"Very… extremely… kind of you. Your Majesty," Crispin mumbled. He was trying, with limited success, to make his eyes stop blurring and become useful in the candlelight. There seemed to be random objects swimming in the air. He was also having some difficulty breathing. He was alone in a room with the queen. He had never even seen her, except at a distance. Artisans, however successful or celebrated, did not hold nocturnal, private converse with their sovereign. Not in the world as Crispin knew it.

His head felt as if a small but insistent hammer inside it were trying to pound its way out. His confusion was extreme, disorienting. Had she captured him or rescued him? And why, in either case? He didn't dare ask. Amid the perfumes he smelled flour again suddenly. That would be himself. From the sack. He looked down at his dinner tunic and made a sour face. The blue was streaked and smeared a greyish-white. Which meant that his hair and beard..

"You were attended to, somewhat, while you slept, "said the queen, graciously enough. "I had my own physician summoned. He said bleeding was not immediately necessary. Would a glass of wine be of help?"

Crispin made a sound that he trusted to convey restrained, well-bred assent. She did not laugh again, or smile. It occurred to him that this was a woman not unused to observing the effects of violence upon men. A number of well-known incidents, unbidden, came into his head. Some were quite recent. The thought of them did nothing to ease him at all.

The queen made no movement, and a moment later Crispin realized that she had meant what she said quite literally. They were alone in this room. No servants, not even slaves. Which was simply astonishing. And he could hardly expect her to serve him wine. He looked around and, more by luck than any effective process of observation, encountered a flask and cups on the table by his elbow. He poured, carefully, and watered two cups, unsure whether that was a presumption. He was not conversant with the Antae court. Martinian had taken all their commissions from King Hildric and then his daughter, and had delivered the reports.

Crispin looked up. His eyesight seemed to be improving as the hammer subsided a little and the room elected to stabilize. He saw her shake her head at the cup he had poured for her. He set it down. Waited. Looked at her again.

The queen of Batiara was tall for a woman and unsettlingly young. Seen this closely, she had the straight Antae nose and her father's strong cheekbones. The wide-set eyes were a much-celebrated blue, he knew, though he couldn't see that clearly in the candlelight. Her hair was golden, bound up, of course, held by a golden circlet studded with rubies.

The Antae had worn bear grease in their hair when they'd first come to settle in the peninsula. This woman was not, manifestly, an exponent of such traditions. He imagined those rubies-he couldn't help himself- set in his mosaic torch on the sanctuary dome. He imagined them gleaming by candlelight there.

The queen wore a golden sun disk about her throat, an image of Heladikos upon it. Her robe was blue silk, threaded with fine gold wire, and there was a purple band running down the left side, from high collar to ankle. Only royalty wore purple, in keeping with a tradition going back to the Rhodian Empire at its own beginnings six hundred years ago.

He was alone in a palace room at night with the headache of his life and a queen-his queen-regarding him with a mild, steady appraisal.

It was common opinion, all through the Batiaran peninsula, that the queen was unlikely to live through the winter. Crispin had heard wagers offered and taken, at odds.

The Antae might have moved beyond bear grease and pagan rituals in a hundred years but they were most emphatically not accustomed to being ruled by a woman, and any choice of a mate-and king-for Gisel was fraught with an almost inconceivable complexity of tribal hierarchies and feuds. In a way, it was only due to these that she was still alive and reigning a year and more after her father's death and the savage, inconclusive civil war that had followed. Martinian had put it that way one night over dinner. The factions of the Antae were locked in balance around her; if she died, that balance spiralled away and war came. Again.

Crispin had shrugged. Whoever reigned would commission sanctuaries to their own glory in the god's name. Mosaicists would work. He and Martinian were extremely well known, with a reputation among the upper classes and reliable employees and apprentices. Did it matter so much, he'd asked the older man, what happened in the palace in Varena? Did any such things signify greatly after the plague?

The queen was still gazing at him beneath level brows, waiting. Crispin, belatedly realizing what was expected, saluted her with his cup and drank. It was magnificent wine. The very best Sarnican. He'd never tasted anything so complex. Under any normal circumstances, he would..

He put it down, quickly. After the blow to his head, this drink could undo him completely.

"A careful man, I see," she murmured.

Crispin shook his head. "Not really, Majesty." He had no idea what was expected of him here, or what to expect. It occurred to him that he ought to feel outraged. he'd been assaulted and abducted outside his own home. Instead, he felt curious, intrigued, and he was sufficiently self-aware to recognize that these feelings had been absent from his life for some time.

"May I assume," he said, "that the footpads who clapped a flour sack on my head and dented my braincase were from the palace? Or did your loyal guards rescue me from common thieves?"

She smiled at that. She couldn't be older than her early twenties, Crispin thought, remembering a royal betrothal and a husband-to-be dying of some mischance a few years ago.

"They were my guards. I told you, their orders were to be courteous, while ensuring you came with them. Apparently you did some injuries to them."

"I am delighted to hear it. They did some to me." "In loyalty to their queen and in her cause. Do you have the same loyalties?"

Direct, very direct.

Crispin watched as she moved to an ivory and rosewood bench and sat down, her back very straight. He saw that there were three doors to the room and imagined guards poised on the other side of each of them. He pushed his hands through his hair-a characteristic motion, leaving it randomly scattered-and said quietly,'I am engaged, to the best of my skill, and using deficient materials, in decorating a sanctuary to honour your father. Is that answer enough, Majesty?"

"Not at all, Rhodian. That is self-interest. You are extremely well paid, and the materials are the best we can offer right now. We've had a plague and a war, Caius Crispus."

"Oh, really," he said. Couldn't help himself. She raised her eyebrows. "Insolence?"

Her voice and expression made him abrupdy aware that whatever the proper court manners might be, he was not displaying them, and the Antae had never been known for patience.

He shook his head. "I lived through both," he murmured. "I need no reminders."

She regarded him in silence another long moment. Crispin felt an unexplained prickling along his back up to the hairs of his neck. The silence stretched. Then the queen drew a breath and said without preamble:! need an extremely private message carried to the Emperor in Sarantium. No man-or woman-may know the contents of this, or that it is even being carried. That is why you are here alone, and were brought by night."

Crispin's mouth went dry. He felt his heart begin to hammer again. "I am an artisan, Majesty. No more than that. I have no place in the intrigues of courts." He wished he hadn't put down the wine glass. "And," he added, too tardily,'I am not going to Sarantium."

"Of course you are," she said dismissively. "What man would not accept that invitation." She knew about it. Of course she did. His mother knew about it.