Crispin looked at her. So did Carullus. The two men exchanged glances. Crispin said, "My dear, please leave that thought in this room. You told me not to be stupid, earlier. Let me say the same to you."

"He's right," Carullus said soberly.

'Jad rot you both!" Danis said in silence, and Crispin heard the pain in the bird that could not be spoken by the woman.

"We are all unhappy tonight," Carullus added. "These are not easy times."

'Unhappy? I could laugh! The man is in his glory!" Danis said, with a savagery unknown for her.

It wasn't true, or not entirely true, but Crispin had no way to say so aloud. He looked at Shirin, and belatedly, in the lamplight, he realized that she was weeping.

"You will hunt her down like some beast," she said bitterly. "All of you. An army of soldiers after one woman whose husband has just been killed, whose life died with him. And then what? Send her back to a hovel in the Hippodrome? Make her dance naked for their amusement? Or are you to quietly kill her when you find her? Spare poor, virtuous Leontes the details?"

It was a woman speaking, and a performer, Crispin understood finally. Fear and this unexpected depth of rage, thinking of the other dancer who had defined, for all of them, the City and the world.

But even here there were layers, because if Leontes was oblivious to what had happened, Styliane was not. It wasn't just about men pursuing a helpless woman. It was also about two women at war, and only one of them could live now.

"I don't know what they will do," said Carullus, and even Shirin, lifting her face, not hiding her tears, had to have heard the distress in his voice.

There were footsteps. A soldier at the arched entrance to the room. He reported no one hiding in the house or the courtyard within. The others filed past him and outside again.

Carullus looked at Crispin. Seemed about to say something more but did not. He turned to Shirin. "May we escort you home, my lady?"

"No," she said.

He swallowed. "There are orders, everyone to remain inside. There are many soldiers in the streets… some of them… unused to the city. It will be safer if-"

"No," she said.

Carullus stopped. After another moment he bowed to her and left the room.

Crispin walked him to the door. Carullus stopped there. "They are… anxious to find her tonight, as you say. There will be some unpleasantness, I suspect, as they search."

Crispin nodded. Unpleasantness. A courtier's masking word. Changes were taking place, even as the night passed, the moons rose. But none of this was Carullus's fault. "I… understand. I am grateful that it was you at my door. Jad guard you."

"And you, my friend. Stay inside."

"I will."

He had truly intended to. Who can know what will come, however, overtaking a life?

Last autumn, at home, it had been an Imperial Courier bearing a summons to Sarantium. Tonight it was something else, but still a summons for there came another knocking, a quieter one, not long after the soldiers left.

Crispin answered it himself again. No flaring of torches this time, no sight of armed men. This was someone cloaked and hooded, and alone. A woman, breathless with running and fear. She asked his name. He gave it, without thinking, stepped aside, she entered, hurriedly, a glance over her shoulder into the night. He closed the door. In the entrance to his home, she wordlessly extended a written note, and then fumbled in her cloak and produced a ring.

He took both. Her hands were trembling. He recognized the ring, and felt his heart thump once, very hard.

He had forgotten someone.

The sealed note, when torn open, contained a command, not a request, and from someone whom-as he stood there, and felt his heart begin to beat properly again-Crispin realized he did have a duty to obey, however bitter the confusions and torn loyalties shaping a terrible day and night.

It also meant going out into the streets again.

Shirin appeared in the arched doorway.

"What is it?"

He told her. He wasn't sure why, but he told her.

"I'm taking you," she said.

He tried to say no. A waste of time.

She had a litter and guards, she pointed out. Was known, had the protection that came with that. Could plausibly be heading home with a friend, even with the streets forbidden. He didn't have the force to refuse her. What was she going to do? Stay in his house while he went out?

Shirin had a two-person litter. Crispin ordered the messenger to be attended to, given food, a bed for the night if she wanted. The woman's eyes betrayed her relief: she'd clearly been terrified she'd have to go back out. Crispin put on his own cloak and then, Shirin beside him, opened the door, waiting for a moment when the street was quiet before they stepped out. The darkness was laden with aura and menace, clear as the stars, heavy as the weight of earth on the dead. Valerius had died in a tunnel, Carullus had said.

Her litter-bearers came for them from the shadows at the end of the portico. Shirin gave them instructions to take her home. They started down the street. Peering through the drawn curtains as they moved, they both saw the strange, small flames flitting at corners, unlit by any visible source, darting and vanishing. Souls, spirits, echoes of Heladikos's fire, inexplicable.

But one always saw those flames in Sarantium at night.

What was new were the noises, and the torches everywhere, smoking, casting orange, erratic light. From all around came the sound of booted feet. Running, not marching. A sense of speed, urgency, the night spinning with it. A banging upon doors, shouted commands to open. Searchers. For one woman. They heard two horses gallop past, orders barked, curses. It occurred to Crispin suddenly that most of these soldiers wouldn't have the least idea what Alixana looked like. He thought again of the Imperial robe, discarded on the island. She wasn't about to be adorned and garbed like an Empress. It wouldn't be so easy to rind her: unless she was betrayed. That, of course, was a possibility.

They made no attempt at concealment as they went, were stopped twice. The Urban Prefect's men both times, which was fortunate, for these troops knew the Principal Dancer of the Greens immediately, and they were allowed to continue on their way to her house.

They didn't go to her house. As they neared her street, Shirin leaned out and changed her orders, instructing her bearers to continue east, towards the walls. From here on the danger grew, was real, for she couldn't claim to be going home now, but they were not stopped again. The search hadn't come this far yet, it seemed; it was fanning out from the Imperial Precinct and up from the harbour, house to house, street to street in the dark.

In time, they came to a dwelling, not far from the triple walls. Shirin ordered the bearers to stop. In the litter there was a silence.

"Thank you," Crispin said, at length. She stared at him. Danis was silent, on the chain about her throat.

He got out. Looked at the closed doorway in front of him, and then up at the night stars. Then he turned back to her. She still hadn't spoken. He leaned into the litter and kissed her gently on the lips. He remembered the first day they'd met, that passionate embrace in the doorway, Danis protesting urgently, Pertenmus of Eubulus appearing behind her.

There was a man who would be happy tonight, Crispin thought suddenly, with bitterness.

Then he turned away and knocked-one more knocking in Sarantium that night-on the door of the person who had summoned him. A servant opened instantly; had been waiting, he realized. He went in.

The servant gestured nervously. Crispin stepped forward.

The queen of the Antae was waiting in the first room on the right, branching off the hallway.