"But these forms of the 'ideal' Empire do have an existence," the Prince remarked. "They must, for otherwise the Oath could not constrain the rest of the Empire to them."

"Lord Prince," Alexandros interjected abruptly. "If they do not exist in a material form, how can they affect anything else?"

Maxian smiled, his handsome face marked by a long-held weariness.

"Not all things," he said, "that exist can be touched or felt or seen. There are things that affect each of us every day that are not: um, material, I suppose."

"Like what?" Alexandros was sitting up again, seemingly poised to leap to his feet. "How can something affect me if it does not have a means to effect me? Something cannot touch me unless it itself can be touched."

Maxian sighed and seemed on the verge of glaring openly at the young man. Then he took a deep breath and rubbed his chin in a nervous gesture.

"Ideas," the Prince said slowly, "affect the world. They affect you. You are constrained by honor, are you not?"

"Yes," the Macedonian said equally slowly. The young man's eyes narrowed, and Krista was put in mind of a cagey horse suspecting that the man with an apple might have a lasso behind his back. "I must act as honor and the gods demand. To be otherwise is to court the fates and disaster."

"Exactly," Maxian said sharply, "but you cannot touch honor. You cannot see it, or feel it. But it affects you, it affects me, and through us it affects all around us. So it is with the curse- this idea of an Empire of Rome- all fixed in its expression at the time of the Divine Augustus."

Gaius snorted and made to sit up, his eyes dancing with indignation. "Puppy!"

Maxian smiled crookedly and waved for the older man to sit back down.

"The traditions of the Senate promulgate this idea, too, and its expression is written down and passed from father to son throughout the generations." The Prince paused, looking thoughtful. "This is the core of the power of the Oath- the Empire that should exist lives in the minds of men, in their memories of the past and belief of how things should be. So are these lattices of form maintained, but then the Oath has the ability to seek out and destroy those who would change that fabric of memory. Too, it can exalt those who would reinforce or maintain these beliefs. So do our armies still fight in the way that they have for two thousand years. Our language maintains, unchanged, such that a man of Alexandros' day can still understand our speech today. The Oath freezes the Empire in amber, a trapped fly with a beating heart. A bee constantly building and reinforcing its own prison."

The Prince's voice ran down, and a cloud seemed to pass over his face. Krista leaned a little forward, her liquid brown eyes watching him carefully. After a moment, Maxian shook his head and looked up again.

"All these lattices, my friend, give the Oath its shape, its purpose, and a form. They interlock in a manifestation of dazzling proportions, reaching from one end of the Empire to the other. They penetrate into the very blood and bone of the people. It is mindless, but subtle. It has no forethought, but it has great purpose. As we have seen, it is surpassingly powerful."

"And you, my Lord Prince, will overturn all this?" Gaius' words seemed mocking, but his face and voice were utterly sincere. "In previous discussions, you and the Persian felt there had to be a keystone that tied all of this together. I know what I believe that key is. Have you found the thing itself?"

Maxian's eyes glinted in anger, but it did not reach his face.

"Yes, Gaius Julius, we have found this key and anchor. It is- I grant you- as you suspected."

"The Emperor," Alexandros said, grinning. "Your very brother."

Cold air lapped at Krista's ankles, seeping through her woolen hose like the icy water of some black Germanian river. She shuddered as she descended the stairs, feeling the clammy air lapping up around her waist. Even here, at the top of the steps, she could hear the droning chant rising from the hidden rooms. The sound set the hairs on the back of her neck up. The Walachs- her Walachs- could be heard as a basso counterpoint to the higher pitch raised by the Persian and Nabatean servants that Abdmachus had gathered. The sound echoed and rolled around the ceiling of the long hallway. For all the volume of the humming drone, it did not pass the top of the steps. There on the crumbling slate a line of pale green glyphs shimmered in the neardarkness, forming a barrier to stop the cold murk and the odd sounds that emanated from the basement.

Icy air closed over her head, and she shuddered, but then smoothed her features and straightened her shoulders. Lanterns gleamed in corroded green sconces, lighting the hallway with pools of pale blue light. Inside each sphere of glass something buzzed and flicked against the glass, casting vague shadows. At the end of the hallway was a turn, and a flight of narrow steps led down into the central room that lay at the base of the house. Here, standing in the doorway of the room, the hum and drone and buzz was loud, like the roar of the crowd in the circus at midday. Even the half-hidden smell of old dried blood that hung in the air was reminiscent of the Games.

At the center of the floor, a circle seven feet wide had been incised in the paving stones and marked with salt and green powder. Outside that circle lay six more layers of ever-expanding rings, each cut an inch or more into the floor of the room. Signs and symbols had been precisely marked into the spaces between each circle until they filled the room from wall to wall. Beneath these new markings, the remains of older signs and symbols could still be seen. This was not the first time the Prince had attempted such a working in these dank chambers. The servants sat along the outside of the outermost ring, each in their own carefully marked space. Candles burned at the cardinal points of each servant's tetrahedron and at the corners of the room.

In the center, at the heart of the innermost ring, lay a marble table the length and breadth of a man. Within the central ring, three triangles formed of silver and gold lines converged upon the table, making a hexagon out of their intersection. Above, the ceiling shimmered and gleamed with a layer of oddly colored green mist that cast a sallow pall across the faces of those gathered in the room.

The Prince Maxian stood at one side of the innermost ring. He wore long dark blue silk pantaloons and a belt of lead links. His chest was bare and smooth, anointed with marks and signs painted in white and purple. His long dark brown hair was tied back behind his head and fell in a tight braid to the small of his back. While the Prince stood, Gaius Julius, Abdmachus, and Alexandros knelt in the triangles, their bodies naked to the waist, free of the kabalistic symbols that marked the Prince. On each forehead, an inverted triangle had been marked in purple dye.

Krista entered the room quietly and stepped off the lowest stair into a pentacle of minature lead cones that stood nearby. This was her place in the ceremony, where she could watch both the door and the room, and stand apart- or so the Prince had promised- from the power that he sought to unleash here.

Within a grain of entering the room, her hair began to rustle and lift away from her shoulders, charged by unseen forces building in the air and stone around her.

"Yes, the Emperor is the focus and anchor of the curse." Maxian's voice was cold and hard, admitting no interruption. "Through him, as in the state, all things flow. But I warn you, Gaius Julius, that attempting to murder him will not only fail to break the power of the curse, but is the surest road to annihilation that you can possibly devise."