Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay Page B

sly now. ‘Or is she to be useful later this evening?’
    Petrus looked unabashed. ‘Aliana? A fine dancer, and I always laugh during her comic turns upon the stage.’ He grinned, the round, smooth face free of guile.
    The Emperor’s gaze was shrewd, undeceived. After a moment he said, quietly, ‘Love is dangerous, nephew.’
    The younger man’s expression changed. He was silent a moment, by one of the doorways. Eventually he nodded his head. ‘It can be. I know that. Do you . . . disapprove?’
    It was a well-timed question. How could his uncle’s disapproval attach to anything he did tonight? After the events of the day?
    Valerius shook his head. ‘Not really. You will move into the Imperial Precinct? One of the palaces?’ There were six of them scattered on these grounds. They were all his now. He would have to learn to know them.
    Petrus nodded. ‘Of course, if you honour me so. But not until after the Mourning Rites and the Investiture, and the Hippodrome ceremony in your honour.’
    ‘You will bring her here with you?’
    Petrus’s expression, directly confronted, was equally direct. ‘Only if you approve.’
    The Emperor said, ‘Are there not laws? Someone said something, I recall. An actress . . .?’
    ‘You
are the source and fount of all laws in Sarantium now, Uncle. Laws may be changed.’
    Valerius sighed. ‘We need to talk further on this. And about the holders of office. Gesius. Adrastus. Hilarinus—I don’t trust him. I never did.’
    ‘He is gone, then. And Adrastus must also be, I fear. Gesius . . . is more complex. You know he spoke for you in the Senate?’
    ‘You said. Did it matter?’
    ‘Probably not, but if he had spoken for Adrastus—unlikely as that may sound—it might have made things . . . uglier.’
    ‘You trust him?’
    The Emperor watched his nephew’s deceptively bland, round face as the younger man thought. Petrus wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t look like a courtier. He carried himself, more than anything else, Valerius decided, like an academician of the old pagan Schools. There was ambition there, however. Enormous ambition. There was, in fact, an Empire’s worth of it. He had cause to know, being where he was.
    Petrus gestured, his soft hands spreading a little apart. ‘Truthfully? I’m not certain. I said it was complex.We will, indeed, have to talk further. But tonight you are allowed an evening of leisure, and I may permit myself the same, with your leave. I took the liberty of commanding ale for you, Uncle. It is on the sideboard beside the wine. Have I your gracious leave to depart?’
    Valerius didn’t really want him to go, but what was he to do? Ask the other man to sit with him for a night and hold his hand and tell him being Emperor would be all right? Was he a child?
    ‘Of course. Do you want Excubitors?’
    Petrus began shaking his head, then caught himself. ‘Probably a wise idea, actually. Thank you.’
    ‘Stop by the barracks. Tell Leontes. In fact, a rotating guard of six of them for you, from now on. Someone used Sarantine Fire here today.’
    Petrus’s too-quick gaze showed he didn’t quite know how to read that comment. Good. It wouldn’t do to be
utterly
transparent to his nephew.
    ‘Jad guard and defend you all your days, my Emperor.’
    ‘His eternal Light upon you.’ And for the first time ever, Valerius the Trakesian made the Imperial sign of blessing over another man.
    His nephew knelt, touched forehead to floor three times, palms flat beside his head, then rose and walked out, calm as ever, unchanged though all had changed.
    Valerius, Emperor of Sarantium, successor to Saranios the Great who had built the City, and to a line of Emperors after him, and before him in Rhodias, stretching back almost six hundred years, stood alone in an elegant chamber where oil lanterns hung from the ceiling and were set in brackets on the walls and where half a hundred candles burned extravagantly. His bedroom for tonight was somewhere nearby. He