Sailing to Sarantium

In the beginning of the book, Crispin and Martinian were working on a chapel in Varena to be dedicated to the late King Hildric. After the work is complete, its dedication ceremony falls on the same day in which Crispin survives two attempts on his life. The chapel is full of Antae nobility, highly ranked clerics, and the relevant artisans. As the clerics begin the ceremony, Agila, the Antae Master of Horses draws his hidden—and forbidden—sword. He disparages the queen and claims that she had conspired to surrender them to the Inicii. The “queen” in the crown and under the convenient veil proves to be a double despite the presence of the queen’s faithful eunuch. Agila kills both the impostor and Pharos, Gisel’s most trusted servant. Eudric, the Chancellor of the Antae, condemns Agila’s actions, though Agila claims that the two had planned the conspiracy and assassination together. Eudric’s men are prepared and quickly kill Agila and his own forces. After Agila’s death, Eudric announces his intention to establish order “in the queen’s name, of course” while he finds her (404).

From aboard a ship, Gisel mourns for the two people she loved most—her childhood nurse and most trusted servant. She has accepted the Emperor’s invitation to come to Sarantium because to do otherwise would have meant certain death. Ever the realist, Gisel knows that is still her likeliest fate even in the near future. She worries that she will not be able to prevent unnecessary bloodshed and knows that she must be careful in how she proceeds, taking every advantage she can: “Everything, everyone who might be a tool needed to be made a tool, if she could manage it” (407). The queen does her best to ensure the architect of the plan, Zoticus, remains with her, but he insists that he must attend to business in Saraudia. Out of desperation, she considers attempting to seduce the old man to keep him with her. Zoticus assures her that he understands that she has fled out of a sense of duty in trying to protect Batiara from war, rather than trying to save her own life. He asks about her plans and how she will return home. She says that she is not sure how, precisely, but “there are armies and…armies. There are different levels of subjugation” (408). As such, she hopes that she will be able to spare Varena and the rest of the peninsula from the worst of the ravages of war.

When they had met to create the plan to replace the queen with an imposter, Zoticus had ascertained the situation and predicted that Leontes would be there by the summer to take Rhodias in the name of Emperor Valerius II. He had also acknowledged the difficult place the young queen was in: She could not arrest the three faction leaders, Agila, Eudric, and Kerdas, but agreeing to marry one of them would cause the others to rise up and kill him—and her. The three had conspired to kill her together and rule as a triumvirate. Zoticus proposed the plan, to which Gisel agreed out of a lack of better options, rather than lack of love for the two whose lives would be forfeit in such a scheme. For all she had protested, she knew that Zoticus was right: They would never believe the deception without Pharos’ attendance, as he was always by her side. A queen’s power, in her case, was very little: “She had not been, it seemed, born into the world for peace or joy or any sure power—or even to keep those very few who loved her by her side” (413).

In the present, Zoticus assures Gisel that she will make it to Sarantium and disembarks the ship, walking the rest of the way to Saraudia and to his death. Along the way, he considers the false senses of absolutism and dichotomy in life: “The long darkness was not always to be feared, he thought. Living on was not an absolute good. There were balances, harmonies to be sought. Things had their season. The same journey in a different cloak, he thought” (414). He takes all of his birds with him. When he heard Linon’s last cry, he had realized that the souls he had taken were not his to take and he refused to die with that debt on his shoulders. After all, “there were powers greater than royalty in the world” (418).

Finding the sacrificial ground in the Aldwood, he lies down. His body is ripped apart, but his face is left untouched out of respect for his willing return. The women whose souls were bound in the birds speak with their own voices, wondering whether they should have hated Zoticus for what he did to them and what will happen next. Linon answers them, telling them that all they had to do was say goodbye. Linon leaves last, giving Zoticus a goodbye and something else “more tender,” before allowing her soul its long-overdue release. Zoticus’ knowledge of how to bind human souls in mechanical bodies dies with him and his birds— “except for one,” the one with Shirin in Sarantium (422).

Emperor Valerius II, Artibasos, Pertennius, the Eastern Patriarch, and his principal advisor discuss Crispin’s plans for the mosaic. Overall, the plan is massive, ambitious, and disconcerting to some. In the East, the City will be shown as if from a great distance and the image of Jad will be given—the dark and stern version Crispin had been so moved by in the Saraudian chapel. In the West, Rhodias is to be shown in ruins. In the North, there will be a detailed and plentiful display of the diversity of creation, including what appears to be a bull, but is really a zubir. In the West, there will be a sky with a sunset opposite the image of Jad. Ultimately, the design is approved. Later that night, the Eastern Patriarch, Zakarios, jerks awake with the idea that there is some heresy in the sunset opposite the rising god, but he cannot remember what it is before he falls back asleep.

Crispin considers what will be his greatest work and how his perception about his work has changed. While he had once thought that “seeing” the work was what mattered most, he now found that there must be a need and vision underneath that “seeing.” He wants to create a work to rival the stern Jad he had seen in the chapel, which had been created with unfailing belief. Crispin supposes that what he has is comparable:

Just now, high above the chaos of Sarantium, it seemed as if there were so many things he wanted to honor or exalt—or take to task, if it came to that, for there was no need for, no justice in, children dying of plague, or young girls being cut into pieces in the forest, or sold in grief for winter grain. If this was the world as the god—or gods—had made it, then mortal man, this mortal man, could acknowledge that and honor the power and infinite majesty that lay within it, but he would not say it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from an autumn tree, helpless in the wind (430).

The mosaic is his purpose and the culmination of his art and his experience to date. In the sunset, he will hide the torch of Heladikos. In the images in the North, he will give the faces of Ilandra, his daughters, his mother, and the other people who mattered to his life as well as the zubir and Linon. Crispin is certain that honoring these people and experiences is appropriate: “For there was room to place such images and they belonged, they were part of the sailing, his own and all men’s journey. The figures of men’s lives were the essence of those lives. What you found, loved, left behind, had taken away from you” (431).

While he considers his legacy and the haven of the scaffold, distancing himself from life, he looks down and sees a woman entering the Sanctuary. Her very presence pulls him back to earth, forcing him to realize that he cannot live his life above the cares of reality—the work will not be enough and he wonders why that is when it had been before. Crispin considers the meaning of his journey and its ultimate lesson:

He was in the world, neither above it nor walled off from it anymore. If he had sailed to anything, it was to that truth. He would do this work or would fail in it as a man living in his time, among friends, enemies, perhaps lovers, and perhaps with love, in Varena under the Antae or here in Sarantium, City of Cities, eye of the world, in the reign of the great and glorious, thrice-exalted Emperor Valerius II, Jad’s Regent upon the earth, and the Empress Alixana (432).

He climbs down from the scaffolding and nods at the woman. Despite her silence and stillness, she had “claimed him for them all” (433). He wonders whether she knows that as knowing it would be in keeping with her character. He steps off the scaffolding and she smiles.