The winter training had been rendered almost meaningless, all the tactical discussions purely abstract. He wasn't riding Second. He had the magnificent, fabled Servator in the left traces in front of him, and the three other horses of the lead team. He was wearing the silver helmet. He was First Chariot of the Blues.
Scortius had disappeared. Hadn't been seen since the week before the season began.
The opening day had been brutal, overwhelming. Taras had gone from riding Fourth for the lowly Reds to wearing the silver helmet for the mighty Blues, leading the grand procession out, then battling Crescens in front of eighty thousand people who had never even heard of him. He had thrown up violently twice between races. Had washed his face after, listened to Astorgus's fierce words of encouragement, and gone back out again onto the sands that could break your heart.
He'd managed to come second four of six times that first day, and three times again in the four races he'd ridden this morning. Crescens of the Greens, confident, ferociously aggressive, showing off his brilliant new right-sider, had won seven on that opening day and four more this morning. Eleven victories in a session and a half! The Greens were delirious with joy. The notion of unfair advantage didn't even enter the picture when you started a season this brilliantly.
No one knew, even now, where Scortius was. Or, if anyone did know, they weren't telling.
Taras was in over his head, trying not to drown.
There were a certain number of people who knew, in fact, but fewer than one might have supposed. Secrecy had been the first item of discussion with the Master of the Senate, when he'd answered an urgent request that he attend at his own small house. There were, in truth, a variety of ways to play this situation, Bonosus had thought, but the absolute insistence of the injured man had ended the conversation. Accordingly, Astorgus and Bonosus himself were the only significant figures aware of where Scortius was right now. The recently arrived (and blessedly competent) Bassanid physician also knew, of course, and so did the household servants. The latter were famously discreet, and the doctor was unlikely to betray the confidence of a patient.
The Senator did not know that his own son was privy to-and instrumental in-these highly unusual circumstances. Nor did he know that one other person was to receive a brief note:
Very obviously you are a dangerous person and your street more perilous than one might have supposed. I appear unlikely to go to the god yet, to complain, and I believe our failed negotiations will remain unreported. It may be necessary to resume them at some point.
Another note, in the same hand, went by way of Astorgus and one of the Blues" messenger boys to the house of Plautus Bonosus, but not to the Senator. It read,
I hope one day to tell you how greatly inconvenienced I have been by your family conference the other night.
The woman who read this did not smile, doing so. She burned the note in her fireplace.
The Urban Prefecture was quietly advised that the charioteer was alive, had been injured in the course of a tryst he preferred to keep private. It happened often enough. They saw no reason to intervene further. They became very busy keeping order in the streets not long after: the Blue partisans, reeling from the disappearance of their hero and the sectacular opening day of the Greens, were in an ugly mood. More injuries and deaths than customary had ensued after the first race day, but on the whole-with so many soldiers in the City now-the mood of Sarantium was more tense and watchful than actively violent.
The seeds were there, mind you. The most celebrated charioteer in the Empire couldn't simply vanish without serious unrest emerging. The Excubitors were put on notice that their services might yet be required.
All of this had been part of the aftermath. On the night a very badly wounded man had shown up at the door, barely upright, but apologizing politely for his intrusion, the issues in the city house of Plautus Bonosus had been otherwise. Certainly for Rustem of Kerakek they had been.
He had thought he might lose this man, had been secretly grateful he was in Sarantium and not back home: there, having taken on the treatment, he'd have been expensively and perhaps even fatally liable if the chariot-racer had died. This was a very significant figure. There was no parallel in Bassania that came to mind, but it was impossible to ignore the stunned faces of the steward or the Senator's murderous offspring as they helped lay the man named Scortius onto a table that night.
The stab wound was bad, he saw-a deep thrust and then an upward, raking movement. And closing the wound, slowing the heavy bleeding, was severely compromised by the ribs fractured-three or four of them-on the same side. A shortness of breath-that was expected. The lung might well have fallen against the ribs. It might or might not kill. Rustem was astonished to learn that the charioteer had walked here through the streets with these injuries. Carefully he observed the man's breathing on the table, desperately shallow, as if he were belatedly acknowledging the pain.
Rustem set to work. A sedative from his travelling bag, towels, hot water, clean linens, vinegar on a sponge to clean out the wound (painfully), kitchen ingredients he instructed the servants to mix and boil for a temporary dressing: once Rustem was engaged, by the light of the lanterns they'd lit for him, he stopped thinking of implications. The charioteer cried out twice, once with the vinegar (Rustem would have used wine which was easier, if less efficacious, but had judged this man could cope with the pain), and then again, beads of sweat pouring down his face, when Rustem attempted to determine the extent and inward penetration of the broken ribs around the wound. After that he was silent, though breathing very rapidly. The sedative might have helped, but he never lost consciousness.
They controlled the bleeding eventually with lint in the wound. Afterwards, Rustem carefully removed all the packing (following Galinus in this much, at least) and inserted a tube for drainage. That, too, would have hurt. A steady flow of blood-coloured liquid ensued. More than he liked. The man didn't even move. Eventually it slowed. Rustem looked at the household skewers and pins they'd brought him-all he had for fibulae to close the wound. He decided to leave it open for now. With that much liquid he might need to drain again. He wanted to watch the lungs, the breathing.
He applied the household's quickly made poultice (adequately done, with good texture, he noted) and wrapped linens loosely as a first bandage. He wanted a better wound dressing, was inclined to use cinnabar- in modest proportions-for a wound of this sort, knowing it to be poisonous if overemployed. He would try to find proper ingredients somewhere in the morning.
He needed more drainage tubes as well. The ribs required a firmer support but the wound needed to be reachable and observed during the first few days. Merovius's famous quartet of danger signs: redness and swelling with heat and pain. Among the first things a physician learned, east or west.
They moved the charioteer upstairs on the plank of the table. Some bleeding started again when they did so, but that too was to be expected. Rustem mixed a heavier dose of his usual sedative and sat by the man's bed until he saw him sleep.
Just before he did so, his eyes already closed, the charioteer murmured softly in a flat, distant voice that nonetheless suggested he was trying to explain something, "She was closeted with her family, you see."
It was not uncommon for the sedative to cause men to say nonsensical things. Rustem set one of the servants to watch with instructions to summon him immediately if anything at all untoward took place, then he went to bed. Elita was already there-he had told her she should retire to his room. The bed was comfortable, warm with her presence. He fell asleep almost immediately. Physicians needed to know how to do that, among other things.