The Excubitors wore their visored helmets. They had already drawn their swords. What ensued was a slaughter. Those facing them were so packed together they could scarcely lift arms to defend themselves. The massacre continued as the sun went down, autumn darkness adding another dimension to the terror. People died of swords, arrows, underfoot, smothered in the blood-soaked crush.
It was a clear night, Pertennius’s chronicle meticulously recorded, the stars and the white moon looking down. A stupefying number of people died in the Hippodrome that evening and night. The Victory Riot ended in a black river of moonlit blood saturating the sands.
Two years later, Bonosus watched chariots hurtle around the spina along that same sand. Another sea-horse dived-they had been dolphins until recently-another egg was flipped. Five laps done. He was remembering a white moon suspended in the eastern window of the throne room as Leontes-unscathed, calm as a man at ease in his favourite bath, golden hair lightly tousled as if by steam-returned to the Attenine Palace with a gibbering and palsied Symeonis in tow. The aged Senator hurled himself prone on the mosaic-inlaid floor before Valerius, weeping in his terror. The Emperor, sitting on the throne now, looked down upon him. ‘It is our belief you were coerced in this,’ he murmured as Symeonis wailed and beat his head against the floor. Bonosus remembered that.
‘Yes! Oh yes, oh my dear, thrice-exalted lord! I was’ Bonosus had seen an odd expression in Valerius’s round, smooth face. He was not a man-it was known-who enjoyed killing people. He’d had the Judicial Code changed already to eliminate execution as a punishment for many crimes. And Symeonis was an old, pathetic victim of the mob more than anything else. Bonosus was prepared to wager on exile for the elderly Senator. ‘My lord?’
Alixana had remained by the window. Valerius turned to her. He hadn’t spoken whatever it was he’d been about to say.
‘My lord,’ repeated the Empress quietly, ‘he was crowned. Garbed in porphyry before the people. Willingly or no. That makes two Emperors in this room. In this city. Two . . . living Emperors.’ Even Symeonis fell silent then, Bonosus remembered. The Chancellor’s eunuchs killed the old man that same night. In the morning his naked, dishonoured body was displayed for all to see, hanging from the wall beside the Bronze Gates in its flabby, pale white shame. Also in the morning came the renewed Proclamation, in all the holy places of Sarantium, that Jad’s anointed Emperor had heeded the will of his dearly beloved people and the hated Lysippus was already banished outside the walls.
The two arrested clerics, both alive if rather the worse for their tenure with the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, were released, though not before a careful meeting was held amongst themselves, the Master of Offices, and Zakarios, the Most Holy Eastern Patriarch of Jad, in which it was made clear that they were to remain silent about the precise details of what had, in fact, been done to them. Neither appeared anxious to elaborate, in any case.
It was, as always, important to have the clerics of the City participate in any attempts to bring order to the people. The co-operation of the clergy tended to be expensive in Sarantium, however. The first formal declaration of the Emperor’s extremely ambitious plans for the rebuilding of the Great Sanctuary took place in that same meeting.
To this day, Bonosus wasn’t at all certain how Pertennius had learned about that. He was, however, in a position to confirm another aspect of the historian’s chronicle of the riot. The Sarantine civil service had always been concerned with accurate figures. The agents of the Master of Offices and the Urban Prefect had been industrious in their observations and calculations. Bonosus, as leader of the Senate, had seen the same report Pertennius had.
Thirty-one thousand people had died in the Hippodrome under that white moon two years ago.
After the wild burst of excitement at the start, four laps unrolled with only marginal changes in positioning. The three quadrigas that had started inside had all moved off the line quickly enough to hold their positions, and since they were Red, White, and the Blues’ second driver, the pace was not especially fast. Crescens of the Greens was tucked in behind these three next to his own Second, who had led him across the track in their initial move. Scortius’s horses were still right behind his rival’s chariot. As the racers hurtled past them on the fifth lap, Carullus gripped Crispin’s arm again and rasped, ‘Wait for it! He’s giving orders now! ‘Crispin, straining to see through the swirling dust, realized that Crescens was indeed shouting something to his left and the Greens’ number two was relaying it forward.