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was Petrus and she was Aliana of the Blues and so young, and the afternoon sun
is bright above her and all of them, in a cloudless springtime sky over
Sarantium.
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She cut off most of her hair in the small boat, being rowed back from
the isle.
If she was wrong about what Daleinus's departure and the murdered guards
meant, shorn hair could be covered, would grow back. She didn't think she was
wrong, even then, on the water. There was a blackness in the world, under the
bright sun, above the blue waves.
She had only Mariscus's knife with which to cut; it was difficult in the boat.
She hacked raggedly, dropped tresses in the sea. Offerings.
Her eyes were dry. When the hair was chopped she leaned over the side and used
the salt water to scrub the cream and paint and scented oils from her face and
blur the scent of her perfume. Her earrings and rings she put in a pocket of
her robe (money would be needed). Then she took one of the rings back out and
gave it to Mariscus, rowing her.
'You may have a choice to make,' she said to him, 'when we reach the harbour.
You are forgiven, whatever you do. This is my thanks to you for this task, and
for all that has gone before.'
He swallowed hard. His hand shook as he took it from her. The ring was worth
more than he could earn in a lifetime in the Imperial
Guard.
She told him to discard his leather armour and Excubitor's over-tunic and
sword. He did so. They went overboard. He had not spoken the whole of the way,
rowing hard, sweating in the light, fear in his eyes. The ring went into his
boot. The boots were expensive for a fisherman, but they would not be together
long. She would have to hope no one noticed.
She used his knife again to cut off the lower portion of her robe, did it
unevenly, tore it in places. People would see stains and rips, not the
fineness of a fabric. She took off her leather sandals, tossed them, too, over
the side. Looked at her bare feet: painted toenails. Decided they would be all
right. Women of the street painted themselves, not just ladies of the court.
She did immerse her hands in the water again, rubbing and roughening them. She
pushed off the last of her rings, one she never removed, let it drop down
through the sea. There were tales of sea people whose rulers had wed the sea
in this way.
She was doing something else.
She spent the last of the journey back to harbour biting and chipping at her
fingernails, smeared the torn robe with dirt and salt water from the bottom of
the boat, and then her cheeks again. Her hands and complexion, left as they
were, would give her away before anything else.
There were other small boats in the water around them by then so she had to be
discreet. Fishermen, ferrymen, small craft carrying goods to and from Deapolis
in and among the looming shapes of the fleet that was to sail west to war. The
announcement planned for today, though none out here knew that. The Emperor in
the Hippodrome kathisma after the last race, with all the great ones of the
realm.
She had timed her morning's outing on the water to be there in time, of
course.
Not now. Now what she sensed ahead of her was an aura of death, an ending. She
had said in the palace two years ago, when Sarantium was burning in the
Victory Riot, that she would rather die in the vestments of Empire than flee
and live any lesser life.
It had been true then. Now, something different was true. An even colder,
harder truth. If they killed Petrus today, if the Daleinoi did this, she would
live long enough herself to see them dead, somehow. After? After would take
care of itself, as was needful.
There were endings and there were endings.
She could not have known, even self-conscious and aware of her own appearance
as she had always been, how she appeared in that moment to the soldier in the
boat with her, rowing to Sarantium.
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They approached a mooring, far down the slip, manoeuvring among the other
jostling small boats. Obscenities and jests rang back and forth across the
water. Mariscus was only just adequate to navigating his
way in. They were loudly cursed, she swore back, crudely, in a voice she
hadn't used for fifteen years, and made a caupona jest. Mariscus, sweating,
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