Emperor

XIII

Being presented to the Emperor didn't feel like an honour to Audax.

It felt like the time he had been hauled up before overseer Volisios because he had cut his hand in a tired fall in a quartz seam, making himself useless for days. It had never even occurred to him to try to explain that he had been kept without sleep for two nights by a gang of dirty men. After yelling at him for a while the overseer had shown him the row of crosses where the bird-pecked remnants of slaves dangled, Audax's destination if he made any more mistakes, and then had handed him over to a burly brute for a whipping.

That was how this felt today, as Thalius and Aurelia led him into the elaborate shrine-like room where the Emperor sat on his throne. The room was filled with light that dazzled from the Emperor's clothes and jewelled crown. Audax recognised some of the people with the Emperor. On his right hand side was Helen, his mother, almost as fancily dressed as her son. To the Emperor's left was Cornelius, his eyes on Audax but murmuring to the Emperor. And beyond them were hard-eyed soldiers, their hands on the hilts of their stabbing swords, watching every movement.

He was brought to within a pace of the Emperor, close enough to touch him. Constantine was terrifying. Audax thought he could feel heat radiating from him. He had spent a lifetime suppressing the instinct to resist, but Audax couldn't help but pull back. But then Constantine caught his eye and smiled at him. Suddenly he seemed human, and Audax's dread subsided, just a little.

Thalius and Aurelia, he nervously, she with smooth confidence, began to describe Audax's scarring and how it had come about. Audax could understand a little of their Latin talk, of a family history, a rich woman who sold her descendants into slavery…Constantine listened with an expression of faint boredom. Audax imagined him listening to hundreds of people every day, each of them with a story they needed him to hear.

Then came the revelation of the scar itself. Aurelia turned the boy around and had him lift his tunic over his head. Audax waited, his head swathed in his tunic, smelling his own sweat, hearing the muffled voices of the adults as they discussed the one thing about him that made him interesting to them. An acrostic…Christian elements, the alpha and the omega…encrypted words. He felt a warm, heavy finger tracing across his back, perhaps the Emperor's own, and his gruff voice teasing out the words: Constare, perire.

The boy was straightened up, his tunic flopped down, and he was turned around to face the Emperor. Audax saw that one of the guards had drawn his sword. Everybody understood the true meaning of the two words. Suddenly the tension in the room was enormous, and Audax, at its focus, was very afraid.

It was Helena who spoke next. Are you threatening my son? Is he to die today?

Thalius spoke rapidly, clearly terrified; he hadn't anticipated this reaction. Nobody will die…Not a threat…We bring you the Prophecy in good faith, we did not make it…We hope you will take it as guidance for a better future for all of us…We bring you a letter…He fumbled beneath his toga for his document, and the guards glared at him even more intently.

And while they were distracted Audax discovered a knife in his hand, a fine, polished blade. It had been put there by Aurelia. As he looked down on the blade, her cold fingers closed around Audax's hand, and the knife.

And she pushed Audax, stretching his arm, and the blade was thrust forward. Audax saw all this as if watching from outside his own body. It had been beaten into him across a lifetime that when an adult pulled you around you didn't resist, not so much as a muscle. So it was his hand that held the knife, but Aurelia's strength that shoved it through layers of cloth, a briefly resisting skin, and then into a wet warmth beyond.

Even as the knife pierced the Emperor's chest, Aurelia screamed, 'No! The slave is a rogue! Help me hold him back, oh help me!' When the knife was embedded to its hilt, Aurelia fell back with a cry.

For a heartbeat all was still. Audax and Constantine were locked together, the knife hilt still in the slave's hand, the blade in the Emperor's chest. Constantine's mouth gaped, with strings of spittle stretched between his lips. Audax's hand felt small, pressed against the huge warmth of the Emperor's body.

Then there was pandemonium. Helena screamed, the soldiers yelled and drew their weapons, and Thalius and Aurelia were both grabbed and held. But nobody dared touch the Emperor himself, or the boy.

Constantine raised his hand, and everything stopped.

The Emperor was breathing slowly, carefully, and he kept his eyes locked on Audax. 'Don't move,' he said in Brigantian.

Audax was surprised enough to speak. 'You know Brigantian.'

Perhaps his arm moved, just a tiny bit, as he spoke. Constantine gasped, and his huge body shuddered, as if he was a puppet controlled by the boy, and the knife.

Constantine said breathlessly, 'I was a soldier here, serving under my father, for many years. This was my home. I learned British. What is your name? Nobody thought to tell me.'

'Audax, sir.'

'Audax. All right, Audax, listen to me carefully. There are two very important things that I must tell you. The first is that I know that it wasn't your fault. I saw the woman push you-what is her name?'

'Aurelia.'

'Yes. I saw it. So whatever happens today, if I live or die, you won't be punished. Do you believe me?'

Audax thought it over. 'No,' he said.

Constantine gritted his teeth. 'I wish my advisors were half as honest. I am the Emperor, Audax. If I make a promise it is kept. So believe me.'

'What is the second important thing?'

'The second thing is that as a soldier I learned a lot about the human body. Mostly by cutting holes in other people. And I know that if you move that knife, even a little bit, you will puncture the vessels of my heart and I will surely die. If you do not move it, I might yet live. Do you understand now why I asked you to stand still?'

'Yes,' said Audax.

Yes, he understood. But his arm, held out straight, was tiring, and the blood was seeping out of the Emperor's robes, bright crimson, and soaking his hand in slippery warmth. He did move, just minutely, no matter how hard he tried to keep still. He couldn't help it. And with every jerky motion he felt the Emperor shudder and twist in response. It was the way Audax had seen crucified slaves jerk and twitch, tiny motions as they tried to relieve the pain in their chests and feet. And just as Audax had learned to recognise mortal fear in the faces of the crucified, so he saw fear on Constantine's greying face now, beneath the clamp of calm.

The Emperor said, 'Can you see the man behind me? The tall man with the spectacles-I mean the bits of glass on his nose? He is my physician-a Greek, and a very good one. He is called Philip. If you want you can let Philip take the knife from you, then I will live. Or you could choose to twist the knife and I will die.'

Audax heard Aurelia yell, 'Kill him, slave! Kill the monster-' Then her voice was muffled, perhaps by a soldier's heavy hand.

Audax stayed still, his arm aching.

The Emperor said, 'Why do you think that woman wants me dead?'

'The words on my back say you will die.'

'All right. But what do you think, Audax? Do you think your choice should depend on a prophecy? Look at me. What do you see?'

Audax considered the man before him: heavy-set, powerful. He reminded Audax of Tarcho. 'A soldier,' he said.

'Yes. Good. That is what I am above all, and always will be.'

'I want to be a soldier,' Audax said.

Constantine nodded, just a little. 'Then I promise you shall be-if you choose to let me live. But it is your choice, Audax. Quite a thing, isn't it? Here we are, Emperor and slave, the highest and the lowest, the top and the bottom. And yet because of a simple knife, at this moment it is you who holds more power than anybody else in the world-you, at whose every tremble all history shudders.'

'It is true,' Thalius whispered. 'It is true! The unravelling of a Prophecy three centuries old-the fate of the whole world to come-all of it boils down to this moment, a knife in the hand of a slave!' But Tarcho hushed him roughly.

Constantine whispered, his voice growing weaker, his face greyer, 'The world is a complicated place, Audax. The future is unknown. And yet we must make choices even so. What do you think such choices should be based on? Words burned into your back, or the judgement of a man like me?'

Audax felt detached from the world, as if he was going to faint. His arm, outstretched, was so stiff, his blood-soaked fingers so numb, that he could barely feel the knife any more, and he didn't know if he was keeping still or not.

And as the world turned to grey, he thought he saw the walls of the room break down, like a collapsed wall in the mine, revealing corridors leading off to misty destinations. Dimly he discerned that the Emperor was telling the truth, and so was Thalius, that momentous events affecting the lives of people for generations unborn depended on what he did in the next few heartbeats. Who was he to trust, then-who or what?

If Constantine had been Tarcho he would not have hesitated-Tarcho, the only person in his life save perhaps his dimly remembered mother who had ever been truly kind to him. And yet Constantine was enough like Tarcho that he found he trusted him. People were real, Audax thought. People and their characters and their judgements. That was all that mattered in the world. Words, prophecies, were nothing.

'Call your doctor,' he said.

Constantine's eyes did not move, but his expression softened. 'Philip. Come here. As slowly as you like, sir…'

Nobody dared move until the Greek doctor had taken the knife from Audax's hand, and then slowly extracted it from the Emperor's chest. Audax, released, fell back, his head ringing, and that strange sense of detachment evaporated, and the room closed up to become just a room once more.

After that there was an explosion of movement, a flashing of blades. Tarcho grabbed Thalius and Audax and pulled them out of the melee.