"You've never seen brilliance, a gift, show itself young? Aren't you young-for all the false dyeing of your hair, and that ridiculous stick?"
Taras saw the doctor look up then, and in the light of the carried torches and lanterns, he registered the presence of something-a memory? — in the Bassanid's face.
The man said nothing, though. There was blood all over his clothing, a smear of it on one cheek. He didn't look young, just now.
"This boy was my legacy," Strumosus went on. "I have no sons, no heirs. He would have… outdone me in his day. Would have been remembered.
Again the doctor hesitated. He looked down again at the body. After a moment, he sighed. "He may yet be," he murmured. "Who decided he was dead? He won't survive if left here on the stones, but Columella should be able to clean the wound and pack it-he saw how I do it. And he knows how to stitch. After that"
"He's alive!" Rasic cried and rushed forward, dropping beside Kyros.
"Careful!" the doctor snapped. "Get a board and lift him on it. And whatever you do, don't let that idiot Ampliarus bleed him. If he suggests it throw him out of the room. Give him to Columella. Now where," he said, turning to Strumosus, "is my escort? I am ready to go home. I am… extremely tired." He leaned upon the stick he carried.
The chef looked at him. "One more patient. This one. Please? I told you, I have no sons. I believe he… I believe… Do you not have children? Do you understand what I am saying?"
"There are doctors here. None of these people today were my patients. I shouldn't have even come for the racer. If people insist on being fools-"
"Then they are only being as the god has made them, or as Perun and the Lady have. Doctor, if this boy dies it will be a triumph for Azal. Stay. Honour your profession."
"Columella-"
"— is a doctor to our horses. Please."
The Bassanid stared at him a long moment, then shook his head. "I was promised an escort. This is not the medicine I practise, not the way I conduct my life."
"None of us conducts his life this way by choice," said Strumosus, in a voice no one there had ever heard him use. "Who chooses violence in the dark?"
There was a silence. The Bassanid's face was expressionless. Strumosus looked at him a long time. When he spoke again it was almost in a whisper.
"If you are decided, we will not hold you, of course. I regret my unkind words before. The Blues of Sarantium thank you for your aid here, today and tonight. You will not go unrequited." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Two of you go down to the street with torches. Don't leave the laneway. Call for the Urban Prefect's men. They won't be far. They'll take the doctor home. Rasic, run back in and bring four men and a table plank. Tell Columella to get ready for us."
The frieze broke as men moved to his bidding. The doctor turned his back on them all and stood, gazing out at the street. Taras could tell from the way he stood how utterly exhausted he was. The stick didn't look like an affectation; it looked like something he needed. Taras knew the feeling: end of a day's racing, when the simple act of walking off the sands and down the tunnel to the changing rooms seemed to demand more strength than he had.
He looked past the Bassanid to the street as well. And in that instant he saw a sumptuous litter go by at the head of their laneway: an apparition, an astonishing evocation of gilded grace and beauty in an ugly night. The two torch-bearers had neared the end of the lane; the litter was illuminated with a brief, golden glow and then it moved on, was gone, heading towards the Hippodrome, the Imperial Precinct, the Great Sanctuary, an unreal image, swift as dreaming, an object from some other world. Taras blinked, and swallowed hard.
The two messengers began calling for men of the Urban Prefect. They were all over the streets tonight. He looked at the eastern physician again and suddenly-incongruously-had an image of his mother, a memory from his own childhood. A vision of her standing in that same way before the cooking fire, having just refused him permission to go out again and back to the stables or hippodrome at home (to watch a foal being birthed or the breaking of a stallion to the harness and chariot, or anything to do with horses)-and then taking a deep breath and, out of love, indulgence, some understanding that he himself was only just beginning to realize, turning to her son and changing her mind, saying, 'All right. But take some of the elixir first, it is cold now, and wear your heavy cloak… "
The Bassanid took a deep breath. He turned. In the darkness Taras thought of his mother, far away, long ago. The doctor looked at Strumosus.
"All right," he said quietly. "One more patient. Because I am a fool as well. Be sure they lift him onto the board face down, and with his left side first."
Taras's heart was pounding hard. He saw Strumosus staring back at the doctor. The torchlight was erratic, flickering. There were noises in the night now, ahead of them and coming from behind as Rasic brought aid. A cold wind blew torch smoke between the two men.
"You do have a son, don't you?" Strumosus of Amoria said, so softly Taras barely heard it.
After a moment, the Bassanid said, "I do."
The carriers came out then, hurrying behind Rasic, bearing a plank from the dining hall. They lifted Kyros onto it, carefully arid as instructed, and then they all went back in. The Bassanid paused at the gates, crossing the threshold with his left foot first.
Taras followed, the last to go in, still thinking of his mother, who also had a son.
She had a sense that much of her life here in the city they called the centre of the world was spent at windows, in one room or another over the streets, looking out, observing, not actually doing anything. It wasn't necessarily bad, Kasia thought-the things she'd done at the posting inn, the tasks she'd had to perform back home (especially after the men had died) weren't in any way desirable, but there was still this odd feeling, at times, that here at the heart of where the world was supposed to be unfolding she was merely a spectator, as if the whole of Sarantium was a kind of theatre or hippodrome and she was in her seat, looking down.
On the other hand, what sort of active role was there for a woman to play here? And it certainly couldn't be said that she had any least desire to be in the streets now. There was so much movement in the city, so little calm, so many people one didn't know at all. No wonder people became agitated: what was there to make them feel safe, or sure? If an Emperor was their father, in some complex way, why shouldn't they become dangerously uncontrolled when he died? At her window Kasia decided that it would be good to have a child, a household full of them, and soon. A family, they might be something to defend you-as you defended them-from the world.
It was dark now, the stars overhead between houses, torches below, soldiers marching, calling out. The white moon would be up behind the house: even in the city Kasia knew the phases of the moons. The violence of the day had mostly passed. The taverns had been closed, the whores ordered off the streets. She wondered where the beggars and the homeless would go. And she wondered when Carullus would be home. She watched; had lit no lamps in this room, could not be seen from below.
She was less fearful than she'd thought she might be. Time passing did that. One could adjust to many things, it seemed, given enough time: crowds, soldiers, the smells and noises, chaos of the city, the utter absence of anything green and quiet, unless one counted the silence in the chapels during the day sometimes, and she didn't like the chapels of Jad.