David Drake - Out of the waters

From weapons drill, Corylus knew that it wouldn't be as easy as a layman might think to handle the lictor's equipment. Each man carried an axe wrapped in a bundle of rods, symbols of the consul's right to flog and to execute.

The additional cost of professionals meant nothing to Saxa. The mental cost to him if a servant turned lictor dropped an axe on someone's foot or spilled his rods at a gathering of dignitaries was beyond calculation.

There was room for the mob of attendants backstage: the Emperor sat in the Tribunal when he attended performances. Besides the retinue of a civilian magistrate, he was always accompanied by fifty or a hundred German bodyguards.

Corylus smiled grimly. This complex included, along with the Temple of Venus at the front and the portico and gardens behind the theater proper, a fine Senate Hall. It had not been used since the afternoon Julius Caesar was assassinated in it.

Caesar had dismissed his Spanish guards, saying that a magistrate of Carce did not need foreigners to protect him from his own people. None of his successors would be so naive.

The chief lictor watched Corylus approach, but here in the city the lictors generally took their cue from the consul's household whose members knew their master's friends. Manetho, a deputy steward, and Gigax, a doorman, stood to either side of the steps up to the Tribunal.

"Hullo, Master Corylus!" Gigax boomed. He would have to lose his thick Illyrian accent before he was promoted to daytime duties on the street door, but he was a good natured fellow who sometimes fenced with Corylus in Saxa's private gym.

"I'm sure the family will be glad to see you, Master Corylus," Manetho said. He was Egyptian by birth, but his Latin was flawless and his Greek would have served an Athenian professor. "But if you please, room is a little tight in the box…?"

"I'll stay down here, never fear," Pulto said. He grinned. "If you think you'll be safe, master?"

From being raped by Hedia, he means, Corylus thought. She wouldn't do that! She's a lady!

He blushed, and an instant later blessed Fortune that Pulto hadn't completed his thought aloud. That was the sort of joke that soldiers told one another. It would not be a good idea in the middle of the household of the husband, who was also Consul of Carce.

"One moment!" said another voice sharply. Candidus, also a deputy steward, was crossing from the other wing of the stage at a mincing trot. "Manetho, you're exceeding your authority. Exceeding your authority again, I should say!"

Manetho turned toward his fellow servant, hunching his shoulders like a Molossian hound about to tackle a boar. Corylus made his face blank, but mentally he grimaced. If only he'd hopped up the stairs a few heartbeats quicker! An outsider had nothing to gain by becoming the token by which a rich man's powerful servants battled over status.

"Manetho," called Varus from the top of the stairs, "my friend Corylus-oh, there you are, Publius! I saw you coming this way. I was just telling Manetho to send you up as soon as you got here."

"I was just doing that, your lordship," said Manetho unctuously. "Despite some Bithynian buffoon trying to prevent you from meeting your friend."

Corylus had never known where Candidus came from originally: the fellow had no accent. Apparently he'd been born in Bithynia…

Corylus took the steps in three long strides. He wasn't bothered by the number of people in the crowd beneath the Tribunal, but the fact they were divided into factions was disturbing. Saxa and his wife had rival establishments, and the lictors were a further element. Add that the individual servants got along badly with one another-as witness the scene of a moment before-and the emotional temperature was very high.

At least in a battle, there's only two sides, Corylus thought. He smiled.

Varus clasped hands with Corylus at the top of the steps. They'd become surprisingly close in the months since they'd met as students of Pandareus of Athens.

Corylus quirked a smile as he edited his own thoughts: it surprised him to be close to a senator's son, certainly; and he suspected it surprised Varus to be close to anybody at all. They were both outsiders in Pandareus' class, but Varus must have been an outsider all his life.

Saxa was still looking out over the hollow of the theater. He seemed dazed, but Corylus thought his vague smile was sincere.

Pandareus stood close to the senator but not with him. The Greek had moved back from the railing, but he hadn't chosen to join Varus until he was summoned.

A foreigner who moved in the highest levels of Carce's society had to be extremely careful not to give offense. Varus wasn't the sort to snarlingly order an uppity Greek to take himself off, but Pandareus was showing his present hosts the same punctilious courtesy that might have saved him from a beating if they had been, say, Calpurnius Piso-another of his present students.

Candidus reentered the Tribunal and murmured to Saxa, who suddenly came alert. He began giving the steward instructions, tapping his finger up and down in animation. Candidus bowed and disappeared down the stairs again.

Alphena and her stepmother talked intently at the back corner of the box while their maids hovered attentively. Alphena was an enthusiastic girl, but she had generally seemed to Corylus to be angry about something. Now she looked happily transfigured.

Hedia, on the other hand… Corylus had seen Varus' stepmother both icily calm, her public face, and letting her warmth and quick intelligence show when she relaxed in private. This was a different woman: frozen in the way a rabbit freezes when the weasel hops toward it.

"Did you see the three men with Sempronius Tardus?" Varus said without preamble. "Where did they go, did you notice? Because they weren't in the audience after I came back. Or Tardus either, but we know who he is."

Came back from where? Corylus thought, but the whole line of questioning had surprised him. Not for the first time, of course. Varus' rank as the son of Gaius Alphenus Saxa gave him access to every library in Carce; he read voraciously and apparently never forgot a word of the contents.

But Varus tended to forget that other people didn't have the same wide background as he did-and that they hadn't been listening to his thoughts to give them a context for whatever he said. Talking with him was often like having fragments of messages fall from the sky to your feet.

"I saw the attendants," Corylus said simply. He would get the context by listening carefully to his friend, and it seemed to him that answering the questions was as easy and far more useful than chattering a series of silly questions of his own. "I thought one of them might be a Moor, but I've never seen anybody like the other two. I didn't notice where they went after the performance. I was concerned with getting through the crowd to find you."

Varus made a moue. "It can't be helped," he said. "And anyway, questioning them might not bring us any closer to an answer."

"I don't even know what the question is," said Corylus, smiling but nonetheless bluntly truthful. "What did you notice about Tardus' servants that caused you to ask?"

Pandareus raised an eyebrow over Varus' shoulder. Corylus caught the gesture and beckoned him. Pandareus might know no more than his students did-which in Corylus' case at least was nothing at all-but his age and authority made everything nearby seem more stable

"That I could see them at all," Varus said. "When I looked into the audience when the vision was at its height, I… it was as if I were on a mountain, looking over the tops of the clouds. Except for those three men, whom I'd noticed with Tardus. But I didn't see Tardus or any of the other senators."

He looked at their teacher. "Master Pandareus, did you see them?" he asked.