Guy Gavriel Kay – Sailing to Sarantium (страница 3)
Those fabled palace gardens were clotted with weeds now, strewn with rubble, the Great Palace sacked and charred by fire a hundred years ago. Sad, shrunken Rhodias was home to a weak High Patriarch of Jad and conquering barbarians from the north and east—the Antae, who still used bear grease in their hair, it was reliably reported.
And the Senate here in Sarantium now—the New Rhodias—was as hollow and complaisant as it had been in the western Empire. It was possible, Bonosus thought grimly, as he looked around the Senate Chamber with its elaborate mosaics on floor and walls and curving across the small, delicate dome, that those same savages who had looted Rhodias—or others worse than them—might soon do the same here where the Emperors now dwelled, the west being lost and sundered. A struggle for succession exposed any empire, considerably so.
Apius had reigned thirty-six years. It was hard to believe. Aged, tired, in the spell of his cheiromancers the last years, he had refused to name an heir after his nephews had failed the test he’d set for them. The three of them were not even a factor now—blind men could not sit the Golden Throne, nor those visibly maimed. Slit nostrils and gouged eyes ensured that Apius’s exiled sister-sons need not be considered by the Senators.
Bonosus shook his head, irked with himself. He was following lines of thought that suggested there was an actual decision to be made by the fifty men in this chamber. In reality, they were simply going to ratify whatever emerged from the intrigues taking place even now within the Imper ial Precinct. Gesius the Chancellor, or Adrastus, or Hilarinus, Count of the Imperial Bedchamber, would come soon enough and inform them what they were to wisely decide. It was a pretence, a piece of theatre.
And Flavius Daleinus had returned to Sarantium from his family estates across the straits to the south just two days before. Most opportunely.
Bonosus had no quarrel with any of the Daleinoi, or none that he knew of, at any rate. This was good. He didn’t much
Oradius, Master of the Senate, was signalling for the session to begin. He was having little success amid the tumult in the chamber. Bonosus made his way to his bench and sat down, bowing formally to the Master’s Seat. Others noticed and followed his example. Eventually there was order. At which point Bonosus became aware of the mob at the doors.
The pounding was heavy, frightening, rocking the doors, and with it came a wild shouting of names. The citizens of Sarantium appeared to have candidates of their own to propose to the distinguished Senators of the Empire.
It sounded as if there was fighting going on.
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 on 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 strategoi, 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
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 neigh-bourhoods.
IN ONE SUCH STREET, lined with uniformly handsome brick façades 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.