Even as he pointed, Martinian wondered at himself. A summons? To the City? And he was playing the games of a boy? No one here would give him away to an arrogant Sarantine, but even so…
In the stillness that ensued, a voice they all knew was suddenly heard overhead with unfortunate clarity. The resonance of sound happened to be very good in this sanctuary.
"By Heladikos's cock, I will carve slices from his rump with his useless glass and force feed him his own buttocks in segments, I swear by holy Jad!"
The courier looked affronted.
"That's Martinian," said Martinian helpfully. "Up there. He's in a temper."
In fact, he really wasn't any more. The blasphemous vulgarity was almost reflexive. Sometimes he said things, and wasn't even aware he was speaking aloud, when a technical challenge engaged him entirely. At the moment, he was obsessed, in spite of himself, with the problem of how to make the torch of Heladikos gleam red when he had nothing that was red with which to work. If he'd had some gold he could have sandwiched the glass against a gold backing and warmed the hue that way, but gold for mosaic was a fatuous dream here in Batiara after the wars and the plague.
He'd had an idea, however. Up on the high scaffold, Caius Crispus of Varena was setting reddish-veined marble from Pezzelana flat into the soft, sticky lime coat on the dome, interspersed with the best of the tesserae they'd managed to salvage from the miserable sheets of glass. The glass pieces he laid at angles in the setting bed, to catch and reflect the light.
If he was right, the effect would be a shimmer and dance along the tall shape of the flame, the flat stones mingled with the tilted, glinting tesserae. Seen from below, it ought to have that result in sunlight through the windows around the base of the dome, or by the light of the wall candles and the suspended iron lanterns running the length of the sanctuary. The young queen had assured Martinian that her bequest to the clerics here would ensure evening and winter lighting. Crispin had no reason to disbelieve it was her father's tomb, and the Antae had had a cult of ancestor-worship, only thinly masked by their conversion to the Jaddite faith.
He had a cloth knotted around the cut in his left hand, and that made him awkward. He dropped a good stone, watched it fall a long way and swore again, reaching for another one. The setting bed was beginning to harden beneath the flame and torch he was filling in. He would have to work faster. The torch was silver. They were using whitish marble and some river-smooth stones for that-it ought to work. He'd heard that in the east they had a way of frosting glass to make an almost pure white tessera like snow, and that mother-of-pearl was available, for crowns and jewellery. He didn't even like thinking about such things. It only frustrated him, here in the west amid ruins.
As it happened, these were his thoughts in the precise moment when the irritated, carrying eastern voice from below penetrated his concentration and his life. A coincidence, or the heard accents of Sarantium carrying his mind sailing that way towards the celebrated channel and the inner sea and the gold and silver and silk of the Emperor?
He looked down.
Someone, short as a snail from this height, was addressing him as Martinian. This would have been merely vexing had Martinian himself-by the doorway, as was usual at this hour-not also been gazing up at Crispin as the easterner barked the wrong name, disturbing all the work in the sanctuary.
Crispin bit back two obscene retorts and then a third response which was to direct the imbecile in the right direction. Something was afoot. It might only be a jibe directed at the courier-though that would be unlike his partner-or it might be something else.
He'd deal with it later.
"I'll be down when I'm done," he called, much more politely than the circumstances warranted. "Go pray for someone's immortal soul in the meantime. Do it quietly."
The red-faced man shouted, "Imperial Couriers are not kept waiting, you vulgar provincial! There is a letter for you!"
Interesting as this undoubtedly was, Crispin found it easy to ignore him. He wished he had some red vivid as the courier's cheeks, mind you. Even from this height they showed crimson. It occurred to him that he'd never tried to achieve that effect on a face in mosaic. He slotted the idea among all the others and returned to creating the holy flame given as a gift to mankind, working with what he had.
Had his instructions not been unfortunately specific, Tilliticus would simply have dropped the packet on the dusty, debris-strewn floor of the shabby little sanctuary, reeking with the worst Heladikian heresy, and stormed out.
Men did not come-even here in Batiara-in their own slow time to receive an invitation from the Imperial Precinct in Sarantium. They raced over, ecstatic. They knelt. They embraced the knees of the courier. Once, someone had kissed his muddy, dung-smeared boots, weeping for joy.
And they most certainly offered the courier largess for being the bearer of such exalted, dazzling tidings.
Watching the ginger-haired man named Martinian finally descend from his scaffolding and walk deliberately across the floor towards him, Pronobius Tilliticus understood that his boots were not about to be kissed. Nor was any sum of money likely to be proffered him in gratitude.
It only confirmed his opinion of Batiara under the Antae. They might be Jad-worshippers, if barely, and they might be formal tributary allies of the Empire in a relationship brokered by the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and they might have conquered this peninsula a century ago and rebuilt some of the walls they had levelled then, but they were still barbarians.
And they had infected with their uncouth manners and heresies even those native-born descendants of the Rhodian Empire who had a claim to honour.
The man Martinian's hair was actually an offensively bright red, Tilliticus saw. Only the dust and lime in it and in his untidy beard softened the hue. His eyes, unsoftened, were a hard, extremely unpleasant blue. He wore a nondescript, stained tunic over wrinkled brown leggings. He was a big man, and he carried himself in a coiled, angry way that was quite unappealing. His hands were large, and there was a bloodstained bandage wrapped around one of them.
He's in a temper, the fool by the doorway had said. The fool was still on his stool, watching the two of them from beneath something misshapen that might once have been a hat. The deaf and mute apprentice had wandered in by now, along with all the others from outside. It ought to have been a splendid, resonant moment for Tilliticus to make his proclamation, to graciously accept the artisan's stammering gratitude on behalf of the Chancellor and the Imperial Post, and then head for the best inn Varena could offer with some coins to spend on mulled wine and a woman. "And so? I'm here. What is it you want?"
The mosaicist's voice was as hard as his eyes. His glance, when it left Tilliticus's face and sought that of the older man in the doorway, did not grow any less inimical. An unpleasant character, entirely.
Tilliticus was genuinely shocked by the rudeness. "In truth? I want nothing whatever with you." He reached into his bag, found the fat Imperial Packet and threw it scornfully at the artisan. The man, moving quickly, caught it in one hand.
Tilliticus said, almost spitting the words, "You are Martinian of Varena, obviously. Unworthy as you are, I am charged with declaring that the Thrice Exalted Beloved of Jad, the Emperor Valerius II, requests you to attend upon him in Sarantium with all possible speed. The packet you hold contains a sum of money to aid you in your travels, a sealed Permit signed by the Chancellor himself that allows you to use Imperial Posting Inns for lodging and services, and a letter that I am sure you will be able to find someone to read to you. It indicates that your services If are requested to aid in the decoration of the new Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom that the Emperor, in his own great wisdom, is even now constructing."