The Sarantine Mosaic (116 page)

Taras did remember. It had been done to him, last fall. He nodded, concentrating. This was business, their profession. ‘When do I whip him?'

‘When you come up to a turn. Hit on the right side. And keep yelling his name. He listens. Concentrate on Servator—he'll handle the other three for you.'

Taras nodded.

‘Listen for me during the race.' Scortius put a hand to his side again and swore, breathing carefully. ‘You're from Megarium? You speak Inici at all?'

‘Some. Everyone does.'

‘Good. If I need to I'll shout at you in that tongue.'

‘How'd you learn … ?'

The older man's expression was suddenly wry. ‘A woman. How else do we learn all the important lessons in life?'

Taras tried to laugh. His mouth was dry. The crowd noise was amazing, really. People were still on their feet, all over the Hippodrome. ‘You said … there were two things?'

‘I did. Listen carefully. We wanted you in the Blues because I knew you were going to be as good as anyone here, or better. You've been thrown into something hideous and unfair, never even handled this team before, having to face Crescens and his Second here.
You are a fucking idiot if you think you've been doing badly. I'd whack you on the head but it'll hurt me too much. You've been astonishing, and any man with half a brain would know it, you Sauradian lout.'

There was a feeling hot mulled wine could give you, sipped in a tavern on a damp winter day. These words felt like that, actually. With all the self-possession he could command, Taras said to him, ‘I
know
I've been astonishing. It's about time you came back to help.'

Scortius let out a bark of laughter, winced in pain. ‘Good lad,' he said. ‘You're fifth in the lanes, I'm second?' Taras nodded. ‘Good. When you get to the line there will be room for you to cut. Watch me, trust Servator, and leave me to deal with Crescens.' He grinned, a thin smile, without any amusement in it.

Taras looked over to where the muscular First of the Greens was wrapping his own reins around himself, in the sixth lane.

‘Of course I will. That's your job,' Taras said. ‘Make sure you do it.'

Scortius grinned again, and then took the silver processional helmet Taras was still holding and gave it to the groom beside them, taking the battered race helmet in exchange. He put it on Taras himself, like a stable boy. The pandemonium grew even wilder. They were being watched, of course, every movement they made studied the way cheiromancers examined entrails or stars.

Taras thought he was going to cry. ‘Are you all right?' he asked. Blood was visible through the other man's tunic.

‘We'll all be just fine,' said Scortius. ‘Unless I get arrested for what I'm about to do to Crescens.'

He walked up, rubbed the head of Servator for a moment and whispered something in the horse's ear, then he turned and went down the diagonal line to the second
Blue chariot, where Isanthus had already stepped down— his face showing as much relief as Taras's had a moment ago—and where the handlers were furiously adjusting the reins to suit Scortius's well-known preferences.

Scortius didn't get into the chariot yet. He stopped by the four horses, touching each of them, whispering, his mouth close to their heads. There was a change of drivers taking place, they needed to know it. Taras, watching, saw that he presented only his right side and right hand to the stallions, shielding the presence of blood.

Taras stepped back up into his own chariot. Began wrapping the reins around his body again. The boy beside Taras gave the silver helmet to another groom and hurried to help, his face shining with excitement. The horses were restless. They had seen their usual driver but he wasn't with them now. Taras picked up his whip. Set it in its sheath beside him for the moment. He took a deep breath.

‘Listen you stupid, fat ploughhorses,' he said to the most celebrated racing team in the world, speaking in the gentle, soothing tone he always used with horses, ‘you don't fucking run for me this time, I'll take you to the tanners myself, you hear me?'

It felt wonderful to be saying that. To feel he could.

THE RACE THAT FOLLOWED
was remembered for a very long time. Even with the events that ensued that day and immediately after, the first afternoon race of the second Hippodrome session that year was to become legendary. An emissary from Moskav, who had accompanied the Grand Prince's entourage and remained behind through the winter in slow negotiations over tariffs, was in attendance and would chronicle the race in his diary—a record that would be preserved, miraculously, through three fires in three cities, a hundred and fifty years apart.

There were those in the Hippodrome that day for whom the racing held more importance than mighty events of war and succession and holy faith. It is always so. The apprentice, decades after, might recall an announcement of war as having taken place the day the chambermaid finally went up to the loft with him. The long-awaited birth of a healthy child will resonate more for parents than the report of an invading army on the border or the consecrating of a sanctuary. The need to finish the harvest before frost overwhelms any response to the death of kings. A flux in the bowels obliterates the weightiest Pronouncements of holy Patriarchs. The great events of an age appear, to those living through them, as backdrops only to the vastly more compelling dramas of their own lives, and how could it be otherwise?

In this same way, many of the men and women there in the Hippodrome (and some who were not, but later claimed to have been) would cling to one private image or another of what transpired. They might be entirely different things, varying moments, for each of us has strings within the soul, and we are played upon in different ways, like instruments, and how could it be otherwise?

CARULLUS THE SOLDIER
, once of the Fourth Sauradian, very briefly a chiliarch of the Second Calysian cavalry, had been most recently reassigned—without ever having reported north, and for reasons he didn't understand as yet—to the personal guard of the Supreme Strategos Leontes, receiving his (quite handsome) pay from the Strategos's own accounts.

He was therefore still in the City and sitting with his wife in the military officers' section of the Hippodrome, having accepted that his current position and rank made it inappropriate for him to stand or sit among the Green partisans any more. There was a palpable undercurrent of
tension among the officers in attendance around them, and it had little to do with the racing. It had been made clear that an important announcement would be made here today. It wasn't hard to guess what that might be. Leontes wasn't in the kathisma yet, nor was the Emperor here this afternoon, but the afternoon had a long way to run.

Carullus looked at his wife. Kasia was attending her first racing, was still visibly uneasy in crowds. The unaligned officers' section of the stands was certain to be less unruly than the Greens' standing area, but he was still worrying about her. He wanted her to enjoy this, and be present for what was likely to be a memorable moment at the end of the day. He'd been here by himself in the morning and had collected her at home during the midday recess: an entire day at the Hippodrome would have been rather too much to ask of Kasia. Notwithstanding his hopes, he was aware that she was here only as an indulgence to him and his passion for the chariots.

It was wondrous, actually, that a woman would do that.

Officers, especially those attached to the Strategos, were well treated in the City. They had splendid seats, not quite halfway along the opening straight, and low down. Most of the crowd was behind and above them, so Kasia could concentrate on the horses and drivers below. He'd thought that would be good.

Being so near, and with the staggered start line that put the outside quadrigas farther along the track, they were quite close to the last three teams. Crescens of the Greens was starting sixth. Carullus pointed him out to his wife, reminded her that the racer had been among those at their wedding, and then made a quick jest when the Greens' First Charioteer withdrew under the stands just before the race was to begin, leaving his team to the
handlers. Kasia smiled a little; one of the other officers laughed.

With a real attempt at self-control—though he was very excited and extremely happy—Carullus tried not to point out
everything
going on to his bride. She did know that Scortius was missing. Every soul in Sarantium knew that. He was aware by now that his voice soothed her as much as his protective presence, however, so he did tell her briefly (as brief as he ever was) about the transaction that had led to the right-side horse in Crescens's quadriga being exchanged for the young rider currently wearing the silver helmet for the Blues in the fifth lane. He'd explained about right-side horses, too. And that meant talking about left-siders, of course, which in turn meant …

She had been interested in some of it, though not in the way he'd expected. She asked him more about how the boy could be sold from one team to another, whether he liked it or not. Carullus had pointed out that no one was
making
him race, or even remain in Sarantium, but he didn't, somehow, think that her underlying question had been answered. He'd changed the subject, pointing out the various monuments in the spina across the track.

Then a roaring had begun, and he'd turned quickly towards the tunnel, and his jaw had dropped as Scortius and Crescens walked out onto the sands together.

People see different things, remember different things, though all might be looking in the same direction. Carullus was a soldier, had been all his adult life. He saw how Scortius was walking and drew some immediate conclusions, even before they came nearer and he noted blood on the man's left side. It affected everything else he saw and felt when the race began, and everything he would recall afterwards: a shading of
crimson to the afternoon, right when it began, before anything was known.

KASIA DIDN
'
T NOTICE
any of this. She was watching the other man—quite close to them actually—the one in Green who now mounted up again in the chariot he'd left before. She remembered him at her wedding: burly, confident, centre of a circle, making others laugh in the way that people laughed when the jests were offered by someone important, whether or not they were truly amusing.

Crescens of the Greens was at the very peak of this profession, Carullus had told her (among the very many things he'd told her), had won every important race last week and this morning, with Scortius missing. The Greens were exultant, in glory, the man was spectacularly triumphant.

For Kasia, that made it genuinely interesting how readily she could read the apprehension in him.

He stood just below them in his chariot, methodically wrapping the long reins about his body. Carullus had explained about that, too. But the Green rider kept casting glances back and to his left where the other man, Scortius, was now entering a chariot, nearer the place where all the statues were. Kasia wondered if others could see this anxiety, or if it was simply that, after a year at Morax's, she was attuned to such things now. She wondered if she always would be.

‘Holy Jad in the sun, he's riding Second chariot!' Carullus breathed, as one might speak a prayer. His tone was rapt; his face, when she glanced over at him, was transfixed, almost in pain.

She was intrigued enough to ask. He explained this to her, as well. Did it quickly, mind you, because as soon as all the various reins were tied where they appeared to belong and the handlers had withdrawn to the inside or outside of
the track and the yellow-garbed officials had done the same, a white handkerchief was dropped by the Master of the Senate in the kathisma, as a single trumpet blew a single note and a silver seahorse dived from overhead, and the race began.

There was quite a lot of dust then.

CLEANDER BONOSUS CEASED
to be a Green that day. He didn't switch allegiance, but rather—as he would often tell the tale afterwards, including one memorable oration at a murder trial—he felt as if he had somehow been lifted
above
faction alliances during the first race of the afternoon on the second Hippodrome day of that spring.

Or just before the race, perhaps, when he'd seen the man his friends had stabbed and kicked in a dark street, the man he'd heard ordered to remain at rest until summer, come walking out on the sands to claim the
Second
team of the Blues. Not the silver helmet which was his by right.

Or even before
that
,
it could be said. For Cleander, looking for his mother and the Bassanid doctor, had been peering into the tunnel, not admiring the charioteers taking their positions on the sand. He'd been low down and close enough and so he—perhaps alone of eighty thousand—had actually seen Crescens of the Greens hammer an elbow into someone's side just as they came into the light, and then he'd seen who that someone was.

He would always remember that. His heart had begun pounding then, and it went on hammering in his chest all the way to the start of the race, which came just as his mother and the doctor reclaimed their seats. Both of them—at a glance—seemed unexpectedly strained, but Cleander had no time to consider that. There was a race on and Scortius was back.

The seahorse dived. Eight quadrigas burst from the staggered starting line, heading towards the white marking down the track where they could leave their lanes and the wild manœuvring would begin.

By instinct, habit, force, Cleander's gaze went to Crescens, as the First of the Greens whipped his team off from the sixth position. Not a good start post, but the boy leading the Blues was only in fifth, so it didn't much matter. Scortius was much lower down the track in the second lane, but with a lesser team. Cleander didn't understand how and why that had happened. The Greens' second driver had the rail and would try to keep it until Crescens worked his way down.