You told me, Styliane Daleina had written, that you were a stranger to the private rooms of royalty.

Nothing more. No added reproach, no direct suggestion that he'd deceived her, no irony or provocation. The stated fact. And the fact that she'd stated it.

Crispin, who'd intended to have a midday meal at home and then return to the Sanctuary, had taken himself off instead to his preferred tavern and then to the baths. In each of these places he'd had more wine than was really good for him.

His friend Carullus, tribune of the Fourth Sauradian, had found him later in the evening, back at The Spina. The burly soldier had seated himself opposite Crispin, signalled for a cup of wine for himself and grinned. Crispin had refused to smile back.

"Two pieces of news, my inexplicably drunken friend," Carullus had said breezily. He held up a finger. "One, I have met with the Supreme Strategos. I have met with him, and Leontes has promised half the arrears for the western army will be sent before midwinter and the rest by spring. A personal promise. Crispin, I've done it!"

Crispin looked at him, trying to share in his friend's delight and failing utterly. This was hugely important news, though-everyone knew about the army unrest and the arrears of pay. It was the reason Carullus had come to the City, if one excepted a desire to see chariots in the Hippodrome.

"No, you haven't done it," he said morosely. "It just means there's a war coming. Valerius is sending Leontes to Batiara, after all. You don't invade with unpaid troops."

Carullus only smiled. "I know that, you sodden dolt. But who gets the credit, man? Who writes his governor in the morning that he has succeeded in getting the payment released when everyone else has failed?"

Crispin nodded and reached for his wine again. "Pleased for you," he said. "Truly. Forgive, if I'm not as pleased to hear that my friends and my mother are now to be invaded."

Carullus shrugged. "Warn them. Tell them to leave Varena."

"Get rucked," Crispin had said, uncharitably. Whatever was happening was not Carullus's fault, and his advice might be good-even more so in the light of what had happened that morning on the scaffolding.

"That activity on your mind? I heard about your visitor this morning. Do you keep pillows up on that scaffold of yours? I'll let you sober up but I'll expect a very detailed explanation in the morning, my friend." Carullus licked his lips.

Crispin swore again. "It was play-acting. Theatre. She wanted to talk to me and needed to give people something to think."

"I'm sure," said Carullus, his eyebrows arched high. 'Talk to you? You rogue. They say she's magnificent, you know. Talk? Hah. Maybe you'll make me believe that in the morning. In, ah, the meantime," he added after an unexpected pause, "that, er, reminds me of my second bit of news. I suppose I'm, ah, out of that sort of game now, myself. Actually."

Crispin had looked muzzily up from his wine cup.

"What?"

"I'm, well, as it happens, I'm getting married," Carullus of the Fourth said.

" What?" Crispin repeated, cogently.

"I know, I know," the tribune went on, "Unexpected, surprising, amusing, all that. A good laugh for all. Happens, though, doesn't it?" His colour heightened. "Ah, well, it does, you know."

Crispin nodded his head in bemusement, refraining only with some effort from saying, "What?" for a third time.

"And, um, well, do you, er, mind if Kasia leaves your house now? It won't look right, of course, not after we have it proclaimed in chapel."

"What?" Crispin said, helplessly.

"Wedding'l1 be in the spring," Carullus went on, eyes bright. "I promised my mother back when I first left home that if I ever married I'd do it properly. There'll be a season's worth of proclaiming by the clerics, so someone can object if they want to, and then a real wedding celebration."

"Kasia?" Crispin said, finally getting a word in.'Kasia?

And as his brain belatedly began to function, to put itself tentatively around this astonishing information, Crispin shook his head again, as if to clear it, and said, "Let me be certain I understand this, you bloated bag of wind. Kasia has agreed to marry you? I don't believe it! Byjad's bones and balls! You bastard! You didn't ask my permission and you don't fucking deserve her, you military lout."

He was grinning widely by then, and he reached a hand across the table and gripped the other man's shoulder hard.

"Of course I deserve her," Carullus said. "I'm a man with a brilliant future." But he, too, had been smiling, with unconcealed pleasure.

The woman in question was of the northern Inicii, sold by her mother into slavery a little more than a year before, rescued from that-and a pagan death-by Crispin on the road. She was too thin and too intelligent, and too strong-willed, though uneasy in the City. On the occasion of their first encounter she had spat in the face of the soldier who was now grinning with delight as he announced that she'd agreed to marry him.

Both men, in fact, knew what she was worth.

And so, on a bright, windy day at the beginning of spring, a number of people were preparing themselves to proceed to the home of the principal female dancer of the Green faction where a wedding was to commence with the usual procession to the chosen chapel and then be celebrated with festivity afterwards.

Neither bride nor groom was in any way from a good family- though the soldier showed signs of possibly becoming an important person-but Shirin of the Greens had a glittering circle of acquaintances and admirers and had chosen to make this wedding the excuse for an elaborate affair. She'd had a very good winter season in the theatre.

In addition, the groom's close friend (and evidently the bride's, it was whispered by some, with a meaningful arch of eyebrows) was the new Imperial Mosaicist, the Rhodian who was executing the elaborate decorations in the Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom-a fellow perhaps worthy of cultivation. There were rumours that other significant personages might attend-if not the actual ceremony, then the celebration in Shirin's home afterwards.

It had also been widely reported that the food was being prepared in the dancer's kitchen by the Master Chef of the Blue faction. There were those in the City who would follow Strumosus into the desert if he took his pots and pans and sauces.

It was a curious, in many ways a unique event, this celebration orchestrated by Greens and Blues together. And all for a middle-ranking soldier and a yellow-haired barbarian girl from Sauradia just arrived in the city with a completely unknown background. She was pretty enough, it was reported by those who'd seen her with Shirin, but not in the usual way of those girls who made a surprising marriage for themselves. On the other hand, it wasn't as if she was wedding a really significant fellow, was it?

Then another rumour started that Pappio, the increasingly well-known Director of the Imperial Glassworks, had personally made a bowl commissioned as a gift for the happy couple. It seemed he hadn't done any actual craftsmanship himself for years and years. No one could understand that, either. Sarantium was talking. With the chariot races not beginning again for some few days, the event was well timed: the City liked having things to talk about.

'I'm not happy," said a small, nondescript artificial bird in an inward, patrician voice heard only by the hostess of the day's affair. The woman was staring critically at her own image in a round, silver-edged mirror held up by a servant.

'Oh, Danis, neither am I!" Shirin murmured in silent reply. 'Every woman from the Precinct and the theatre will be dressed and adorned to dazzle and I look like I haven't slept in days.