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, Martmian-‘
‘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 Cams 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 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.