Sailing to Sarantium (2 page)

Fotius, still thinking about his wager, wondered if he ought to have
stopped at a cemetery on the way with a curse-tablet against the
principal Green charioteer, Scortius. It was the boy, Scortius, who
was likeliest to stand-or drive-today between Astorgus and his seven
straight triumphs. He'd bruised his shoulder in a fall in mid-session
last time, and hadn't been running when Astorgus won that magnificent
four-in-a-row at the end of the day.

It offended Fotius that a dark-skinned, scarcely bearded upstart from
the deserts of Ammuz-or wherever he was from-could be such a threat
to his beloved Astorgus. He ought to have bought the curse-tablet, he
thought ruefully. An apprentice in the linen guild had been knifed in
a dockside caupona two days before and was newly buried: a perfect
chance for those with tablets to seek intercession at the grave of
the violently dead. Everyone knew that made the inscribed curses more
powerful. Fotius decided he'd have only himself to blame if Astorgus
failed today. He had no idea how he'd pay Pappio if he lost. He chose
not to think about that, or about his wife's reaction.

'Up the Blues!' he shouted suddenly. A score of men near him roused
themselves to echo the cry.

'Up the Blues in their butts!' came the predictable reply from across
the way.

'If there were any Greens with balls!' a man beside Fotius yelled
back. Fotius laughed in the shadows. The white moon was hidden now,
over behind the Imperial Palaces. Dawn was coming, Jad in his chariot
riding up in the east from his dark journey under the world.

And then the mortal chariots would run, in the god's glorious name,
all through a summer's day in the holy city of Sarantium. And the
Blues, Jad willing, would triumph over the stinking Greens, who were
no better than barbarians or pagan Bassanids or even Kindath, as
everyone knew.

'Look,' someone said sharply, and pointed.

Fotius turned. He actually heard the marching footsteps before he saw
the soldiers appear, shadows out of the shadows, through the Bronze
Gate at the western end of the square.

The Excubitors, hundreds of them, armed and armoured beneath their
gold-and-red tunics, came into the Hippodrome Forum from the Imperial
Precinct. That was unusual enough at this hour to actually be
terrifying. There had been two small riots in the past year, when the
more rabid partisans of the two colours had come to blows. Knives had
appeared, and staves, and the Excubitors had been summoned to help
the Urban Prefect's men quell them. Quelling by the Imperial Guard of
Sarantium was not a mild process. A score of dead had strewn the
stones afterwards both times.

Someone else said, 'Holy Jad, the pennons!' and Fotius saw,
belatedly, that the Excubitors' banners were lowered on their staffs.
He felt a cold wind blow through his soul, from no direction in the
world. The Emperor was dead.

Their father, the god's beloved, had left them. Sarantium was bereft,
forsaken, open to enemies east and north and west, malevolent and
godless. And with Jad's Emperor gone, who knew what daemons or
spirits from the half-world might now descend to wreak their havoc
among helpless mortal men? Was this why he'd seen a ghost? Fotius
thought of plague coming again, of war, of famine. In that moment he
pictured his child lying dead. Terror pushed him to his knees on the
cobbles of the square. He realized that he was weeping for the
Emperor he had never seen except as a distant, hieratic figure in the
Imperial Box in the Hippodrome.

Then-an ordinary man living his days in the world of ordinary
men-Fotius the sandalmaker understood that there would be no racing
today. That his reckless wager with the glassblower was nullified.
Amid terror and grief, he felt a shaft of relief like a bright spear
of sunlight. Three races in a row? It had been a fool's wager, and he
was quit of it.

There were many men kneeling now. The Holy Fool, seeing an
opportunity, had raised his voice in denunciation-Fotius couldn't
make him out over the babble of noise, so he didn't know what the man
was decrying now. Godlessness, license, a divided clergy, heretics
with Heladikian beliefs. The usual litanies. One of the Excubitors
strode over to him and spoke quietly. The holy man ignored the
soldier, as they usually did. But then Fotius, astonished, saw the
ascetic dealt a slash across the shins with a spear shaft. The ragged
man let out a cry-more of surprise than anything else-and fell to his
knees, silent.

Over the wailing of the crowd another voice rose then, stern and
assured, compelling attention. It helped that the speaker was on
horseback, the only mounted man in the forum.

'Hear me! No harm will come to anyone here,' he said, 'if order is
preserved. You see our banners. They tell their tale. Our glorious
Emperor, Jad's most dearly beloved, his thrice-exalted regent upon
earth, has left us to join the god in glory behind the sun. There
will be no chariots today, but the Hippodrome gates will be opened
for you to take comfort together while the Imperial Senate assembles
to proclaim our new Emperor.'

A louder murmur of sound. There was no heir; everyone knew it. Fotius
saw people streaming into the forum from all directions. News of this
sort would take no time at all to travel. He took a breath,
struggling to hold down a renewed panic. The Emperor was dead. There
was no Emperor in Sarantium.

The mounted man again lifted a hand for stillness. He sat his horse
straight as a spear, clad as his soldiers were. Only the black horse
and a border of silver on his overtunic marked his rank. No
pretension here. A peasant from Trakesia, a farmer's son come south
as a lad, rising in the army ranks through hard work and no little
courage in battle. Everyone knew this tale. A man among men, that was
the word on Valerius of Trakesia, Count of the Excubitors.

Who now said, 'There will be clerics in all the chapels and
sanctuaries of the City, and others will join you here, to lead
mourning rites in the Hippodrome under Jad's sun.' He made the sign
of the sun disk. 'Jad guard you, Count Valerius!' someone cried. The
man on the horse appeared not to hear. Bluff and burly, the Trakesian
never courted the crowd as others in the Imperial Precinct did. His
Excubitors did their duties with efficiency and no evident
partisanship, even when men were crippled and sometimes killed by
them. Greens and Blues were dealt with alike, and sometimes even men
of rank, for many of the wilder partisans were sons of aristocracy.
No one even knew which faction Valerius preferred, or what his
beliefs were, in the manifold schisms of Jaddite faith, though there
was the usual speculation. His nephew was a patron of the Blues, that
was known, but families often divided between the factions.

Fotius thought about going home to his wife and son after morning
prayers at the little chapel he liked, near the Mezaros Forum. There
was a greyness in the eastern sky. He looked over at the Hippodrome
and saw that the Excubitors, as promised, were opening the gates.

He hesitated, but then he saw Pappio the glassblower standing a
little apart from the other Greens, alone in an empty space. He was
crying, tears running into his beard. Fotius, moved by entirely
unexpected emotion, walked over to the other man. Pappio saw him and
wiped at his eyes. Without a word spoken the two of them walked side
by side into the vastness of the Hippodrome as the god's sun rose
from the forests and fields east of Sarantium's triple landward walls
and the day began.

 

Plautus Bonosus had never wanted to be a Senator. The appointment, in
his fortieth year, had been an irritant more than anything else.
Among other things, there was an outrageously antiquated law that
Senators, could not charge more than six per cent on loans. Members
of the 'Names'-the aristocratic families entered on the Imperial
Records-could charge eight, and everyone else, even pagans and the
Kindath, were allowed ten. The numbers were doubled for marine
ventures, of course, but only a man possessed by a daemon of madness
would venture moneys on a merchant voyage at twelve per cent. Bonosus
was hardly a madman, but he was a frustrated businessman, of late.

Senator of the Sarantine Empire. Such an honour! Even his wife's
preening irked him, so little did she understand the way of things.
The Senate did what the Emperor told it to do, or what his privy
counsellors told it; no less, and certainly no more. It was not a
place of power or any legitimate prestige. Perhaps once it had been,
back in the west, in the earliest days after the founding of Rhodias,
when that mighty city first began to grow upon its hill and proud,
calm men-pagans though they might have been-debated the best way to
shape a realm. But by the time Rhodias in Batiara was the heart and
hearth of a world-spanning Empire-four hundred years ago, now-the
Senate there was already a compliant tool of the Emperors in their
tiered palace by the river.

Those fabled palace gardens were clotted with weeds now, strewn with
rubble, the Great Palace sacked and charred by fire a hundred years
ago. Sad, shrunken Rhodias was home to a weak High Patriarch of Jad
and conquering barbarians from the north and east-the Antae, who
still used bear grease in their hair, it was reliably reported.

And the Senate here in Sarantium now-the New Rhodias-was as hollow
and complaisant as it had been in the western Empire. It was
possible, Bonosus thought grimly, as he looked around the Senate
Chamber with its elaborate mosaics on floor and walls and curving
across the small, delicate dome, that those same savages who had
looted Rhodias-or others worse than them-might soon do the same here
where the Emperors now dwelled, the west being lost and sundered. A
struggle for succession exposed any empire, considerably so.

Apius had reigned thirty-six years. It was hard to believe. Aged,
tired, in the spell of his cheiromancers the last years, he had
refused to name an heir after his nephews had failed the test he'd
set for them. The three of them were not even a factor now-blind men
could not sit the Golden Throne, nor those visibly maimed. Slit
nostrils and gouged eyes ensured that Apius's exiled sister-sons need
not be considered by the Senators.

Bonosus shook his head, irked with himself. He was following lines of
thought that suggested there was an actual decision to be made by the
fifty men in this chamber. In reality, they were simply going to
ratify whatever emerged from the intrigues taking place even now
within the Imperial Precinct. Gesius the Chancellor, or Adrastus, or
Hilarinus, Count of the Imperial Bedchamber, would come soon enough
and inform them what they were to wisely decide. It was a pretence, a
piece of theatre.

And Flavius Daleinus had returned to Sarantium from his family
estates across the straits to the south just two days before. Most
opportunely.

Bonosus had no quarrel with any of the Daleinoi, or none that he knew
of, at any rate. This was good. He didn't much care for them, but
that was hardly the issue when a merchant of modestly distinguished
lineage considered the wealthiest and most illustrious family in the
Empire.

Oradius, Master of the Senate, was signalling for the session to
begin. He was having little success amid the tumult in the chamber.
Bonosus made his way to his bench and sat down, bowing formally to
the Master's Seat. Others noticed and followed his example.
Eventually there was order. At which point Bonosus became aware of
the mob at the doors.

The pounding was heavy, frightening, rocking the doors, and with it
came a wild shouting of names. The citizens of Sarantium appeared to
have candidates of their own to propose to the distinguished Senators
of the Empire.

It sounded as if there was fighting going on. What a surprise,
Bonosus thought sardonically. As he watched, fascinated, the ornately
gilded doors of the Senate Chamber-part of the illusion that matters
of moment transpired here-actually began to buckle under the
hammering from without. A splendid symbol, Bonosus thought: the doors
looked magnificent, but yielded under the least pressure. Someone
farther along the bench let out an undignified squeal. Plautus
Bonosus, having a whimsical turn of mind, began to laugh.

The doors crashed open. The four guards fell backwards. A crowd of
citizens-some slaves among them-thrust raucously into the chamber.
Then the vanguard stopped, overawed. Mosaics and gold and gems had
their uses, Bonosus thought, amused irony still claiming him. The
torch-bearing image of Heladikos, riding his chariot towards his
father the Sun-an image of no little controversy in the Empire
today-looked down from the dome.

No one in the Senate Chamber seemed able to form a response to the
intrusion. The crowd milled about, those still outside pushing
forward, those in the chamber holding back, unsure of what they
wanted to do now that they were here. Both factions-Blues and
Greens-were present. Bonosus looked at the Master. Oradius remained
bolted to his seat, making no motion at all. Suppressing his
amusement, Bonosus gave an inward shrug and stood.

'People of Sarantium,' he said gravely, extending both hands, 'be
welcome! Your aid in our deliberations in this difficult time will be
invaluable, I am certain. Will you honour us with those names that
commend themselves to you as worthy to sit the Golden Throne, before
you withdraw and allow us to seek Jad's holy guidance in our weighty
task?'

It took very little time, actually.

Bonosus had the Registrar of the Senate dutifully repeat and record
each one of the shouted names. There were few surprises. The obvious
strategoi, equally obvious nobility. Holders of Imperial Office. A
chariot racer. Bonosus, his outward manner sober and attentive, had
this name recorded, as well: Astorgus of the Blues. He could laugh
about that afterwards.