She smiled, a smile thin as river ice in the north when the winter's freezing has not yet made it safe. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you both." She looked over her shoulder. The Bassanid doctor had stayed where he was through all of this. Now he came forward, impeccably grave.

He looked at Scortius first. His own charge. "You understand your coming here… alters things?"

"I do," Scortius said. "I am very sorry."

His physician nodded. "With this," said the Bassanid, "I will not contend." There was a blunt finality to his tone.

"I understand," said Scortius. "I am grateful for all you have done until now."

The doctor turned away. "May I escort you, my lady? You mentioned a cooling drink?"

"I did," she said. Thank you, yes." She looked at the Bassanid thoughtfully for a moment as if considering new information, and then turned back to Scortius. "I expect you to win this race," she murmured. "From what my son tells me, our dear Crescens has won sufficiently in your absence."

And with that, she turned and went away with the physician, towards the stairs and the concession booths and stalls on the level above them.

The two charioteers stood alone, looked at each other.

"What was he talking about?" Crescens jerked his chin towards the receding figure of the physician.

"Disclaiming responsibility if I kill myself."

"Ah."

"They do that in Bassania. You needed a piss?"

The Green rider nodded. "Always do, after lunch."

"I know."

"Saw you. Came to say hello. Saw the knife. You're bleeding."

"I know."

"Are you… back for good?"

Scortius hesitated. "Probably not yet. I recover quickly, mind you. Or I used to."

Crescens smiled sourly. "We all used to." His turn to hesitate. People would be emerging any moment now. They both knew it. "She couldn't possibly have hurt you unless you let her."

"Yes, well, that's… Tell me, how's your new trace horse?"

Crescens looked at him a moment, then nodded his head in acceptance. "I like him. Your young driver…"

"Taras."

"Taras. Bastard has the makings of a racer. I didn't see it last year." He grinned, wolfishly. "I'm planning to break his heart this spring."

"Of course you are."

The Green rider's smile deepened. "You wanted a lovely appearance all by yourself, didn't you? Returning hero, walking across the sand alone? By Heladikos, what an entrance!"

Scortius's expression was wry. "I'd thought of it."

But he was really thinking about the woman, images interwoven with memories of his childhood, amazingly, and the feeling he'd had looking into her eyes just before the knife moved. You should have lied to me. He had been about to let her stab him. Crescens was right. An other-worldly mood, a state of being she had shaped, with those glittering eyes, in the dusty half-light. It seemed a dream already, only moments after. He didn't think the dream was going to go away.

Crescens said, "I don't believe I can allow you that entrance. I'm sorry. Saving your fucking life's one thing. Trivial. But giving you that kind of a return's another. Very bad for Green morale."

One had to smile. One was back in the Hippodrome. The world it made within the world. "I can see that. Let's go together, then."

They went together, just as the first dancers began emerging from the darkness of the tunnel to their left.

"Thank you, by the way," Scortius added, as they approached the two yellow-clad guards at the doors.

I expect you to win this race, she had said. After the doctor had formally disclaimed responsibility if he killed himself. She had come under the stands with a knife. She had come to the Hippodrome with one. She knew what she was saying. You can't imagine I'd be long behind you. He had long thought, before ever really knowing her, that there was something extraordinary beneath her celebrated reserve. Then he'd thought, arrogantly, that he'd found it, defined it. He'd been wrong. There was so much more. Should he have known?

"Thank you? Not at all," said Crescens. "Too boring here without you, winning against children. Mind you, I do want to keep winning."

And as they passed the two guards, just before they walked out on the bright sands together, into the sight of eighty thousand people, he hammered an elbow entirely without warning into the injured man's left side.

Scortius gasped, staggered. The world reeled, went red in his sight.

"Oh! Sorry!" the other man exclaimed. "Are you all right?"

Scortius had doubled over, clutching his side. They were in the entrance now. Would be seen in a stride or two. With a shuddering, racking effort he forced himself to straighten, started moving again, an act of will more than anything else. Was still desperately fighting for breath. Heard, as in a fever, the first roars of the crowd nearest to them.

It began. The volume of noise growing, and growing, rolling along the first straightway like a wave, the sound of his name. Crescens was beside him but it was a mistake on his part, really, for only one name was heard, over and again. A screaming. He struggled to breathe without passing out, to keep moving, not to double over again, not put a hand to his wound.

"I am a terrible man," said Crescens cheerfully beside him, waving to the crowd as if he'd personally fetched the other rider back from the dead like some hero of the ancient tales. "By Heladikos, I really am."

He wanted to kill, and to laugh at the same time. Laughing would probably kill him. He was back in the Hippodrome. The world of it. Out on the sands. Saw the horses up ahead. Wondered how one walked so far.

Knew he was going to do it, somehow.

And in that same moment, seeing the drivers ahead of them swivelling to look back and stare, looking at the teams and their positions, and at one in particular, he had his idea, swift as horses, a gift. He actually smiled, baring his teeth, through breathing was very difficult. There was more than one wolf here, he thought. By Heladikos, there was.

"Watch me," he said then, to the other charioteer, to himself, to the boy he'd been once on that stallion in Soriyya, to all of them, the god and his son and the world. He saw Crescens look quickly over at him. Was aware, triumphantly, through the red, stabbing pain, of sudden anxiety in the other man's features.

He was Scortius. He was still Scortius. The Hippodrome belonged to him. They built monuments to him in this place. Whatever might happen elsewhere, in darkness, with the sun below the world.

"Watch me," he said again.

West of them, not all that far, as the two charioteers are leaving their tunnel, the Emperor of Sarantium is heading towards his own, to pass under the Imperial Precinct gardens from one palace to another where he is about to make the final dispositions for a war he has thought about from the time he placed his uncle on the Golden Throne.

The Empire had been whole once, and then sundered, and then half of it had been lost, like a child might be lost. Or, better put, a father. He has no children. His father died when he was very young. Did these things matter? Had they ever? Did they now? Now that he was an adult, growing old, shaping nations under holy Jad?

Aliana thinks so, or wonders about it. She'd put it to him directly one night not long ago. Was he risking so much, seeking to leave so bright and fierce a mark on the world, because he had no heir for whom to guard what they already had?

He didn't know. He didn't think this was so. He'd been dreaming of Rhodias for so long-a dream of something made whole again. And made so by him. He knew too much about the past, perhaps. There had been three Emperors once for a short, savage time, and then two, here and in Rhodias, for a long, divisive span of years, then only one, here in the City Saranios made, with the west lost and fallen.