A moment passed, another. And then Pertennius smiled. He understood, and it was all as it should be. At last. The Trakesian peasant was dead. The whore was or would be. The Empire was turning back-finally- to a proper place.

"I shall," he said. "Believe me, I shall."

"Lecanus?" It was Lysippus again. "You promised! You did promise me." There was desire in his voice, unmistakable, the tone raw with need.

"The Trakesian first, then me," said Lecanus Daleinus.

"Of course," said Lysippus, eagerly. "Of course, Lecanus." He was bowing and jerking, Pertennius saw, the gross body moving with urgency, hunger, like spasms of faith or desire.

"Holy Jad! I'm leaving," said Tertius, hastily. His sister moved aside as the youngest Daleinus went hurriedly back along the tunnel, almost running. She didn't follow, turning instead to look at her ruined brother, and at the Calysian, who was breathing rapidly, his mouth open. She bent down and said something then, softly, to Lecanus. Pertennius didn't hear what it was. He hated that. The brother made no reply.

Pertennius lingered long enough to see the blind man extend the nozzle and trigger and observe how the Calysian trembled as he untied Daleinus's maimed hands from them. Then he felt a sickness coming. He reclaimed and sheathed his knife and then he, too, went quickly back towards the door he had unlocked. He didn't look back.

He wasn't going to record this, anyhow. It had never happened, wasn't a part of history, he didn't need to watch, he told himself. Only the things written down mattered.

Somewhere men were racing horses, ploughing fields, children were playing, or crying, or labouring at hard tasks in the world. Ships were sailing. It was raining, snowing, sand blew in a desert, food and drink were being taken, jests made, oaths uttered, in piety or rage. Money changed hands. A woman cried a name behind shutters. Prayers were spoken in chapels and forests and before sacred, guarded flames. A dolphin leaped in the blue sea. A man laid tesserae upon a wall. A pitcher broke on a well rim, a servant knew she would be beaten for it.

Men were losing and winning at dice, at love, at war. Cheiromancers prepared tablets that besought yearning or fertility or extravagant wealth. Or death for someone desperately hated for longer than one could ever say.

Pertennius of Eubulus, leaving the tunnel, felt another rush of wet, distant heat, but heard no scream this time.

He came out into the lower part of the Attenine Palace again, below ground. A wide staircase led up, the corridor ran both ways to other hallways, other stairs. No guards. No one at all. Tertius Daleinus had already run upstairs. Somewhere. A trivial, meaningless man, Pertennius thought. Not a thought to be written now, of course, or not in any… public document.

He took a breath, smoothed his tunic, and prepared to go up, outside, and back across the gardens, and then down in the other palace to tell Leontes what had happened.

It proved unnecessary, that walk.

He heard a clatter of sound from above and looked up, just as, from behind him in the tunnel, there came a muffled, distant cry, and a last blast of heat came down, all the way to the hallway where he stood alone.

He didn't look back. He looked up. Leontes descended the stairs, moving briskly as he always did, soldiers behind him, as there always were.

"Pertennius! What in the god's holy name is keeping you, man? Where's the Emperor? Why is the door… where are the guards?

Pertennius swallowed hard. Smoothed his tunic. "My lord," he said, "something terrible has happened."

"What? In there?" The Strategos stopped.

"My lord, do not go in. It is… terrible." Which was nothing but truth.

And generated the predictable response. Leontes glanced at his guards. "Wait here." The golden-haired leader of the Sarantine armies went into the tunnel.

So, of course, Pertennius had to go back in. This might never be recorded, either, but it was impossible for a chronicler not to be present for what would happen now. He closed the door carefully behind him.

Leontes moved quickly. By the time Pertennius had retraced his steps down the tunnel and come to the curve again, the Strategos was on his knees beside the blackened body of his Emperor.

There was a span of time wherein no one moved. Then Leontes reached to the clasp at his throat, undid it, swept off his dark blue cloak and laid it gently over the body of the dead man. He looked up.

Pertennius was behind him, couldn't see his expression. The smell of burnt flesh was very bad. Ahead of them, motionless, stood the other two living people in this place. Pertennius stayed where he was, at the curve of the tunnel, half hidden against the wall.

He saw the Strategos stand. Saw Styliane facing him, her head high. Beside her, Lysippus the Calysian seemed to become aware that he was still holding the nozzle of the fire device. He let it fall. His face was strange now, too. There were three dead bodies beside him, all charred and black. The two guards. And Lecanus Daleinus, who had first burned all those years ago, with his father.

Leontes said nothing. Very slowly he moved forward. Stood before his wife and the Calysian.

"What are you doing here?" he said. To Lysippus.

Styliane was as ice, as marble. Pertennius saw the Calysian looking at the Strategos as though unsure where he'd come from." What does it look like?" he said. A memorable voice. "I'm admiring the floor mosaics."

Leontes, commander of the armies of Sarantium, was a different sort of man than the dead Emperor behind him. He drew his sword. A gesture repeated more times than could ever be numbered. Without speaking again he drove the blade through flesh and into the heart of the man standing beside his wife.

Lysippus never even moved, had no chance to defend himself. Pertennius, coming forward a step, unable to hold back, saw the astonishment in the Calysian's eyes before the blade was pulled out, hard, and he fell, thunderously.

The echoes of that took time to die away. Amid a stench of meat and the bodies of five dead men now, a husband and a wife faced each other underground and Pertennius shivered, watching them.

"Why did you do that?" said Styliane Daleina.

The slap took her across the face, a soldier's blow. Her head snapped to one side.

"Be brief, and precise," said her husband. "Who did this?"

Styliane didn't even bring a hand up to touch her cheek. She looked at her husband. She had been ready to be burned alive, the secretary remembered, only moments ago. There was no fear in her, not the least hint of it.

"My brother," she said. "Lecanus. He has taken his revenge for our father. He sent word to me this morning that he was coming here. Had obviously bribed his guards on the island, and through them the Excubitors at the doors here."

"And you came?"

"Of course I came. Too late to stop it. The Emperor was dead, and the two soldiers. And the Calysian had already killed Lecanus."

The lies, so effortless, so necessary. The words that might make this work, for all of them.

She said, "My brother is dead."

"Rot his evil soul," said her husband flatly. "What was the Calysian doing here?"

"A good question to ask him," Styliane said. The left side of her face was red where he'd hit her. "We might have an answer had someone not blundered in waving a sword."

"Careful, wife. I still have the sword. You are a Daleinus, and by your own statement your family has just murdered our holy Emperor."

"Yes, husband," she said. "They have. Will you kill me now, my dear?"

Leontes was silent. Looked back, for the first time. Saw Pertennius watching. His expression did not change. He turned to his wife again. "We are on the very eve of war. Today. It was to be announced today. And now there are tidings that the Bassanids are across the border in the north, breaking the peace. And the Emperor is dead. We have no Emperor, Styliane."