In all the lands ruled by that City, with its domes and its bronze and golden doors, its palaces and gardens and statues, forums and theatres and colonnades, bathhouses and shops and guildhalls, taverns and whorehouses and sanctuaries and the great Hippodrome, its triple landward walls that had never yet been breached, and its deep, sheltered harbour and the guarded and guarding seas, there was a timeworn phrase that had the same meaning in every tongue and every dialect.
To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness, brilliance, fortune—or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity.
Valerius the Trakesian had become an Emperor.
Heladikos, whom some worshipped as the son of Jad and placed in mosaic upon holy domes, had died in his chariot bringing fire back from the sun.
PART ONE
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork . . .
Chapter I
The Imperial Post, along with most of the civil positions in the Sarantine Empire after Valerius I died and his nephew, having renamed himself appropriately, took the Golden Throne, was under the hegemony of the Master of Offices.
The immensely complex running of the mails—from the recently conquered Majriti deserts and Esperana in the far west to the long, always-shifting Bassanid border in the east, and from the northern wildernesses of Karch and Moskav to the deserts of Soriyya and beyond—required a substantial investment of manpower and resources, and no little requisitioning of labour and horses from those rural communities dubiously honoured by having an Imperial Posting Inn located in or near them.
The position of Imperial Courier, charged with the actual carrying of the public mails and court documents, paid only modestly well and involved an almost endless regimen of hard travelling, sometimes through uncertain territory, depending on barbarian or Bassanid activity in a given season. The fact that such positions were avidly solicited, with all the associated bribes, was a reflection of where the position might lead after a few years more than anything else.
The couriers of the Imperial Post were expected to be part-time spies for the Quaestor of Imperial Intelligence, and diligent labour in this unspoken part of the job— coupled with rather more of the associated bribes—might see a man appointed to the intelligence service directly, with more risks, less far-ranging travel, and significantly higher recompense. Along with a chance to be on the receiving end, at last, of some of the bribes changing hands.
As one’s declining years approached, an appointment from Intelligence back to, say, running a substantial Posting Inn could actually lead to a respectable retirement—especially if one was clever, and the Inn far enough from the City to permit rather more watering of wine and an enhancing of revenues by accepting travellers without the required Permits.
The position of courier was, in short, a legitimate career path for a man with sufficient means to make a start but not enough to be launched by his family in anything more promising.
This, as it happened, was a fair description of the competence and background of Pronobius Tilliticus. Born with an unfortunately amusing name (a frequently cursed legacy of his mother’s grandfather and his mother’s unfamiliarity with current army vernacular), with limited skill at law or numbers, and only a modest paternal niche in Sarantine hierarchies, Tilliticus had been told over and again how fortunate he was to have had his mother’s cousin’s aid in securing a courier’s position. His obese cousin, soft rump securely spread on a bench among the clerks in the Imperial Revenue office, had been foremost of those to make this observation at family gatherings.
Tilliticus had been obliged to smile and agree. Many times. He had a gathering-prone family.
In such an oppressive context—his mother was now constantly demanding he choose a useful wife—it was sometimes a relief to leave Sarantium. And now he was on the roads again with a packet of letters, bound for the barbarian Antae’s capital city of Varena in Batiara and points en route. He also carried one particular Imperial Packet that came—unusually—directly from the Chancellor himself, with the elaborate Seal of that office, and instructions from the eunuchs to make this delivery with some ceremony.
An important artisan of some kind, he was given to understand. The Emperor was rebuilding the Sanctuary of Jad’s Holy Wisdom. Artisans were being summoned to the City from all over the Empire and beyond. It irked Tilliticus: barbarians and rustic provincials were receiving formal invitations and remuneration on a level three or four times his own to participate in this latest Imperial folly.
In early autumn on the good roads north and then west through Trakesia it was hard to preserve an angry mien, however. Even Tilliticus found the weather lifting his spirits. The sun shone mildly overhead. The northern grain had been harvested, and on the slopes as he turned west the vineyards were purple with ripening grapes. Just looking at them gave him a thirst. The Posting Inns on this road were well known to him and they seldom cheated couriers. He lingered a few days at one of them (Let the damned paint-dauber wait for his summons a little!) and feasted on spit-roasted fox, stuffed fat with grapes. A girl he remembered seemed also to enthusiastically remember him. The innkeeper did charge double the price for her exclusive services, but Tilliticus knew he was doing it and saw that as one of the perquisites of a position he dreamed of for himself.
On the last night, however, the girl asked him to take her away, which was simply ridiculous.
Tilliticus refused indignantly and—abetted by a quantity of scarcely watered wine—offered her a lecture about his mother’s family’s lineage. He exaggerated only slightly; with a country prostitute it was hardly required. She didn’t seem to take the chiding with particular good grace and in the morning, riding away, Tilliticus considered whether his affections had been misplaced.
A few days later he was certain they had been. Urgent medical circumstances dictated a short detour north and a further delay of several days at a well-known Hospice of Galinus, where he was treated for the genital infection she had given him.
They bled him, purged him with something that emptied his bowels and stomach violently, made him ingest various unpleasant liquids, shaved his groin, and daubed on a burning, foul-smelling black ointment twice a day. He was instructed to eat only bland foods and to refrain from sexual congress and wine for an unnatural length of time.
Hospices were expensive, and this one, being celebrated, was particularly so. Tilliticus was forced to bribe the chief administrator to record his stay as being for injuries incurred in the course of duties—or else he’d have had to pay for the visit out of his own pocket.
Well, a crab-infested chit in a Posting Inn was an injury incurred in the Emperor’s service, wasn’t it? This way, the administrator could bill the Imperial Post directly—and he would no doubt add to the tally half a dozen treatments Tilliticus hadn’t received and designate those sums for his own purse.
Tilliticus left a stiff letter addressed to the innkeeper four days’ ride back, to be delivered by the next eastbound courier. Let the bitch hump for slaves and farmhands in an alley back of a caupona if she wasn’t going to keep herself clean. The Posting Inns on the roads of the Empire were the finest in the world, and Pronobius Tilliticus regarded it as a positive duty to make sure she was gone when next he rode through.
He was in the service of the Sarantine Emperor. These things re flected directly upon the majesty and prestige of Valerius II and his glorious Empress Alixana. The fact that the Empress had been bought and used in her youth in exactly the same way as the chit in the inn was not a matter for open discussion at this stage in the world’s progression. A man was allowed his thoughts, however. They couldn’t kill you for thinking things.
He lasted a part of the prescribed period of abstinence, but a tavern he knew too well in Megarium, the port city and administrative centre of western Sauradia, proved predictably