The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He walks over mosaic floor tiles, in the footsteps of Emperors long dead, communing with them, imagining silent dialogues, luxuriating in that silence, the achingly rare privacy of this long, winding corridor between palaces and people. The lighting is steady, the air and ventilation carefully devised. The solitude is a joy for him. He is the mortal servant and exemplar of Jad, lives his life in the bright eye of the world, is never alone save here. Even at night there are guards in his chambers, or women in the rooms of the Empress when he is there with her. He would linger now in the tunnel, but there is much to do at the other end as well, and time is running. This is a day awaited since … since he came south from Trakesia at his soldier uncle’s command?

  An exaggeration, with truth in it.

  His pace is brisk, as always. He is some distance down the tunnel, under the evenly spaced torches set in iron brackets in the stone walls, when he hears, in that rich silence, the turning of a heavy key behind him and then a door and then the sound of other footsteps, not hurrying.

  And so the world changes.

  It changes in every moment, of course, but there are … degrees of change.

  Half a hundred thoughts—or so it feels—run through his mind between one step and the next. The first thought and the last are of Aliana. In between these he has already grasped what is happening. Has always been known—and feared—for this quickness, has taken an unworthy measure of pride in that, all his life. But subtlety, swiftness, may have just become irrelevant. He continues walking, only a little faster than before.

  The tunnel, twisting slightly in the shape of an S for Saranios—a conceit of the builders—is far below the gardens and the light. Meaningless to shout here, and he’ll not get close enough to either door to be heard in the lower corridors of either palace. He has understood there is no point running, because those behind him are not: which means, of course, that there is someone ahead of him.

  They will have entered before the soldiers meeting him in the other palace arrived outside the door, will have been waiting underground, perhaps for some time. Or perhaps … they might have entered through the same door he did and gone towards the other end to wait? Simpler that way? Only two guards to suborn. He thinks back and yes, he does remember the faces of the two Excubitors at the door behind him. Not strangers. His own men. Which means something … unfortunate. The Emperor feels anger, curiosity, a surprisingly sharp grief.

  The sense of relief that Taras felt when he heard the rolling, rapidly growing explosion of sound and looked back was as nothing he’d ever felt in all his life.

  He was saved, reprieved, divested of the massive burden that had been crushing him like a weight too heavy to shoulder and too vital to disclaim.

  Amid the noise, which was stunning even for the Hippodrome, Scortius came walking up to him, and he was smiling.

  Out of the corner of his eye Taras saw Astorgus hurrying over, his square, bluff features creased with worry. Scortius got there first. As Taras hastily untied himself from the reins of the first chariot and stepped down, lifting off the silver helm, he realized—belatedly—that the other man was not walking or breathing easily, despite the smile. And then he saw the blood.

  ‘Hello there. Have a difficult morning?’ Scortius said easily. He didn’t reach for the helmet.

  Taras cleared his throat. ‘I … didn’t do very well. I can’t seem to—’

  ‘He did just fine!’ said Astorgus, coming up. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  Scortius smiled at him. ‘Fair question. No good answer. Listen, both of you. I have one race in me, maybe. We need to make it count. Taras, you are staying in this chariot. I’m riding Second for you. We are going to win this race and stuff Crescens into the wall or the spina or up his own capacious rectum. Understood?’

  He wasn’t saved, after all. Or, perhaps he was, in a different way.

  ‘I … stay First?’ Taras mumbled.

  ‘Have to. I may not be able to go seven laps.’

  ‘Fuck that. Your doctor knows you are here?’ Astorgus asked.

  ‘As it happens, he does.’

  ‘What? He … allowed this?’

  ‘Hardly. He’s disowned me. Said he takes no responsibility if I die out here.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Astorgus. ‘Should I?’

  Scortius laughed, or tried to. He put a hand to his side, involuntarily. Taras saw the track steward coming over. Normally this sort of delay for an on-track colloquy would be prohibited, but the steward was a veteran and knew he was dealing with something unusual. People were still screaming. They would have to quiet a bit before the race could start in any case.

  ‘Welcome back, charioteer,’ he said briskly. ‘Are you riding this race?’

  ‘I am,’ said Scortius. ‘How’s your wife, Darvos?’

  The steward smiled. ‘Better, thank you. The boy sits out?’

  ‘The boy rides First chariot,’ said Scortius. ‘I’ll take Second. Isanthus sits. Astorgus, will you tell him? And have them redo the reins on the trace horses the way I like them?’

  The steward nodded his head and turned away to report to the starter. Astorgus was still staring at Scortius. He hadn’t moved.

  ‘You are sure?’ he said. ‘Is this worth it? One race?’

  ‘Important race,’ the injured man said. ‘For a few reasons. Some that you won’t know.’ He smiled thinly, but not with his eyes this time. Astorgus hesitated a heartbeat longer, then nodded slowly and walked away towards the second Blue chariot. Scortius turned back to Taras.

  ‘All right. Here we go. Two things,’ the Glory of the Blues said quietly. ‘One, Servator is the best trace horse in the Empire, but only if you ask him to be. He’s conceited and lazy, otherwise. Likes to slow down and look at our statues. Scream at him.’ He smiled. ‘Took me a long time to realize what I could make him do. You can go faster in the turns with him holding the inside than you will ever believe you can—until you’ve done it the first few times. Stay wide awake at the start. Remember how he can make the other three cut with him?’

  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.