And from the immediate smile on the charioteer’s face, he knew that he had it. He did. A puzzle-solving mind. All his life.
In the waiting silence, Crispin said, with growing confidence, ‘I would say that the very experienced Scortius took his cue from the darkness of the crowd as he reached the turn below the Imperial Box, my lord Emperor. There must have been other things he knew that I cannot even imagine, but I’d hazard that was the most important thing.’
‘The darkness of the crowd,’ said the Master of Offices. Faustinus glared. ‘What nonsense is this?’
‘I hope it is not nonsense, my lord. I refer to their faces, of course.’ Crispin said no more. He was looking at the charioteer beside him.
Everyone was, by now.
‘We seem,’ the Soriyyan said, at length, ‘to have a chariot-driver here.’ He laughed, showing white, even teeth. ‘I fear the Rhodian is no mosaicist at all. He is a dangerous deceiver, my lord.’ ‘He is correct?’ said the Emperor sharply. ‘He is entirely so, thrice-exalted lord.’ ‘Explain!’ It was a command, whip like.
‘I am honoured to be asked,’ said the champion of the Blues, calmly. ‘You are not asked. Cams Crispus of Varena, explain what you mean.’ Scortius looked abashed, for the first time. Crispin realized that the Emperor was genuinely vexed, and he guessed why: there was, clearly, another puzzle-solving mind in this room.
Crispin said cautiously, ‘Sometimes a man who sees a thing for the first time may observe that which others, more familiar, cannot truly see any more. I confess that I grew weary of the later races in the long day, and my gaze wandered. It went to the stands across the spina.’
‘And that taught you how to win a chariot race?’ Valerius’s brief pique had passed. He was engaged again, Crispin saw. Beside him, Alixana’s dark gaze was unreadable.
‘It taught me how a better man than I might do so. A mosaicist, as I told you, my lord, sees the changing colours and light of Jad’s world with some . . . precision. He must, or will fail at his own tasks. I spent a part of the afternoon watching what happened when the chariots went past the far stands and people turned to follow their passage.’
Valerius was leaning forward now, his brow furrowed in concentration. He held up a hand suddenly. ‘Wait! I’ll hazard this. Wait. Yes… the impression is brighter, paler when they look straight ahead-faces towards you-and darker when their heads turn away, when you see hair and head-coverings?’
Crispin said nothing. Only bowed. Beside him, Scortius of the Blues wordlessly did the same.
‘You have earned your own ruby, my lord,’ said the charioteer.
‘I have not. I still don’t… You now, Scortius. Explain!’
The Soriyyan said, ‘When I reached the kathisma turn, my lord Emperor, the stands to my right were many-hued, quite dark as I drove past Crescens to the inside. They ought not to have been, with the Firsts of the Greens and Blues right beneath them. Their faces ought to have been turned directly to us as we went by, offering a brightness in the sunlight. There is never time to see actual faces in a race, only an imprests the Rhodian said-of light or dark. The stands before the turn were dark. Which meant the watchers were turned away from us. Why would they turn away from us?’
‘A collision behind you,’ said the Emperor of Sarantium, nodding his head slowly, his fingers steepled together now, arms on the arms of his throne. ‘Something more compelling, even more dramatic than the two champions in their duel.’
‘A violent collision, my lord. Only that would divert them, turn their heads away. You will recall that the original accident happened before Crescens and I moved up. It appeared a minor one, we both saw it and avoided it. The crowd would have seen it as well. For the Hippodrome to be turned away from the two of us, something violent had to have happened since that first collision. And if a third-or a fourth-chariot had smashed into the first pair, then the Hippodrome crews were not going to be able to clear the track.’