Lord of Emperors (66 page)

Fotius the sandalmaker, in his very best blue tunic, was telling everyone who would listen about the events that had occurred in this same place all those years ago when Apius died and the first Valerius came to the Golden Throne.

There had been a murder then, too, he said sagely, and he, Fotius, had seen a ghost on his way to the Hippodrome that morning, presaging it. Just as he, Fotius, had seen another one three days ago, in broad daylight, crouched on top of a colonnade, on the
very
morning the Emperor had been so foully slain by the Daleinoi.

There was
more,
he added, and he did have listeners, which was always gratifying. They were waiting for the Mandator to appear in the kathisma-the Patriarch would follow, and then the officials of the court and then those who were to be crowned today. It would be impossible to talk then, of course, with the noise of better than eighty thousand people.

In those days, Fotius expounded to some of the younger craftsmen in the Blues" section, there had been a corrupt, evil attempt to subvert the will of the people right here in the Hippodrome-and it had been engineered by the Daleinoi back then, too! And what's more, one of those working to achieve that had been the very same Lysippus the Calysian who had just been part of the murder in the palace!

And it had been Fotius himself, the sandalmaker declared proudly, who had unmasked the slimy Calysian as an imposter when he'd tried to pretend he was a follower of the Blues and incite the faction to acclaim Flavius Daleinus down there on the sands.

He pointed to the exact spot. He remembered it well. Thirteen, fourteen years, and as yesterday. As yesterday.

Everything came around in circles, he said piously, making the sign of the disk. Just as the sun rose and then set and then rose again, so did the patterns and fates of mortal men. Evil would be found out. (He had heard his chapel's cleric say all this, just a week ago.) Flavius Daleinus had paid for his sins in fire that day long ago, and now his children and the Calysian had also paid.

But, someone objected, why did Valerius II die of the same fire, if it was all a matter of justice?

Fotius looked scornfully at the young man, a clothmaker. Would you, he said, seek to understand the ways of the god?

Not really, the clothmaker said. Only those of men here in the City. If the Calysian had been part of the Daleinus conspiracy to claim the throne back then, why did he end up as Quaestor of Revenue for Valerius I and then his nephew? For
both
of them? He wasn't exiled till
we
demanded it, the man said, as others turned to him. Remember? Less than three years ago.

A cheap debating trick, Fotius thought indignantly. It wasn't as if anyone
would
forget. Thirty thousand people had died.

Some people, Fotius retorted airily, had the most limited understanding of affairs in the court. He didn't have enough
time
today to educate the young. There were weighty events unfolding. Didn't the clothmaker know that the Bassanids were across the border in the north?

Well, yes, the man said, everyone knew that. But what did that have to do with Lysippus the-

Trumpets blew.

What followed was performed with rituals of ceremony and precedent laid down in the days of Saranios and revised only marginally in hundreds of years, for what were rituals if they changed?

An Emperor was crowned by a Patriarch, and then an Empress was crowned by the Emperor himself. The two crowns, and the Imperial sceptre and ring, were those of Saranios and his own Empress, brought east from Rhodias and used only on these occasions, guarded in the Attenine Palace at all other times.

The Patriarch blessed the two anointed ones with oil and incense and sea water, and then he gave his blessing to the multitude gathered to bear witness. The principal dignitaries of the court presented themselves- garbed in splendour-before the Emperor and Empress and made the triple obeisance in full view of the people. An aged representative of the Senate presented the new Emperor with the Seal of the City and golden keys to the triple walls. (The Master of the Senate had been graciously excused from appearing today. It seemed there had been a sudden death in his own family, and a burial only the day before.)

There were chants, religious and then secular, for the factions were very much a part of this, and their Accredited Musicians led the Blues and Greens in ritual acclamations, crying the names of Valerius III and the Empress Gisel in that thronged space where the names cried were most often those of horses and the men who rode in chariots behind them. No dancing followed, no racing, no entertainment at all: an Emperor had been assassinated, his body would be laid to rest soon in the Great Sanctuary he'd ordered built after the last one had burned.

There was universal approval of the name Leontes had chosen for his own Imperial title, in homage to his patron and predecessor. A genuine sense of mystery and wonder attached to the fact that his new bride was already a queen. The women in the stands seemed to like that. A romance, and royalty.

Nothing was said (or if something
was
said, it was done very quietly) about the Emperor's put-aside wife or the speed of this remarriage. The Daleinoi had once more proven themselves treacherous beyond description. No Emperor would wish to ascend the Golden Throne of Saranios tainted before Jad and the people by the stain of a murderous spouse.

They said he had let her live.

More justice than she deserved, was the general view in the Hippodrome. Both brothers were dead, however, and the loathed Calysian. One wouldn't ever want to make the mistake of thinking that Leontes- Valerius III-was soft in any way.

The number of armed soldiers present here was evidence of that.

And so, too, was the Mandator's first public announcement after the Investiture Ceremony was done. His words were caught and relayed by official speakers through the vast stands, and their import was clear, and exhilarating.

It seemed their new Emperor would not be lingering long among them. The Bassanid army was in Calysium, had overrun Asen (again) and was said to be marching and riding towards Eubulus even now.

The Emperor, who had been their Supreme Strategos four days before, was disinclined to indulge them in this.

He would lead the assembled armies of Sarantium himself. Not overseas to Rhodias, but north and east. Not over the dangerous, dark waters but up in spring weather along the wide, smoothly paved Imperial Road to deal with the cowardly, truce-breaking soldiers of King Shirvan. An Emperor in the field himself! It had been a very long time. Valerius III, the sword of Sarantium, the sword of holy Jad. There was something awesome and thrilling in just thinking about it.

The easterners had thought to take advantage of Leontes and the army sailing west, had vilely breached the Eternal Peace they'd sworn by their own pagan gods to keep. They would learn the dimensions of their mistake, the Mandator proclaimed, his words picked up and echoed through the Hippodrome.

Eubulus would be defended, the Bassanids driven back across the border. And more. Let the King of Kings defend Mihrbor now, the Mandator cried. Let him
try
to defend it against what Sarantium would bring against him. The time was done when they would pay monies to Kabadh to buy a peace. Let Shirvan sue for mercy. Let him pray to his gods. Leontes the Golden, who was now an Emperor, was coming after him.

The noise that greeted this was loud enough, some thought, to reach the very sky and the god behind the bright sun overhead.

As for Batiara, the Mandator continued, when the shouting subsided enough for his voice to be heard and relayed again, look who was Empress of Sarantium now. Look who might deal with Rhodias and Varena, which were her own! This Empress had a crown of her own and had brought it here to them, was daughter of a king, a queen in her own name. The citizens of Sarantium could believe that Rhodias and the west might be theirs, after all, with no brave soldiers dying on distant western battlefields, or on the trackless seas.

The acclamations that accompanied this were as loud as the ones before, and-the perceptive noted-they were led by the aforementioned soldiers this time.

It was a glittering day, and so most of the histories would describe it. The weather mild, the god's sun shining upon them all. The Emperor magnificent, the new Empress as golden as he, tall for her sex, utterly regal in her bearing and blood.

There were always fears and doubts in a time of change. The half-world might creep closer, ghosts and daemons be seen, when the great of the world died and their souls departed, but who could be
truly
fearful, standing in the Hippodrome in sunshine, looking at these two?

One lamented a dead Emperor, and might wonder about the still-absent figure of his Empress, the one who had been a dancer in her day, born right here in the Hippodrome (not like the new Empress, not like her at all). One might pause to consider the colossal fall of the Daleinoi and the sudden shifting of a theatre of war… but in the stands that day there was an undeniable feeling of uplift, of exuberance, something new beginning, and there was nothing compelled or contrived about the approval that resounded.

Then the Mandator declared that the racing season would resume as soon as the period of mourning was over and paused to announce that Scortius of the Blues was healing and well, and that Astorgus, the Blues" factionarius, and Crescens of the Greens had agreed to humbly accept judicial admonishment and had made peace with each other. And as he gestured, those two well-known men stood forward, stepping up upon raised platforms in their factions" sections to be seen. They made the charioteers" open-palmed gesture towards each other and then turned and bowed together towards the kathisma, and eighty thousand people went wild. The holy Patriarch took pains to keep his countenance inscrutable behind his white beard as the crowd celebrated its chariots and horses and the ceremony came to a close.

Nothing at all was said that afternoon, by the Mandator or anyone else, about changes in the doctrines of Jad regarding depictions of the god himself in holy places and elsewhere.

There would be time to present such complex matters to the people, carefully, in the sanctuaries and chapels. The Hippodrome that day was not a place for nuances and subtleties of faith. Timing, as any good general knew, was the essence of a campaign.

Valerius III, wearing the full weight of the garments of Imperial power, stood up easily, as if they were no burden in the least, and saluted his people as they saluted him. Then he turned and extended a hand to his Empress and they walked together from the kathisma through the door at the back and out of sight. The cheering did not stop.

All was well. All would be well, one might truly believe. Fotius accepted a swift, entirely unexpected embrace from the young clothmaker, and returned it, then they both turned to hug others beside them in the stands, all of them shouting the Emperor's name in the clear, bright light.

Over the course of an exhausting ten days in the Blues" compound, Rustem of Kerakek had developed a hypothesis about Sarantines and their physicians. In essence, the instructions of the doctors were accepted or ignored as the patients saw fit.

It was entirely otherwise in Bassania. At home, the doctor was at risk when he took on the care of a patient. By speaking the formal words of acceptance, a physician placed his own worldly goods and even his life at hazard. If the sick person failed to follow precisely the doctor's instructions, this commitment, this hazarding, was negated.

Here, doctors risked nothing but the possibility of a poor reputation, and based on what he'd seen here (in an admittedly short while), Rustem didn't think that constituted much of a concern at all. None of the physicians he'd observed at work seemed to know much more than an inadequately digested muddle of Galinus and Merovius, supplemented by vastly too much letting of blood and their own cobbled-together medications, most of which were noxious in some degree or other.

Given this, it made sense that patients would form their own decisions about whether to heed their physicians or not.

Rustem wasn't used to it, and wasn't inclined to accept it.

As an example, as the
prime
example, from the outset he had firmly instructed the attendants caring for Scortius the charioteer that visitors were limited to one in the morning and one after midday, and only for short periods and with no wine at all to be brought or consumed. He had, as a precaution, relayed these directives to Strumosus (since at least some of the wine came from the casks by the kitchen) and to Astorgus, the factionarius. The latter was soberly attentive and had promised to do his best to enforce compliance. He had, Rustem knew, a profoundly vested interest in the recovery of the invalid charioteer.

They
all
did.

The problem was that the patient didn't see himself as an invalid, or requiring any extremes of care, even after almost dying twice in a short while. A man who would slip from his room out a window and down a tree and over a wall and walk the length of the city to race horses in the Hippodrome with broken ribs and an unhealed wound was unlikely (Rustem had to concede) to take kindly to a limitation on wine or the number of visitors, particularly female, who attended at his bedside.

At least he had stayed in the bed, Astorgus had pointed out wryly, and mostly by himself. There
had
been reports of night-time activities inconsistent with a healing regimen.

Rustem, still caught up in the bewildering intensity of the past few days and the arrival of his family, found it more difficult than usual to project the proper outrage and authority. He was acutely aware, among other things, that if he or his women or children left this guarded compound they were at grave risk of assault in the streets. Bassanids here, since the news of the border attack, and then the departure of the Sarantine army north, led by the Emperor himself, were in a precarious circumstance, and there had been killings. His own decision not to return home was reinforced by the painful understanding that the King of Kings would have ordered the northern attack while fully aware that this would be a consequence for those of his people in the west. Including the man who had saved his own life.