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 constandy 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 violendy, 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 reflected 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 tempting. He didn't remember any of the girls this time round but they were all lively enough, and the wine was good. Megarium had a reputation for decent wine, however barbaric the rest of Sauradia might be.

An unfortunate incident involving jests about his name-made one night by a loutish apprentice and a trader in Heladikian icons-left him with a gashed chin and a twisted shoulder that called for further medical treatment and a longer stay than anticipated in the tavern. The stay became less than pleasant after the first few days because it appeared that two of the once-willing girls had contracted an affliction unfortunately similar to the one he was to have been cured of by now, and they made no secret about blaming Tilliticus.

They didn't throw him out, of course-he was an Imperial Courier, and the girls were bodies-for-sale, one of them a slave-but his food tended to arrive cold or overcooked after that, and no one rushed to help a man with an awkward shoulder manage his plates and flasks. Tilliticus was feeling seriously hard done by when he finally decided he was well enough to resume his journey. The tavern-keeper, a Rhodian by birth, gave him mail for relatives in Varena. Tilliticus tossed it in a midden-heap by the harbour.

It was much later in the autumn than it should have been by then and the rains had come. He caught one of the last of the small ships tacking west across the bay to the Batiaran port of Mylasia and docked in a cold, driving rain, having emptied his guts over the ship's railing several times. Tilliticus had little love for the sea.

The city of Varena-where the barbaric, still half-pagan Antae who had sacked Rhodias a hundred years ago and conquered all Batiara held their wretched little court-was three days" ride farther west, two if he hurried. He had not the least interest in hurrying. Tilliticus waited out the rain, drinking morosely by the harbour. His injuries allowed him to do that, he decided. This had been a very difficult run. His shoulder still hurt.

And he had liked that girl in Trakesia.

In the good weather Pardos was outside at the oven making quicklime for the setting bed. The heat of the fire was pleasant when the wind picked up, and he liked being in the sanctuary yard. The presence of the dead under their headstones didn't frighten him, or not in daylight at any rate. Jad had ordained that man would die. War and plague were part of the world the god had made. Pardos didn't understand why, but he had no expectation of understanding. The clerics, even when they disagreed about doctrine or burned each other over Heladikos, all taught submission and faith, not a vainglorious attempt to comprehend. Pardos knew he wasn't wise enough to be vain or to comprehend.

Beyond the graven, sculpted headstones of the named dead, a dark earth mound rose-no grass there yet-at the northern end of the yard. Beneath it lay bodies claimed by the plague. It had come two years ago and then again last summer, killing in numbers too great for anything but mass burial by slaves taken in war. There was lime ash in there, too, and some other elements mixed in. They were said to help contain the bitter spirits of the dead and what had killed them. It was certainly keeping the grass from coming back. The queen had ordered three court cheiromancers and an old alchemist who lived outside the walls to cast binding spells as well. One did all the things one could think to do in the aftermath of plague, whatever the clerics or the High Patriarch might say about pagan magics.