"Sailing to Sarantium" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER VI

It was with uncharacteristic intensity of thought and feeling for such an early hour that Plautus Bonosus, Master of the Senate, walked with his wife and unmarried daughters towards the small, elite Sanctuary of the Blessed Victims near their home to offer the dawn invocation on the second anniversary of the Victory Pviot in Sarantium.

Having arrived home discreetly in chilly darkness, he had washed off the scent of his young lover-the boy insisted on wearing a particularly distinctive herbal concoction-and changed his clothes in time to meet his womenfolk in the foyer at sunrise. It was when he noticed the sprig of evergreen each of the three women was wearing in her hair for Dykania that Bonosus suddenly and vividly recalled doing exactly this same thing (having left a different boy) two years before on the morning of the day the City exploded in blood and fire.

Standing in the exquisitely decorated sanctuary, actively participating, as a man of his position was expected to, in the antiphonal chants of the liturgy, Bonosus allowed his mind to wander back-not to the sulky sleekness of his lover, but to the inferno of two years before.

Whatever anyone said, whatever the historians might one day write- or had already written-Bonosus had been there: in the Attenine Palace, in the throne room with the Emperor, with Gesius the Chancellor, with the Strategos, the Master of Offices, all the others, and he knew which person had spoken the words that turned the two days" tide that had already swamped the Hippodrome and the Great Sanctuary, and had been lapping even then at the Bronze Gates of the Imperial Precinct.

Faustinus, the Master of Offices, had been urgently proposing the Emperor withdraw from the City, take to sea from the hidden wharf below the gardens, across the straits to Deapolis or even farther, to wait out the chaos engulfing the capital.

They had been trapped within the Precinct since the morning before. The Emperor's appearance in the Hippodrome to drop the handkerchief at the outset of the Dykania Festival's racing had led not to cheering but to a steadily growing rumble of rage, and then men boiling out of the stands to stand below the kathisma shouting and gesticulating. They wanted the head of Lysippus the Calysian, the Empire's chief taxation officer, and they were making certain Jad's anointed Emperor knew it.

The Hippodrome Prefect's guards, routinely sent down to disperse the crowd, had been swallowed up and killed, savagely. Anything resembling the routine had disappeared with that.

"Victory!" someone shouted, hoisting aloft the severed arm of a guardsman like a banner. Bonosus remembered the moment; he dreamt of it, at times. "Victory to the glorious Blues and Greens!"

Both factions had joined together in the cry. Unheard of. And the shout was picked up until it echoed through the Hippodrome. The killings took place directly below the Emperor. It was judged prudent that Valerius II and his Empress withdraw through the back of the kathisma at that point and return down the enclosed, elevated corridor to the Imperial Precinct.

The first deaths are always the hardest for a mob. After that, they are in a different country, they have crossed a threshold, and things become truly dangerous. More blood will follow, and fire. Both had, for a day and a brutal night already, and this was the second day.

Leontes had just returned, sword bloodied, from a reconnoitre through the city with Auxilius of the Excubitors. They reported entire streets and the Great Sanctuary burning. Blues and Greens were marching side by side in the smoke, chanting together as they brought Sarantium to its knees. Several names were being declaimed, the tall Strategos said quietly, as replacements for the Emperor.

"Any of them in the Hippodrome yet?" Valerius was standing beside his throne, listening attentively. His soft, smooth-cheeked features and grey eyes betrayed no immediate distress, only an intensity of concentration as he wrestled with a problem. His city is on fire, Bonosus remembered thinking, and he looks like an academic in one of the ancient Schools, considering a problem of volumes and solids.

"It appears so, my lord. One of the Senators. Symeonis." Leontes, ever courteous, refrained from looking over at Bonosus. "Some of the faction leaders have draped him in purple and crowned him with a necklace of some sort in the kathisma. I believe it is against his will. He was found outside his doors and seized by the mob."

"He is an old, frightened man," Bonosus said. His first words in that room. "He has no ambitions. They are using him."

"I know that," Valerius said quietly.

Auxilius of the Excubitors said, "They are trying to get Tertius Daleinus to come out to them. They broke into his house, but word is, he's already left the city."

Valerius did smile then, but not with his eyes. "Of course he has. A cautious young man."

"Or a coward, thrice-exalted lord," said Auxilius. Valerius's Count of the Excubitors was a Soriyyan, a sour-faced, often angry man. Not a disadvantage, given his office.

"It might be he's simply loyal," Leontes said mildly, with a glance at the other soldier.

It was possible but unlikely, Bonosus thought privately. The pious Strategos was known for offering benign interpretations of other men's actions, as if everyone might be measured by his own virtues. But the youngest son of the murdered Flavius Dalemus would not have any more loyalty towards this Emperor than he'd had for the first Valerius. He would have ambitions, but would be unlikely to reach for the dice cup so early in a game this large. From the Daleinoi's nearest country estate he could gauge the mood of the City and return very swiftly.

Bonosus, in the tight grip of his own fear, was unable not to look over and glare at the man sitting near him: Lysippus the Calysian, Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, who had caused all of this.

The Empire's chief taxation officer had been silent throughout the discussions, his prodigious bulk spilling over the edges of the carved bench on which he sat, threatening to bring it crashing down. His face was blotchy with strain and fear. Perspiration stained his dark robe. His distinctive green eyes shifted uneasily from one speaker to another. He had to know that his public execution-or even throwing him through the Bronze Gates to the enraged mob-was a perfectly viable option at this moment, though no one had yet spoken it aloud. It would not be the first time an Imperial Revenue officer had been sacrificed to the people.

Valerius II had shown no signs of such an intent. His loyalty to the fat, gross man who had so efficiently and incorruptibly funded his building schemes and the expensive co-opting of various barbarian tribes had always been firm. It was said that Lysippus had been a part of the machinations that brought the first Valerius to the throne. Whether that was true or not, an ambitious Emperor needed a ruthless taxation officer as much as he needed an honest one: Valerius had said that once to Bonosus, in the most matter-of-fact way-and the enormous Calysian might be depraved in his personal habits, but no one had ever been known to bribe or suborn him, or quarrel with his results.

Plautus Bonosus, at prayer beside his wife and daughters two years after, could still recall the chaotic intermingling of admiration and terror he'd felt that day. The sound of the mob at the Precinct doors had penetrated even into the room where they were gathered around a golden throne, amid artifacts of sandalwood and ivory and birds crafted of gold and semiprecious stones.

Bonosus knew that he himself would have offered the Quaestor to the factions without a second thought. With taxation levels rising each quarter for the past year and a half, continuing even after the debilitating effects of a plague, Lysippus ought to have known better than to arrest and torture who well-liked clerics for sheltering a tax-evading aristocrat he was seeking. It was one thing to pursue the wealthy (though Bonosus did have his thoughts on that). It was another to go after the clerics who ministered to the people.

Surely any sane official would have made allowance for the unrest of the City, how volatile it was on the eve of the Autumn Festival. The Dykania was always a dangerous time for authority. Emperors walked carefully then, placating the City with games and largess, knowing how many of their predecessors had lost sight, limbs, life in those turbulent days at autumn's end when Sarantium celebrated-or went dangerously wild.

Two years later Bonosus lifted his strong voice, intoning, "Let there be Light for us, and for our dead, and for us when we die, lord. Holy Jad, let us find shelter with you and never lie lost in the dark."

Winter was coming again. The months of long, damp, windy darkness. There had been light that afternoon two years ago… the red light of the Great Sanctuary uncontrollably afire. A loss so great it was almost unimaginable.

"The northern army can be here from Trakesia in fourteen days," Faustmus had murmured that day, dry and efficient. "The Supreme Strategos will confirm that. This mob has no leadership, no clear purpose. Any puppet they acclaim in the Hippodrome will be hopelessly weak. Symeonis as Emperor? It is laughable. Leave now and you will re-enter the City in triumph before full winter comes."

Valerius, a hand laid across the back of his throne, had looked at Gesius, the aged Chancellor, first, and then at Leontes. Both the Chancellor and the golden-haired Strategos, long-time companion, hesitated.

Bonosus knew why. Faustinus might be right, but he might be perilously wrong: no Emperor who had fled from the people he ruled had ever returned to govern them. Symeonis might be a terrified figurehead, but what would stop others from emerging once Valerius was known to have left Sarantium? What if the Dalemus scion found his courage, or had it handed to him?

On the other hand, in the most obvious way, no Emperor torn apart by a howling throng intoxicated by its own power had ever governed after that either. Bonosus wanted to say as much, but kept silent. He wondered if the mob, should they come this far, would understand that the Master of the Senate was here for purely formal reasons, that he had no authority, posed no danger, had done them no harm? That he was even, financially, as much a victim of the evil Quaestor of Imperial Revenue as any of them?

He doubted it.

No man spoke a word in that moment fraught with choice and destiny. They saw leaping flames and black smoke through the open windows-the Great Sanctuary burning. They could hear the dull, heavy roar of the mob at the gates and inside the Hippodrome. Leontes and Auxilius had reported at least eighty thousand people gathered in and around the Hippodrome, spilling into the forum there. As many more seemed to be running wild through the rest of the city, from the triple walls down, and had been for much of the night just past. Taverns and cauponae had been overrun and looted, they'd said. Wine was still being found and passed out from the cellars and then from hand to hand in the reeling, smoky streets.

There was a smell of fear in the throne room.

Plautus Bonosus, chanting gravely in his neighbourhood sanctuary two years later, knew he would never forget that moment.

No man spoke. The one woman in the room did.

"I would sooner die clothed in porphyry in this palace," the Empress Alixana said quietly, "than of old age in any place of exile on earth." She had been standing by the eastern window while the men debated, gazing out at the burning city beyond the gardens and the palaces. Now she turned and looked only at Valerius. "All Jad's children are born to die. The vestments of Empire are seemly for a shroud, my lord. Are they not?"

Bonosus remembered watching Faustinus's face go white. Gesius opening his mouth, and then closing it, looking old suddenly, wrinkles deep in pale parchment flesh. And he remembered something else he thought he would never lose in his life: the Emperor, from near his throne, smiling suddenly at the small, exquisite woman by the window.

Among many other things, Plautus Bonosus had realized, with a queer kind of pain, that he had never in all his days looked at another man or woman in that way, or received a gaze remotely like the one that the dancer who had become their Empress bestowed upon Valerius in return.

"It is intolerable," said Cleander, speaking loudly over the tavern noise, "that a man like that should possess such a woman!" He drank, and wiped at the moustache he was trying to grow.

"He doesn't possess her, "Eutychus replied reasonably." He may not even be bedding her. And he is a man of some distinction, little sprout."

Cleander glared at him as the others laughed.

The volume of sound in The Spina was considerable. It was midday and the morning's races were done, with the afternoon chariots slated to begin after the break. The most ambitious of the drinking places near the Hippodrome was bursting with a sweating, raucous, bipartisan crowd.

The more fervent followers of Blue and Green had made their way to less expensive taverns and cauponae dedicated to their own factions, but the shrewd managers of The Spina had offered free drinks to retired and current charioteers of all colours from the day they'd opened their doors, and the lure of hoisting a beer or a cup of wine with the drivers had made The Spina a dramatic success from that first day.

It had to be… they'd put a fortune into it. The long axis of the tavern had been designed to simulate the real spina-the central island of the Hippodrome, around which the chariots wheeled in their furious careen. Instead of thundering horses, this spina was ringed by a marble counter, and drinkers stood or leaned on both sides, eyeing scaled reproductions of the statues and monuments that decorated the real thing in the Hippodrome. Against one long wall ran the bar itself, also marbled, with patrons packed close. And for those prudent-and solvent-enough to have made arrangements ahead of time, there were booths along the opposite wall, stretching to the shadows at the back of the tavern.

Eutychus was always prudent, and Cleander and Dorus were notably solvent, or rather, their fathers were. The five young men-all Greens, of course-had a standing arrangement to prominently occupy the highly visible second booth on race days. The first booth was always reserved for charioteers or the occasional patrons from the Imperial Precinct amusing themselves among the crowds of the city.

"No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow," said Gidas moodily. "He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting glimpse into her soul." Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be.

"If they have souls," said Eutychus wryly, drinking his carefully watered wine. "It is, after all, a liturgical issue."

"Not any more," Pollon protested. "A Patriarchal Council settled that a hundred years ago, or something."

"By a single vote," Eutychus said, smiling. Eutychus knew a lot; he didn't hide the fact. "Had one of the august clerics had an unfortunate experience with a whore the night before, the Council would likely have decided women have no souls."

"That's probably sacrilege," Gidas murmured.

"Heladikos defend me!" Eutychus laughed.

"That is sacrilege," Gidas said, with a rare, quick smile.

"They don't," Cleander muttered, ignoring this last exchange. " don't have souls. Or she doesn't, to be permitting that grey-faced toad to court her. She sent back my gift, you know."

"We know, Cleander. You've told us. A dozen times." Pollen's tone was kindly. He ruffled Cleander's hair. "Forget her. She's beyond you. Pertennius has a place in the Imperial Precinct and in the military. Toad or not, he's the sort of man who sleeps with a woman like that.. unless someone of even higher rank pushes him out of her bed."

"A place in the military?" Cleander's voice swirled upwards in indignation. "Jad's cock, that's a bad joke! Pertennius of Eubulus is a bloodless, ass-licking secretary to a pompous strategos whose courage is long behind him since he married above himself and decided he liked soft beds and gold."

"Lower your voice, idiot!" Pollon gripped Cleander's arm. "Eutychus, water his fucking wine before he gets us into a fight with half the army."

"Too late," Eutychus said sorrowfully. The others followed his glance towards the marble spina running down the middle of the room. A broad-shouldered man in an officer's uniform had turned from contemplating a replica of the Greens" second statue to the charioteer Scortius and was razing across at them, his expression stony. The men on either side of him-neither one a soldier-had also glanced over, but then returned to their drinks at the counter.

With Pollen's firm hand on his arm, Cleander kept silent, though he gazed truculently back at the soldier until the man at the spina bar turned away. Cleander sniffed. "Told you," he said, though quietly. "An army of useless fakers, boasting of imaginary battlefields."

Eutychus shook his head in amusement. "You are a rash little sprout, aren't you?"

"Don't call me that."

"What, rash?"

"No. The other. I'm seventeen now, and I don't like it."

"Being seventeen?"

"No! That name. Stop it, Eutychus. You aren't that much older."

"No, but I don't walk around like a boy with his first erection. Someone's going to cut it off for you one day if you aren't careful."

Dorus winced. "Eutychus."

A figure appeared suddenly at their booth. They looked up at a server. He carried a beaker of wine.

"Compliments of the officer at the spina," he said, licking his lips nervously. "He invites you to salute the glory of the Supreme Strategos Leontes with him."

"I don't take wine on conditions," brisded Cleander. "I can buy my own when I want it."

The soldier hadn't turned around. The server looked more unhappy. "He, ah, instructed me to say that if you do not drink his wine and offer his salute he will be distressed and express this by hanging the. loudest of you by his tunic from the hook by the front door." He paused. "We don't want trouble, you know."

"Fuck him!" Cleander said, loudly.

There was a moment before the soldier turned.

This time, so did the two big men on either side of him. One was red-haired and bearded, of indeterminate origin. The other was a northerner of some sort, probably a barbarian, though his hair was close-cropped. The noise of The Spina continued unabated. The server looked from the booth to the three men at the spina and made an earnest, placating gesture.

"Boys don't fuck me," the soldier said gravely. Someone farther along the spina turned at that. "Boys who wear their hair like barbarians they've never faced, and dress like Bassanids they've never seen, do what a working soldier tells them." He pushed off from the bar and walked slowly across to their booth. His expression remained mild. "You style your hair like the Vrachae. If Leontes's army were not on your northern and western borders today, a Vrachae spearman might have been over the walls and up your backside by now. Do you know what they like to do with boys taken in battle? Shall I tell you?"

Eutychus lifted a hand and smiled thinly. "Not on a festival day, thank you. I'm sure it is unpleasant. Do you really propose to start a quarrel over Pertennius of Eubulus? Do you know him?"

"Not at all, but I will quarrel over insults to my Strategos. I've given you a choice. It is good wine. Drink to Leontes and I'll join you. Then we'll toast some of the old Green charioteers and one of you will explain to me how the fucking Blues got Scortms away from us."

Eutychus grinned. "You are, I dare take it, a follower of the glorious and exalted Greens?"

"All my sorry life." The man returned the grin wryly.

Eutychus laughed aloud and made room for the soldier to sit. He poured the offered wine. They toasted Leontes; none of them really disliked him, anyhow. It was difficult, even for Cleander, to be genuinely dismissive of such a man, though he did offer an aside about being known by the secretary one kept.

They went quickly through the soldiers beaker and then two more, saluting a long sequence of Green drivers. The soldier appeared to have a voluminous recollection of Green charioteers from cities all over the Empire in the reigns of the last three Emperors. The five young men had never heard of most of them. The man's two friends watched them from the spina bar, leaning back against it, occasionally joining in the toasts across the aisle. One of them was smiling a little, the other was expressionless.

Then the manager of The Spina had the horns blown, in imitation of those that marked the chariots" Processional in the Hippodrome, and they all began paying their reckonings and tumbling in a noisy spill of people out into the windy autumn sunshine, joining the disgorged crowds from the other taverns and baths to cross the forum for the afternoon's chariots.

The first running after the midday break was the major race of the day and no one wanted to be late.

"All four colours in this one," Carullus explained as they hurried across the open space. "Eight quadrigas, two of each colour, a big purse. The only purse as large is the last one of the day when the Reds and Whites stay out of it and four Greens and Blues run with bigas-two horses each. That's a cleaner race, this one's wilder. There'll be blood on the track, most likely." He grinned. "Maybe someone will run over that dark-skinned bastard, Scortius."

"You'd like that?" Crispin asked.

Carullus considered the question for a moment. "I wouldn't," he said finally. "He's too much pleasure to watch. Though I'm sure he spends a fortune each year in wards against curse-tablets and spells. There are a good many Greens who'd cheerfully see him dragged and trampled for crossing to the Blues."

Those five we drank with?"

"One of them, anyhow. The noisy one."

The five young men had pushed ahead of them across the Hippodrome Forum, heading for the patrician gates and their reserved seats.

"Who was the woman he was going on about?"

"A dancer. It's always a dancer. Latest darling of the Greens. Name's Shirin, apparendy. A looker, it sounds like. They usually are. The young aristocrats are always elbowing each other to get in bed with the dancer or actress of the day. A long tradition. The Emperor married one, after all."

"Shirin?" Crispin was amused. He had that name in his baggage, on a torn-off piece of parchment.

"Yes, why?"

"Interesting. If this is the same person, I'm supposed to visit her. A message to deliver from her father." Zoticus had said she was a prostitute, at first.

Carullus looked astonished. "Jad's fire, Rhodian, you are a series of surprises. Don't tell my new friends. The youngest one might knife you- or hire someone to do it-if he hears you have access to her."

"Or be my friend for life if I offer to let him come visit with me."

Carullus laughed. "Wealthy lad. Useful friend." The two men exchanged an ironic glance.

Vargos, on Crispin's other side, listened carefully, saying nothing. Kasia was back at the inn where they'd booked a room last night. She'd been invited to come with them-women were permitted in the Hippodrome under Valerius and Alixana-but had been showing signs of distress ever since they'd passed into the roiling chaos of the City. Vargos hadn't been happy either, but he'd been within city walls before and had some framework for his expectations.

Sarantium dwarfed expectations, but they'd been warned it would.

The long walk from the landward walls to the inn near the Hippodrome had visibly unsettled Kasia the day before. It was a festival; the noise levels and the numbers of people in the streets were overwhelming. They had passed a half-naked ascetic perched precariously on the top of a squared-off triumphal obelisk, his long white beard streaming sideways in the breeze. He was preaching of the City's iniquities to a gathered cluster of the City's people. He'd been up there three years, someone said. It was best to stay upwind, they added.

A few prostitutes had been working the edges of the same crowd. Carullus had eyed one of them and then laughed as she grinned at him and slowly walked away, hips swinging. He'd pointed: the imprint of her sandals in the dust read, quite clearly, "Follow Me."

Kasia hadn't laughed, Crispin remembered.

And she had elected to remain behind at the inn today rather than deal with the streets again so soon.

"You'd really have started a fight with them?" Vargos asked Carullus. His first words of the afternoon.

The tribune glanced over at him. "Of course I would have. Leontes was maligned in my hearing by an effete little City snob who can't even grow a proper moustache yet."

Crispin said, "You'll do a lot of fighting if that's going to be your attitude here. I suspect the Sarantines are free with their opinions."

Carullus snorted. "You are telling me about the City, Rhodian?"

"How many times have you been here?"

Carullus looked chagrined. "Well, just twice in point of fact, but-"

"Then I suspect I know rather more than you about urban ways, soldier. Varena isn't Sarantium, and Rhodias isn't what it was, but I do know that if you bridle at every overheard opinion the way you might in a barracks you command you'll never survive."

Carullus frowned. "He was attacking the Strategos. My commander. I fought under Leontes against the Bassanids beyond Eubulus. In the god's name, I know what he's like. That bedbug with his father's money and his stupid eastern robe had no business even speaking his name. I wonder where that little boy was two years ago today, when Leontes smashed the Victory Riot? That was courage, by Jad's blood! Yes, I would have fought them. It was… a matter of honour."

Crispin arched an eyebrow. "A matter of honour," he repeated. "Indeed. Then you should have had rather less difficulty understanding what I did at the walls yesterday when we came in."

Carullus snorted. "Not at all the same thing. You could have had your nose slit for declaring a name other than the one on your Permit. Using those papers was a crime. In Jad's name, Martmian-"

"Crispin," said Crispin.

An excited, not-entirely-sober cluster of Blues cut in front of them, rushing towards their gate. Vargos was jostled but kept his balance. Crispin said, "I chose to enter Sarantium as Cams Crispus-the name my father and mother gave me, not a false one." He looked at the tribune. "A matter of honour."

Carullus shook his head emphatically. "The only reason, the only reason the guard didn't look properly at your papers and detain you when the names didn't match was because you were with me."

"I know," Crispin said, grinning suddenly. "I relied on that."

Vargos, on his other side, snorted with an amusement he couldn't quite control. Carullus glared. "Are you actually planning to give your own name at the Bronze Gates? In the Attenine Palace? Shall I introduce you to a notary first, to arrange for the final disposition of your worldly goods?"

The fabled gates to the Imperial Precinct were, as it happened, visible at one end of the Hippodrome Forum. Beyond them, the domes and walls of the Imperial palaces could be seen. Not far away, north of the forum, scaffolding and mud and masonry surrounded the building site of Valerius immense new Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom. Crispin-or Martinian-had been summoned to play a part in that.

"I haven't decided," Crispin said.

It was true. He hadn't. The declaration at the customs gate in the wall had been entirely spontaneous. Even as he was speaking his own name aloud for the first time since leaving home, he'd realized that being in the company-virtually the custody-of half a dozen soldiers would probably mean his papers would not be examined by an overworked guard at festival time, and that is what had happened. Carullus's blistering, obscene interrogation of him the moment they were out of earshot of the guardhouse had been a predictable consequence.

Crispin had delayed explaining until they'd taken rooms at an inn Carullus knew near the Hippodrome and the new Great Sanctuary. The soldiers of the Fourth Sauradian were sent to a barracks to report, with one of them dispatched to the Imperial Precinct to announce that the Rhodian mosaicist had arrived in Sarantium as requested.

At the inn, over boiled fish and soft cheese with figs and melon after, Crispin had explained to the two men and the woman how he'd come to be travelling with an Imperial Permit belonging to another man. Or, more properly, he'd explained the obvious aspects of that. The rest, having to do with the dead and a barbarian queen, belonged to himself.

Carullus, stunned into unwonted silence through all of this, had eaten and listened without interrupting. When Crispin was done, he'd said only, "I'm a betting man not afraid of odds, but I'd not wager a copper folles on your surviving a day in the Imperial Precinct as Caius Crispus when someone named Martinian was invited on behalf of the Emperor. They don't like. surprises at this court. Think about it."

Crispin had promised to do so. An easy promise. He'd been thinking about it, without any answer emerging, since he'd left Varena.

As they crossed the Hippodrome Forum now, the Sanctuary behind them, the Imperial Precinct to their right, a squat, balding man behind a folding, hastily assembled counter was rattling off a sequence of names and numbers as people passed. Carullus stopped in front of him.

"Positions for the first race?" he demanded.

"Everyone?"

"Of course not. Crescens and Scortius."

The tout grinned, showing black, erratic teeth. "Interesting rimes today. Sixth and eighth, Scortius is outside."

"He won't win from eighth. What are you giving on Crescens of the

Greens?"

"For an honest officer? Three to two." "Copulate with your grandmother. Two to one." "At two to one I am doing that, in her grave, but all right. At least a silver solidus, though. I won't do those odds for beer money." "A solidus? I'm a soldier not a greedy race tout."

"And I run a bet shop, not a military dispensary. You have silver, wager it. Otherwise, stop blocking my booth."

Carullus bit his lower lip. It was a great deal of money. He dug into his purse, pulled out what Crispin was fairly certain was the only silver piece he had, and passed it across the makeshift counter to the other man. In return he received a green chit with the name «Crescens» on it above the name of the tout. The man had marked, painstakingly, the race number, the amount of the wager, and the odds given on the back of the chit.

They walked on amongst a tide of people. Carullus was silent amid the noise as they approached the looming gates of the Hippodrome. As they passed within, he appeared to revive. He clutched his betting chit tightly.

"He's in the eighth position, the last one outside. He won't win from there."

"Is the sixth post so much better?" Crispin asked, perhaps unwisely.

"Hah! One morning at the races and the arrogant Rhodian with a false name thinks he knows the Hippodrome! Be silent, you poxed artisan, and pay attention, like Vargos. You may even learn something! If you behave I'll buy you both Samican red with my winnings when the day is done."

Bonosus quite enjoyed watching the chariots.

Attending at the Hippodrome, representing the Senate in the Imperial kathisma, was a part of his office that gave him genuine pleasure. The morning's eight races had been splendidly diverting: honours closely divided between Blues and Greens, two wins each for the new Green hero, Crescens, and the truly magnificent Scortius. An exciting surprise in the fifth race when an enterprising fellow racing for the Whites had nipped inside the Greens" second driver in the last turn to win a race he'd no business winning. The Blue partisans treated their junior colour's win as if it had been a dazzling military triumph. Their rhythmic, well-coordinated tauntings of the humbled Greens and Reds caused a number of fistfights before the Hippodrome Prefect's men moved in to keep the factions apart. Bonosus thought the young White driver's flushed, exhilarated face beneath his yellow hair as he took his victory lap was very appealing. The young man's name, he learned, was Witticus, a Karchite. He made a mental note of it, leaning forward to applaud politely with the others in the kathisma.

Occurrences of that sort were exactly what made the Hippodrome dramatic, whether it was a startling victory or a charioteer carried off, his neck broken, another victim of the dark figure they called the Ninth Driver. Men could forget hunger, taxes, age, ungrateful children, scorned love, in the drama of the chariots.

Bonosus knew that the Emperor was of a different mind. Valerius would as soon have avoided the racing entirely, sending a stream of court dignitaries and visiting ambassadors to the kathisma in his stead. The Emperor, normally so unruffled, used to fume that he was far too busy spend an entire working day watching horses run around. He tended to go to bed at all after a day spent with the chariots, to catch up.

Valerius's work habits were well known from the reign of his uncle. Then and now he drove secretaries and civil servants to terrified distraction and a state of somnambulant hysteria. They called him The Night's Emperor, and men told tales of seeing him pacing the halls of one palace or another in the very dead of night, dictating correspondence to a stumbling secretary while a slave or a guard walked alongside with a lantern that cast high, leaping shadows on the walls and ceilings. Some said strange lights or ghostly apparitions could be seen flitting in the shadows at such hours, but Bonosus didn't believe that, really.

He settled back into his cushioned seat in the third row of the kathisma and lifted a hand for a cup of wine, waiting for the afternoon's program to begin. Even as he signalled, he heard a telltale rap behind him and rose, very swiftly. The carefully barred door at the back of the Imperial Box was unlocked and swung open by the Excubitors on guard, and Valerius and Alixana, with the Master of Offices, Leontes and his tall new bride, and a dozen other court attendants appeared in the box. Bonosus sank to his knees beside the other early arrivals and performed the triple obeisance.

Valerius, clearly not in good humour, moved briskly past them and stood beside his elevated throne at the front, in full view of the crowd. He hadn't been present in the morning, but he dared not stay away all day. Not today. Not at the end of the festival, the last running of the year, and not, especially, with the memory only two years old of what had happened in this place. He needed to be seen here.

In a way it was perverse, but the all-powerful, godlike Emperors of Sarantium were enslaved by the Hippodrome tradition and the almost mythic force residing within it. The Emperor was the beloved servant and the mortal regent of Holy Jad. The god drove his fiery chariot through the daytime sky and then down through darkness under the world every night in battle. The charioteers in the Hippodrome did battle in mortal homage to the god's glory and his wars.

The connection between the Emperor of Sarantium and the men racing quadrigas and bigas on the sand below had been made by mosaicists and poets and even clerics for hundreds of years-though the clerics also minted against the people's passion for chariot-drivers and their ensuing failure to attend at the chapels. That, Bonosus thought wryly, had been an issue-one way or another-for much longer than a few hundred years, even before the faith of Jad had emerged in Rhodias.

But this underlying link between the throne and the chariots embedded deep in the Sarantine soul, and much as Valerius might resent time lost from paperwork and planning, his presence here went beyond the diplomatic and entered the holy. The mosaic on the roof of the kathisma showed Saranios the Founder in a chariot behind four horses, a victor's wreath on his head, not a crown. There was a message in that and Valerius knew it. He might complain, but he was here, amongst his people, watching the chariots run in the god's name.

The Mandator-the Emperor's herald-lifted his staff of office from', the right side of the box. A deafening roar immediately went up from eighty thousand throats. They had been watching the kathisma, waiting for this moment.

"Valerius!" cried the Greens, the Blues, all those gathered there: men, women, aristocrats, artisans, labourers, apprentices, shopkeepers, even slaves granted a day to themselves at Dykania. The notoriously changeable people of Sarantium had decided in the past two years that they loved their Emperor again. The evil Lysippus was gone, golden Leontes had won a war and conquered lands all the way to the deserts of the Majriti far to the south and west, restoring memories of Rhodias in its grandeur. "All hail the thrice-exalted! All hail our thrice-glorious Emperor! All hail the Empress Alixana."

And well the people should hail her, Bonosus thought. She was one of them in a way that no one else here in the kathisma was. A living symbol of how high someone might rise, even from a rat-infested hovel of an apartment in the bowels of the Hippodrome.

With a wide gesture of encompassing benevolence, Valerius II of Sarantium greeted his welcoming citizens and signalled for a handkerchief for the Empress to drop that the Processional might commence the afternoon races begin. A secretary was already crouched down- hidden from the crowd by the railing of the kathisma-preparing to deal with the Emperor's flow of dictation that would proceed even while the horses ran. Valerius might accede to the demands imposed by the day and appear before his people, joined to them here in the Hippodrome, united by the sport and the courage down below-mirrors of Jad in his godly chariot-but he would certainly not waste an entire afternoon.

Bonosus saw the Empress accept the brilliant white square of silk. Alixana was magnificent. She always was. No one wore-no one was allowed to wear-jewellery about their hair and person in the way Alixana did. Her perfume was unique, unmistakable. No woman would even dream of copying it, and only one other was permitted to use the scent: a well-publicized gift Alixana had made the spring before.

The Empress lifted a slender arm. Bonosus, seeing the swift, theatrical gesture, suddenly remembered seeing that arm lifted in the same way fifteen years ago, as she danced, very nearly naked, on a stage.

"The vestments of Empire are seemly for a shroud, my lord. Are they not?" She had said that in the Attenine Palace two years ago. A leading role on a very different stage.

I am growing old, Plautus Bonosus thought. He rubbed his eyes. The past kept impinging upon the present: all he saw now appeared shot through with images of things seen before. Too many interwoven memories. He would die on some tomorrow that lay waiting even now, and then everything would become yesterday-in the god's mild Light, if Jad were merciful.

The weighted handkerchief dropped, fluttering like a shot bird towards the sands below. The wind gusted; it drifted right. Auguries would flow from that, Bonosus knew: fiercely vying interpretations from the cheiromancers. He saw the gates at the far end swing open, heard horns, the high, piercing sound of flutes, then cymbals and martial drums as the dancers and performers led the chariots into the Hippodrome. One man was adroitly juggling sticks that had been set on fire as he capered and danced across the sand. Bonosus remembered flames.

"How many of your own men," Valerius had said two years ago, into the rigid stillness that had followed the Empress's words, "would it take to force a way into the Hippodrome through the kathisma? Can it be done?"

His alert grey eyes had been looking at Leontes. His arm had remained casually draped over the back of the throne. There was an elevated, covered passageway, of course, from the Imperial Precinct across to the Hippodrome, ending at the back of the kathisma.

There had been a collective intake of breath in that moment. Bonosus had seen Lysippus the taxation officer look up at the Emperor for the first time.

Leontes had smiled, a hand drifting to the hilt of his sword. "To take Symeonis?"

"Yes. He's the immediate symbol. Take him there, have him defer to you." The Emperor paused for a moment. "And I suppose there will need to be some killing."

Leontes nodded. "We go down, into the crowd?" He paused, thinking. Then amended: "No, arrows first, they won't be able to avoid them. No armour, no weapons. No way to get up to us. It would create chaos. A panic towards the exits." He nodded again. "It might be done, my lord. Depends on how intelligent they are in the kathisma, if they've barricaded it properly. Auxilius, if I can get in with thirty men and cause some disruption, would you be able to cut your way out of here to two of the Hippodrome gates with the Excubitors and move in as the crowd is rushing for the exits?"

"I would, or die in the attempt," Auxilius said, dark-bearded, hard-eyed, revitalized. "I will salute you from the sands of the Hippodrome. These are slaves and commoners. And rebels against Jad's anointed."

Jad's anointed crossed to stand by his Empress at the window, looking at the flames. Lysippus, breathing heavily, was on his overburdened bench nearby.

"It is so ordered, then," said the Emperor quietly. "You will do this just before sundown. We depend upon you both. We place our life and our throne in your care. In the meantime," Valerius turned to the Chancellor and the Master of Offices, "have it proclaimed from the Bronze Gates that the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue has been stripped of his position and rank for excess of zeal and has been exiled in disgrace to the provinces. We'll have the Mandator announce it in the Hippodrome, as well, if there's any chance he'll be heard. Take him with you, Leontes. Faustinus, have your spies spread these tidings in the streets. Gesius, inform the Patriarch: Zakarios and all the clerics are to promulgate this in the sanctuaries now and this evening. People will be fleeing there, if the soldiers do their task. This fails if the clergy are not with us. No killing in the chapels, Leontes."

"Of course not, my lord," the Strategos said. His piety was well known. "We are all your servants. It shall be as you say, thrice-glorious lord," said Gesius the Chancellor, bowing with a supple grace for so aged a man. Bonosus saw others beginning to move, react, take action. He felt paralysed by the gravity of what had just been decided. Valerius was going to fight for his throne. With a handful of men. He knew that if they had but walked a little west from this palace, across the autumn serenity of the gardens, the Emperor and Empress could have been down a stone staircase in the cliff and onto a trim craft and away to sea before anyone was the wiser. If the reports were correct, better than a hundred and fifty thousand people were in the streets right now. Leontes had requested thirty archers. Auxilius would have his Excubitors. Two thousand men, perhaps. Not more. He gazed at the Empress, straight-backed, immobile as a statue, centred in the window. Not an accident, that positioning, he suspected. She would know how to place herself to best effect. The vestments of Empire. A shroud.

He remembered the Emperor looking down at his corpulent, sweating taxation officer. There were stories circulating of what Lysippus had done to the two clerics in one of his underground rooms. Tales of what transpired there had made the rounds for some time now. Ugly stories. Lysippus the Calysian had been a well-made man once, Bonosus remembered: strong features, a distinctive voice, the unusual green eyes. He'd had a great deal of power for a long time, however. He couldn't be corrupted or bribed in his duties, everyone knew that, but everyone also knew that corruption could take. other forms.

Bonosus was perfectly aware that his own habits went to the borders of the acceptable, but the rumoured depravities of the fat man-with boys, coerced wives, felons, slaves-repulsed him. Besides which, Lysip-pus's tax reforms and pursuit of the wealthier classes had cost Bonosus substantial sums in the past. He didn't know which aspect of the man outraged him more. He did know, because he'd been quietly approached more than once, that there was more to this riot than the blind rage of the common people. A good many of the patricians of Sarantium and the provinces would not be displeased to see Valerius of Trakesia gone and a more… pliant figure on the Golden Throne.

Watching in silence, Bonosus saw the Emperor murmur something to the man on the bench beside him. Lysippus looked up quickly. He straightened his posture with an effort, flushing. Valerius smiled thinly, then moved away. Bonosus never knew what was said. There was a bustle of activity at the time and an endless hammering from over by the gates.

Having been summoned to this gathering purely for the procedural formality of it-the Senate still, officially, advised the Emperor on the people's behalf-Bonosus found himself standing uncertainly, superfluous and afraid, between a delicately wrought silver tree and the open eastern window. The Empress turned her head and saw him. Alixana smiled. Sitting three rows behind her now in the kathisma, his face burning again with the memory, Plautus Bonosus recalled his Empress saying to him, in an intimate tone of arch, diverted curiosity, as if they were sharing a dining couch at a banquet for some ambassador, "Do tell me, Senator, assuage my womanly curiosity. Is the younger son of Regalius Paresis as beautiful unclothed as he is when fully garbed?"

Taras, fourth rider of the Reds, didn't like his position. He didn't like it at all. In fact, being as honest as a man ought to be with himself and his god, he hated it like scorpions in his boots.

While the handlers held his agitated horses in check behind the iron barrier, Taras distracted himself from the pointed glances of the rider on his left by checking the knot of his reins behind his back. The reins had to be well tied. It was too easy to lose a handgrip on them in the frenzy of a race. Then Taras checked the hang of the knife at his waist. More than one charioteer had been claimed by the Ninth Driver because he couldn't cut himself free of the reins when his chariot toppled and he was dragged like a straw toy behind the horses. You raced between one kind of disaster and another, Taras thought. Always.

It occurred to him that this was particularly so for him in this first race of a festival afternoon. He was in the seventh position-a bad post, but it shouldn't have mattered. He drove for the Reds. He wasn't expected to win a major race with the first and second drivers of Blue and Green all present.

He did have-as all the White and Red drivers did-a role in every race. And this function was greatly complicated for Taras just now by the undeniable fact that the men in the sixth and eighth slots had very strong expectations of winning, despite starting outside, and each carried the fervent hopes of about half the eighty thousand souls in the stands.

Taras tightened his hold on his whip. Each of the men beside him wore the silver ceremonial helmet that marked them as First of their colour. They were taking those off now, Taras saw, glancing to each side furtively, as the last of the Processional music gave way to the final preparations to run. On his left and a little behind him, in the sixth post, Crescens of the Greens shoved his leather racing helmet firmly down on his head as a handler cradled the silver one tenderly in his arms. Crescens glared quickly across at Taras, who was unable to glance away in time.

"He gets down in front of you at the Line, worm, I'll have you shovelling manure at some broken-down hippodrome on the frozen border of Karch. Fair warning."

Taras swallowed and nodded. Oh, very fair, he thought bitterly but did not say. He gazed past the barrier and down the track. The Line, chalked in white across the sand, was about two hundred paces away. To that point each chariot had to hold its lane, to allow the staggered start position to have its effect and prevent crashes right at the starting gates. After they reached the white line, the outside drivers could begin cutting down. If there was room.

That was the issue, of course.

Taras actually wished, at this moment, that he was still racing in Megarium. The little hippodrome at his home in the west might not have been very important, a tenth the size of this one, but he'd been a Green there, not a lowly Red, riding a strong Second, fair hopes after a fine season of claiming the silver helmet, sleeping at home, eating his mother's food. A good life, tossed aside like a broken whip the day an agent of the Greens of Sarantium had come west and watched him run and recruited him. He would race for the Reds for a while, Taras had been told, starting the way almost everyone began in the City. If he did honourably… well, the lives of all the great drivers were there to be observed.

If you thought you were good, and wanted to succeed, the Greens" agent said, you went to Sarantium. It was as simple as that. Taras knew it was true. He was young. It was an opportunity. Sailing to Sarantium, men called it, when someone took a chance like this. His father had been proud. His mother had cried, and packed him a new cloak and two sealed amphorae of her own grandmother's sovereign remedy for any and all ailments. The most evil-tasting concoction on earth. Taras had taken a spoonful each day since he'd arrived in the City. She'd sent two more jars in the summer, by Imperial Post.

So here he was, healthy as a young horse, on the very last day of his first season in the capital. No bones broken on the year and barely a handful of new scars, only one bad spill that left him dizzy for a few days and hearing flute music. Not a bad season, he thought, given that the horses the Reds and Whites drove-especially their lesser drivers-were hopelessly feeble when matched on the great track with those of the Blues and Greens. Taras had an easygoing disposition, worked hard, learned quickly, and had grown more than adequate-or so his factionarius had told him, encouragingly-at the tasks of the lesser colours. They were the same at every track, after all. Blocks, slow-downs, minor fouls (major ones could cost your lead colour the race and get you a suspension and a whip across the back-or face-from a First driver in the dressing rooms), even care- fully timed spills to bring down a rival team coming up behind you. The trick was to do that last without breaking a bone, or dying, of course.

He'd even won three times in the minor races involving the lesser Green and Blue riders and the Reds and Whites-amusements for the crowd, those were, with careening chariots, reckless corners, dangerous pile-ups, hot-headed young riders lashing at each other as they strove for recognition- Three wins was perfectly decent for a youngster riding Fourth for the Reds in Sarantium.

Problem was, perfectly decent wouldn't suffice at this particular moment. For a veritable host of reasons, the race coming up was hugely important, and Taras cursed fortune that it was his lot to be slotted outside between ferocious Crescens and the whirlwind that was Scortius. He shouldn't even have been in this race, but the Reds" second driver had fallen and wrenched a shoulder earlier in the morning and the factionarius had chosen to leave his Third in the next race, where he might have a chance to win.

As a direct result of this, seventeen-year-old Taras of Megarium was sitting here at the starting line, behind horses he didn't know at all well, sandwiched between the two finest drivers of the day, with one of them making it clear that if he didn't cut off the other, his brief tenure in the City might be over.

It was all a consequence of not having enough money to buy adequate protection against the curse-tablets, Taras knew. But what could one do? What could one possibly do?

The first trumpet sounded, warning of the start to come. The handlers withdrew. Taras leaned forward, talking to his horses. He dug his feet deeply into the metal sheaths on the chariot floor and looked nervously to his right and a bit ahead. Then he glanced quickly down again. Scortius, holding his experienced team easily in place, was smiling at him. The lithe, dark-skinned Soriyyan had an easy grin-allegedly lethal among the women of the City-and at the moment he was glancing back with amusement at Taras.

Taras made himself look up. It would not do to appear intimidated. "Miserable position, isn't it?" the First of the Blues said mildly. "Don't worry too much. Crescens is a sweet-natured fellow under that surface. He knows you can't go fast enough to block me."

"The fuck I am, the fuck I do!" Crescens barked from the other side. "I want this race, Scortius. I want seventy-five for the year and I want it in this one. Baras, or whatever your name is, keep him outside or get used to the smell of horse manure in your hair."

Scortius laughed. "We're all used to that, Crescens." He clucked reassuringly at his four horses.

The largest of them, the majestic bay in the leftmost position, was Servator, and Taras longed in his heart to stand in a chariot behind that magnificent animal just once in his life. Everyone knew that Scortius was brilliant, but they also knew that a goodly portion of his success-evinced by two statues in the spina before he was thirty years old-had been shaped by Servator. There had even been a bronze statue to the horse in the courtyard outside the Greens" banquet hall, until this year. It had been melted down over the winter. When the Greens lost the driver they lost the horse, because Scortius's last contract with them had stipulated- uniquely-that he owned Servator, not the faction.

He'd gone over to the Blues in the winter, for a sum and on terms that no one knew for certain, though the rumours were wild. The muscular, tough-talking Crescens had come north from riding First for the Greens in the notoriously rough-and-tumble hippodrome of Sarnica- second city of the Empire-and had assuaged some of his faction's grief by being hard and brave and ruggedly aggressive and by winning races. Seventy-five would be a splendid first season for the Greens" new standard-bearer.

Seventy five would be, Taras desperately wanted to say, but didn't. Didn't have time, either. His right-side trace horse was restive and needed attention. He had only handled this team once before, back in the summer. The starter's trumpet was up. A handler hurried back and helped Taras hold his position. He didn't look over at Crescens, but he heard the fierce man from Amoria cry, "A case of red from my home if you keep the Soriyyan bastard outside for a lap, Karas!"

"His name's Taras!" Scortius of the hated Blues called back, still laughing in the very moment the trumpet sounded and the barriers sprang away, laying the wide track open like an ambush or a dream of glory.

"Watch the start!"

Carullus gripped Crispin's arm, shouting over the deafening noise as thirty-two horses came up to the barriers below and the first warning trumpet blast sounded. Crispin was watching. He and Vargos had learned a great deal through the morning; Carullus was surprisingly knowledgeable and unsurprisingly talkative. The start was almost half the race, they'd come to realize, especially with the best drivers on the track, unlikely to make mistakes on the seven laps around the spina. If one of the top Blues or Greens took the lead at the first turn, it required luck and a great deal of effort to overtake him on a crowded track.

The real drama came when-as now-the two best drivers were so far outside that it was impossible for them to win except by coming from behind, fighting through the blocks and disruptions of the lesser colours.

Crispin kept his eyes on the outside racers. He thought that Carullus's very large wager was a decent bet: the Blues" Scortius was in a miserable position, flanked by a Red driver whose sole task-he had learned through the morning-would be to keep the Blue champion from cutting down for as long as possible. Running wide for a long time on this track was brutally hard on the horses. Crescens of the Greens had his own Green partner on his left, another piece of good fortune, despite his own outside start. If Crispin understood this sport at all by now, that second Green driver would go flying from the barriers as fast as he could and then begin pressing left towards the inside lanes, opening room for Crescens to angle over as well, as soon as they sped past the white chalked line that marked the beginning of the spina and the point when the chaos of manoeuvring began.

Crispin hadn't expected to be this engaged by the races but his heart was pounding now, and he'd found himself shouting many times through the morning. Eighty thousand screaming people could make you do that.

He'd never been among so large a crowd in his life. Crowds had their own power, Crispin had begun to realize; they carried you with them.

And now the Emperor was here: a new element to the festival excitement of the Hippodrome. That distant purple-robed figure at the western end of the stands-just where the chariots made their first turning round the spina-represented another dimension of power. The men down below them in their frail chariots, whips in hand and reins lashed around their hard, trained bodies, were a third. Crispin looked up for a moment. The sun was high on a clear, windy day: the god in his own chariot, riding above Sarantium. Power above and below and all around.

Crispin closed his eyes for a moment in the brilliance of the day, and just then-without any warning at all, like a flung spear or a sudden shaft of light-an image came to him. Whole and vast and unforgettable, completely unexpected, a gift.

And also a burden, as such images had always been for him: the terrible distance between the art conceived in the eye of the mind and what one could actually execute in a fallible world with fallible tools and one's own crushing limitations.

But sitting there on the marble benches of the Sarantine Hippodrome, assailed by the tumult and the screaming of the crowd, Caius Crispus of Varena knew with appalling certainty what he would like to do on a sanctuary dome here, given the chance. He might be. They'd asked for a mosaicist. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His fingers were tingling. He opened his eyes and looked down at his scarred, scratched hands.

The second trumpet sounded. Crispin lifted his head just as the barriers below were whipped away and the chariots sprang forward like a thunder of war, pushing the inner image back in his mind but not away, not away. "Come on, you cursed Red! Come on!" Carullus was roaring at the top of his considerable voice, and Crispin knew why. He concentrated on the outside chariots and saw the Red driver burst off the line with exceptional speed-the very first team out of the barriers, it seemed to him. Crescens was almost as fast, and the Green second driver in the fifth lane was lashing his horses hard, preparing to lead his champion down and across as soon as they passed the white line. In the eighth position, it seemed to Crispin that Scortius of the Blues had actually been caught unprepared by the trumpet; he seemed to have been turned backwards, saying something.

"On!" roared Carullus. "Go! Lash them! Good man, you Red!" The Red driver had already caught Scortius's Blues, Crispin saw, even against the advantage the outside chariot was given at the staggered start. Carullus had said it this morning: half the races were decided before the first turn. It looked like this one might be. With the Red already right beside him-and now pulling ahead with the ferocity of his start-the Blue champion had no way to cut down from his position so far outside. His cohorts in the inside lanes were going to be hard pressed to keep Crescens outside or blocked, especially with the Greens" second driver there to clear a path. The first chariots reached the white line. The whip hand of the Red driver in the seventh lane seemed a blur of motion as he lashed his mounts forward, first to the line. It didn't matter where that team finished, Crispin knew. Only that they keep Scortius outside for as long as they could.

"He's done it!" Carullus howled, clutching Crispin's left arm in his vise of a grip.

Crispin saw the two Green chariots cross the line and begin an immediate angling downwards-they had room. The White chariot in the fourth lane hadn't started fast enough to fend them off. Even if the White driver fouled the Green leading the way and they both went down, that would only open up more space for Crescens. It was wonderfully well done; even Crispin could see that. Then he saw something else.

Scortius of the Blues, in the worst position, farthest outside, with a fiercely determined Red driver lashing his horses into a frenzy to get ahead of him, let that chariot go by.

Then the Blue driver suddenly leaned over, so far left his upper body was outside the platform of his chariot, and from that position he sent his whip forward-for the first time-and lashed his right trace horse. At the same time the big bay on the left side of the team, the one called Servator, pulled sharply left and the Blue chariot almost pivoted on the sands as Scortius hurled his body back to the right to balance it. It seemed impossible it could remain upright, keep rolling, as the four horses passed behind the still accelerating Red driver at an unbelievably sharp angle straight across the open track and right up to the back of Crescens's chariot.

"Jad rot the soul of the man!" Carullus screamed, as if in mortal agony. "I don't believe it! I do not believe it! It was a trick! That start was deliberate! He wanted to do this!" He shook both fists in the air, a man in the grip of a vast passion. "Oh, Scortius, my heart, why did you leave us?"

All around them, even in the stands of those not formally aligned with one faction or another, men and women were screaming as Carullus was, so startling and spectacular had that angled, careening move been. Crispin heard Vargos and he heard himself shouting with all of them as if his own spirit were down there in the chariot with the man in the blue tunic and leather straps. The horses thundered into the first turn passing beneath the Imperial Box. Dust swirled, the noise was colossal. Scortius was right behind his rival, his four horses almost trampling on the back of the other man's chariot. None of Crescens's allies could block him without also impeding the Green driver or fouling so flagrantly from the side as to disqualify their colour from victory.

The chariots whipped along the far stands as Crispin and the others strained to see across the spina and its monuments. The Blues" second driver had used his inside position to seize and hold the lead and he was first into the second turning, straining to keep his horses from drifting outside. Right behind him, surprisingly, was the young Red driver from the seventh lane. Having failed to block Scortius, he had done the only thing he could and pressed downwards himself, taking advantage of his spectacular-and spectacularly unsuccessful-start from the barriers.

The first of the seven bronze sea-horses tilted and dived from above, down into the silver tank of water at one end of the spina. An egg-shaped counter flipped over at the opposite end. One lap done. Six to go.

It was Pertennius of Eubulus who had most comprehensively chronicled the events of the Victory Riot. He was Leontes" military secretary, an obvious sycophant and flatterer, but educated, manifestly shrewd, and carefully observant, and since Bonosus had been present himself for many of the events the Eubulan recorded in his history, he could vouch for their essential accuracy. Pertennius was, in fact, the sort of man who could make himself so colourless, so unobtrusive, that you forgot he was there. which meant he heard and saw things others might not. He enjoyed this, a little too obviously, letting slip occasional bits of information, clearly expecting confidences in return. Bonosus didn't like him.

Notwithstanding this, Bonosus was inclined to credit his version of events in the Hippodrome two years ago. There were a good many corroborating sources, in any case.

The subversive work of men strewn through the crowd by Faustinus had managed to set Blues and Greens somewhat at odds towards the end of that day. Tempers frayed with uncertainty, and the allegiance between the factions seemed to be wearing thin in places. Everyone knew the Empress favoured the Blues, having been a dancer for them herself. It had not been difficult to make the Greens in the Hippodrome anxious and suspicious that they might be the prime victims of any response to the events of the past two days. Fear could bring men together, and it could drive them apart.

Leontes and his thirty archers of the Imperial Guard made their way silently down the enclosed corridor from the Precinct to the rear of the kathisma. There followed an ambiguous incident with a number of the Hippodrome Prefect's men, guarding the corridor for those in the box, allegedly undecided where their immediate loyalties lay. In Pertennius's account, the Strategos made a quietly impassioned speech in that dark corridor and swayed them back to the Emperor's side.

Bonosus had no obvious reason to doubt the report, though the eloquence of the speech as recorded, and its length, seemed at odds with the urgency of the moment.

The Strategos's men-each one armed with his bow as well as a sword- then burst in through the back door of the kathisma, joined by the Prefect's soldiers. They discovered Symeonis actually sitting on the Emperor's seat. This was confirmed: everyone in the Hippodrome had seen him there. He was to argue plausibly, afterwards, that he'd had no choice.

Leontes personally ripped the makeshift crown and the porphyry robe from the terrified Senator. Symeonis then dropped to his knees and embraced the booted feet of the Supreme Strategos. He was permitted to live; his abject, very public, obeisance was a useful symbol, since everything happening could be seen clearly throughout the Hippodrome.

The soldiers made ruthlessly short work of those in the kathisma who had placed Symeonis on the Emperor's chair. Most were popular agitators, though not all. Four or five of those in the box with Symeonis were aristocrats who saw themselves as having cause to dispense with an independent Emperor and be the powers behind the throne of a figurehead. Their hacked bodies were immediately thrown down to the sands, landing bloodily on the heads and shoulders of the crowd, which was so densely packed that people could scarcely move.

This, of course, became the principal cause of the slaughter that followed. Leontes had the Mandator proclaim the exile of the hated taxation officer. Pertennius reported this speech at some length as well, but as Bonosus understood events, it was likely that next to no one heard it.

This was so because, even as the Mandator was declaring the Emperor's decision, Leontes directed his archers to begin shooting. Some arrows were fired at those directly below the kathisma; others arched high to fall like deadly rain on unprotected people far off. No one on the sands had any weapons, any armour. The arrows, randomly strewn, steadily and expertly fired, caused an immediate, panic-stricken hysteria. People fell, were trampled to death in the chaos, lashed out at each other in desperate attempts to flee the Hippodrome through one of the exits.

It was at this point, according to Pertennius, that Auxilius and his two thousand Excubitors, divided into two groups, appeared at entrances on opposite sides. One of these-the tale would linger and gain resonance- was the Death Gate, the one through which dead and injured charioteers were carried out.

The Excubitors wore their visored helmets. They had already drawn their swords. What ensued was a slaughter. Those facing them were so packed together they could scarcely lift arms to defend themselves. The massacre continued as the sun went down, autumn darkness adding another dimension to the terror. People died of swords, arrows, underfoot, smothered in the blood-soaked crush.

It was a clear night, Pertennius's chronicle meticulously recorded, the stars and the white moon looking down. A stupefying number of people died in the Hippodrome that evening and night. The Victory Riot ended in a black river of moonlit blood saturating the sands.

Two years later, Bonosus watched chariots hurtle around the spina along that same sand. Another sea-horse dived-they had been dolphins until recently-another egg was flipped. Five laps done. He was remembering a white moon suspended in the eastern window of the throne room as Leontes-unscathed, calm as a man at ease in his favourite bath, golden hair lightly tousled as if by steam-returned to the Attenine Palace with a gibbering and palsied Symeonis in tow. The aged Senator hurled himself prone on the mosaic-inlaid floor before Valerius, weeping in his terror. The Emperor, sitting on the throne now, looked down upon him. "It is our belief you were coerced in this," he murmured as Symeonis wailed and beat his head against the floor. Bonosus remembered that.

"Yes! Oh yes, oh my dear, thrice-exalted lord! I was" Bonosus had seen an odd expression in Valerius's round, smooth face. He was not a man-it was known-who enjoyed killing people. He'd had the Judicial Code changed already to eliminate execution as a punishment for many crimes. And Symeonis was an old, pathetic victim of the mob more than anything else. Bonosus was prepared to wager on exile for the elderly Senator. "My lord?"

Alixana had remained by the window. Valerius turned to her. He hadn't spoken whatever it was he'd been about to say.

"My lord," repeated the Empress quietly, "he was crowned. Garbed in porphyry before the people. Willingly or no. That makes two Emperors in this room. In this city. Two. living Emperors." Even Symeonis fell silent then, Bonosus remembered. The Chancellor's eunuchs killed the old man that same night. In the morning his naked, dishonoured body was displayed for all to see, hanging from the wall beside the Bronze Gates in its flabby, pale white shame. Also in the morning came the renewed Proclamation, in all the holy places of Sarantium, that Jad's anointed Emperor had heeded the will of his dearly beloved people and the hated Lysippus was already banished outside the walls.

The two arrested clerics, both alive if rather the worse for their tenure with the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, were released, though not before a careful meeting was held amongst themselves, the Master of Offices, and Zakarios, the Most Holy Eastern Patriarch of Jad, in which it was made clear that they were to remain silent about the precise details of what had, in fact, been done to them. Neither appeared anxious to elaborate, in any case.

It was, as always, important to have the clerics of the City participate in any attempts to bring order to the people. The co-operation of the clergy tended to be expensive in Sarantium, however. The first formal declaration of the Emperor's extremely ambitious plans for the rebuilding of the Great Sanctuary took place in that same meeting.

To this day, Bonosus wasn't at all certain how Pertennius had learned about that. He was, however, in a position to confirm another aspect of the historian's chronicle of the riot. The Sarantine civil service had always been concerned with accurate figures. The agents of the Master of Offices and the Urban Prefect had been industrious in their observations and calculations. Bonosus, as leader of the Senate, had seen the same report Pertennius had.

Thirty-one thousand people had died in the Hippodrome under that white moon two years ago.

After the wild burst of excitement at the start, four laps unrolled with only marginal changes in positioning. The three quadrigas that had started inside had all moved off the line quickly enough to hold their positions, and since they were Red, White, and the Blues" second driver, the pace was not especially fast. Crescens of the Greens was tucked in behind these three next to his own Second, who had led him across the track in their initial move. Scortius's horses were still right behind his rival's chariot. As the racers hurtled past them on the fifth lap, Carullus gripped Crispin's arm again and rasped, "Wait for it! He's giving orders now! "Crispin, straining to see through the swirling dust, realized that Crescens was indeed shouting something to his left and the Greens" number two was relaying it forward.

Right at the beginning of the sixth lap, just as they came out of the turn, the Red team running in second place-the Greens" teammate- suddenly and shockingly went down, taking the Blues" second quadriga with him in an explosion of dust and screams.

A chariot wheel flew off and rolled across the track by itself. It happened directly in front of Crispin, and his clearest single image amid the chaos was of that wheel serenely spinning away, leaving carnage behind. He watched it roll, miraculously untouched by any of the swerving and bouncing chariots, until it wobbled to rest at the outer edge of the sand.

Crescens and the other Green beside him avoided the wreck. So did Scortius, pulling swiftly wide to the right. The trailing White second team wasn't quite quick enough to steer around. Its inside horse clipped the piled, mangled chariots and the driver hacked furiously at the reins tied to his waist as his platform tipped over. He hurtled free, to the inside, rolling and rolling across the track towards the spina. Those behind him, with more time to react, were all heading wide. The driver was in no danger once free of his own reins. One of his inside yoked horses was screaming, though, and down, a leg clearly broken. And beside the initial wreckage, the second driver of the Blues lay very still on the track.

Crispin saw the Hippodrome crew sprinting across the sand to get the men away-and the horses-before the surviving chariots came round again.

"That was deliberate!" Carullus shouted, looking down at the chaos of horses and men and chariots. "Beautifully done! Look at the lane he opened for Crescens! On, Greens!"

Even as Crispin dragged his eyes away from the downed chariots and the motionless man and focused on the quadrigas flying down the straightaway towards the Emperor's box, he saw the Greens" number two driver, sitting in second place now after the accident, pull his team suddenly wide to the outside as Crescens, just behind him, lashed his own horses hard. The timing was superb, like a dance. The Greens" champion hurtled past his partner and was suddenly right beside the White team that had been leading to this point-and then past it, outside but astonishingly close, in an explosion of nerve and speed, before the White driver could react and swing out from the rail to force him wider as they entered the turn.

But even as Crescens of the Greens hurtled brilliantly by, accelerating into a curve, the White charioteer abandoned the attempt to slow him and pulled his own horses up sharply instead, reins gripped hard, holding them right on the rail-and Scortius was there.

The Blue champion's magnificent inside bay brushed up against the White's outside horse, so close was the move that his own wheels seemed to blur into those of his teammate, and in that instant Crispin surged again to his feet shouting along with everyone else in the Hippodrome, as if they were one person, melded by the moment.

Crescens was ahead as they swept under the Imperial Box, but his ferocious burst of speed had forced his horses wide on the curve. And Scortius of the Blues, leaning madly over to his left again, his entire upper body outside the bouncing, careening chariot, the great bay horse pulling the other three downwards, had curled inside him only half a length behind as they exploded out of the curve into the far straight with eighty thousand people on their feet and screaming. The two champions were alone in front.

Throat raw with his own shouting, straining to see across the spina, past obelisks and monuments, Crispin saw Crescens of the Greens lash his horses, leaning so far forward he was almost over their tails, and he heard a thunderous roar from the Green stands as the animals responded gallantly, opening a little distance from the pursuing Blues.

But a little was enough here. A little could be the race: for with that half length gained back again, Crescens, in his turn, leaned over to the left and, with one quick, gauging glance backwards, sacrificed a notch of speed for a sharp downwards movement and claimed the inside lane again.

"He did it!" Carullus howled, pounding Crispin's back. "Ho, Crescens! On, Greens! On!"

"How?" Crispin said aloud, to no one in particular. He watched Scortius belatedly go hard to his own whip, lashing his team now, and saw them respond in turn as the two quadrigas flew down the far straight. The Blue horses came up again, their heads bobbing beside Crescens's hurtling chariot once more-but it was too late, they were on the outside now. The Green driver had seized the rail again with that brilliant move out of the turn, and at this late stage the shorter distance along the inside would surely have to tell.

"Holy Jad!" Vargos suddenly screamed from Carullus's other side, as if the words had been ripped from his throat. "Oh, by Heladikos, look! He did it deliberately! Again!" "What?" Carullus cried.

"Look! In front of us! Oh, Jad, how did he know?" Crispin looked to where Vargos was pointing and cried out himself then, incoherent, disbelieving, in a kind of transport of excitement and awe. He clutched at Carullus's arm, heard the other man roaring, a sound suspended between anguish and fierce rapture, and then he simply watched, in the appalled fascination with which one might observe a distant figure hurtling towards a cliff he did not see.

The track crews, administered by the civil office of the Hippodrome Prefect and thus resolutely non-partisan, were extremely good at their various tasks. These included attending to the state of the racecourse, the condition of the starting barriers, the fairness of the start itself, judging fouls and obstructions during the races, and attempting to police the stables and prevent poisonings of horses or assaults on drivers-at least within the Hippodrome itself. Attacks outside were none of their business.

One of their most demanding activities was clearing the track after a collision. They were trained to remove a chariot, horses, an injured driver with speed and skill, either to the safety of the spina or across to the outside of the track against the stands. They could disentangle a pair of mangled quadrigas, cut free the rearing, frightened horses, push twisted wheels out of the way, and do all of this in time to enable the surviving chariots coming around to proceed apace.

Three downed and wrecked quadrigas, twelve entangled horses, including a broken-legged White yoke horse that had dragged its thrashing, yoked companion awkwardly over on its side when it went down, and an unconscious, badly hurt driver presented something of a problem, however.

They got the injured man on a litter over to the spina. They cut all six trace horses free and unhooked two pairs of-the yoke horses. They dragged one chariot as far to the outside as they could. They were working on the other two, struggling to unyoke the terrified healthy horse from the broken-legged one, when a warning shout came that the leaders had come back around-moving very fast-and the yellow-garbed track crew had to sprint madly for safety themselves.

The accident had taken place on the inside lanes. There was plenty of room for the thundering quadrigas to pass the wreckage to the outside. Or, in the alternative, just enough room for one of them, if they happened to be running nearly abreast and the outside driver was disinclined to move over enough to let the inside one pass safely by.

They were, as it happened, running nearly abreast. Scortius of the Blues was outside, a little behind as the two quadrigas came out of the turn and the sea-horse dived to signal the last lap. He drifted smoothly outwards as they came into the straight-just enough to take his quadriga safely around the wreckage and the two tangled horses on the track.

Crescens of the Greens was thereby faced, in a blur of time and at the apex of fevered excitement, with three obvious but extremely unpalatable choices. He could destroy his team and possibly himself by tearing into the obstruction. He could cut towards Scortius, trying to force his way around the outer edge of the pile-up-thereby incurring a certain disqualification and a suspension for the rest of the day. Or he could rein his steaming horses violently back, let Scortius go by, and veer around behind the other driver, effectively conceding defeat with but a single lap to go. He was a brave man. It had been a stunning, blood-stirring race. He tried to go through on the inside. The two fallen horses were farther over. Only a single downed chariot lay near the spina rail. Crescens lashed his own splendid left-side trace horse once, guided it to the innermost rail and squeezed his four horses by. The left one scraped hard against the rail. The outside trace horse clipped a leg against a spinning wheel-but they were by. The Green champion's chariot hurtled through as well, bouncing into the air so that Crescens appeared to be flying for a moment like an image of Heladikos. But he was through. He came down, brilliantly keeping his balance, whip and reins still in hand, the horses running hard.

It was most terribly unfortunate, given so much courage and skill displayed, that his outside chariot wheel bounced down behind him, having been dislodged on the way through the wreckage.

One could not, however brave or skilful, race a one-wheeled chariot. Crescens cut himself free of the reins around his torso. He stood a moment upright in the wildly slewing chariot, lifted his knife in a brief but clearly visible salute to the receding figure of Scortius ahead of him, and jumped free.

He rolled several times, in the way drivers all learned young, and then stood up, alone on the sand. He removed his leather helmet, bowed to the Emperor's box-ignoring the other teams now coming around the curve-then he spread his hands in resignation and bowed equally low to the Green stands.

Then he walked off the track to the spina. He accepted a flask of water from a crewman. He drank deeply, poured the rest in a stream over his head, and stood there blistering the air among the monuments with the profane, passionate fire of his frustration as Scortius turned the last straightaway into a one-chariot Procession, and then ran the formal Victory Lap itself, collecting his wreath, while the Blues permitted themselves to become delirious and the Emperor himself in the kathisma-the indifferent Emperor who favoured no faction and didn't even like the racing- lifted a palm in salute to the triumphant charioteer as he went by.

Scortius showed no flamboyance, no exaggerated posture of celebration. He never did. He hadn't for a dozen years and sixteen hundred triumphs. He simply raced, and won, and spent the nights being honoured in some aristocratic palace, or bed.

Crescens had had access to the faction ledgers. He knew what the Greens had budgeted for counterspells against the curse-tablets that would have been commissioned against Scortius over the years. He imagined that the Blues had designated half as much again this year.

It would be pleasant, Crescens thought, wiping mud and sweat from his face and forehead among the monuments on the last race day of his first year in Sarantium, to be able to hate the man. He had no idea how Scortius had deduced the wreckage would still be there after a simple two-chariot accident. He would never actually ask, but he badly wanted to know. He had been allowed to take the inside out of that last turn, and he had done as permitted, like a child who snatches a sweet when he thinks his tutor has turned away.

He noted, with a measure of wryness, that the fellow racing for the Reds in the seventh lane-Baras, or Varas, or whatever-the one who'd been gulled by Scortius at the start, had actually caught a tiring White team coming out of the last turn and taken second place with its considerable prize. It was a wonderful result for a young man riding second for the Reds, and it prevented a sweep for the Blues and Whites.

Crescens decided it would be, under all the circumstances, inappropriate to berate the fellow. Best put this race behind. There were seven more to be run today, he was in four of them, and he still wanted his seventy-five wins.

On his way back to the dressing rooms under the stands to rest before his second appearance of the afternoon, he learned that the Blues" Second, Dauzis, downed in the crash, was dead-his neck broken, either in the fall, or when they moved him.

The Ninth Driver was always running with them. He had shown his face today.

In the Hippodrome they raced to honour the sun god and the Emperor and to bring joy to the people, and some of them ran in homage to gallant Heladikos, and all of them knew-every single time they stood behind their horses-that they could die there on the sands.