Sailing to Sarantium (39 page)

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.

 

Could one forget how to be free?

The question had come to her on the road and it lingered now,
unanswered. Could a year of slavery mark your nature forever? Could
the fact of having been sold? She had been sharp-tongued, quick,
astringent at home. Erimitsu. Too clever to marry, her mother had
worried. Now she felt afraid in the core of her being: anxious, lost,
jumping at sounds, averting her eyes. She had spent a year having any
man who paid Morax use her in whatever way he wanted. A year being
beaten for the slightest failing or for none at all, to keep her
mindful of her station.

They had only stopped that at the very end, when they wanted her
unmarked, smooth as a sacrifice, for death in the forest.

From her room at the inn Kasia could hear the noise from the
Hippodrome. A steady sound like the cascading waters north of home,
but rising at intervals-unlike the waters-into a punishing volume of
sound, a roar like some many-throated beast when a turn of fortune,
terrible or wonderful, happened over there where horses were running.

The zubir had made no sound at all in the wood. There had been
silence, under and over leaves, shrouded and gathered in fog. The
world closing down to the smallest thing, to the one thing. Something
terrible or wonderful, and her own existence given back to her,
leading her from the Aldwood to Sarantium which had never even been a
dream. And to freedom, which had been, every night of that year.

There were eighty thousand people over in the Hippodrome right now.
Carullus had said so. It wasn't a number she could even get her mind
around. Nearly five hundred thousand in the City, he'd said. Even
after the riot two years ago and the plague. How did they all not
tremble?

She'd spent the morning in this small room. Had thought to have her
meal sent up, reflecting on the change that embodied, wondering what
girl, beaten and afraid, would appear with a tray for the lady.

The lady with the soldiers. With the man who was going to the palace.
She was that lady. Carullus had made certain they knew it downstairs.
Service was a function of status here, as everywhere, and the Bronze
Gates opening were the doorway to the world in Sarantium.

Martinian was going there. Or, rather, Caius Crispus was. He'd said
they should call him Crispin in private. His name was Crispin. He'd
been married to a woman named Ilandra. She was dead and his two
daughters were. He had cried her name aloud in the country dark.

He hadn't touched Kasia since that night after the Aldwood. Even
then, he'd had her sleep in his cloak on the floor again at the
beginning. She'd come to the bed herself, when he cried out. Only
then had he turned to her. And only that one time. After, he'd made
certain she had her own room as they travelled with the soldiers
through the autumn winds and blowing leaves, Sauradia's swift rivers
and silver mines becoming Trakesia's harvested grainlands, and then
that first appalling sight of the City's triple walls.

Five hundred thousand souls.

Kasia, her world spinning and changing too quickly for even a clever
one to deal with, had no idea how to sort through what she was
feeling. She was too caught in the movement of things. She could make
herself blush-right now-if she remembered some of what she had felt,
unexpectedly, towards dawn at the end of that one night.

She was in her room, hearing the Hippodrome, mending her cloak-his
cloak-with needle and thread. She wasn't skilled with a needle, but
it was a thing to do. She'd gone down to the common room for the
midday meal, after all. She was erimitsu, the clever one, and she did
know that if she allowed herself to become enclosed within walls and
locked doors here she might never get out. Hard as it was, she'd made
herself go down. They had served her with casual efficiency, though
not with deference. All a woman could ask for, perhaps, especially in
the City.

She'd had half a roasted fowl with leeks and good bread and a glass
of wine she'd watered more than halfway. It occurred to her, eating
at a corner table, that she'd never done this in her life: taken a
meal at an inn, as a patron, drinking a glass of wine. Alone.

No one troubled her. The room was almost empty. Everyone was in the
Hippodrome, or celebrating the last day of Dykania in the streets,
snatching food and too much drink from vendors' stalls, waving
noise-makers and banners of guild or racing faction. She could hear
them outside, in the sunlight. She forced herself to eat slowly, to
drink the wine, even pour a second glass. She was a free citizen of
the Sarantine Empire in the reign of Valerius II. It was a public
holiday, a festival. She made herself accede when the serving woman
asked if she wanted melon.

The woman's hair was the same colour as her own. She was older,
though. There was a faded scar on her forehead. Kasia smiled at her
when she brought the melon but the woman didn't smile back. A little
later, however, she brought over a two-handled cup filled with hot
spiced wine.

'I didn't order this,' Kasia said, worriedly.

'I know. You should have. Cold day. This'll calm you. Your men'll be
back soon enough and they'll be excited. They always are, after the
chariots. You'll have to get busy again, dear.'

She walked away, still without a smile, before Kasia could correct
her. It had been a kindness, though. Dear. She had meant to be kind.
That could still happen then, in cities.

The spiced wine was good. It smelled of harvests and warmth. Kasia
sat quietly and finished it. She watched the open doorway to the
street outside. A flow of people, back and forth, unending. From all
over the world. She found herself thinking of her mother, and home,
and then of where she was, right now. This moment. The place in the
god's world where she was. And then she thought about the night she
had lain with Martinian-Crispin-and that made her flush again and
feel extremely strange.

She did as Carullus had instructed and had the serving woman set her
meal to the room charges and then she went back upstairs. She had a
room of her own. A closed door with a new lock. No one would come in
and use her, or order her to do something. A luxury so intense it was
frightening. She sat at the small window, needle to hand again, the
cloak warm across her knees, but the spiced wine after the other two
cups had made her sleepy and she must have drifted off in the slant
of sunlight there.

The hard knocking at the door woke her with a start and set her heart
to hammering. She stood up hastily, wrapped herself in the cloak-an
involuntary, protective gesture-crossed to the locked door. She
didn't open it. 'Who is that?' she called. She heard her voice waver.
'Ah. They said he brought a whore.' A clipped, eastern voice,
educated, sour. 'I want to see the westerner, Martinian. Open the
door.'

She was the erimitsu, Kasia reminded herself then. She was. She was
free, had rights under law, the innkeeper and his people were below.
It was full daylight here. And Martinian might need her to keep her
wits just now. She'd heard Morax talk to merchants and patricians
often enough. She could do this.

She took a breath. 'Who seeks him, may I ask?'

There was a short, dry laugh. 'I don't talk to prostitutes through
locked doors.'

Anger helped, actually. 'And I don't open doors to ill-bred
strangers. We have a problem, it appears.'

A silence. She heard a floorboard creak in the hallway. The man
coughed. 'Presumptuous bitch. I am Siroes, Mosaicist to the Imperial
Court. Open the door.'

She opened the door. It might be a mistake, but Marti-Crispin-had
been summoned here to do mosaic work for the Emperor and this man ..
.

This man was small, plump and balding. He was dressed in a rich, very
dark blue, calf-length linen tunic worked expensively in gold thread,
a crimson cloak over that with an intricate design running across it
in a band, also in gold. He'd a round, complacent face, dark eyes,
long fingers, at odds with the general impression of rotund softness.
On his hands she saw the same network of cuts and scars that Crispin
bore. He was alone save for a servant, a little distance behind him
in the empty hallway.

'Ah,' said the man named Siroes. 'He likes skinny women. I don't mind
them. What do you charge for an afternoon encounter?'

It was important to be calm. She was a free citizen. 'Do you insult
all the women you meet? Or have I offended you somehow? I was told
the Imperial Precinct was known for its courtesies. I appear to have
been wrongly informed. Shall I call for the innkeeper to have you
thrown out, or shall I simply scream?'

Again the man hesitated, and this time, looking at him, Kasia thought
she saw something. It was unexpected, but she was almost sure.

'Thrown out?' He gave that same short rasp of laughter. 'You aren't
presumptuous, you are ignorant. Where is Martinian?'

Careful, she said to herself. This man was important, and Crispin
might depend upon him, work with him, for him. She could not give way
to panic or anger, either one.

She schooled her voice, cast her eyes downwards, thought of Morax,
genuflecting to some fat-pursed merchant. 'I am sorry, my lord. I may
be a barbarian and unused to the City, but I am no one's whore.
Martinian of Varena is at the Hippodrome with the tribune of the
Fourth Sauradian.'

Siroes swore under his breath. She caught it again, then, that hint
of something unexpected. He's afraid, she thought. 'When will he be
back?'

'My lord, I would imagine when the racing ends.' They heard a roar
from across the narrow streets and the expanse of the Hippodrome
Forum. Someone had won a race, someone had lost it. 'Will you wait
for him? Or shall I leave him a message from you?'

'Wait? Hardly. Amusing, I must say, that the Rhodian thinks he is at
leisure to go to the games when he's taken the god's time arriving.'

'Surely not a failing during Dykania, my lord? The Emperor and the
Chancellor were both to be at the Hippodrome, we were told. No court
presentations were scheduled.'

'Ah. And who is informing you so comprehensively?'