And just now Scortius, First of the Blues, to whose glory a silver statue had been promised tonight for the Hippodrome spina, was glancing up, soup spoon in hand, and murmuring to Strumosus, ‘What can I say, my friend? The soup is worthy of the banquet hall of the god.’
‘It is,’ echoed the red-haired Rhodian beside him. ‘It is wonderful.’ His expression was rapt, as revealing as Strumosus had said faces could be at such times.
Strumosus, entirely relaxed now, sitting at the head of the table pouring wine for his three guests, had benignly tilted his head sideways. He said: ‘Young Kyros over there attended to it. He has the makings of a cook.’
Two sentences. Simple words. Kyros feared he might weep for joy and pride. He did not, of course. He wasn’t a child, after all. He did blush, unfortunately, and lower his head before all the approving smiles. And then he began waiting ardently for the moment, released to the privacy of his cot in the apprentices’ room, when he could reclaim-over and again-that miraculous sequence of words and the expressions that had followed. Scortius had said. Then the Rhodian had added. Then Strumosus had said …
Kyros and Rasic were given the next day to themselves: an unexpected holiday, a reward for working all night. Rasic went whistling off to the harbour to buy a woman in a caupona. Kyros used the free time to go to his parents’ apartment down in the overcrowded, pungent warrens of the Hippodrome where he’d grown up. He told them, shyly, about what had been said the night before. His father, a man of few words, had touched his son’s shoulder with a scarred, bitten hand before going off to feed his beasts. His mother, rather less reserved, had screamed.
Then she had bustled out of their tiny apartment to tell all her friends, before buying and lighting an entire row of thanksgiving candles in the Hippodrome’s own chapel. For once, Kyros didn’t think she was being excessive.
The makings of a cook.
Strumosus had said that!
They didn’t end up going to bed that night. There was food fit for the god’s palaces behind the sun and wine to equal it in the blessedly warm, firelit kitchen. They finished with an herbal tea, just before sunrise, that reminded Crispin of the one Zoticus had served him before his journey had begun-which reminded him of Linon, and then home, which made him think, again, of how far away he was. Among strangers, but less so after tonight, it felt. He sipped the hot tea and allowed the faint dizziness of extreme fatigue to wash over him, a sense of distance, of words and movements drifting towards his awareness from far away.
Scortius had gone out to the stables to check on his best horse. Now he came back, rubbing his hands together after the pre-dawn chill of the air, and took the bench next to Crispin again. A calm man, alert and unassuming, for all his wealth and renown. A generous spirit. He’d run madly in the darkness to warn them of danger. That said something.
Crispin looked at Carullus across the stone table. Not a truth to call this man a stranger now, really. Among other things, he knew the big soldier well enough to realize he was hiding discomfort. The wounds weren’t dangerous, they’d been assured by the surgeon, but they had to be hurting now, and Carullus would carry new scars from both of them. He had also lost men he’d known a long time tonight. Might even be blaming himself for that; Crispin wasn’t sure.
They had no idea who’d paid for the assault. Soldiers on leave were not particularly expensive to hire in the City, it seemed. It required only some determination to arrange an abduction or even a killing. A runner had been sent with a message from Carullus to his surviving men-the ones who had taken the architect home would be expecting them at the inn. It would be a hard message for them to hear, Crispin thought. Carullus, a commander, had lost two men in his charge, but the soldiers would have lost companions. There was a difference.