The Sarantine Mosaic (37 page)

‘Those five we drank with?'

‘One of them, anyhow. The noisy one.'

The five young men had pushed ahead of them across the Hippodrome Forum, heading for the patrician gates and their reserved seats.

‘Who was the woman he was going on about?'

‘A dancer. It's always a dancer. Latest darling of the Greens. Name's Shirin, apparently. A looker, it sounds like. They usually are. The young aristocrats are always
elbowing each other to get in bed with the dancer or actress of the day. A long tradition. The Emperor married one, after all.'

‘Shirin?' Crispin was amused. He had that name in his baggage, on a torn-off piece of parchment.

‘Yes, why?'

‘Interesting. If this is the same person, I'm supposed to visit her. A message to deliver from her father.' Zoticus had said she was a prostitute, at first.

Carullus looked astonished. ‘Jad's fire, Rhodian, you
are
a series of surprises. Don't tell my new friends. The youngest one might knife you—or hire someone to do it—if he hears you have access to her.'

‘Or be my friend for life if I offer to let him come visit with me.'

Carullus laughed. ‘Wealthy lad. Useful friend.' The two men exchanged an ironic glance.

Vargos, on Crispin's other side, listened carefully, saying nothing. Kasia was back at the inn where they'd booked a room last night. She'd been invited to come with them—women were permitted in the Hippodrome under Valerius and Alixana—but had been showing signs of distress ever since they'd passed into the roiling chaos of the City. Vargos hadn't been happy either, but he'd been within city walls before and had some framework for his expectations.

Sarantium dwarfed expectations, but they'd been warned it would.

The long walk from the landward walls to the inn near the Hippodrome had visibly unsettled Kasia the day before. It was a festival; the noise levels and the numbers of people in the streets were overwhelming. They had passed a half-naked ascetic perched precariously on the top of a squared-off triumphal obelisk, his long white beard streaming sideways in the breeze. He was preaching
of the City's iniquities to a gathered cluster of the City's people. He'd been up there three years, someone said. It was best to stay upwind, they added.

A few prostitutes had been working the edges of the same crowd. Carullus had eyed one of them and then laughed as she grinned at him and slowly walked away, hips swinging. He'd pointed: the imprint of her sandals in the dust read, quite clearly, ‘Follow Me.'

Kasia hadn't laughed, Crispin remembered.

And she had elected to remain behind at the inn today rather than deal with the streets again so soon.

‘You'd really have started a fight with them?' Vargos asked Carullus. His first words of the afternoon.

The tribune glanced over at him. ‘Of course I would have. Leontes was maligned in my hearing by an effete little City snob who can't even grow a proper moustache yet.'

Crispin said, ‘You'll do a lot of fighting if that's going to be your attitude here. I suspect the Sarantines are free with their opinions.'

Carullus snorted. ‘You are telling
me
about the City, Rhodian?'

‘How many times have you been here?'

Carullus looked chagrined. ‘Well, just twice in point of fact, but—'

‘Then I suspect I know rather more than you about urban ways, soldier. Varena isn't Sarantium, and Rhodias isn't what it was, but I do know that if you bridle at every overheard opinion the way you might in a barracks you command you'll never survive.'

Carullus frowned. ‘He was attacking the Strategos. My commander. I fought under Leontes against the Bassanids beyond Eubulus. In the god's name, I
know
what he's like. That bedbug with his father's money and his stupid eastern robe had no business even
speaking
his name. I wonder where that little boy was two years
ago today, when Leontes smashed the Victory Riot?
That
was courage, by Jad's blood! Yes, I would have fought them. It was … a matter of honour.'

Crispin arched an eyebrow. ‘A matter of honour,' he repeated. ‘Indeed. Then you should have had rather less difficulty understanding what I did at the walls yesterday when we came in.'

Carullus snorted. ‘Not at
all
the same thing. You could have had your nose slit for declaring a name other than the one on your Permit. Using those papers was a
crime
. In Jad's name, Martinian—'

‘Crispin,' said Crispin.

An excited, not-entirely-sober cluster of Blues cut in front of them, rushing towards their gate. Vargos was jostled but kept his balance. Crispin said, ‘I chose to enter Sarantium as Caius Crispus—the name my father and mother gave me, not a false one.' He looked at the tribune. ‘A matter of honour.'

Carullus shook his head emphatically. ‘The only reason, the
only
reason the guard didn't look properly at your papers and detain you when the names didn't match was because you were with me.'

‘I know,' Crispin said, grinning suddenly. ‘I relied on that.'

Vargos, on his other side, snorted with an amusement he couldn't quite control. Carullus glared. ‘Are you actually planning to give your own name at the Bronze Gates? In the Attenine Palace? Shall I introduce you to a notary first, to arrange for the final disposition of your worldly goods?'

The fabled gates to the Imperial Precinct were, as it happened, visible at one end of the Hippodrome Forum. Beyond them, the domes and walls of the Imperial palaces could be seen. Not far away, north of the forum, scaffolding and mud and masonry
surrounded the building site of Valerius II's immense new Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom. Crispin—or Martinian—had been summoned to play a part in that.

‘I haven't decided,' Crispin said.

It was true. He hadn't. The declaration at the customs gate in the wall had been entirely spontaneous. Even as he was speaking his own name aloud for the first time since leaving home, he'd realized that being in the company— virtually the custody—of half a dozen soldiers would probably mean his papers would not be examined by an overworked guard at festival time, and that is what had happened. Carullus's blistering, obscene interrogation of him the moment they were out of earshot of the guardhouse had been a predictable consequence.

Crispin had delayed explaining until they'd taken rooms at an inn Carullus knew near the Hippodrome and the new Great Sanctuary. The soldiers of the Fourth Sauradian were sent to a barracks to report, with one of them dispatched to the Imperial Precinct to announce that the Rhodian mosaicist had arrived in Sarantium as requested.

At the inn, over boiled fish and soft cheese with figs and melon after, Crispin had explained to the two men and the woman how he'd come to be travelling with an Imperial Permit belonging to another man. Or, more properly, he'd explained the obvious aspects of that. The rest, having to do with the dead and a barbarian queen, belonged to himself.

Carullus, stunned into unwonted silence through all of this, had eaten and listened without interrupting. When Crispin was done, he'd said only, ‘I'm a betting man not afraid of odds, but I'd not wager a copper folles on your surviving a day in the Imperial Precinct as Caius Crispus when someone named Martinian was invited on behalf of the Emperor. They don't like … surprises at this court. Think about it.'

Crispin had promised to do so. An easy promise. He'd been thinking about it, without any answer emerging, since he'd left Varena.

As they crossed the Hippodrome Forum now, the Sanctuary behind them, the Imperial Precinct to their right, a squat, balding man behind a folding, hastily assembled counter was rattling off a sequence of names and numbers as people passed. Carullus stopped in front of him.

‘Positions for the first race?' he demanded.

‘Everyone?'

‘Of course not. Crescens and Scortius.'

The tout grinned, showing black, erratic teeth. ‘Interesting times today. Sixth and eighth, Scortius is outside.'

‘He won't win from eighth. What are you giving on Crescens of the Greens?'

‘For an honest officer? Three to two.'

‘Copulate with your grandmother. Two to one.'

‘At two to one I
am
doing that, in her grave, but all right. At least a silver solidus, though. I won't do those odds for beer money.'

‘A
solidus
? I'm a soldier not a greedy race tout.'

‘And I run a bet shop, not a military dispensary. You have silver, wager it. Otherwise, stop blocking my booth.'

Carullus bit his lower lip. It was a great deal of money. He dug into his purse, pulled out what Crispin was fairly certain was the only silver piece he had, and passed it across the makeshift counter to the other man. In return he received a green chit with the name ‘Crescens' on it above the name of the tout. The man had marked, painstakingly, the race number, the amount of the wager, and the odds given on the back of the chit.

They walked on amongst a tide of people. Carullus was silent amid the noise as they approached the looming gates of the Hippodrome. As they passed within, he appeared to revive. He clutched his betting chit tightly.

‘He's in the eighth position, the last one outside. He won't win from there.'

‘Is the sixth post so much better?' Crispin asked, perhaps unwisely.

‘Hah! One morning at the races and the arrogant Rhodian with a false name thinks he knows the Hippodrome! Be silent, you poxed artisan, and pay attention, like Vargos. You may even learn something! If you behave I'll buy you both Sarnican red with my winnings when the day is done.'

Bonosus quite enjoyed watching the chariots.

Attending at the Hippodrome, representing the Senate in the Imperial kathisma, was a part of his office that gave him genuine pleasure. The morning's eight races had been splendidly diverting: honours closely divided between Blues and Greens, two wins each for the new Green hero, Crescens, and the truly magnificent Scortius. An exciting surprise in the fifth race when an enterprising fellow racing for the Whites had nipped inside the Greens' second driver in the last turn to win a race he'd no business winning. The Blue partisans treated their junior colour's win as if it had been a dazzling military triumph. Their rhythmic, well-coordinated tauntings of the humbled Greens and Reds caused a number of fistfights before the Hippodrome Prefect's men moved in to keep the factions apart. Bonosus thought the young White driver's flushed, exhilarated face beneath his yellow hair as he took his victory lap was very appealing. The young man's name, he learned, was Witticus, a Karchite. He
made a mental note of it, leaning forward to applaud politely with the others in the kathisma.

Occurrences of that sort were exactly what made the Hippodrome dramatic, whether it was a startling victory or a charioteer carried off, his neck broken, another victim of the dark figure they called the Ninth Driver. Men could forget hunger, taxes, age, ungrateful children, scorned love, in the drama of the chariots.

Bonosus knew that the Emperor was of a different mind. Valerius would as soon have avoided the racing entirely, sending a stream of court dignitaries and visiting ambassadors to the kathisma in his stead. The Emperor, normally so unruffled, used to fume that he was far too busy to spend an entire working day watching horses run around. He tended not to go to bed at all after a day spent with the chariots, to catch up.

Valerius's work habits were well known from the reign of his uncle. Then and now he drove secretaries and civil servants to terrified distraction and a state of somnambulant hysteria. They called him The Night's Emperor, and men told tales of seeing him pacing the halls of one palace or another in the very dead of night, dictating correspondence to a stumbling secretary while a slave or a guard walked alongside with a lantern that cast high, leaping shadows on the walls and ceilings. Some said strange lights or ghostly apparitions could be seen flitting in the shadows at such hours, but Bonosus didn't believe that, really.

He settled back into his cushioned seat in the third row of the kathisma and lifted a hand for a cup of wine, waiting for the afternoon's program to begin. Even as he signalled, he heard a telltale rap behind him and rose, very swiftly. The carefully barred door at the back of the Imperial Box was unlocked and swung open by the Excubitors on guard, and Valerius and Alixana, with the
Master of Offices, Leontes and his tall new bride, and a dozen other court attendants appeared in the box. Bonosus sank to his knees beside the other early arrivals and performed the triple obeisance.

Valerius, clearly not in good humour, moved briskly past them and stood beside his elevated throne at the front, in full view of the crowd. He hadn't been present in the morning, but he dared not stay away all day. Not today. Not at the end of the festival, the last running of the year, and not, especially, with the memory only two years old of what had happened in this place. He needed to be seen here.