She put her hands to either side of his face and, rising on tiptoe, kissed him on the lips. She was soft and scented and warm.

"Thank you for my life," she said.

He cleared his throat. Found his head spinning, that no words would come. Too much wine. Amusing: a torrent of words, no words at all. She opened the door. He stumbled onto the threshold, under the stars.

"You are right to leave," Kasia said softly. She put a hand on his chest and gave him a little push. "Go home and have children, my dear."

And then she closed the door before he could say anything at all in reply to something so astonishing.

It was astonishing. There were people in the world who could-and would-say such a thing to him.

One person, at least.

"Let's walk for a little," he said to the other two when he caught up to them, waiting under a wall lamp.

Both were taciturn men, not intrusive at all. They left him to his thoughts, kept their own, as they paced through the streets and squares, offering their presence as security and companionship. The Urban Prefect's guards were about, the taverns and cauponae open again, though the City was still formally in mourning. That meant the theatres were closed and the chariots wouldn't run, but Sarantium was alive now in the springtime dark with smells and sounds and movements into and out of lantern-light.

A pair of women called to the three of them from a doorway. Crispin saw a flame flicker in the lane beyond, one of those he'd had to grow accustomed to, appearing without source, disappearing as soon as seen. The half-world.

He led the others down towards the harbour. The fleet had gone, leaving only the usual naval complement, with the merchant vessels and fishing boats. A rougher neighbourhood, waterfronts always were. The other two, in stride a little behind him, came nearer. Three big men were unlikely to be disturbed, even here.

Crispin felt almost clear-headed now. He made a decision, and he was to keep it: rising the next morning, eating a meal without wine, taking a trip to the baths, having a shave there (a habit by now, he'd break it at sea).

So many farewells, he was thinking, Kasia's words still with him, walking with two friends by the harbour at night. Some goodbyes not yet properly done, some never to be done.

His work not done, never to be done.

It will all come down.

As he walked he found himself continually looking into doorways and down alleys. When the women called to him, offering themselves with promises of delight and forgetting, he turned and looked at them before moving on.

They reached the water. Stopped, listening to the creak of ships and the waves slapping the planks of the piers. Masts moved, the moons appearing to swing from one side of them to another, rocking. There were islands out there, Crispin thought, looking at the sea, with strands of stony beach that would be silver, or blue-tinted in the moonlight beyond the dark.

He turned away. They went on, climbing back up the lanes leading from the water, his companions offering silence as a kind of grace. He was leaving. Sarantium was leaving him.

A pair of women walked by. One stopped and called to them. Crispin stopped as well, looked at her, turned away.

She could change her voice, he knew, sound like anyone at all. Probably look like anyone. Artifice of the stage. If she was alive. He had a fantasy, he admitted finally to himself: he was walking in the darkness of the City, thinking that if she was still here, if she saw him, she might call to him, to say farewell.

It was time to go to bed. They walked back. A servant sleepily admitted them. He said goodnight to the others. They went to their rooms. He went up to his. Shirin was waiting there.

Some goodbyes, not yet properly done.

He closed the door behind him. She was sitting on the bed, one leg neatly crossed over the other. Images begetting images. No dagger this time. Not the same woman.

She said, "It is very late. Are you sober?"

"Tolerably; he said. "We took a long walk."

"Carullus?"

He shook his head. "We pretty much carried him home to Kasia."

Shirin smiled a little. "He doesn't know what to celebrate, what to mourn."

"That's about right," he said. "How did you get in?"

She arched her eyebrows. "My litter's waiting across the road. Didn't you see it? How did I get in? I knocked at the door. One of your servants opened it. I told them we hadn't yet said goodbye and could I wait for you to return. They let me come up." She gestured, he saw the glass of wine at her elbow. "They have been attentive. How do most of your visitors get in? What did you think, that I climbed through a window to seduce you in your sleep?"

"I'm not so lucky a man," he murmured. He took the chair by the window. He felt a need to sit down.

She made a face. "Men are better awake, most of the time," she said. "Though I could make a case the other way, for some of those who send me gifts."

Crispin managed a smile. Danis was on her thong about Shirin's neck. They'd both come. Difficult. Everything was difficult these last days.

He couldn't really say why this encounter was, however, and that was a part of the problem, in itself.

"Pertennius being troublesome again?" he asked.

"No. He's with the army. You should know that."

"I'm not paying attention to everyone's movements. Do forgive me." His voice was sharper than he'd meant it to be.

She glared at him.

'She says she feels like killing you," Danis spoke for the first time.

"Say it yourself," Crispin snapped. "Don't hide behind the bird."

"I am not hiding. Unlike some people. It isn't… polite to say such things aloud."

He laughed, against his will. Protocols of the half-world.

Reluctantly, she smiled as well.

There was a small silence. He breathed her scent in his room. Two women in the world wore this perfume. One now, more likely, the other was dead, or hiding still.

"I don't want you to go," Shirin said.

He looked at her without speaking. She lifted her small chin. Her features, he had long ago decided, were appealing but not arresting in repose. It was in the expressiveness of her, in laughter, pain, anger, sorrow, fear-any and all of those-that Shirin's face came alive, her beauty compelled attention and awareness and gave birth to desire. That, and when she moved, the dancer's grace, suppleness, unspoken hint that physical needs scarcely admitted could be assuaged. She was a creature never to be fully captured in an art that did not move.

He said, "Shirin, I cannot stay. Not now. You know what has happened. You called me a liar and an idiot for trying to make… less of it, when last we spoke."

"Danis called you an idiot," she corrected, and then was silent again. Her turn to glare at him.

And after a long moment, Crispin said, bringing the thought into words, ! cannot ask you to come with me, my dear."

The chin lifted a little more. Not a word spoken. Waiting.

"I… have thought of it," he murmured.

"Good," said Shirin.

"I don't even know if I'll stay in Varena, what I'll do."

"Ah. The wanderer's hard life. Nothing a woman could share."

"Not… this woman," he said. He was entirely sober now. "You are just about the second empress of Sarantium, my dear. They need you desperately, the new rulers. They'll want continuity, the people diverted. You can expect to be showered with even more than you have now."

"And ordered to marry the Emperor's secretary?"

He blinked. "I doubt it," he said.

"Oh. Do you? You know all about the court here, I see." She glared at him again. "Why not stay, then? They'll geld you and make you Chancellor when Gesius dies."

He looked at her. Said, after a moment, "Shirin, be truthful. Do you honestly fear they'll force you to marry someone-anyone-right now?"