Free Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay

respectable inn where members of the healing profession were inclined to stay when in Sarantium.
    The food on the road north was wretched and the accommodations worse, but—given that it was the end ofwinter, not yet spring, when any remotely intelligent people avoided travel entirely—the trip proved largely uneventful. Their arrival in Sarantium was rather less so. Rustem had not expected to encounter both death and a wedding on his first day.

    It had been years since Pappio, Director of the Imperial Glassworks, had actually done any actual glassblowing or design work himself. His duties now were administrative and diplomatic, involving the coordination of supplies and production and the distribution of tesserae and flat sheets of glass to craftsmen requesting them, in the City and beyond. Determining priorities and placating outraged artisans comprised the most delicate part of his office. Artisans, in Pappio’s experience, tended to incline towards outrage.
    He had his system worked out. Imperial projects came first, and amongst those Pappio made assessments of how important a given mosaic might be in the scheme of things. This required delicate inquiries in the Imperial Precinct at times, but he did have a staff for that, and he had acquired a sufficient polish to his own manners to make it feasible for him to attend upon some of the higher civil service functionaries when necessary. His wasn’t the most important of the guilds—the silk guild had that distinction, of course—but it wasn’t anywhere near the least significant, either, and under this particular Emperor, with his elaborate building projects, it could be said that Pappio was an important man. He was treated respectfully, in any case.
    Private commissions came behind the Imperial ones, but there was a complication: the artisans engaged on projects for the Emperor received their supplies free of charge, while those doing mosaic or other glass work for citizens had to buy their tesserae or sheets of glass. The ImperialGlassworks was expected to pay for itself now, in the modern scheme of things devised by thrice-exalted Valerius II and his advisers. Pappio was not, therefore, at liberty to entirely ignore the entreaties of those mosaicists clamouring for tesserae for private ceilings, walls, or floors. Nor, frankly, would it make sense for him to refuse all the quiet offers of sums for his own purse. A man had a duty to his family, didn’t he?
    Over and above these nuanced issues, Pappio had a powerful inclination to favour those craftsmen—or patrons—who had a demonstrated affinity for the Greens.
    The Splendid Greens of Great and Glorious Achievement were his own beloved faction, and one of the extreme pleasures attendant upon his rise to this lofty status in his guild was that he was now in a position to subsidize the faction somewhat, and be honoured and recognized accordingly in their banquet hall and at the Hippodrome. He was no longer just another humble supporter. He was a dignitary, present at the feasts, prominently seated at the theatre, among those in the preferred places for the chariot races themselves. Long past were the days when he’d line up before dawn outside the Hippodrome gates to get a standing place to watch the horses run.
    He couldn’t be too obvious in his favouritism—the Emperor’s people were present and observing, everywhere—but Pappio did make sure that, all other things being remotely balanced, a Green mosaicist did not go away empty-handed if competing for hard-to-find colours or semi-precious stones with a known follower of the accursed Blues or even someone without declared allegiance.
    This was only as it should be. Pappio owed his appointment to his Green partisanship. His predecessor as head of the guild and Glassworks Director—an equally ferventGreen—had selected him in large part for that reason. Pappio knew that when he chose to retire he was expected to pass on the position to another Green. It