Sailing to Sarantium
Guy Gavriel Kay
Praise for
Sailing to Sarantium
“Sailing to Sarantium confirms, yet again, Kay’s status as one of our most accomplished and engaging storytellers.”
—Toronto Star
“With consummate skill and a flair for leisurely storytelling, [Kay] begins a new series set in a fantasy version of the Byzantine Empire . . . [An] evocative tale of one man’s rendezvous with his destiny.”
—Library Journal
“An intricately plotted, fascinating historical novel and a moving story. Kay’s distinctive prose style always flows smoothly . . . Reaches strikingly beautiful depths.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“The novel’s cleverness lies in fusing historical fact with skilful speculation. An enchanting, colourful fantasy adventure.”
—Time Out (UK)
“Kay has achieved one of the finest works of historical fantasy I have read in years . . . Sailing to Sarantium is a masterful example of the genre, one which perhaps redefines its possibilities. Most other such works pale in its light.”
—Edmonton Journal
“A spellbinding tale . . . Simply one of the most beautifully written books I have read in ages . . . Indescribably elegant.”
—The Telegram (St. John’s)
“With help from Yeats, a cohort of consulting historians, and some familiar and effective narrative frameworks, Sailing to Sarantium sees the [Sarantine Mosaic] series well-launched . . . Whether in one or more volumes, Kay’s writing is of the literate, page-turning variety that is crafted with great care to weave together its underlying themes.”
—Calgary Herald
“Kay’s aim—and his book—are to be applauded. Reality transformed to sparkling fantasy.”
—SFX (UK)
“Kay at his finest. Sarantium itself is vast, sumptuous, and dangerous . . . Beneath the shining authorial handiwork lies something closer to Yeatsian miracle.”
—Locus
“[Sailing to Sarantium] has much to say as it dusts off and makes accessible—through the language of fantasy—the intrigues and forces of the sixth century.”
—Quill & Quire
“Kay is in high gear . . . An enticing and often powerful novel . . . Kay’s writing, often lyrical and always engaging, moves the reader through the appropriately Byzantine plot.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“Stunning . . . A rich tapestry of a story that surpasses even Kay’s previous novels.”
—SF Site
“Brimful of danger, romance and intrigue . . . Kay deftly brings all his characters to vivid life . . . He also succeeds brilliantly in invoking the numinous.”
—Starburst (UK)
“Sailing to Sarantium’s principal task is to set the stage for future conflict and introduce the dramatis personae. This it does supremely well, and one can only hope that it doesn’t take too long for the concluding novel to hit the racks.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Up to Kay’s usual high standard . . . He has adapted realworld history so well for his world-building purposes that even those who know what he is borrowing will admire it.”
—Booklist
“Marvellous and moving.”
—Bookbrowser
“Kay has taken on the potentially perilous task of taking an alternate history of Byzantium, Rome, and . . . alloying it with fantasy. He succeeds brilliantly; his believably realised view of this world is matched by the characters he creates to populate it.”
—Outland Magazine (UK)
“Kay is a master of suspense and exceptionally good at delineating character, especially female character. A top quality romantic adventure.”
—Interzone (UK)
PENGUIN CANADA
SAILING TO SARANTIUM
GUY GAVRIEL KAY is the author of ten novels and a volume of poetry. He won the 2008 World Fantasy Award for Ysabel, has been awarded the International Goliardos Prize, and is a two-time winner of the Aurora Award. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world.
Visit his Canadian website at www.guygavrielkay.ca and his international website at www.brightweavings.com.
ALSO BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY
The Fionavar Tapestry:
The Summer Tree
The Wandering Fire
The Darkest Road
Tigana
A Song for Arbonne
The Lions of Al-Rassan
The Sarantine Mosaic:
Lord of Emperors
The Last Light of the Sun
Beyond This Dark House
(poetry)
Ysabel
Under Heaven
SAILING TO
SARANTIUM
BOOK 1 OF THE SARANTINE MOSAIC
GUY
GAVRIEL
KAY
PENGUIN CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),
a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1998
Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),
a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1999, 2003, 2005
Published in this edition, 2010
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)
Copyright © Guy Gavriel Kay, 1998
Author representation: Westwood Creative Artists
94 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1G6
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Kay, Guy Gavriel
Sailing to Sarantium / Guy Gavriel Kay.
(Sarantine mosaic bk. 1)
ISBN 978-0-14-317460-8
I. Title. II. Series: Kay, Guy Gavriel. Sarantine mosaic ; bk. 1.
PS8571.A935S26 2010 C813′.54 C2010-900451-5
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without th
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For my sons,
Samuel Alexander and Matthew Tyler,
with love, as I watch them
‘... fashion everything
From nothing every day, and teach
The morning stars to sing.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Imagine it is obvious from the title of this work, but I owe a debt of inspiration to William Butler Yeats, whose meditations in poetry and prose on the mysteries of Byzantium led me there and gave me a number of underlying motifs along with a sense that imagination and history would be at home together in this milieu.
I have long believed that to do a variation in fiction upon a given period, one must first try to grasp as much as possible about that period. Byzantium is well served by its historians, fractious as they might be amongst each other. I have been deeply enlightened and focused by their writing and—via electronic mail—by personal communications and generous encouragement offered by many scholars. It hardly needs to be stressed, I hope, that those people I name here cannot remotely bear any responsibility for errors or deliberate alterations made in what is essentially a fantasy upon themes of Byzantium.
I am happy to record the great assistance I have received from the work of Alan Cameron on chariot racing and the Hippodrome factions; Rossi, Nordhagen, and L’Orange on mosaics; Lionel Casson on travel in the ancient world; Robert Browning, particularly on Justinian and Theodora; Warren Treadgold on the military; David Talbot Rice, Stephen Runciman, Gervase Mathew and Ernst Kitzinger on Byzantine aesthetics; and the broader histories of Cyril Mango, H.W. Haussig, Mark Whittow, Averil Cameron and G. Ostrogorsky. I should also acknowledge the aid and stimulation I received from participating in the lively and usefully disputatious scholarly mailing lists on the Internet relating to Byzantium and Late Antiquity. My research methods will never be the same.
On a more personal level, Rex Kay remains my first and most astringent reader, Martin Springett brought his considerable skills to preparing the map, and Meg Masters, my Canadian editor, has been a calm, deeply valued presence for four books now. Linda McKnight and Anthea Morton-Saner in Toronto and London are sustaining friends as well as canny agents, and a sometimes demanding author is deeply aware of both of these elements. My mother guided me to books as a child and then to the belief I could write my own. She still does that. And my wife creates a space into which the words and stories can come. If I say I am grateful it grievously understates the truth.
. . . and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we were at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.
—Chronicle of the Journey of Vladimir, Grand
Prince of Kiev, to Constantinople
PROLOGUE
Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights, sufficiently so to make plausible the oft-repeated tale that the Emperor Apius passed to the god in the midst of a towering storm, with lightning flashing and rolls of thunder besieging the Holy City. Even Pertennius of Eubulus, writing only twenty years after, told the story this way, adding a statue of the Emperor toppling before the bronze gates to the Imperial Precinct and an oak tree split asunder just outside the landward walls. Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession.
In fact, on the night Apius breathed his last in the Porphyry Room of the Attenine Palace there was no rain in the City. An occasional flash of lightning had been seen and one or two growls of thunder heard earlier in the evening, well north of Sarantium, towards the grainlands of Trakesia. Given the events that followed, that northern direction might have been seen as portent enough.
The Emperor had no living sons, and his three nephews had rather spectacularly failed a test of their worthiness less than a year before and had suffered appropriate consequences. There was, as a result, no Emperor Designate in Sarantium when Apius heard—or did not hear—as the last words of his long life, the inward voice of the god saying to him alone, ‘ Uncrown, the Lord of Emperors awaits you now.’
The three men who entered the Porphyry Room in the still-cool hour before dawn were each acutely aware of a dangerously unstable situation. Gesius the eunuch, Chancellor of the Imperial Court, pressed his long, thin fingers together piously, and then knelt stiffly to kiss the dead Emperor’s bare feet. So, too, after him, did Adrastus, Master of Offices, who commanded the civil service and administration, and Valerius, Count of the Excubitors, the Imperial Guard.
‘The Senate must be summoned,’ murmured Gesius in his papery voice. ‘They will go into session immediately.’
‘Immediately,’ agreed Adrastus, fastidiously straightening the collar of his ankle-length tunic as he rose. ‘And the Patriarch must begin the Rites of Mourning.’
‘Order,’ said Valerius in soldier’s tones, ‘will be preserved in the City. I undertake as much.’
The other two looked at him. ‘Of course,’ said Adrastus, delicately. He smoothed his neat beard. Preserving order was the only reason Valerius had for being in the room just now, one of the first to learn the lamentable situation. His remarks were . . . a shade emphatic.
The army was primarily east and north at the time, a large element near Eubulus on the current Bassanid border, and another, mostly mercenaries, defending the open spaces of Trakesia from the barbarian incursions of the Karchites and the Vrachae, both of whom had been quiescent of late. The strategos of either military contingent could become a decisive factor—or an Emperor—if the Senate delayed.
The Senate was an ineffectual, dithering body of frightened men. It was likely to delay unless given extremely clear guidance. This, too, the three officials in the room with the dead man knew very well.
‘I shall,’ said Gesius casually, ‘make arrangements to have the noble families apprised. They will want to pay their respects.’
‘Naturally,’ said Adrastus. ‘Especially the Daleinoi. I understand Flavius Daleinus returned to the City only two days ago.’
The eunuch was too experienced a man to actually flush.
Valerius had already turned for the doorway. ‘Deal with the nobility as you see fit,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘But there are five hundred thousand people in the City who will fear the wrath of Holy Jad descending upon a leaderless Empire when they hear of this death. They are my concern. I will send word to the Urban Prefect to ready his own men. Be thankful there was no thunderstorm in the night.’
He left the room, hard-striding on the mosaic floors, burly-shouldered, still vigorous in his sixtieth year. The other two looked at each other. Adrastus broke the shared gaze, glancing away at the dead man in the magnificent bed, and at the jewelled bird on its silver bough beside that bed. Neither man spoke.
Outside the Attenine Palace, Valerius paused in the gardens of the Imperial Precinct only long enough to spit into the bushes and note that it was still some time before the sunrise invocation. The white moon was over the water. The dawn wind was west; he could hear the sea, smell salt on the breeze amid the scent of summer flowers and cedars.
He walked away from the water under the late stars, past a jumble of palaces and civil service buildings, three small chapels, the Imperial Silk Guild’s hall and workspaces, the playing fields, the goldsmiths’ workshops, and the absurdly ornate Baths of Marisian, towards the Excubitors’ barracks near the bronze gates that led out to the City.
Young Leontes was waiting outside. Valerius gave the man precise instructions, memor
ized carefully some time ago in preparation for this day.
His prefect withdrew into the barracks and Valerius heard, a moment later, the sounds of the Excubitors—his men for the last ten years—readying themselves. He drew a deep breath, aware that his heart was pounding, aware of how important it was to conceal any such intensities. He reminded himself to send a man running to inform Petrus, outside the Imperial Precinct, that Jad’s Holy Emperor Apius was dead, that the great game had begun. He offered silent thanks to the god that his own sister-son was a better man, by so very much, than Apius’s three nephews.
He saw Leontes and the Excubitors emerging from the barracks into the shadows of the pre-dawn hour. His features were impassive, a soldier’s.
It was to be a race day at the Hippodrome, and Astorgus of the Blues had won the last four races run at the previous meeting. Fotius the sandalmaker had wagered money he couldn’t afford to lose that the Blues’ principal charioteer would win the first three races today, making a lucky seven in a row. Fotius had dreamt of the number twelve the night before, and three quadriga races meant Astorgus would drive twelve horses, and when the one and the two of twelve were added together . . . why, they made a three again! If he hadn’t seen a ghost on the roof of the colonnade across from his shop yesterday afternoon, Fotius would have felt entirely sure of his wager.
He had left his wife and son sleeping in their apartment above the shop and made his way cautiously—the streets of the City were dangerous at night, as he had cause to know—towards the Hippodrome. It was long before sunrise; the white moon, waning, was west towards the sea, floating above the towers and domes of the Imperial Precinct. Fotius couldn’t afford to pay for a seat every time he came to the racing, let alone one in the shaded parts of the stands. Only ten thousand places were offered free to citizens on a race day. Those who couldn’t buy, waited.
Two or three thousand others were already in the open square when he arrived under the looming dark masonry of the Hippodrome. Just being here excited Fotius, driving away a lingering sleepiness. He hastily took a blue tunic from his satchel and pulled it on in exchange for his ordinary brown one, modesty preserved by darkness and speed. He joined a group of others similarly clad. He had made this one concession to his wife after a beating by Green partisans two years before during a particularly wild summer season: he wore unobtrusive garb until he reached the relative safety of his fellow Blues. He greeted some of the others by name and was welcomed cheerfully. Someone passed him a cup of cheap wine and he took a drink and passed it along.
