Sailing to Sarantium

Three doors burst open on the instant.

A score of people sprang into the room and flung themselves prostrate on the floor in obeisance. He saw Gesius and Adrastus, then the Quaestor of the Sacred Palace, the Urban Prefect, the Count of the Imperial Bed- chamber-Hilarinus, whom he didn't trust-the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue. All the highest officers of the Empire. Flattened before him on a green and blue mosaic floor of sea creatures and sea flowers.

In the ensuing stillness, one of the mechanical birds began to sing. Valerius the Emperor laughed aloud.

Very late that same night, the sea wind having long since died to a breath, most of the City asleep, but some not so. Among these, the Holy Order of the Sleepless Ones in their austere chapels, who believed-with fierce and final devotion-that all but a handful of them had to be constantly awake and at prayer through the whole of the night while Jad in his solar chariot negotiated his perilous journey through blackness and bitter ice beneath the world.

The bakers, too, were awake and at work, preparing the bread that was the gift of the Empire to all who dwelt in glorious Sarantium. In winter the glowing ovens would draw people from the darkness seeking warmth-beggars, cripples, streetwalkers, those evicted from their homes and those too new to the Holy City to have found shelter yet. They would move on to the glassmakers and the metalsmiths when the grey, cold day came.

In broiling summer now, the nearly naked bakers worked and swore at their ovens, slick with sweat, quaffing watery beer all night, no attendants at their doors save the rats, scurrying from cast light into shadow.

Torches burning on the better streets proclaimed the houses of the wealthy, and the tread and cry of the Urban Prefect's men warned the illicit to take a certain care elsewhere in the night city. The roaming bands of wilder partisans-Green and Blue each had their violent cadres- tended to ignore the patrols, or, more properly, a lone patrol was inclined to be prudently discreet when the flamboyantly garbed and barbered partisans careened into sight from one tavern or another.

Women, save for the ones who sold themselves or patricians in litters with armed escorts, were not abroad after dark.

This night, however, all the taverns-even the filthiest cauponae where sailors and slaves drank-were closed in response to an Imperial death and an Emperor acclaimed. The shocking events of the day seemed to have subdued even the partisans. No shouting, drunken youths in the loose, eastern clothing of Bassania and the hair-styling of western barbarians could be seen-or heard-slewing through empty streets.

A horse neighed in one of the faction stables by the Hippodrome, and a woman's voice could be heard through an open window over a colo

The god's sun passed in its chariot through ice and past howling daemons under the world. The two moons worshipped-perversely-as goddesses by the Kindath had both set, over west into the wide sea. Only the stars, which no one claimed as holy, shone like strewn diamonds over the city Saranios had founded to be the New Rhodias, and to be more than Rhodias had ever been.

"Oh City, City, ornament of the earth, eye of the world, glory of Jad's creation, will I die before I see you again?"

So, Lysurgos Matanias, posted as ambassador to the Bassanid court two hundred years past, longing in his heart for Sarantium even amid the luxurious eastern splendours of Kabadh. Oh City, City.

In all the lands ruled by that City, with its domes and its bronze and golden doors, its palaces and gardens and statues, forums and theatres and colo

To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness, brilliance, fortune-or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity.

Valerius the Trakesian had become an Emperor.

Heladikos, whom some worshipped as the son of Jad and placed in mosaic upon holy domes, had died in his chariot bringing fire back from the sun.

I

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork.

CHAPTER I

The Imperial Post, along with most of the civil positions in the Sarantine Empire after Valerius died and his nephew, having renamed himself appropriately, took the Golden Throne, was under the hegemony of the Master of Offices. The immensely complex ru

The position of Imperial Courier, charged with the actual carrying of the public mails and court documents, paid only modestly well and involved an almost endless regimen of hard travelling, sometimes through uncertain territory, depending on barbarian or Bassanid activity in a given season. The fact that such positions were avidly solicited, with all the associated bribes, was a reflection of where the position might lead after a few years more than anything else.

The couriers of the Imperial Post were expected to be part-time spies for the Quaestor of Imperial Intelligence, and diligent labour in this unspoken part of the job-coupled with rather more of the associated bribes-might see a man appointed to the intelligence service directly, with more risks, less far-ranging travel, and significantly higher recompense. Along with a chance to be on the receiving end, at last, of some of the bribes changing hands.

As one's declining years approached, an appointment from Intelligence back to, say, ru

The position of courier was, in short, a legitimate career path for a man with sufficient means to make a start but not enough to be launched by his family in anything more promising.

This, as it happened, was a fair description of the competence and background of Pronobius Tilliticus. Born with an unfortunately amusing name (a frequently cursed legacy of his mother’s grandfather and his mother's unfamiliarity with current army vernacular), with limited skill at law or numbers, and only a modest paternal niche in Sarantine hierarchies, Tilliticus had been told over and again how fortunate he was to have had his mother's cousin's aid in securing a courier's position. His obese cousin, soft rump securely spread on a bench among the clerks in the Imperial Revenue office, had been foremost of those to make this observation at family gatherings.