The doors crashed open. The four guards fell backwards. A crowd of citizens-some slaves among them-thrust raucously into the chamber. Then the vanguard stopped, overawed. Mosaics and gold and gems had their uses, Bonosus thought, amused irony still claiming him. The torch-bearing image of Heladikos, riding his chariot towards his father the Sun-an image of no little controversy in the Empire today-looked down from the dome.
No one in the Senate Chamber seemed able to form a response to the intrusion. The crowd milled about, those still outside pushing forward, those in the chamber holding back, unsure of what they wanted to do now that they were here. Both factions-Blues and Greens-were present. Bonosus looked at the Master. Oradius remained bolted to his seat, making no motion at all. Suppressing his amusement, Bonosus gave an inward shrug and stood.
"People of Sarantium," he said gravely, extending both hands, "be welcome! Your aid in our deliberations in this difficult time will be invaluable, I am certain. Will you honour us with those names that commend themselves to you as worthy to sit the Golden Throne, before you withdraw and allow us to seek Jad's holy guidance in our weighty task?"
It took very little time, actually.
Bonosus had the Registrar of the Senate dutifully repeat and record each one of the shouted names. There were few surprises. The obvious strate-goi, equally obvious nobility. Holders of Imperial Office. A chariot racer. Bonosus, his outward manner sober and attentive, had this name recorded, as well: Astorgus of the Blues. He could laugh about that afterwards.
Oradius, evident danger past, roused himself to a fulsome speech of gratitude in his rich, round tones. It seemed to go over well enough, though Bonosus rather doubted the rabble in the chamber understood half of what was being said to them in the archaic rhetoric. Oradius asked the guards to assist the Empire's loyal citizenry from the chamber. They went-Blues, Greens, shopkeepers, apprentices, guildsmen, beggars, the many-raced sortings of a very large city.
Sarantines weren't especially rebellious, Bonosus thought wryly, so long as you gave them their free bread each day, let them argue about religion, and provided their beloved dancers and actors and charioteers.
Charioteers, indeed. Jad's Most Holy Emperor Astorgus the Charioteer. A wonderful image! He might whip the people into line, Bonosus thought, briefly amusing himself again.
His flicker of initiative spent, Plautus Bonosus leaned sideways on his bench, propped on one hand, and waited for the emissaries from the Imperial Precinct to come and tell the Senators what they were about to think.
It turned out to be a little more complex than that, however. Murder, even in Sarantium, could sometimes be a surprise.
In the better neighbourhoods of the City it had become fashionable in the previous generation to add enclosed balconies to the second and third storeys of houses or apartments. Reaching out over the narrow streets, these sun rooms now had the ironic, if predictable, effect of almost completely blocking the sunlight, all in the name of status and in order to afford the womenfolk of the better families a chance to view the street life through beaded curtains or sometimes extravagant window openings, without themselves suffering the indignity of being observed.
Under the Emperor Apius, the Urban Prefect had passed an ordinance forbidding such structures to project more than a certain distance from the building walls, and had followed this up by tearing down a number of solaria that violated the new law. Needless to say, this did not happen on the streets where the genuinely wealthy and influential kept their city homes. The power of one patrician to complain tended to be offset by the ability of another to bribe or intimidate. Private measures, of course, could not be entirely forestalled, and some regrettable incidents had unfortunately taken place over the years, even in the best neighbourhoods.
In one such street, lined with uniformly handsome brick facades and with no shortage of lanterns set in the exterior walls to offer expensive lighting at night, a man now sits in a flagrantly oversized solarium, alternately watching the street below and the exquisitely slow, graceful movements of a woman as she plaits and coils her hair in the bedroom behind him.
Her lack of self-consciousness, he thinks, is an honour of sorts extended to him. Sitting unclothed on the edge of the bed, she displays her body in a sequence of curves and recesses: uplifted arm, smooth hollow of arm, honey-coloured amplitude of breast and hip, and the lightly downed place between her thighs where he has been welcomed in the night just past.
The night a messenger came to report an Emperor dead.
As it happens, he is wrong about one thing: her absorbed, unembarrassed nakedness has more to do with self-directed ease than any particular emotion or feeling associated with him at this moment. She is not, after all, unused to having her body seen by men. He knows this, but prefers, at times, to forget it.
He watches her, smiling slightly. He has a smooth-shaven, round face with a soft chin and grey, observant eyes. Not a handsome or an arresting man, he projects a genial, uncontentious, open manner. This is, of course, useful.
Her dark brown hair, he notes, has become tinged with red through the course of the summer. He wonders when she's had occasion to be outside enough for that to happen, then realizes the colour might be artificial. He doesn't ask. He is not inclined to probe the details of what she does when they are not together in this apartment he has bought for her on a carefully chosen street.
That reminds him of why he is here just now. He looks away from the woman on the bed-her name is Aliana-and back out through the beaded curtains over the street. Some movement, for the morning is advanced and the news will have run through Sarantium by now.
The doorway he is watching remains closed. There are two guards outside it, but there always are. He knows the names of these two, and the others, and their backgrounds. Details of this sort can sometimes matter. Indeed, they tend to matter. He is careful in such things, and less genial than might appear to the unsubtle.
A man had entered through that doorway, his bearing urgent with tidings, just before sunrise. He had watched this by the light of the exterior torches, and had noted the livery. He had smiled then. Gesius the Chancellor had chosen to make his move. The game was begun, indeed. The man in the solarium expects to win it but is experienced enough in the ways of power in the world, already, to know that he might not. His name is Petrus.
"You are tired of me," the woman says, ending a silence. Her voice is low, amused. The careful movements of her arms, attending to her hair, do not cease. "Alas, the day has come."
"That day will never come," the man says calmly, also amused. This is a game they play, from within the entirely improbable certainty of their relationship. He does not turn from watching the doorway now, however.
"I will be on the street again, at the mercy of the factions. A toy for the wildest partisans with their barbarian ways. A cast-aside actress, disgraced and abandoned, past my best years."
She was twenty in the year when the Emperor Apius died. The man has seen thirty-one summers; not young, but it was said of him-before and after that year-that he was one of those who had never been young.
"I'd give it two days," he murmurs, "before some infatuated scion of the Names, or a rising merchant in silk or Ispahani spice won your fickle heart with jewellery and a private bathhouse."
"A private bathhouse," she agrees, "would be a considerable lure."
He glances over, smiling. She'd known he would, and has managed, not at all by chance, to be posed in profile, both arms uplifted in her hair, her head turned towards him, dark eyes wide. She has been on the stage since she was seven years old. She holds the pose a moment, then laughs.