Styliane Daleina smiled then. Pertennius saw it. A woman so beautiful it could stop your breath. "We will," she said. "We will very soon. My lord."

And she knelt, exquisite and golden among the blackened bodies of the dead, before her husband.

Pertennius stepped away from the wall and went forward a few steps and did the same, falling to both knees, lowering his head to the floor. There was a long silence in the tunnel.

"Pertennius," said Leontes, at length, "there is much to be done. The Senate will have to be called into session. Go to the kathisma in the Hippodrome. Immediately. Tell Bonosus to come back here with you. Do not tell him why but make it clear he must come."

"Yes, my lord."

Styliane looked at him. She was still on her knees. "Do you understand? Tell no one what has happened here, or about the Bassanid attack. We must have order in the City tonight, to control this."

"Yes, my lady."

Leontes looked at her. "The army is here. It will not be the same as… the last time there was no heir."

His wife looked back at him, and then at her brother, beside her on the ground.

"No," she said, "Not the same." And then she said it again, "Not the same."

Pertennius saw the Strategos reach out then and help her to rise. His hand went to her bruised cheek, gently this time. She did not move, but her eyes were on his. They were so golden, the two of them, Pertennius thought, so tall. His heart was swelling.

He stood and turned and went. He had orders to obey.

He entirely forgot there was blood on his dagger, neglected to clean it all that day, but no one paid any attention to him so it didn't matter.

He was so seldom noticed; an historian, a recorder of events, hovering and grey, present everywhere, but not ever someone who ever played any kind of role in events.

Going up the stairs swiftly, then hurrying through the palace towards an upper staircase and the enclosed walkway that led to the rear of the kathisma, he was already casting his mind after phrasings, a way to begin. The proper tone of detachment and reflection at the outset of a chronicle was so important. Even the most perfunctory study of past events teaches that Jad's just retribution for the godless and evil may be long in coming but…

He stopped abruptly, forcing one of the eunuchs in a corridor to sidestep him quickly. He was wondering where the whore was. She was unlikely-surely-to be in the kathisma, though that would have been something to observe. Was she still in her bath in the other palace, naked and slippery with a soldier? He smoothed his tunic. Styliane would deal with her, he thought.

We must have order in the City tonight, she had said.

He knew what she meant. How could he not? The last death of an Emperor without a named heir had been Apius's, and in the violence that followed that-in the Hippodrome and the streets and even the Imperial Senate chamber-an ignorant Trakesian peasant had been lifted on a shield, acclaimed by the rabble, robed in porphyry. Order was hugely important now, and calm among the eighty thousand in the Hippodrome.

It crossed his mind that if all went as it should, by the end of this day his own status might rise a great deal. He thought of another woman, then, and smoothed his tunic again.

He was very happy, a rare, almost an unprecedented state for him, as he carried enormous, world-shaking tidings to the kathisma, with blood on the blade in his belt.

The sun was high above the City, past its peak, going down, but that day-and night-had a long way yet to go in Sarantium.

In the tunnel, among the dead, two golden figures stood looking at each other in silence, and then walked slowly out and up the wide stairs, not touching, but side by side.

On the stones behind them, on the mosaic stones under a blue cloak, lay Valerius of Sarantium, the second of that name. His body. What was left of it. His soul was gone, to dolphins, to the god, to wherever souls go.

Somewhere in the world, just then, a longed-for child was born and somewhere a labourer died, leaving a farm grievously undermanned with the spring fields still to be ploughed and the crops all to be planted. A calamity beyond words.

CHAPTER XII

The Imperial boat tacked across the straits-no dolphins to be seen this time-and was docked with flawless expertise by a worried crew. Crispin was not the only one watching the port anxiously during their approach. Men had been killed on the isle. At least two of the Excubitors" own number were traitors. Daleinus had escaped. The Empress had left them to row back with one man only. Danger was in the brightness of the air. No one new was waiting for them, however. No enemies, no friends, no one at all. They came into the slip and the dock crew moored them with the ropes and then stood by, waiting for the Empress to descend.

Whatever the shape of the plot unfolding today, Crispin thought, on the isle, in the Imperial Precinct, it had not been so precisely devised as to include the possibility that the Empress might be taking a pleasure cruise with a visiting artisan, to look at dolphins-and visit a prisoner on an island.

Alixana, he thought, could have stayed with them after all to sail home. But then what? Have herself carried in the litter back to the Attenine Palace or the Traversite to inquire if her husband had been attacked or killed yet by Lecanus Daleinus and the suborned Excubitors, and did they have any immediate plans for her?

It was the Excubitors in the plot, he realized, that had made her certain there was a large scheme unfolding here. If the Imperial Guard were being turned, any of them, something deadly and immediate was at work. This was not simply an escape by a prisoner, a flight to freedom.

No, he knew why she'd left her robe on the strand to make her way back in secrecy. He wondered if he'd ever see her again. Or the Emperor. And then he wondered-for he had to-what would happen to him when it was learned, as it surely would be, that he'd made this morning's journey with the Empress across the water. They would ask him what he knew. He didn't know what he would say. He didn't know, yet, who would be asking.

He thought about Styliane then. Remembering what she'd said to him before he'd left her in the night, through a window into the courtyard. Some events must happen now. I will not say I am sorry. Remember this room, though, Rhodian. Whatever else I do.

He was not so innocent as to believe that the ruined brother on the isle, even with his bird-soul, had shaped his escape alone. Crispin wondered where his anger was: it had defined him for two years. Anger, he thought, was a luxury of sorts. It offered simplicity. There was nothing simple here. A thing was done once, she had said, and all else follows upon it.

All else. An empire, a world, all who lived within that world. The shape of the past defining the shape of the present. I will not say I am sorry.

He remembered going up the dark stairs, desire running in him like a river. The bitter complexity of her. Remembered it as he would always now remember Alixana, too. Images begetting images. The Empress on the stony beach. The whore, Pertennius had called her in his secret papers. Vile things, such hatred. Anger was easier, Crispin thought.

He looked down. The crew on the dock were standing in order, still expecting the Empress to descend. The Excubitors and sailors aboard looked uncertainly at each other and then-it might have been amusing had there been any space for laughter in the world-at Crispin, for guidance. Their leader had gone with the Empress.

Crispin shook his head. "I have no idea," he said. "Go to your posts. Report, 1 suppose. Whatever you do when… this sort of thing happens." This sort of thing. He felt like an idiot. Linon would have told him as much.