Sailing to Sarantium (35 page)

'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 Caius 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 times
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 not 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
hinted 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.