Crispin shivered again, uncontrollably, a feeling of something unseen brushing against him, against his life. His hands were shaking. He stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. Who was it who had sung that lament? What was being mourned with pagan words in a chapel of Jad? He thought of Linon, in grey mist on the cold grass. Remember me. Did the half-world linger forever, once you entered it? He didn't know. He didn't know.
He clasped his hands together, staring at them-scratches, cuts, old scars-until they grew steady again. He spoke the Invocation to Jad into shadow and silence and he made the sign of the sun disk and then he asked the god for mercy and for light, for the dead and the living he knew, here and far away. And then he rose and went back out into the day, walking home along streets and lanes, through squares, under covered colonnades, hearing the noise from the Hippodrome behind him as he went-very loud now, something happening. He saw men running, appearing from all directions, carrying sticks and knives. He saw a sword. His heart was still hammering like a drum, painful in his breast.
It was beginning. Or, seen another way, it was ending. He ought not to care so much. He did, though, more than words could tell. It was a truth, not to be denied. But there was no role left for him to play.
He was wrong, in the event.
Shirin was waiting when he arrived at his home. She had Danis about her neck.
The riot boiled up with unbelievable speed. One moment the Blues were running their Victory Lap, the next, the screaming had changed, turned ugly, and there was savage violence in the Hippodrome.
Cleander, in the tunnel where Scortius lay, looked back out through the Processional Gates and saw men battling with fists and then knives as the factions fought through the neutral stands to get at each other. People were being trampled in their efforts to get out of the way. He saw someone lifted bodily and thrown through the air, landing on heads several rows below. As he watched, a woman, twisting to get out of the way of a cluster of antagonists, fell to her knees and Cleander imagined-even at this distance and with the uproar all around-that he could hear her screams as they trampled her. People were milling desperately towards the exits in a brutal crush of bodies.
He looked at his stepmother, then at the kathisma at the far end of the long straight. His father was up there, too far away to be of any help to them at all. He didn't even know they'd come today. Cleander drew a deep breath. He took a last quick look at the doctors labouring over the prone body of Scortius and then he left. He took his stepmother gently by the elbow and led her further into the tunnel. She came obediently, saying nothing at all. He knew this place extremely well. They came at length to a small, locked door. Cleander picked the lock (it wasn't difficult, and he'd done it before) and then unhooked the latch and they emerged at the very eastern end of the Hippodrome.
Thenai's was compliant, eerily detached, seemingly oblivious to the panic all around them. Cleander looked around the corner for her litter, back near the main gates through which they'd entered, but immediately realized there was no point trying to get to it: the fighting had already spilled out of the Hippodrome. The factions were brawling in the forum now. Men were coming, at a run. The noise from inside was huge, ugly. He took his stepmother's elbow again and they started the other way, as quickly as he could make her go.
He had an image in his mind, couldn't shake it: the expression on Astorgus's face when the yellow-clad gate attendant had stepped forward and reported what Cleander himself had seen but had determined not to tell. Astorgus had gone rigid, his face a mask. After a frozen moment, the Blues" factionarius had turned on his heel without a word and gone back out onto the sands.
On the track, the Blues had still been celebrating, the young rider who'd won the race doing victory laps with the two White riders.
Scortius had been unconscious in the tunnel. His Bassanid physician, assisted by the Blues" own doctor, desperately trying to stanch the flow of blood and keep him breathing, among the living. They were covered with blood themselves by then.
A few moments later those in the tunnel had heard the cheering in the stands turn to something else, a deep, terrifying sound, and then the fighting had begun. At that point they didn't know why, or what Astorgus had done.
Cleander hurried his stepmother up onto a colonnade, letting a swarm of young men sprint past in the street, shouting, waving cudgels and knives. He saw someone with a sword. Two weeks ago he could have been that man, racing towards bloodshed with a weapon in his hand. Now he saw all of them as threats, wild-eyed and uncontrolled. Something had happened to him. He kept a hand on his stepmother's arm.
He heard himself hailed by name. Turned swiftly to the loud voice and felt a surge of relief. It was the soldier, Carullus: the one he'd met in the Spina last autumn, the one whose wedding feast Shirin had just hosted. Carullus had his left arm around his wife and a knife in his right hand. They came quickly up the steps to the colonnade.
"In stride with me, lad," he said, his manner brisk but entirely calm. "We'll get the women home so they can have a quiet cup of something warm on a pleasant day in spring. Isn't it a beautiful day? I love this time of year."
Cleander was unspeakably grateful. Carullus was a big, intimidating man, and he moved like a soldier. No one disturbed them as they went, though they saw one man crack a staff over the head of another right beside them in the street. The staff broke; the struck man fell, awkwardly. Carullus winced. "Broken neck," he said matter-of-factly, looking back, keeping them moving. "He won't get up."
They came down into the road again at the end of the colonnade. Someone hurled a cookpot from a window overhead, narrowly missing them. Carullus stooped and picked it up. "A wedding gift! How unexpected! Is this better than the one we have, love?" he asked his wife, grinning.
The woman shook her head, managed a smile. Her eyes were terrified. Carullus tossed the pot over his shoulder. Cleander glanced at his stepmother. No terror there. Nothing there. It was as if she hadn't even heard or seen any of this: the arrival of companions, the man struck down-killed-right beside them. She seemed in another world entirely.
They continued without further incident, though the streets were crowded with running, shouting figures and Cleander saw shopkeepers hastily closing their shop fronts and doors, boarding up. They reached their house. The servants were watching for them. Well trained, they had already set about barricading the courtyard gates, and those waiting at the door were holding heavy sticks. This was hardly the first riot in memory.
Cleander's mother entered the house without speaking. She hadn't spoken since they'd left the Hippodrome. Since the race had begun, he suddenly realized. It fell to him to offer thanks to the soldier. He stammered his gratitude, invited them in. Carullus declined with a smile. "I'd best report to the Strategos, soon as I get my wife home. A small word of advice: stay indoors tonight, lad. The Excubitors will be out, for certain, and not choosing with any great care where they strike in the dark."
"I will," said Cleander. He thought about his father, but decided that wasn't a cause of concern: from the kathisma they could get back into the Imperial Precinct. His father could wait there or get a soldiers" escort home. His own duty was to his mother and his sisters here. Keeping them safe.
Dictating his celebrated Reflections forty years afterwards, Cleander Bonosus would describe the day the Emperor Valerius II was assassinated by the Daleinoi, the day his own stepmother killed herself in her bath- opening her wrists with a small blade no one knew she had-as the day he became a man. Schoolboys would learn and copy the well-known phrases, or memorize them for recitation: Just as it is adversity that hardens the spirit of a people, so can adversity strengthen the soul of a man. What we master becomes ours to use.