They were the Excubitors, the Imperial Guards, best soldiers in the Empire. The kneeling soldier didn’t look up or back. He’d have died, had he done so. Instead, he hurtled straight to one side from his kneeling position, rolling hard as he did, over the flat of his own sword. The blade that had been sweeping down to take him from behind bit, instead, into the body of the already-slain guard. The attacker swore savagely, ripped his blade free, turned to face the other soldier—the leader of this quartet—who was up now, his own sword levelled.
There was still no one near the Empress, Crispin saw.
The two Excubitors faced each other in the sunlight, feet wide for balance, circling slowly. The other two soldiers were on their feet now, halfway across the clearing, but frozen as if in shock.
There was death here now. There was more than that.
Caius Crispus of Varena, in the world, of the world, said a quick silent prayer to the god of his fathers and took three hard running steps, hammering his shoulder with all the force he could command into the small of the back of the traitorous soldier in front of him. Crispin wasn’t a fighter, but he was a big man. The man’s breath was expelled with a rush, his head snapped back, his arms splayed helplessly out and wide with the impact, the sword spinning from nerveless fingers.
Crispin fell to the ground with him, on top of him, rolled quickly away. He pushed himself up. In time to see the man whose life he’d saved plunge his blade, without ceremony, straight into the back of the other soldier where he lay on the ground, killing him.
The Excubitor threw Crispin one swift, searching look, then wheeled and sprinted towards the Empress, bloodied sword in hand. Struggling up from his knees, heart in his throat, Crispin watched him go. Alixana stood motionless, a sacrifice in a glade, accepting her fate.
The soldier stopped in front of her and spun around to defend his Empress.
Crispin heard a strange sound in his own throat. There were two dead men next to him in this clearing. He ran, stumbling, over to Alixana himself. Her face, he saw, was still chalk white.
The other two Excubitors came quickly over now, their own blades out, horror written in both faces. The leader, standing in front the Empress, waited for them, his head and eyes darting about, scanning the clearing and the shadows of the pines.
‘Sheathe!’ he snapped. ‘Formation. Now.’
They did, drew themselves up side by side. He stood before them, his gaze ferocious. Looked at one, and then the other.
Then he plunged his bloodied sword into the belly of the second man.
Crispin gasped, his fists clenched at his side.
The leader of the Excubitors watched his victim fall, then he turned again and looked at the Empress.
Alixana had not moved. She said, her voice entirely without inflection, almost inhuman, ‘He was bought as well, Mariscus?’
The man said, ‘My lady, I could not be sure. Of Nerius I am sure.’ He gestured with his head at the remaining soldier. He looked at Crispin searchingly. ‘You trust the Rhodian?’ he asked.
‘I trust the Rhodian,’ said Alixana of Sarantium. There was no life in her tone, in her face. ‘I believe he saved you.’
The soldier showed no response to that. He said, ‘I do not understand what has happened here. But it is not safe for you, my lady.’
Alixana laughed. Crispin would remember that sound, too.
‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘I know. It is not safe for me. But it is too late now.’ She closed her eyes. Crispin saw that her hands were at her sides. His own were twisting and clenching, windows to the roiling he felt within. ‘It is so obvious now, much too late. Today will have been a day when they changed the Urban Prefect’s guards here, I’ll wager. I imagine they were already here, watching, when we sailed in at the end of the morning, waiting until we left this clearing.’
Crispin and the two soldiers looked at her.
‘Two dead here,’ said Alixana. ‘So two of the Prefect’s men were bought. And the four new ones arriving on their little boat will have been, of course, or there’d have been no point. And you think two of the Excubitors, too.’ A spasm crossed her features, was gone. The mask reasserted itself. ‘He will have left as soon as we went away. They’ll have reached the City by now. Some time ago, I imagine.’
None of the three men with her said a word. Crispin’s heart ached. These were not his people, Sarantium was not his place on Jad’s earth, but he understood what she was saying. The world was changing. Might have already changed.
Alixana opened her eyes then. Looked straight at him. ‘He has something that allows him to . . . see things?’ No reproach in her tone. Nothing in her tone. Had he told her right away . . .
He nodded. The two soldiers looked uncomprehending. They didn’t matter. She did. She mattered very much, he realized, gazing at her. She turned past him, towards the two dead men near the prison house.
And then turned completely away, from the men standing with her, from the dead in the clearing. Faced north, her shoulders straight as always, head lifted a little, as if to see beyond the tall pines, beyond the strait with its dolphins and ships and white-capped waves, beyond harbour, city walls, bronze gates, the present and the past, the world and the half-world.
‘I believe,’ said Alixana of Sarantium, ‘it may even be over by now.’
She turned back to look at them. Her eyes were dry.
‘I have placed you in mortal danger, Rhodian. I am sorry for it. You will have to go back on the Imperial ship alone. You may expect to be asked hard questions, perhaps as soon as you land. More likely later, tonight. It will be known you were with me today, before I disappeared.’
‘My lady?’ he said. ‘You don’t know what has happened.’ He paused, swallowed hard. ‘He is cleverer than any man alive.’ And then her last word penetrated, and he said, ‘Disappeared?’
She looked at him. ‘I do not know for certain, you are correct. But if things have fallen out in a certain way, the Empire as we have known it is ended and they will be coming for me. I would not care, but . . . ’ She closed her eyes again. ‘But I do have . . . one or perhaps two things to do. I cannot let myself be found before that. Mariscus will take me back—there will be small craft on this island—and I will disappear.’
She stopped, drew a breath. ‘I knew he should have been killed,’ she said. And then, ‘Crispin, Caius Crispus, if I am right, Gesius will be no help to you now.’ Her mouth twitched. A fool might have called it a smile. ‘You will need Styliane. She is the one who might guard you. She feels something for you, I believe.’
He didn’t know how she might know that. He was far past caring about such things. He said, ‘And you, my lady?’
A distant trace of amusement. ‘What do I feel for you, Rhodian?’
He bit his lip hard. ‘No, no. My lady, what are you to do? May I . . . may we not help?’
She shook her head. ‘Not your role. Not anyone’s. If I am correct about what has happened, I have a task to do before I die, and then it can end.’ She looked at Crispin, standing very near him and yet in another place, another world, almost. ‘Tell me, when your wife died . . . how did you go on living?’
He opened his mouth, and closed it without answering. She turned away. They went back through the forest to the sea. On the stony strand of the isle, he was still unable to speak. He watched as she unclipped and let fall her purple cloak, and then dropped the brooch that had pinned it and turned and went away along the white stones. The man named Mariscus followed her out of sight.
How did you go on living?
No answers came to him on the ship when he and the remaining Excubitor came to it and the mariners weighed anchor at the soldier’s harsh order and they sailed back to Sarantium.
THE IMPERIAL CLOAK and the golden brooch were left behind on the isle, were still lying there when the stars came out that night, and the moons.
CHAPTER X
Cleander had done well by them, it appeared.
They were
not among the enormous block of Green partisans—his mother had expressly forbidden that—but it seemed the boy had sufficient contacts by now among the Hippodrome crowd to have obtained excellent seats low down and near the starting line. Some of the morning attendees among the wealthier classes were inclined to miss the afternoon, it seemed. Cleander had found three seats that way. They had a clear, close view of the cumbersome looking start apparatus and the jumble of monuments along the spina, and could even see into the roofed interior space where the performers and charioteers were even now awaiting the signal to come out for the afternoon procession. Beyond that, Cleander had pointed out another entrance to and from the vast spaces under the stands. He called it the Death Gate, with evident relish.
The boy, dressed with perfect sobriety in brown and gold with a wide leather belt and his long, barbarian-style hair brushed back, was urgently pointing out all that took place to his stepmother and the physician whose servant he’d killed two weeks before. He seemed wildly happy and very young, Rustem thought, aware of ironies.
Thenaïs had already been saluted by at least half a dozen men and women sitting nearby and had introduced Rustem with flawless formality to them. No one asked why she wasn’t in the kathisma with her husband. This was a well-bred, well-dressed section of the Hippodrome. There might be shouting and jostling above them in the standing places but not down here.
Or perhaps, Rustem thought, not until the horses began running again. He acknowledged, with professional interest, an excitement within himself, undermining detachment. The mood of the crowd—he had never in his life been among so many people—was communicating itself, undeniably.
A trumpet sounded. ‘Here they come,’ said Cleander, on the far side of his mother. ‘The Greens have the most wonderful juggler, you’ll see him right after the Hippodrome Prefect’s horse.’
‘No faction talk,’ said Thenaïs quietly, eyes on the gateway to the sands, where a horseman had indeed appeared.
‘I’m not,’ said the boy. ‘Mother, I’m just . . . telling you things.’
It became difficult to tell—or hear—things just about then, as the crowd erupted into full-throated salutation, like a beast with one voice.
Behind the single horseman came a dazzling, multicoloured array of performers. The juggler Cleander had mentioned was tossing sticks set on fire. Beside and behind him capered dancers dressed in blue and green, and then red and white, doing backflips and wheel-like movements. One walked on her hands, shoulders twisted into a position that made Rustem wince. She’d be unable to lift a cup without pain by the time she was forty, the doctor thought. Another entertainer, ducking his head to clear the tunnel roof, came striding out on high sticks that elevated him to giant size, and he managed, somehow, to dance on the sticks from that great height. Clearly a favourite, his appearance led to an even louder roar of approval. There came musicians with drums and flutes and cymbals. Then more dancers sprinted past, criss-crossing each other, long streamers of coloured fabric in their hands, drifting in the breeze and with the speed of their running. Their clothing was lifting, too, and there wasn’t over-much of it. The women would have been stoned in Bassania for appearing in public so nearly naked, Rustem thought.
Then there came, just after them, the chariots.
‘That’s Crescens! Glory of the Greens!’ shouted Cleander, ignoring his mother’s injunction, pointing at a man in a silver helmet. He paused. ‘And beside him, that’s the young one. Taras. For the Blues. He’s riding first chariot again.’ He quickly looked across at Rustem. ‘Scortius isn’t here.’
‘What?’ said a florid, ginger-haired man behind Thenaïs, leaning forward, brushing her. Cleander’s mother shifted to one side, avoiding the contact, her face impassive as she watched the chariots emerge from the wide tunnel to the left of them. ‘You expected him? No one has any idea where he is, boy.’
Cleander said nothing to that, which was a blessing. The boy didn’t entirely lack sense. Behind the two lead chariots, the others came rolling quickly out as the performers ahead of them danced and tumbled down the long straight towards the kathisma at the far end. It was impossible to make out who was sitting there, but Rustem knew that Plautus Bonosus was among the elite in that roofed box. The boy had told him earlier, with an unexpected note of pride, that his father sometimes dropped the white cloth to start the games if the Emperor was absent.
The last chariots, riders clad in white and red over their leather, rolled out of the tunnel. The single horseman and lead dancers were on the far side now, beyond the monuments, would exit through a second gate over there after leading the parade past those seats and stands.
‘I believe,’ said Thenaïs Sistina, ‘that I require a moment out of the sun. Are there refreshments of any kind through that gate?’ She gestured at the space through which the horses had come.
‘Well, yes,’ said Cleander. ‘There are all sorts of food stands inside. But you go back up and then down the stairs to get under. You can’t go through the Procession Gate, there’s a guard there.’
‘Indeed there is,’ said his mother. ‘I see him. I imagine he’ll let me through, spare a woman the long walk around.’
‘You can’t. And you certainly can’t just go alone, mother. This is the Hippodrome.’
‘Thank you, Cleander, I appreciate your concern that there might be . . . unruly people here.’ Her expression was unreadable, but the boy flushed crimson. ‘I have no intention of stepping where all those horses have gone, and I wouldn’t dream of going alone. Doctor, will you be so good . . . ?’
More reluctantly than he’d have wanted to admit, Rustem stood up, holding his walking stick. He might miss the start of this now. ‘But of course, my lady,’ he murmured. ‘Do you feel unwell?’
‘A moment in the shade and something cool to drink will be enough,’ the woman said. ‘Cleander, remain here and conduct yourself with dignity. We will be back, of course.’ She rose and moved past Rustem in the aisle to walk down two more steps and then along the narrow space between the first row of seats and the barrier to the sands. As she went, she put up her hood, hiding her face within it.
Rustem followed, stick in hand. No one paid them any attention. He saw people moving about all over the Hippodrome, taking their places or heading for refreshments or the latrines. All eyes were on the noisy procession below. Stopping a discreet distance behind the Senator’s wife, he saw her address the guard at the low, gated barrier where the walkway ended, just beside the grand Procession Gates a few steps below.
The guard’s initial expression of brusque indifference melted quite swiftly as Thenaïs said whatever it was she said. He looked quickly around to be sure there was no one nearby, and then unbarred the low portal at the end of the walkway and let her through into the covered space beneath the stands. Rustem followed, pausing to give the man a coin.
It was only when he walked into the vaulted tunnel, watching carefully to avoid the evidence that horses had just passed, that Rustem saw a man standing alone in the muted light of this atrium, clad in the leather of a charioteer, and a blue tunic.
The woman had stopped just inside, was waiting for Rustem. She said quietly, from within her sheltering hood, ‘You were correct, doctor. It seems your patient, our unexpected houseguest, is here after all. Do give me a moment with him, will you?’
And without waiting for a reply, she walked towards the man standing alone in the tunnel. There were two yellow-clad track attendants by the wide, high gates, not far from the small one where Rustem stood. They had clearly been about to swing them shut. Equally clearly, from the way they were looking at Scortius, they were not about to do so now.
He hadn’t yet been noticed by anyone else. Must have remained hidden in the shadows here until the chariots rolled out. There were three main tunnels and half a dozen smaller ones branching from this large atrium. The Hippodrome’s interior space was vast, cavernous, could hold more people than dwelled in Kerakek, Rustem realized. People lived their li
ves here, he knew, in apartments down those corridors. There would be stables, shops, food stalls and drinking places, doctors, whores, cheiromancers, chapels. A city within the City. And this open, high-roofed atrium would normally be a bustling, thronged gathering place, echoing with sounds. It would be again in a few moments, Rustem guessed, when the parade performers returned down tunnels from the far side.
At the moment, it was nearly empty, dim and dusty after the bright light outside. He saw the Senator’s wife walk towards the charioteer. She pushed back her hood. He saw Scortius turn his head—rather late—and notice her, and so Rustem registered the sudden change in his posture and manner, and some things came clear with that.
He was, after all, an observant man. A good doctor had to be. Indeed, the King of Kings had sent him to Sarantium because of it.
HE HAD ANTICIPATED a number of things, including the distinct possibility that he might collapse before getting to the Hippodrome, but having Thenäis appear in the empty, echoing space of the Processional Atrium had not been one of them.
The two attendants at the gates had seen him as soon as he came out from one of the residential tunnels, after the last of the chariots had gone. A finger to his lips had ensured their immediate, slack-jawed complicity. They would be drinking until all hours on this tale tonight, he knew. And for many nights to come.
He was waiting for the right moment to go forward. Knew that he had—at best—only one race in him today, and a message had to be given with maximum impact, to sustain the Blues, quiet the roiling of unrest, serve notice to Crescens and the others.
And assuage his own pride. He needed to race again, remind them all that whatever the Greens might do during this opening of the season, Scortius was among them yet and was still what he had always been.
If it was true.
He might have made a mistake. It had become necessary to acknowledge that. The slow, long walk from Bonosus’s house by the walls had been amazingly difficult, and the wound had opened up at some point. He hadn’t even noticed, until he’d seen blood on his tunic. He was very short of breath, felt pain whenever he tried to draw in more air. He ought to have hired a litter, or arranged to have Astorgus send one, but he hadn’t even told the factionarius he was doing this. Stubbornness had always had a price— why should it be different now? This arrival for the afternoon’s first race, this entrance on foot across the sands to the starting line, was entirely his own statement. No one in Sarantium knew he was coming.