‘Of course not, my lord,’ the Strategos said. His piety was well known. ‘We are all your servants. It shall be as you say, thrice-glorious lord,’ said Gesius the Chancellor, bowing with a supple grace for so aged a man. Bonosus saw others beginning to move, react, take action. He felt paralysed by the gravity of what had just been decided. Valerius was going to fight for his throne. With a handful of men. He knew that if they had but walked a little west from this palace, across the autumn serenity of the gardens, the Emperor and Empress could have been down a stone staircase in the cliff and onto a trim craft and away to sea before anyone was the wiser. If the reports were correct, better than a hundred and fifty thousand people were in the streets right now. Leontes had requested thirty archers. Auxilius would have his Excubitors. Two thousand men, perhaps. Not more. He gazed at the Empress, straight-backed, immobile as a statue, centred in the window. Not an accident, that positioning, he suspected. She would know how to place herself to best effect. The vestments of Empire. A shroud.
He remembered the Emperor looking down at his corpulent, sweating taxation officer. There were stories circulating of what Lysippus had done to the two clerics in one of his underground rooms. Tales of what transpired there had made the rounds for some time now. Ugly stories. Lysippus the Calysian had been a well-made man once, Bonosus remembered: strong features, a distinctive voice, the unusual green eyes. He’d had a great deal of power for a long time, however. He couldn’t be corrupted or bribed in his duties, everyone knew that, but everyone also knew that corruption could take . . . other forms.
Bonosus was perfectly aware that his own habits went to the borders of the acceptable, but the rumoured depravities of the fat man-with boys, coerced wives, felons, slaves-repulsed him. Besides which, Lysip-pus’s tax reforms and pursuit of the wealthier classes had cost Bonosus substantial sums in the past. He didn’t know which aspect of the man outraged him more. He did know, because he’d been quietly approached more than once, that there was more to this riot than the blind rage of the common people. A good many of the patricians of Sarantium and the provinces would not be displeased to see Valerius of Trakesia gone and a more … pliant figure on the Golden Throne.
Watching in silence, Bonosus saw the Emperor murmur something to the man on the bench beside him. Lysippus looked up quickly. He straightened his posture with an effort, flushing. Valerius smiled thinly, then moved away. Bonosus never knew what was said. There was a bustle of activity at the time and an endless hammering from over by the gates.
Having been summoned to this gathering purely for the procedural formality of it-the Senate still, officially, advised the Emperor on the people’s behalf-Bonosus found himself standing uncertainly, superfluous and afraid, between a delicately wrought silver tree and the open eastern window. The Empress turned her head and saw him. Alixana smiled. Sitting three rows behind her now in the kathisma, his face burning again with the memory, Plautus Bonosus recalled his Empress saying to him, in an intimate tone of arch, diverted curiosity, as if they were sharing a dining couch at a banquet for some ambassador, ‘Do tell me, Senator, assuage my womanly curiosity. Is the younger son of Regalius Paresis as beautiful unclothed as he is when fully garbed?’
Taras, fourth rider of the Reds, didn’t like his position. He didn’t like it at all. In fact, being as honest as a man ought to be with himself and his god, he hated it like scorpions in his boots.
While the handlers held his agitated horses in check behind the iron barrier, Taras distracted himself from the pointed glances of the rider on his left by checking the knot of his reins behind his back. The reins had to be well tied. It was too easy to lose a handgrip on them in the frenzy of a race. Then Taras checked the hang of the knife at his waist. More than one charioteer had been claimed by the Ninth Driver because he couldn’t cut himself free of the reins when his chariot toppled and he was dragged like a straw toy behind the horses. You raced between one kind of disaster and another, Taras thought. Always.