Free Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay Page A

happened all the time, in every guild except the silk, which was a special case and closely scrutinized by the Imperial Precinct. One faction or the other controlled most of the guilds, and it was rare for that control to be wrested away. One had to be blatantly corrupt for the Emperor’s people to interfere.
    Pappio had no intention of being blatant about anything, or even corrupt, if it came to that. He was a careful man.
    And it was that instinctive caution, in part, that had made him a little uneasy about the surprising request he’d received, and the extremely substantial payment that had accompanied it—before he’d even done a preliminary sketch of the glass bowl requested!
    He understood that it was his stature that was being bought. That the gift would acquire greatly enhanced value because it had been fashioned by the head of the guild himself, who never did such things any more. He also knew that the man buying this from him—as a wedding gift, he understood—could afford to do so. One didn’t need to make inquiries to know that the principal secretary to the Supreme Strategos, an historian who also happened to be chronicling the Emperor’s building projects, had sufficient resources to buy an elaborate bowl. This was a man who, more and more, seemed to require a certain deference. Pappio didn’t like the sallow, unsmiling, lean-faced secretary, but what did liking have to do with anything?
    What was harder to sort out was why Pertennius of Eubulus was buying this gift. Some discreet questions had to be asked elsewhere before Pappio thought he had the answer. It turned out to be simple enough, in the end—one of the oldest stories of all—and it had nothing to do with the bride and groom.
    It was someone else that Pertennius was trying to impress. And since that person happened to be dear to Pappio’s own heart, he had to overcome a certain indignation—visualizing a woman sleek and splendid as a falcon in the thin arms of the dour secretary—to concentrate on his unaccustomed craft again. He forced himself to do so, however, as best he could.
    After all, he wouldn’t want the Principal Dancer for his beloved Greens to think him less than an exemplary artisan. Perhaps, he daydreamed, she might even ask for further work on her own behalf after seeing his bowl. Pappio imagined meetings, consultations, two heads bent close over a series of drawings, her notorious perfume— worn by only two women in all of Sarantium—enveloping him, a trusting hand laid on his arm . . .
    Pappio was not a young man, was stout and bald and married with three grown children, but it was a truth of the world that certain women carried a magic about them, on the stage and off, and dreams followed where they went. You didn’t stop dreaming just because you weren’t young any more. If Pertennius could attempt to win admiration with a showy gift given to people he couldn’t possibly care about, might not Pappio try to let the exquisite Shirin see what the Director of the Imperial Glassworks could do when he put his hands and mind— and a part of his heart—to his earliest craft?
    She would see the bowl when it was delivered to her house. It seemed the bride was living with her.
    After some thought, and a morning’s sketching, Pappio decided to make the bowl green, with inset pieces of bright yellow glass like meadow flowers in the spring that was coming at last.
    His heart quickened as he began to work, but it wasn’t the labour or the craft that was exciting him, or even the image of a woman now. It was something else entirely. Ifspring was nearly upon them, Pappio was thinking, humming a processional march to himself, then so were the chariots, so were the chariots, so were the chariots again.

    Every morning, during the sunrise invocations in the elegant chapel she had elected to frequent, the young queen of the Antae went through an exercise of tabulating, as on a secretary’s slate in her mind, the things for which