Kay, Guy Gavriel – Sarantine Mosaic 01 – Sailing to Sarantium

He saw no daemons or spirits or flickers of flame on the paving stones, but there were men under the marble roof of the almost-finished por­tico of the Great Sanctuary.

There ought not to have been. Not at this time of night, and not spread out so precisely, like soldiers. He would not have been surprised to find drunken revellers outstaying the end of Dykania, wending their way in the cold through the construction materials in the square before the Bronze Gates, but this motionless cluster who thought they were con­cealed by pillar and cloak and darkness sent a different sort of message. From where they waited on the portico, these men-whoever they were-could see the gates clearly, and the first movement he made from his own position would bring him into the open, even if they didn’t know this small doorway was here.

He wasn’t tired any more.

Danger and a challenge were the heady, unmixed wine of life to

Scortius of Soriyya: another reason he lived for the speed and blood of the track and for these illicit trysts in the Precinct or beyond it. He knew this, in fact, had known it for many years.

He breathed a quick, forbidden invocation to Heladikos and began considering his options. Those shadowed men would be armed, of course. They were here for a purpose. He had only a knife. He could sprint across the open space towards the Hippodrome Forum, catching them by sur­prise, but they had an angle on him. If any of them could run he’d be cut off. And a footrace lacked … any sort of dignity.

He reluctantly decided the only intelligent course, now that he’d spot­ted them, was to slip back into the Precinct. He could find a bed among the Excubitors in their barracks-they’d be proud to have him and would ask no questions. Or he could go to the Bronze Gates openly from inside, inviting unfortunate speculation at this hour, and request that a message be carried to the Blues’ compound. He’d have an escort party in very little time.

Either way, more people would discover how late he’d been here than he really cared to have know. It wasn’t as if his nocturnal habits were so very secret, but he did pride himself on doing as little as possible to draw attention to individual episodes. Dignity, again, and a respect for the women who trusted him. He lived much of his life in the eye of the world. He preferred some details to be his own and not the property of every envious or titillated rumourmonger in the bathhouses and barracks and cauponae of Sarantium.

Not much choice here, alas. It was sprint through the street like an apprentice dodging his master’s cudgel, or slip back in and put a wry face on things with the Excubitors or at the gates.

He really wasn’t about to run.

He’d already taken the key back out of his leather purse when he saw a flare of light on the Sanctuary portico as one of the massive doors swung open. Three men stepped out, vividly outlined against the bright­ness behind them. It was very late; this was odd in the extreme. The Great Sanctuary was not yet open to the public; only the workers and architects had been inside. Watching, unseen, Scortius saw the waiting group of men on the portico shift silently and begin to spread out, in immediate response. He was too far away to hear anything, or recognize anyone, but he saw two of the three men before the doors turn and bow to the third, who withdrew inside. And that sent another sort of warning to him.

A blade of light narrowed and disappeared as the heavy door was closed. The two men turned to stand alone and exposed on the porch amid the debris of construction in windy darkness. One of the two turned and said something to the other. They were manifestly unaware of swordsmen spreading out around them.

Men died at night in the City all the time.

People went to the graves of the violently dead with cheiromancers’ curse-tablets, ignoring the imprecations of the clergy as they invoked death or dismemberment for the charioteers and their horses, fierce pas­sion from a longed-for woman, sickness to a hated neighbour’s child or mule, storm winds for an enemy’s merchant vessel. Blood and magic, flames flitting along the night streets. Heladikos’s fires. He had seen them.