Her heart ached as with a wound, and a grim, hard-eyed image of her father was in her mind, for she knew what he would have thought and said of this flight. It was a grief. It was a grief, among all the others of her life.
Her hood blew back in a swirling of the salt wind, exposing her face to the elements and men's eyes, sending her hair streaming. It didn't matter. Those on board knew who she was. The need for uttermost care had ended when the ship slipped anchor on the dawn tide carrying her from her throne, her people, her life.
Was there a way to return? A course to sail between the rocks of violent rebellion at home and those of the east, where an army was almost certainly being readied to reclaim Rhodias? And if there was such a course, if it existed in the god's world, was she wise enough to find it? And would they let her live so long?
She heard a footfall on the deck behind her. Her women were below, both of them violently unwell at sea. She had six of her own guards here.
Only six to go so far, and not Pharos, the silent one she'd so dearly wanted by her side-but he was always by her side, and the deception would have failed had he not remained in the palace.
It wasn't one of the guards who approached now, nor the ship's captain, who was being courteous and deferential in exactly proper measure. It was the other man, the one she had summoned to the palace to help her achieve this flight, the one who had said why Pharos would have to remain in Varena. She remembered weeping then.
She turned her head and looked at him. Middling height, long grey-white hair and beard, the rugged features and deep-set blue eyes, the ash-wood staff he carried. He was a pagan. He would have to be, she thought, to be what else he was.