They came to the gates, to the guards there. Kyros saw that these men were armed, swords and spears and chest-plates. They wore helmets, like soldiers. Weapons and armour were forbidden to citizens in the streets, but the faction compounds had been given their own laws and they were allowed to defend themselves.

It was quiet here, too. They looked through the iron gates down the dark lane. There were occasional movements in the street beyond: distant sounds, a single voice calling, a carried torch passing at the head of their laneway. Rasic asked for news. One of the guards said that the Senate had been summoned into session.

"Why?" Rasic snapped. "Useless fat farts. Voting themselves another ration of wine and Karchite boys?"

"Voting an Emperor," the guard said. "If your brain's small, kitchen boy, keep your mouth shut to hide the fact."

"Fuck you," Rasic snarled.

"Shut up, Rasic," Kyros said quickly. "He's upset," he explained to the guards.

"We all are," the man said bluntly. Kyros didn't know him.

They heard footsteps approaching from behind them, turned. By the torches mounted on the walls by the gate Kyros recognized a charioteer.

"Taras!" said another guard, and there was respect in his voice.

They'd heard, in the kitchens: Taras, their newest driver, had won the first afternoon race, working with the miraculously returned Scortius in some dazzling, amazing fashion. They'd come first, second, third and fourth, entirely obliterating the Green triumphs of the last session and the morning.

And then violence had exploded, during the victory laps.

The young driver nodded his head, came up to stand by Kyros before the gates. "What do we know about the factionarius?" he asked.

"Nothing yet," a third guard said. He spat somewhere into the dark beyond the lamplight. "Fuckers in the Urban Prefect's office won't say a thing, even when they come by here."

"They probably don't know," Kyros said. A torch flared, showering sparks, and he looked away. It seemed to him he was always the one trying to be reasonable among men who didn't feel troubled by any need to be. He wondered what it would be like to sprint through the streets waving a blade in his hand, screaming in fury. Shook his head. A different person, a different life. Different foot, for that matter.

"How's Scortius?" he asked, looking at the other charioteer. Taras had a cut on his forehead and an ugly bruise on his cheek.

Taras shook his head. "Sleeping now, they told me. They gave him something to make him sleep. There was a lot of pain, from where his ribs were broken, before."

"Will he die?" Rasic asked. Kyros quickly made the sign of the sun disk in the darkness, saw two of the guards do the same.

Taras shrugged. "They don't know, or they won't say. The Bassanid doctor is very angry."

"Fuck the Bassanid," Rasic said, predictably. "Who is he, anyhow?" There came a sudden clattering sound from beyond the gates and a sharp, rasped command. They turned quickly to peer down the laneway. "More of ours coming back," the first guard said. "Open the gates." Kyros saw a group of men-perhaps a dozen-being herded roughly down the laneway by soldiers. One of the men couldn't walk; he was being supported between two others. The soldiers had their swords out, hustling the Blues along. He saw one of them sweep his blade and hit a stumbling man with the flat of it, swearing in a northern accent.

The gates swung open. Torches and lamps flickered with the movement. The man who'd been hit tripped and fell on the cobbled laneway. The soldier cursed again and prodded him hard with the point of his blade. "Get up, you lump of horsedung!"

The man pushed himself awkwardly to one knee as the others hurried through the gates. Kyros, without stopping to think, limped out and knelt by the fallen man.

He draped the man's right arm over his shoulder. There was a smell of sweat and blood and urine. Kyros staggered to his feet, swayed, supporting the other fellow. He'd no idea who it was, in the dark, but it was a Blue, they all were, and he was hurt.

"Move, clubfoot! Unless you want a sword up your butt," the soldier said. Someone laughed. They're under orders, Kyros told himself. There's been rioting. The Emperor's dead. They are afraid, too.

It seemed a long way, those ten steps back to the gates of the compound. He saw Rasic come running out to help him. Rasic went to lift the injured man's other arm to put it around his own shoulders, but the man between them cried out in agony at the movement, and they realized he had a sword wound in that arm.

"You fuckers!" Rasic snarled, turning on the soldiers in a rage. "He has no weapon! You goat-fuckers! You didn't have to-"

The nearest soldier, the one who had laughed, turned to Rasic and- expressionlessly, this time-lifted his sword. A mechanical, precise motion, like something not human.

"No!" Kyros shouted, and twisting violently, still supporting the wounded man, he grabbed for Rasic with his free hand. He stumbled sideways with the weight and the too-quick movement, tried to keep his balance.

And it was in that moment, some time after darkfall on the day the Emperor Valerius II died, that Kyros of the Blues, born in the Hippodrome, who had certainly never thought of himself as one of Jad's beloved and had never even seen from close the god's most holy regent upon earth, the thrice-exalted shepherd of his people, also felt something white and searing plunge into him from behind. He fell then, as Valerius had, and he, too, had a flashing thought of so many things yet desired and not yet done.

This may be shared, if nothing else is shared at all.

Taras, cursing himself as befuddled and hopelessly too slow, sprang through the gates past the guards, who would have been cut down if they'd gone into the lane with weapons.

The man called Rasic stood frozen as a statue, his mouth open as he stared down at his fallen friend. Taras seized him by the shoulders and almost threw him back towards the gates and the guards before he, too, could be chopped down. Then he knelt, lifting his hands in a quick, placating gesture to the soldiers, and picked up the man Kyros had been trying to help. The wounded man cried out again, but Taras gritted his teeth and half dragged, half carried him to the gates. He gave him to the guards and turned around again. He was going to go back, but something made him stop.

Kyros was lying face down on the cobblestones and he was motionless. Blood-black in the shadows-was pouring from the sword wound in his back.

In the laneway the soldier who had stabbed him looked indifferently down at the body, and then over at the gates where the Blues stood clustered in the wavering torchlight. "Wrong horsedung," he said lightly. "Don't matter. Take a lesson. People do not speak to soldiers that way. Or someone dies."

"You… come in here, say that… butt-fucking… goatboy! Blues! Blues!" Rasic was crying helplessly even as he stammered his obscenities, his features blurred and distorted.

The soldier took a heavy step forward.

"No!" snapped another of them, the same thick accent, authority in the word. "Orders. Not inside. Let's go."

Rasic was still weeping, calling for aid, screaming a foul-mouthed tirade of impotent fury. Taras felt like doing the same, actually. As the soldiers turned to leave, one of them stepping right over the prone body of the slain undercook, he heard footsteps. More torches appeared behind them in the compound.

"What is it? What happened here?" It was Strumosus, with the Bassanid doctor, a number of other men with lights attending them.

"Another dozen of ours brought back," one of the guards said. "At least two badly injured, probably by the soldiers. And they just-"

"It's Kyros!" Rasic cried, clutching at the cook's sleeve. "Strumosus, look! It's Kyros they've killed now!"