Kyros shuffled to a stool and sat down heavily, hearing that. He knew who had been on gate duty. Short straw on a banquet night. He was beginning to feel sick.
Strumosus showed no reaction at all. He looked at the third figure in the kitchen, a smooth-shaven, very well-dressed man with flaming red hair and a grim face.
‘You are the Rhodian they wanted?’
The man nodded briefly.
‘Of course you are. Do tell me, I pray you,’ said the master cook of the Blues, while men fought and died in the dark outside his kitchen, ‘have you ever tasted lamprey from the lake near Baiana?’
There followed a brief silence in the room. Kyros and the others were moderately familiar with this sort of thing; no one else could possibly be.
‘I’m… ah, very sorry,’ said the red-haired man, eventually, with a composure that did him credit, ‘I cannot say I have.’
Strumosus shook his head in regret. ‘A very great pity,’ he murmured. ‘Neither have I. A legendary dish, you must understand. Aspalius wrote of it four hundred years ago. He used a white sauce. I don’t, myself, actually. Not with lamprey.’
This produced a further, similar, silence. A number of torches were in the courtyard now as more and more of the Blues appeared in hastily thrown-on boots and clothing. The latecomers had missed the battle, it seemed. No one was resisting now. Someone had silenced the dogs. Kyros, peering through the doorway, saw Astorgus coming quickly across and then up the three steps to the portico. The factionarius paused there, looking down at the fallen man for a moment, then entered the kitchen.
‘There are six dead intruders out there,’ he said, to no one in particular. His face showed anger but no fatigue.
‘All dead?’ It was the big soldier. ‘I’m sorry for that. I had questions.’
‘They entered our compound,’ Astorgus said flatly. ‘With swords. No one does that. Our horses are here.’ He stared at the wounded man a moment, assessing. Then looking back over his shoulder, he snapped, ‘Toss the bodies outside the gate and notify the Urban Prefect’s officers. I’ll deal with them when they arrive. Call me when they do. Someone get Columella in here, and send for the doctor.’ He turned to Scortius.
Kyros couldn’t decipher his expression. The two men looked at each other for what seemed a long time. Fifteen years ago Astorgus had been exactly what Scortius was now: the most celebrated chariot-racer in !’ the Empire.
‘What happened?’ the older man asked, finally. ‘Jealous husband? Again?’
In fact, he had assumed that to be the case, at first.
A measure of his success in the dark after the racing and the feasts had always been due to the fact that he was not a man who actively pursued women. Notwithstanding this, it would have been an inaccuracy to suggest that he didn’t desire them acutely, or that his pulse did not quicken when certain invitations were waiting for him at his home when he returned from the Hippodrome or the stables.
That evening-end of the Dykania revels, end of the racing season- when he came home to change for the Imperial banquet, a brief, unsigned, unscented note had been among those waiting for him on the marble table inside the entranceway. He hadn’t needed a signature, or scent. The laconic, entirely characteristic phrasing told him that he’d conquered more than Crescens of the Greens in the first race that afternoon.
‘If you are equal to avoiding a different set of dangers,’ the neat, small handwriting read, ‘my maidservant will be waiting on the eastern side of the Traversite Palace after the Emperor’s feast. You will know her. She is to be trusted. Are you?’
No more than that.
The remaining letters were set aside. He had wanted this woman for a long time. Wit drew him, of late, and her demeanour of serene, amused detachment, the aura of… difficulty about her. He was fairly certain that the withdrawn manner was only a public one. That there was a great deal beneath that formal austerity. That perhaps even her extremely powerful husband had never fathomed that.