Lord of Emperors (34 page)

The boy beside Taras spat into the street. "Tucking unlock the gate. It's raining and he's who he says he is."

In that order,
Taras thought glumly, water dripping from his hat and down the back of his neck. The metal gates were reluctantly swung open. No word of welcome, of course. The guards didn't even believe he was a chariot-racer. The compound's courtyard-almost identical to that of the Greens-was muddy and deserted in the wet, cold morning.

"You'll be in that barracks," the boy said, pointing off to the right. "Don't know which bed. Astorgus said drop your stuff and see him. He'll be eating. Banquet hall's that way." He went off through the mud, not looking back.

Taras carried his gear to the indicated building. A long, low sleeping quarters, again much like the one he'd lived in this past year. Some servants were moving about, tidying up, arranging bed linens and discarded clothing. One of them looked over indifferently as Taras appeared in the doorway. Taras was about to ask which bed was his, but suddenly the prospect seemed too humiliating. That could wait. He dropped his wet bags near the door.

"Keep an eye on these for me," he called out with what he hoped sounded like authority. "I'll be sleeping in here."

He shook the rain off his hat, put it back on his head, and went out again. Dodging the worst puddles, he angled across the courtyard a second time, towards the building the boy had indicated. Astorgus, the factionarius, was supposed to be in there.

Taras entered a small but handsomely decorated front room. The double doors leading to the hall itself were closed; it was quiet beyond, at this hour of a grey, wet morning. He looked around. There were mosaics on all four walls here, showing great charioteers-all Blues, of course-from the past. Glorious figures. Taras knew them all. All the young riders did; these were the shining inhabitants of their dreams.

Taras felt unwell. He saw a man, warmed by two fires, sitting on a high stool at a desk near the interior doors that led to the dining hall itself. There was a lamp at his elbow. He looked up from some writing he was doing and arched an eyebrow.

"Wet, aren't you?" he observed.

"Rain tends to be wet, "Taras said shortly. "I'm Taras of the…I'm Taras ot Megarium. New rider. For the Whites."

"Are you?" the man said. "Heard of you." At least
someone
had, Taras thought. The man looked Taras up and down, but he didn't snicker or look amused. "Astorgus is inside. Get rid of that hat and go on in."

Taras looked for somewhere to put his hat.

"Give it to me. "The secretary-or whatever he was-took it between two fingers as if it were a rancid fish and dropped it on a bench behind his desk. He wiped his fingers on his robe and bent to his work again. Taras sighed, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and opened the heavy oak doors to the banquet hall. Then he froze.

He saw a huge, brightly lit room, packed with people at every table. The morning stillness was shattered by a sudden, vast, thundering roar erupting like a volcano, loud enough to shake the rafters. He realized, as he stopped dead on the threshold, heart in his throat, that they were all leaping to their feet-men and women-cups and flasks uplifted in his direction, and they were shouting his name so loudly he could almost imagine his mother hearing it, half a world away in Megarium.

Stupefied, frozen to the spot, Taras tried desperately to grasp what was happening.

He saw a compact, much-scarred man throw his cup down, bouncing it off the floor, spilling and spattering the lees of his wine, and stride across the room towards him. "By the beard of the beardless Jad!" cried the celebrated Astorgus, leader of all the Blues,'I cannot fucking
believe
those idiots let you go! Hah!
Hah!
Welcome, Taras of Megarium, we're proud to have you with us!" He wrapped Taras in a rib-cracking, muscular embrace and stepped back, beaming.

The noise in the room continued unabated. Taras saw Scortius himself-the great Scortius-grinning at him, cup held high. The two urchins who had fetched him were both here now, laughing together in a corner, sticking fingers in their mouths to whistle piercingly. And now the secretary and one of the guards from the gate came in behind Taras, clapping him hard on the back.

Taras realized his mouth was gaping open. He closed it. A young girl, a dancer, came forward and gave him a cup of wine and a kiss on each cheek. Taras swallowed hard. He looked down at his cup, lifted it hesitantly to the room, and then drank it off at a gulp, eliciting an even louder shout of approval and whistling everywhere now. They were still crying his name.

He was afraid, suddenly, that he was going to cry.

He concentrated on Astorgus. Tried to appear calm. He cleared his throat. "This is… this is a generous welcome for a new rider for the Whites," he said.

"The Whites? The fucking
Whites'?
I love my White team as a father loves his youngest child, but you aren't with them, lad. You're a Blue rider now.
Second
of the Blues, behind Scortius.
That's
why we're celebrating!"

Taras, blinking rapidly, abruptly decided he was going to have to get to a chapel very soon. Thanks had to be given somewhere, and Jad was surely the place to start.

Approaching the barrier in his quadriga, controlling the restive horses on the second day of the race season, springtime sunlight pouring down on a screaming Hippodrome crowd, Taras hadn't the least inclination to rescind the thanks and candles he'd offered months ago, but he was still terrified this morning, aware that he was doing something significantly beyond him, and feeling the strain of that every moment.

He understood now exactly what Astorgus and Scortius had been thinking when they had manoeuvred to bring him to the Blues. The second driver for the last two years had been a man named Rulanius, from Sarnica (as so many of the drivers were), but he had become a problem. He thought he was better than he was, and he drank too much as a consequence.

The role of the Second driver for a faction that had Scortius wearing the silver helmet was essentially defined by tactical challenges. You didn't
win
races (except lesser ones, when the two leaders weren't running), you attempted to make sure your First driver wasn't stopped from winning them.

That involved blocks (subtle ones), holding lanes against the Greens, forcing them wide on turns, slowing down to slow others, or dropping back hard at a precisely judged moment to open space for your leader to come through. Sometimes you even crashed at opportune times-with the very considerable risks attendant upon that. You needed to be observant, alert, willing to be banged and bruised, attentive to whatever coded instructions Scortius might shout to you on the track, and fundamentally reconciled to being an adjunct to the leader. The cheering would never be for you.

Rulanius, increasingly, had not been reconciled.

It had begun to show more and more as the last season had gone on. He was too experienced to simply be dismissed, and a factionarius had more than just Sarantium to think about. The decision had been made to send him north to Eubulus, second city of the Empire, where he could ride First in a smaller hippodrome. A demotion; a promotion. However defined, it put him out of the way. The warning about drinking, however, had been very specific. The track was no place for men who were not at their sharpest, all morning, all afternoon. The Ninth Rider was too near them, always.

But
that
problem solved had left another behind. The current Third rider for the Blues was an older man, more than content with his lot in life, running in the minor races, backing up Rulanius on occasion. He'd been judged by Astorgus, bluntly, as not equal to the tactical demands and the frequent spills of facing Crescens of the Greens and his own aggressive number two on a regular basis.

They could promote or recruit someone else from the smaller cities, or approach this a different way. They chose the latter course.

It appeared that Taras had made an impression, a significant one, especially during one memorable race at the very end of last year. What he himself had seen as a wretched failure, when his explosive start had been undermined by Scortius's brilliant slashing run down behind him, had been regarded by the Blues as a splendid effort, subverted only by an act of genius. And then Taras had come second in that same race, a major achievement with horses he didn't know well, and after burning his team so much as they broke from the line.

Some discreet enquiries into his background, some internal discussion, and a decision had been made that he'd be suited to the role of riding Second. He would be thrilled by the task, not chafing at it. He'd appeal to the crowd because of his youth. This had the potential to become a glorious coup for the Blues, Astorgus had concluded.

He'd negotiated a transaction. The horse, Taras had learned, was a significant one. Crescens had speedily claimed it as his own right-sider. He'd be even more formidable now, and they knew it.

That awareness had placed an additional burden of anxiety on Taras's shoulders, despite the generosity of his welcome and the meticulous tactical training he'd been undergoing with Astorgus-who had been, after all, the most triumphant rider in the world in his own day.

But that anxiety, the steadily growing sense of responsibility he'd felt from the beginning, was as nothing to what he was dealing with now as the chariots paraded back out onto the Hippodrome sands for the afternoon session of the second meeting of the new season.

The winter training had been rendered almost meaningless, all the tactical discussions purely abstract. He wasn't riding Second. He had the magnificent, fabled Servator in the left traces in front of him, and the three other horses of the lead team. He was wearing the silver helmet. He was First Chariot of the Blues.

Scortius had disappeared. Hadn't been seen since the week before the season began.

The opening day had been brutal, overwhelming. Taras had gone from riding Fourth for the lowly Reds to wearing the silver helmet for the mighty Blues, leading the grand procession out, then battling Crescens in front of eighty thousand people who had never even heard of him. He had thrown up violently twice between races. Had washed his face after, listened to Astorgus's fierce words of encouragement, and gone back out again onto the sands that could break your heart.

He'd managed to come second four of six times that first day, and three times again in the four races he'd ridden this morning. Crescens of the Greens, confident, ferociously aggressive, showing off his brilliant new right-sider, had won seven on that opening day and four more this morning. Eleven victories in a session and a half! The Greens were delirious with joy. The notion of unfair advantage didn't even enter the picture when you started a season
this
brilliantly.

No one knew, even now, where Scortius was. Or, if anyone did know, they weren't telling.

Taras was in over his head, trying not to drown.

There
were
a certain number of people who knew, in fact, but fewer than one might have supposed. Secrecy had been the first item of discussion with the Master of the Senate, when he'd answered an urgent request that he attend at his own small house. There were, in truth, a variety of ways to play this situation, Bonosus had thought, but the absolute insistence of the injured man had ended the conversation. Accordingly, Astorgus and Bonosus himself were the only significant figures aware of where Scortius was right now. The recently arrived (and blessedly competent) Bassanid physician also knew, of course, and so did the household servants. The latter were famously discreet, and the doctor was unlikely to betray the confidence of a patient.

The Senator did
not
know that his own son was privy to-and instrumental in-these highly unusual circumstances. Nor did he know that one other person was to receive a brief note:

Another note, in the same hand, went by way of Astorgus and one of the Blues" messenger boys to the house of Plautus Bonosus, but not to the Senator. It read,

The woman who read this did not smile, doing so. She burned the note in her fireplace.

The Urban Prefecture was quietly advised that the charioteer was alive, had been injured in the course of a tryst he preferred to keep private. It happened often enough. They saw no reason to intervene further. They became very busy keeping order in the streets not long after: the Blue partisans, reeling from the disappearance of their hero and the sectacular opening day of the Greens, were in an ugly mood. More injuries and deaths than customary had ensued after the first race day, but on the whole-with so many soldiers in the City now-the mood of Sarantium was more tense and watchful than actively violent.

The seeds were there, mind you. The most celebrated charioteer in the Empire couldn't simply vanish without serious unrest emerging. The Excubitors were put on notice that their services might yet be required.

All of this had been part of the aftermath. On the night a very badly wounded man had shown up at the door, barely upright, but apologizing politely for his intrusion, the issues in the city house of Plautus Bonosus had been otherwise. Certainly for Rustem of Kerakek they had been.

He had thought he might lose this man, had been secretly grateful he was in Sarantium and not back home: there, having taken on the treatment, he'd have been expensively and perhaps even fatally liable if the chariot-racer had died. This was a very significant figure. There was no parallel in Bassania that came to mind, but it was impossible to ignore the stunned faces of the steward or the Senator's murderous offspring as they helped lay the man named Scortius onto a table that night.