They had practised exactly three times, once on each of the past three days, and each time had been a catastrophe of bruises and broken wood. For all his practice in falling through the winter, Math had been lucky to walk away with his bones intact.
He wasn’t alone in that. The chaos in practice had been bloodily painful and there had not been time to get it right. Even so, Akakios had been explicit that their lives depended on a perfect display and nobody doubted him. News of the baker’s fate had spread through the compound faster than a dose of flux. If nothing else, it had brought the teams to a level of cooperation that had been unthinkable through the winter.
But this wasn’t a race. Racing would have meant only one man driving only four horses and a light chariot. Racing would have been easy. This was a contrivance designed to show the emperor how inspired had been his choice of teams, how perfectly trained they were, and, contrary to the reality, how closely matched.
Thus, setting aside all they had worked for through the winter and knew to be true, Blue, White and Green had to leave the start line in foot-perfect synchrony and reach the finish in line abreast, keeping together all the way.
In a steam of horse-sweat and hammering feet, they thundered down the long straight with their wheels in perfect line. The speed was terrifying, far faster than they had dared risk in practice. Ajax, Poros and Lentus of the Whites seemed consumed by gods, or demons, determined to show their best speed, even if it saw them all dead.
Math clung to the back rail of the chariot with his teeth loosening in his head and his palms cut in ridges by his nails and knew that the second man in the Blues to his outside and the Whites to his inside were doing the same.
Too fast, the first bend came.
‘
Math!
’
Ajax’s shout cut through the roar and fury of the race. Math prised his grip from the rail and leaned away from the tilt, pressing ever more of his weight over the outside rear wheel, leaning out and out, balanced on one foot, until he was flying, precariously suspended in space over the packed sand with the crown of his head a hand’s breadth from the spinning, hissing, burning wheels of the Blue chariot and his hair brushing the spokes.
For a moment, he thought he might be sick with terror, but then it was over, the apex of the corner was passed and the pressure of the rails on his ribs meant he could bring himself back on to the platform again, and balance with the balls of both feet over the rear axle directly behind Ajax as they pounded along the short straight at the top of the track.
His mouth was dry, and his heart smashed itself sore against his ribs. His hands were wet and cramped and he had to focus on each finger to move it. He stared at the back of Ajax’s neck as a snake stares at its prey, watching the bunched muscles cording the naked shoulders, trying to gauge how far and steeply they were going to lean.
Unconsciously, he counted the horses’ strides. Four, and the short side was over. He saw Ajax widen his stance, saw his left arm swing a little out, and almost by instinct began to lean himself ever further to the right, to balance the turn.
This time it was not so terrifying. Math flew for a moment and returned to stand square behind Ajax. He didn’t feel sick.
Twice more, and they were done with the first circuit. Four more to go, and then three, and then two. The corners became easier each time. Nobody made any mistakes and the rhythm of the hooves fed the rhythms of the race so that it became a dance between men and boys and horses, beautiful and lethal.
A lap and a half to go. Math found he could take his hand from the rail down the long straight and smear the sweat from his forehead. He risked a brief look for Hannah and found her standing at the rails. She waved, and Math returned it.
Behind her, Nero stood atop his gold-layered platform, legs spread, arms folded across his naked chest. He was wearing only a driver’s loincloth made of white silk, an already strange effect that was further confused by the slaves standing to his either side who kept him cool with ostrich-wing fans.
‘
Math!
’
A corner again. Math wrenched his attention back to the track. Two strides. One. Math watched Ajax’s neck and leaned out and out and out, his fingers relaxed on the rail, so that he could lean ever further out over the speeding sand, so that he was flying, weightless, perfect, with his hair streaming behind and the hiss of the wheels in his ears and the bounce and sway so like the ship from Gaul that he—
‘
Lentus!
Move over!’
Ajax called too late to the Whites’ driver. Twice, in practice, the boy in the White chariot had leaned too far so that his chariot had swooned out on the apex of the turn, touching wheels with whoever was next to him. Once it had been Ajax and once Poros and each time it had thrown them into a rig-destroying crash.
Akakios had promised a slow death for them all if they did it in front of the emperor.
Math felt the subtle judder of wood on wood. He felt the wind of the Blue wheels cut the air a hand’s breadth from his head and thought that if he leaned out just a little further it was possible he might buy himself a swift death.
‘Math, lean out more. Lean
out
!’
The shout came from his outside. Through a blur of tears and sweat and spinning wheels, he caught sight of Poros’ face turned back towards him, and the open cave of his mouth.
‘Lean out further. Bring your chariot out.’
There
was
space. Poros was creating it, even as he pushed his own horses round the turn. Ajax was leaning too, but the other way, levering the last pairs of horses into the space Poros left for them. The Blues’ driver shouted again, ‘Math, lean out, damn you!’
Math didn’t trust Poros, but Akakios had said they would all die together if any one of them crashed and he didn’t think Poros wanted to lie pegged on the sand with his skin stripped any more than Math did.
And so he tried the impossible, and let go of the rail and hooked his right ankle on something that felt firm and, stretching his arms up, reached further out.
The rail was hooked under his ribs now, seated in the curve of his waist. His hair streamed back. A slipstream cooled his armpits. His eyes spewed tears and his face was scrubbed clean and raw with the flying dust.
But the juddering stopped and then the corner was over and all he had to do was bring himself in again smoothly, to be in balance for the long drive down the straight.
The chariot wobbled. In the fight to hold the team in line, Math felt Ajax shift his own weight and realized that the rock-steady thing he had hooked his ankle round was Ajax’s shin and that, by easing it sideways, the driver was helping him back in to the chariot again.
And he was there, safe, standing on knees that threatened to buckle but did not, heaving great gulps of gritty air and grinning stupidly in relief.
‘Three more corners,’ Ajax shouted past Math to the drivers and seconds on either side, over the boiling chaos of cheers from the trackside. ‘Let’s see if we can do them safely, shall we?’
They did. Nobody, on the track or off it, had the stamina for more excitement. They took the corners with plenty of space between and they paced themselves to perfection, so that the lead horses were not only in line but were matched stride for stride as they crossed the finish.
Gradually, the teams slowed and stopped. Steam came off them in ripe clouds. Ajax was laughing, Poros too. Lentus was threatening his boy with every bad death he could think of, but quietly, so that nobody beyond the three chariots could hear. They existed in a bubble of their own; the almost-hysteria of the watching crowd couldn’t reach them yet, nor the fact that Nero was climbing down into a litter, ready to be brought to the front of the throng.
Math leaned back on the rail and looked up at the dirty sky. His palms had crescent nail marks gouged across the width of each, his face felt as if Akakios had already stripped it of skin and his ribs were bruised where the rails had bitten into them. He was as happy as he could ever remember.
He took a deep breath. ‘It’s not about losing the fear, is it? It’s about feeling it and still being able to think.’ He spat grit from his mouth that had been there since the beginning. ‘And calling to the gods, obviously. I did hear you do that.’
Math felt the heat of Ajax’s gaze and turned his face up. ‘Am I too much like my father?’
Ajax looked away. ‘You’re very like him. But not too much. You reminded me of … someone else.’
‘You?’
‘No. My mother’s brother. He would have had your courage, I think, when he was young. It was a great thing you did today.’ Ajax looked away, smoothing the reins straight. ‘Nero’s coming.’
Math made himself stand up tall. He wanted to straighten his tunic, but he wasn’t wearing one. He wasn’t, in fact, wearing nearly enough, but then none of them was. He straightened his loincloth instead, and ran his hand through his hair.
Ajax jumped down from the chariot and turned to offer him his hand. ‘I want to meet your mother’s brother,’ said Math, as he climbed down.
‘One day you will.’ Ajax’s lips barely moved as he spoke. ‘If we survive this afternoon. I’ll lay you two denarii that Nero’s going to invite us to join him in the baths.’
‘T
he kithara is played by Rhemaxos,’ Nero said languidly. ‘Do you like it?’
They were in the private imperial baths, exactly as Ajax had predicted, and, despite his best efforts to cleave close to the rest of the Green team, Math was alone with Nero, standing up to his chest in scalding water that sought out every scrape and cut and lapped at them viciously.
He wanted to lie down, to savour again the moments of flying, to find if they might, at last, portend the beginnings of his success as a driver. Instead, he shifted his weight to lean back against the pink marble of the pool’s edge and let one filthy foot rise up. Scrubbing at it with the heel of his hand, he said, ‘The music is beyond words, lord. All of Alexandria is. Compared to Coriallum, this is a city for the gods.’
He spoke Latin with the inflections of court. A winter in the compound had taught him that. He had learned a measure of diplomacy, too, although he had no idea if it was enough to keep him safe.
Each time he looked at Nero, he saw in his mind’s eye an image of the baker, who had died by imperial order, and heard in his mind’s ear Pantera’s warning that if he ever gave way to Nero’s blandishments the emperor would tire of the chase and have Math slaughtered afterwards, or do it himself in the throes of lust.
He had met men like that before and survived them, but in Coriallum, if he had made eyes at a client and then changed his mind, he could simply have vanished into the alleyways and both would have forgotten it within a day.
Here, now, there was no possibility of quiet anonymity. By Akakios’ decree, Math was a hostage to Hannah’s ‘good behaviour’, his life inextricably linked to hers. He wondered if Nero knew that too, and decided he probably did.
He scraped the mud from his toenails with his fingers, dropped his foot back into the water and lifted the other one. Under Nero’s limpid gaze, even something so grubbily basic as cleaning his feet was, it seemed, to be transformed into an erotic invitation. If Math had any doubts on that score, the echoes were above and all around, in mosaics and murals of lechery.
Here on the side wall, the nymph Echo lay naked before Narcissus, her fingers resting lightly on her groin. A little further away, wing-heeled Mercury disported himself with human maids and youths, beguiling them with his brilliance. High up in the domed ceiling, satyrs joined with water spirits, gods with goddesses and mortal women, all modelled on the same tight-breasted girl. The men all had hair that curled about their heads, as Nero’s did.
To bring it all from the walls to reality, white linen cloths lay at the pool’s edge, ready for whomsoever should leave first. Beyond, bedrooms furnished with silk lay with their doors open and beautiful slaves waited tactfully in the background. The lyre’s notes drifted down from the high gallery, at times light as wild blossom in spring, at others stirring as a martial anthem.
A crash of military chords sent a hero to his death. In the lull afterwards, Nero rolled over on to his stomach sending waves teasing across the pool towards Math. Beneath the water, his skin was broiled to the same pink hue as the marble that walled the pool.
‘Alexandria is indeed made for the gods,’ he said pensively. ‘It’s unsurpassed in our empire, except only for Rome. You will see that soon for yourself.’
‘To see Rome, lord, we must win the race against the Blues and the Whites,’ Math said. ‘As you saw today, we are well matched.’
‘No.’ Nero blew on the water, making complex patterns of ripples. ‘What we saw today was that you are all capable of appearing well matched, that the White boy is prone to indulgences of exhilaration, while you and the Blues’ second held your nerve. Above all, we saw that Ajax and Poros are drivers of exceptional talent. We did not see all three teams well matched.’
Math felt his bladder tighten. He remembered something Pantera had said about being honest with this man. Truthfully, he said, ‘The Greens and the Blues are well matched, Lord. If it’s true that the baker was selling information, he couldn’t have sold news of which would win, because none of us knows.’
‘Which is exactly what he sold. That, and news of a damaged tendon that was healed before he ever got word of it.’
‘So, why—’
‘He died for the principle that our compound remains sealed, not for the value of what he knew.’
Abruptly, Nero kicked out towards the deepest end of the pool. There, goat-footed Pan in bronze played his reed pipes to a trio of nymphs. They were polished often, but still the heated water spread green rust on the tips of their elbows and in the creases of their knees.
Easing himself round Pan’s raised right hoof, Nero came to sit on a ledge that let him submerge up to his neck. He crooked a finger, calling Math to him. Math checked again on the positions of the others in case he had the chance to call on them. At the pool’s shallower end, the artful pages still held Ajax, Poros and Lentus in a group. The other boys were playing dice with a pair of guards. Caught between them, Akakios looked no more bitter than any man who was forced to disport himself naked with boys he has ordered flogged and men who would see him dead in a heartbeat if they but had the power.