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charioteer.'
They were alone in a vast space. For a little time. The parade would be
ending, the others coming noisily back through the tunnels.
'I am honoured that you are the first to say as much,' he said. 'My lady, I
hope you received my note.'
'It was so thoughtful of you to write,' she said. The brittle formality was
its own message. 'I do apologize, of course, that I was with my family for a
short while that night when you felt such an ...
urgent need for my company.' She paused. 'Or for that of any woman who might
offer her body to a celebrated charioteer.'
'Thenai's,' he said.
And stopped. She had, he belatedly saw, a knife in her right hand.
And so he finally understood what this encounter really was. He closed his
eyes. There had always been this possibility, in the life he'd lived.
'Yes?' she said, the tone as detached, as composed as ever. 'I
thought I heard someone say my name.'
He looked at her. He could not have named or even numbered the women who had
shared his nights over the years. All the years. Not one had found a way to
unsettle him as this one had, and still did. He felt old suddenly, and tired.
His wound hurt. He remembered the same feeling, the night he'd gone looking
for her. His shoulder aching in the night wind.
'It was me,' he said quietly. 'I said your name. I say it most nights,
Thenai's.'
'Really? How diverting that must be for the woman lying with you at the time,'
she said.
The two gatekeepers were watching them. One still had his mouth agape. It
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could have been amusing. The wretched physician remained a precise, polite
distance away. It was probable that none of them had seen the dagger in the
soft light.
Scortius said, 'I went to the house of Shirin of the Greens to present her
with an offer from Astorgus.'
'Ah. He wanted to bed her?'
'You are being unkind.'
He winced at what flashed in her eyes then, realized anew just how enraged she
was.
The lifelong mask of control, of absolute, flawless poise: what happened to
such a person when something broke right through. He drew a too-deep breath,
felt the shock of pain in his ribs, said, 'He wanted to invite her,
discreetly, to join the Blues. I had promised to add my voice to the
proposal.'
'Your voice,' she said. There was a glitter in her eyes. He had never seen it
before. 'Just your voice? In the middle of the night.
Climbing up to her bedroom. How . . . persuasive.'
'It is the truth,' he said.
'Indeed. And did you bed her?'
She had no right to ask. To answer was a betrayal of another woman who had
offered him wit and kindness and shared pleasure.
It never occurred to him not to answer, or to lie. 'Yes,' he said.
'Unexpectedly.'
'Ah. Unexpectedly.' The knife was very still in her hand.
'Where did they hurt you?' she asked.
There were noises now from one of the tunnels. The first dancers had left the
sands. Beyond her, through the Processional Gates, he could see the eight
chariots of the first race wheeling back around and up towards the slant of
the start line.
And suddenly it seemed to him that it might actually be enough, what he had
done with his life thus far. That the look in this woman's eyes spoke to a
level of pain he'd caused-an unfair burden, perhaps, but how did fairness
enter into life?-and he could die here, after all, accepting it from her, in
this place. He had never expected to
grow old.
He said, 'Left side. A stab wound, broken ribs around it.'
All he had wanted to do once, long ago, was race horses.
She nodded, biting at her lower lip thoughtfully, a single line across her
brow. 'How unfortunate. I have a knife.'
'I did see that.'
'If I wished to hurt you very, very much before you died . .. ?'
'You would stab me here,' he said, and showed her. There was blood, in any
case. It could be seen welling through the blue tunic.
She looked at him. 'You wish to die?'
He considered it then. 'Not really, no. But I would not want to live if it
caused you so much grief'
She drew a breath then. Courage and pain and a kind of... madness.
That fierce, never-before-seen glinting in her eye. 'You can't imagine I'd be
long behind you.'
He closed his eyes again, opened them. 'Thenai's, there is ... so much wrong
in that. But I am prepared for whatever you desire.'
The knife still did not move. 'You should have lied to me, just now.
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