Bonosus expected that Gesius would win this morning. That his patrician candidate would emerge as the Emperor Designate, with the eunuch retaining his position as Imperial Chancellor. The conjoined power of the Chancellor and the wealthiest family in the City were more than a match for Adrastus’s ambition, however silken might be the manner and the intricate webs of intelligence spun by the Master of Offices. Bonosus was prepared to risk a sizeable sum on the affair, if he could find a taker.
Later, he, too, would have cause to be privately grateful—amid chaos—that a wager had not taken place that day.
Watching as he sipped his wine, Bonosus saw Gesius, with the smallest, elegant gesture of his long fingers, petition Oradius to be allowed to speak. He saw the Master of the Senate bob his head up and down like a street puppet in immediate acknowledgement. He’s been bought, he decided. Adrastus would have his supporters here too. Would doubtless make his own speech soon. It was going to be interesting. Who could squeeze the hapless Senate harder? No one had tried to bribe Bonosus. He wondered if he ought to be flattered or offended.
As another rote eulogy of the dead, thrice-exalted, luminous, never-to-be-equalled Emperor came to a platitudinous close, Oradius gestured with deference towards the Chancellor. Gesius bowed graciously and moved to the white marble speaker’s circle in the centre of the mosaics on the floor.
Before the Chancellor began, however, there came another rapping at the door. Bonosus turned, expectantly. This was remarkably well timed, he noted with admiration. Flawlessly, in fact. He wondered how Gesius had done it.
But it was not Flavius Daleinus who entered the room. Instead, an extremely agitated officer of the Urban Prefecture told the assembled Senate about Sarantine Fire loosed in the City and the death of an aristocrat.
A short time after that, with a grey-faced, visibly aged Chancellor being offered assistance on a bench by Senators and slaves, and the Master of Offices displaying either stupefied disbelief or brilliant acting skills, the august Senate of the Empire heard a mob outside its much-abused doors for the second time that day.
This time there was a difference. This time there was only one name being cried, and the voices were ferociously, defiantly assertive. The doors banged open hard, and the street life of the City spilled in. Bonosus saw the faction colours again, too many guilds to count, shopkeepers, street vendors, tavern-masters, bathhouse workers, animal-keepers, beggars, whores, artisans, slaves. And soldiers. There were soldiers this time.
And the same name on all their lips. The people of Sarantium, making known their will. Bonosus turned, on some instinct, in time to see the Chancellor suddenly drain his cup of wine. Gesius took a deep, steadying breath. He stood up, unaided, and moved towards the marble speaker’s circle again. His colour had come back.
Holy Jad, thought Bonosus, his mind spinning like the wheel of a toppled chariot, can he be this swift?
‘Most noble members of the Imperial Senate,’ the Chancellor said, lifting his thin, exquisitely modulated voice. ‘See! Sarantium has come to us! Shall we hear the voice of our people?’
The people heard him, and their voice—responding— became a roar that shook the chamber. One name, again and again. Echoing among marble and mosaic and precious stones and gold, spiralling upwards to the dome where doomed Heladikos drove his chariot, carrying fire. One name. An absurd choice in a way, but in another, Plautus Bonosus thought, it might not be so absurd. He surprised himself. It was not a thought he’d ever had before.
Behind the Chancellor, Adrastus, the suave, polished Master of Offices—the most powerful man in the City, in the Empire—still looked stunned, bewildered by the speed of things. He had not moved or reacted. Gesius had. In the end, that hesitation, missing the moment when everything changed, was to cost Adrastus his office. And his eyes.
The Golden Throne had been lost to him already. Perhaps that dawning awareness was what froze him there on a marble bench while the crowd roared and thundered as if they were in the Hippodrome or a theatre, not the Senate Chamber. His dreams shattered— subtle, intricate designs slashed apart—as a beefy, toothless smith howled the City’s chosen name right in his well-bred face.
Perhaps what Adrastus was hearing then, unmoving, was another sound entirely: the jewelled birds of the Emperor, singing for a different dancer now.
‘Valerius to the Golden Throne!’
The cry had run through the Hippodrome, exactly as he’d been told it would. He’d refused them, had shaken his head decisively, turned his horse to leave, seen a company of the Urban Prefect’s guardsmen running towards him—not his own men—and watched as they knelt before his mount, blocking his way with their bodies.
Then they, too, raised his name in a loud shout, begging that he accept the throne. Again he refused, shaking his head, making a sweeping gesture of denial. But the crowd was already wild. The cry that had begun when he brought them word of Daleinus’s death reverberated through the huge space where the chariots ran and people cheered. There were thirty, perhaps forty thousand people there by then, even with no racing this day.
A different contest was proceeding towards its orchestrated end.
Petrus had told him what would happen and what he had to do at every step. That his reporting of the second death would bring shock and fear, but no grief, and even some vindication following hard upon the too-contrived acclamations of Daleinus. He hadn’t asked his nephew how he’d known those acclamations would come. Some things he didn’t need to know. He had enough to remember, more than enough to keep clearly in sequence this day.
But it had developed precisely as Petrus had said it would, exact as a heavy cavalry charge on open ground, and here he was astride his horse, the Urban Prefect’s men blocking his way and the Hippodrome crowd screaming his name to the god’s bright sun. His name and his alone. He had refused twice, as instructed. They were pleading with him now. He saw men weeping as they roared his name. The noise was deafening, a wall, punishingly loud, as the Excubitors— his own men this time—moved closer, and then completely surrounded him, making it impossible for a humble, loyal, unambitious man to ride from this place, to escape the people’s declared will in their time of great danger and need.
He stepped down from his horse.
His men were around him, pressing close, screening him from the crowd where Blues and Greens stood mingled together, joined in a fierce, shared desire they had not known they even had, where all those gathered in this white, blazing light were calling upon him to be theirs. To save them now.
And so, in the Hippodrome of Sarantium, under the brilliant summer sun, Valerius, Count of the Excubitors, yielded to his fate and suffered his loyal guards to clothe him in the purple-lined mantle Leontes happened to have brought with him.
‘Will they not wonder at that?’ he had asked Petrus.
‘It won’t matter by then,’ his nephew had replied. ‘Trust me in this.’
And the Excubitors made way, the outer ring of them parting slowly, like a curtain, so that the innermost ones could be seen holding an enormous round shield. And standing upon that shield as they raised it to their shoulders—in the ancient way soldiers proclaimed an Emperor—Valerius the Trakesian lifted his hands towards his people. He turned to all corners of the thundering Hippodrome—for here was the true thunder that day—and accepted, humbly and graciously, the spontaneous will of the Sarantine people that he be their Imperial Lord, Regent of Holy Jad upon earth.
Valerius! Valerius! Valerius!
All glory to the Emperor Valerius!
Valerius the Golden, to the Golden Throne!
His hair had been golden once, long ago, when he had left the grainlands of Trakesia with two other boys, poor as stony earth, but strong for a lad, willing to work, to fight, walking barefoot through a cold, wet autumn, the north wind behind them bringing winter, all the way to the Sarantine military camp, to offer their services as soldiers to a distant Emperor in the unimaginable City, long, long ago.
&nbs
p; ‘Petrus, stay and dine with me?’
Night. A western sea breeze cooling the room through the open windows over the courtyard below. The sound of falling water drifted up from the fountains, and from farther away came the susurration of wind in the leaves of the trees in the Imperial gardens.
Two men stood in a room in the Traversite Palace. One was an Emperor, the other had made him so. In the larger, more formal Attenine Palace, a little way across the gardens, Apius lay in state in the Porphyry Room, coins on his eyes, a golden sun disk clasped between folded hands: payment and passport for his journey.
‘I cannot, Uncle. I have promises to be kept.’
‘Tonight? Where?’
‘Among the factions. The Blues were very useful today.’
‘Ah. The Blues. And their most favoured actress? Was she very useful?’ The old soldier’s voice was sly now. ‘Or is she to be useful later this evening?’
Petrus looked unabashed. ‘Aliana? A fine dancer, and I always laugh during her comic turns upon the stage.’ He grinned, the round, smooth face free of guile.
The Emperor’s gaze was shrewd, undeceived. After a moment he said, quietly, ‘Love is dangerous, nephew.’
The younger man’s expression changed. He was silent a moment, by one of the doorways. Eventually he nodded his head. ‘It can be. I know that. Do you … disapprove?’
It was a well-timed question. How could his uncle’s disapproval attach to anything he did tonight? After the events of the day?
Valerius shook his head. ‘Not really. You will move into the Imperial Precinct? One of the palaces?’ There were six of them scattered on these grounds. They were all his now. He would have to learn to know them.
Petrus nodded. ‘Of course, if you honour me so. But not until after the Mourning Rites and the Investiture, and the Hippodrome ceremony in your honour.’
‘You will bring her here with you?’
Petrus’s expression, directly confronted, was equally direct. ‘Only if you approve.’
The Emperor said, ‘Are there not laws? Someone said something, I recall. An actress …?’
‘You are the source and fount of all laws in Sarantium now, Uncle. Laws may be changed.’
Valerius sighed. ‘We need to talk further on this. And about the holders of office. Gesius. Adrastus. Hilarinus— I don’t trust him. I never did.’
‘He is gone, then. And Adrastus must also be, I fear. Gesius … is more complex. You know he spoke for you in the Senate?’
‘You said. Did it matter?’
‘Probably not, but if he had spoken for Adrastus—
unlikely as that may sound—it might have made things … uglier.’
‘You trust him?’
The Emperor watched his nephew’s deceptively bland, round face as the younger man thought. Petrus wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t look like a courtier. He carried himself, more than anything else, Valerius decided, like an academician of the old pagan Schools. There was ambition there, however. Enormous ambition. There was, in fact, an Empire’s worth of it. He had cause to know, being where he was.
Petrus gestured, his soft hands spreading a little apart. ‘Truthfully? I’m not certain. I said it was complex.
We will, indeed, have to talk further. But tonight you are allowed an evening of leisure, and I may permit myself the same, with your leave. I took the liberty of commanding ale for you, Uncle. It is on the sideboard beside the wine. Have I your gracious leave to depart?’
Valerius didn’t really want him to go, but what was he to do? Ask the other man to sit with him for a night and hold his hand and tell him being Emperor would be all right? Was he a child?
‘Of course. Do you want Excubitors?’
Petrus began shaking his head, then caught himself. ‘Probably a wise idea, actually. Thank you.’
‘Stop by the barracks. Tell Leontes. In fact, a rotating guard of six of them for you, from now on. Someone used Sarantine Fire here today.’
Petrus’s too-quick gaze showed he didn’t quite know how to read that comment. Good. It wouldn’t do to be utterly transparent to his nephew.
‘Jad guard and defend you all your days, my Emperor.’ ‘His eternal Light upon you.’ And for the first time ever, Valerius the Trakesian made the Imperial sign of blessing over another man.
His nephew knelt, touched forehead to floor three times, palms flat beside his head, then rose and walked out, calm as ever, unchanged though all had changed.
Valerius, Emperor of Sarantium, successor to Saranios the Great who had built the City, and to a line of Emperors after him, and before him in Rhodias, stretching back almost six hundred years, stood alone in an elegant chamber where oil lanterns hung from the ceiling and were set in brackets on the walls and where half a hundred candles burned extravagantly. His bedroom for tonight was somewhere nearby. He wasn’t sure where. He wasn’t familiar with this palace. The Count of the Excubitors had never had reason to enter here. He looked around the room. There was a tree near the courtyard window, made of beaten gold, with mechanical birds in the branches. They glittered in the flickering light with jewels and semi-precious stones. He supposed they sang, if one knew the trick. The tree was gold. It was entirely of gold. He drew a breath.
He went to the sideboard and poured himself a flask of ale. He sipped, then smiled. Honest Trakesian brew. Trust Petrus. It occurred to him that he should have clapped hands for a slave or Imperial officer, but such things slowed matters down and he had a thirst. He’d a right to one. It had been a day of days, as the soldiers said. Petrus had spoken true—he was entitled to an evening without further planning or tasks. Jad knew, there would be enough to deal with in the days to come. For one thing, certain people would have to be killed—if they weren’t dead already. He didn’t know the names of the men who’d wielded that liquid fire in the City—he didn’t want to know—but they couldn’t live.
He walked from the sideboard and sank down into a deep-cushioned, high-backed chair. The fabric was silk. He’d had little experience of silk in his life. He traced the material with a calloused finger. It was soft, smooth. It was … silken. Valerius grinned to himself. He liked it. So many years a soldier, nights on stony ground, in bitter winter or the southern desert storms. He stretched out his booted feet, drank deeply again, wiped his lip with the back of a scarred, heavy hand. He closed his eyes, drank again. He decided he wanted his boots removed. Carefully, he placed the ale flask on an absurdly delicate three-legged ivory table. He sat up very straight, took a deep breath and then clapped his hands three times, the way Apius—Jad guard his soul!—used to do.
Three doors burst open on the instant.
A score of people sprang into the room and flung themselves prostrate on the floor in obeisance. He saw Gesius and Adrastus, then the Quaestor of the Sacred Palace, the Urban Prefect, the Count of the Imperial Bedchamber—Hilarinus, whom he didn’t trust—the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue. All the highest officers of the Empire. Flattened before him on a green and blue mosaic floor of sea creatures and sea flowers.
In the ensuing stillness, one of the mechanical birds began to sing. Valerius the Emperor laughed aloud.
Very late that same night, the sea wind having long since died to a breath, most of the City asleep, but some not so. Among these, the Holy Order of the Sleepless Ones in their austere chapels, who believed—with fierce and final devotion—that all but a handful of them had to be constantly awake and at prayer through the whole of the night while Jad in his solar chariot negotiated his perilous journey through blackness and bitter ice beneath the world.
The bakers, too, were awake and at work, preparing the bread that was the gift of the Empire to all who dwelt in glorious Sarantium. In winter the glowing ovens would draw people from the darkness seeking warmth— beggars, cripples, streetwalkers, those evicted from their homes and those too new to the Holy City to have found shelter yet. They would move on to the glassmakers and the metalsmiths when the grey, cold day came.
I
n broiling summer now, the nearly naked bakers worked and swore at their ovens, slick with sweat, quaffing watery beer all night, no attendants at their doors save the rats, scurrying from cast light into shadow.
Torches burning on the better streets proclaimed the houses of the wealthy, and the tread and cry of the Urban Prefect’s men warned the illicit to take a certain care elsewhere in the night city. The roaming bands of wilder partisans—Green and Blue each had their violent cadres—tended to ignore the patrols, or, more properly, a lone patrol was inclined to be prudently discreet when the flamboyantly garbed and barbered partisans careened into sight from one tavern or another.
Women, save for the ones who sold themselves or patricians in litters with armed escorts, were not abroad after dark.
This night, however, all the taverns—even the filthiest cauponae where sailors and slaves drank—were closed in response to an Imperial death and an Emperor acclaimed. The shocking events of the day seemed to have subdued even the partisans. No shouting, drunken youths in the loose, eastern clothing of Bassania and the hair-styling of western barbarians could be seen—or heard—slewing through empty streets.
A horse neighed in one of the faction stables by the Hippodrome, and a woman’s voice could be heard through an open window over a colonnade nearby, singing the refrain of a song that was not at all devout. A man laughed, and then the woman did, and then there was silence there, too. The high screech of a cat in a laneway. A child cried. Children always cried in the darkness, somewhere. The world was what it was.
The god’s sun passed in its chariot through ice and past howling daemons under the world. The two moons worshipped—perversely—as goddesses by the Kindath had both set, over west into the wide sea. Only the stars, which no one claimed as holy, shone like strewn diamonds over the city Saranios had founded to be the New Rhodias, and to be more than Rhodias had ever been.
‘Oh City, City, ornament of the earth, eye of the world, glory of Jad’s creation, will I die before I see you again?’
The Sarantine Mosaic Page 5
