ROME SPY OF THE EMPEROR'S

The Price of loyalty

"Math? Are you all right?" Hannah had found him.

She was dark-eyed and quiet-souled, a healer from Alexandria and Ajax's new woman or perhaps not quite his woman yet.

In the month she had been among them, Math had never seen Ajax so much as lay a finger on her, although his interest in her had been clear from the beginning she was the complete opposite of the other women who hovered around the edges of the team.

Those women would have given themselves to Ajax in a moment if he had only asked. But Ajax had never asked any of them.

For a long time, Math had thought that women simply did not interest Ajax.

Then Hannah arrived, carrying a sense of stillness that seemed to bring peace to Ajax and the whole team that was why the team had loved her almost immediately.

Soon, however, they discovered that Hannah was a healer of a very different kind from the people who usually served the citizens of Coriallum.

Only ten days earlier, one of the younger colts had gone down with colic. Hannah had treated him with a drench, and within a day the colt had recovered.

After that, the entire team began to compete for her attention not just Ajax.

They hung on her every word and hurried to meet her needs even the other teams wanted her around, hoping she would keep their horses healthy and fit for the emperor's race.

They all knew they probably would not win.

That became obvious as soon as they saw the magistrate's new horses.

But they also knew that coming second would be a respectable result.

For Math, however, second place had never been enough.

His heart's dream had been to race a chariot before the emperor and win. At least, that had been his dream before he met Pantera.

Now he needed to think. He needed to weigh his heart and his dreams. And to do that, he needed to be alone. But Hannah was there, close and warm and still, like a forest pool on a summer river.

The barn was lit only by the stars, and even those were faint. Math could barely see her.

All he could make out was a wave of black hair falling like smoked silk from her high, clear brow and the straight nose beneath it.

Her face was close to his as she peered into the darkness. "Math, what's the matter? What happened to your cheek? Did one of your men hit you? Did you cut a purse and someone caught you?" Hannah was a breath of fresh air in many ways.

One of the greatest was the quiet way she accepted what Math did and why he did it. She was also good with horses, almost as good as his mother had been.

Nobody except perhaps Ajax could have crouched where Hannah was now, almost between Sweat's two back feet, and looked into the warm nest Math had made for himself in the straw the colt fidgeted and stamped his foot, but he did not try to kick her head or tear her scalp with his teeth.

Hannah moved closer to Math, sharing his little huddle of straw. Her forefinger stroked once down his cheek.

She felt the wetness there, but she said nothing. His mother would have done the same. She would have noticed his tears without making him name them.

Thickly, Math said, "You shouldn't come in here. Your hair will smell of horse piss when you leave. "Really?" She took his hand and squeezed it. Math felt the flash of her smile in the warm, damp darkness. "I've probably smelled of nothing else since I first came to look at your colts ten days ago."

She didn't. She smelled of wood smoke and warm hair, wool and leather, and the sweat of a woman, which was very different from the sweat of men.

The temptation to bury himself in her arms was like thirst on a hot day. He supposed Ajax felt the same way. That thought gave Math the strength to resist. Hannah felt the change in him as he edged away and clenched his fist.

Tentatively, she wrapped both hands around his.

"Math, what have you got? Can I see?" After a moment's hesitation, he opened his fingers.

She picked up the coin by feel. "It's a denarius," he said, although she already knew. She was not rich. She might have come from Rome's breadbasket, but if she had brought any of its wealth with her when she left, it was all in her head.

Like everyone else on the team, she owned little more than the tunic she wore every day and a silver belt buckle.

Beyond that, she had a linen sack containing bandages and unguents, dried herbs, and five nested copper bowls for washing wounds.

She had arrived at the race barns with almost nothing, and she would probably leave with as little. Anyone who lived hand to mouth knew the feel of a denarius without needing light to see it.

Quietly, Hannah gave the coin back to him and closed his fingers around it "Did you steal it? Is that how you scraped your face?" "I earned it." He could hear the stubborn pride in his own voice and hated it. "I didn't steal it. I earned it."

"Oh, Math…" She pulled him close again, and this time he let her. "Please be careful." They sat silently for a while, breathing in each other's warmth as the horses moved around them.

She was so much like his mother. Math forced himself to think about the differences, so he would never confuse the two women.

Hannah was dark-haired. His mother had hair the colour of ripe corn. Hannah's eyes were deep brown. His mother's had been blue-grey, like a mackerel's back.

Hannah was perhaps ten years younger than his mother and closer to Ajax's age ten or fifteen years older than Math.

Hannah spoke Greek first, then Latin, and a faulty Gaulish his mother had preferred three different dialects of northern Gaul.

She spoke Greek when she had to and Latin only when there was no other choice. Hannah had been trained in philosophy and medicine.

She spoke to Ajax about Isis and Osiris, Socrates and Plato, Pythagoras and Demetrius as though gods and men alike were still alive.

Math's mother had told him stories about the heroes of Britain, most of whom were dead, and had taught him the daily rituals used to remember the gods of oak and river.

He chose, for the most part, to forget those things now that she was dead. But there was one thing the two women had in common.

Their time in his life was short. His mother was already gone. And Hannah, Math knew, would leave soon. Ajax had said that she was not the kind of woman who stayed in one place for long or with one man.

He had warned Math not to fall in love with her. It had seemed to Math that Ajax was speaking mostly for himself.

Hannah moved slightly, and Math caught a brief scent of something else beneath the wood smoke. "What were you celebrating?" he asked. He felt the searching quality of her look.

Then he said, "I can smell roast lamb."Ajax said you were quick." "It wasn't me. Someone was celebrating on my behalf." Hannah was suddenly less still, as if a stone had been thrown into the pool of her soul and disturbed its surface. Math waited.

After a while, she said, "A friend of my father has been searching for me for more than half a year. Today his journey ended. He gave a feast to show his gratitude."

Math said, "You don't like lamb." Hannah never ate meat. It was another way she was different from his mother.

She nodded. "He doesn't know that. My father died before I was born. My mother returned to Alexandria to give birth to me and take care of my childhood.

I have never met any of my father's friends until today." They were quiet for a while, listening to the horses slowly eating. Then Hannah said, "His name is Shimon. He wants me to go back with him when he leaves."

"Will you?"

"I don't want to."

"But you might?"

Math thought this was the first time she had seriously considered it.

She reached up and teased a tangle of hair from Sweat's mane. "I might." Math picked up a piece of straw and sucked on the end, tasting autumn and frost he thought about how Ajax had changed after Hannah arrived, and how much he would change again if she left. He said, "Ajax says everyone who comes to Coriallum is running from something.

It's as far away from Rome as a man can get."Or a woman?" Hannah's eyes were sharp in the grey light.

"Might we not be running towards something?"

"He didn't say that." They were quiet for a long time.

Math stared up into the darkness of the roof.

"If we win the race tomorrow, Nero will send us to Alexandria to train," he said eventually. "All his horses go there first. Then he chooses the best ones to race for him in Rome." They said it took two months by sea or three by road. "But that would mean taking the horses over the mountains, and they don't want to do that. We'd have to leave by the end of next month, before the sea lanes close."

He paused."If we win," he added. "But we won't."

Hannah's hand moved to his shoulder.

Math felt her return from her distant thoughts. "Is that what's wrong?" she asked. "You think you might be stuck in Coriallum all your life?" "You won't." She smiled. "The emperor will notice your horses. I'm sure of it."Ajax still thinks he can win." Math let his voice show how foolish he thought that was.

Hannah shook her head. Her smoke-black hair brushed against his cheek. "No, he doesn't. But he doesn't want the entire team to decide that second place is good enough."Good enough" is how you lose.

"Did Ajax say that?"

"Yes. And he's right. You need to keep aiming to win if you want to catch the emperor's eye." She paused.

"It's the fire in all of you, the need to win, that will do it. Ajax said he'll get you to Rome to race for the emperor if it kills him.

He promised it on the shade of your mother."I know. I was there." Math shook his head.

"But he can't promise what isn't in his power."

He hesitated. "He drew the Green ribbon this afternoon. The gods are against us." "Just because you've always been on the Red team doesn't mean "Nero hates Green.

He thinks it's unlucky."Then you'll just have to show him that it isn't."Hannah took his head in both hands and kissed his brow.

Her lips were cool and dry, just as his mother's had been, except at the end, when his mother's lips had been hot."And to do that, you need to sleep," Hannah said. "You'll never be a race-driver if you spend the night before a race wide awake."

She paused."You could come and sleep with me in the healer's booth. I have a straw pallet and hides. It's warmer than here." The part of Math that stood apart and watched other people knew that Ajax would give a month's food for an offer like that.

It was almost worth accepting just to see Ajax's face in the morning when he found out. But the smell of cheese on his fingers reminded Math that he needed to be alone.

He shook his head. "I need to stay with Sweat and Thunder. They get upset the night before a race.", "But, Math, they aren't racing tomorrow. Only the first team goes into the traces."

"I know that," he said crossly. "But they don't. They just smell the axle grease and know there's a race coming." He looked toward the two colts. "If I leave them now, they'll keep everyone awake kicking the walls. I need to stay here."

He paused. "And I want to. I'm fine, honestly."

"You're crying, Math. I've never seen you cry before."

"I was thinking of my mother."His voice softened.

"She bred Brass and Bronze, who are in the first team. She would have wanted to see them race."

"Then I'll leave you with her memory. Thank you for telling me."

Hannah kissed his hair and did not comment on its smell. Standing, she said, "My mother is dead, too. She was a healer, far better than me."

She squeezed his hand. "When I bring a woman through childbirth and both mother and child are healthy, or when I set a broken bone and know it will heal, I cry too, out of pride in her memory."

She smiled. "It isn't something to hide." She squeezed his hand once more and began to work her way between Sweat and the edge of the stall toward the passageway at the large open doorway, she stopped.

She was a black shadow against the starlight outside.

Raising her head, she called back to him. "Ajax says you'll be a race-driver one day if you want it badly enough. Better than him if you put your mind to it."

"I know. Thank you."

Math made his voice sound sincere, even though another part of him knew that Ajax had told Hannah those things only so she would pass them on as part of his plan to save Math from himself.

Math lay in his hollow of straw, listening to Hannah's quiet footsteps crossing the grass. He heard the splash of urine as she squatted to relieve herself.

Then he heard the soft press of straw as she settled onto her pallet. Her booth was not far from the end of the barn. It stood at the front of the newly named Green team's collection of tents and stalls.

A white linen rag hung from a pole outside to show her profession. Math waited until he could hear the sound of her sleeping breath. Then he got up.

He moved through the warm, horse-filled darkness to speak first to Sweat, his favourite, and then to Thunder. He was no longer crying.

He wiped his face with his hands and let the colts lick the salt from his palms. He told them they were wonderful and that they would win if they were racing.

But they had to be patient in the morning when Brass and Bronze were harnessed to the big quadriga, with the two trace horses running behind them.

The trace horses were never considered as important.

The colts nudged Math and flicked their tails before returning to the half-doze from which he had awakened them. "My mother bred them," he had told Pantera. "That makes them easier to handle."

What he had not told him was that his mother had bred all eight of the horses that raced for Ajax the first and second teams.

But Sweat and Thunder were special. His mother had given them to her son. She had taken Math to the field on the day the two long-legged bay colts were born, Sweat half a morning before Thunder. She had let him name them.

She had also kept him beside her throughout their early training. Then, when Math was five and the colts were three, she gave them to him as his gift at the midsummer solstice.

They were, of course, far too valuable to be owned by a five-year-old boy. So they had been sold.

But Math knew that one of the conditions of the sale was that he would be taken on as an apprentice when he came of age. Gordianus, who owned the team at the time, said no.

Math would not be allowed to become an apprentice until he was ten. After his mother died, however, nobody expected Math to live that long. Not even Math himself.

Then, the previous year, Gordianus broke both his legs in an accident at the end of the autumn season. By chance, Ajax happened to be there.

He had simply walked in off the last boat before the season ended for winter. He had a shaved head, one ear missing, black eyebrows that seemed almost painted on, and scars covering his body from races, war, and one brutal flogging.

People had mocked him for those scars when he first arrived. They stopped mocking him once they saw how well he could race. Ajax had told many different people many different stories about how he had received the scars.

To Math, he had said: "I was young and I hated the legions. I thought I could beat them." "And they caught you?" Math had asked dutifully. "They did." Ajax's quick grin made it sound almost as ordinary as being caught stealing fish from the docks, something everyone did sooner or later. "They would have killed me after they flogged me.

But my mother's brother was an officer in the auxiliary, and he was able to get me released." He had pointed a warning finger at Math. "If your mother doesn't have a brother in the auxiliary, don't steal from the legions.

That's my advice." Somewhere between all the racing and the stories, Ajax had shown Gordianus the weight of his money. A deal had been struck.

For an untold amount of gold, Ajax acquired the practice chariots, the racing chariot, the eight racehorses, sixteen young horses, the wainwright and his three apprentices, the loriner and his son, and the various stud hands who had kept the breeding herds alive after Math's mother died.

He also acquired Caradoc of the Osismi, the harness-maker who was Math's father, along with Lucius, the existing apprentice.

And he took on the promise that Math would become the second apprentice when he came of age. At the midwinter solstice, not long after the fires had been extinguished and relit to honour the death and rebirth of the sun god, Ajax came to Math and his father.

He carried a smoked herring and a sprig of mistletoe in his open hands. His shaved head shone in the candlelight because he had polished it with oil.

The hole where his ear had been cut away was blue at the edges from the cold outside. His black eyebrows seemed to have been drawn on with charcoal.

Even so, he looked a little like the sun god, returned from midwinter to bring light back into the world.

"I am told I should give these to the mother of my apprentice boy," he had said formally, "as payment for the use of her son for the next nine years."

He looked toward Caradoc. "But since he has no mother, I would ask Caradoc of the Osismi, father to Math of the Osismi, to do me the honour of accepting them." Something had already been said between Ajax and Caradoc.

Math could see it in the way their eyes met and in the silent communication that passed over his head. It was not the first time. Ajax and Caradoc had got along surprisingly well from the beginning. That was good.

But it also meant that both of them were trying to change Math. His father had asked him, "Math, do you still want to be a race-driver? The work will be hard."

"Not harder than working the docks." Math had said it aloud, although he had only meant to think it.

He saw his father read the answer in his face and immediately regretted it. He was always sorry for the hurt he caused his father. But almost everything he had done since his mother's death seemed to cause it. That was stupid.

And it made him angry. He also did not want to be indebted to Ajax. Looking away, he had said, "I have work. I bring in enough for both of us.

I don't need more." He felt both men looking at him over his head. His father wanted to answer, but Ajax stopped him by standing. "Of course," Ajax said. "I apologize for insulting you. We don't have to speak of it again." He shook Caradoc's hand.

Then he looked at Math. "You have made the horses well. They'll miss you." Ajax left, taking the mistletoe but leaving the herring behind. Two nights later, Math was passing the horse barns when he found Ajax trying to use a straw wisp to bring out the shine in Brass's coat.

The horse had a ticklish stomach. There was a particular way to wisp him that worked, and Ajax did not know it. Math took the pad of woven straw from Ajax's hand and showed him how to do it.

Ajax was leaving when Math suddenly said: "I won't stop working the docks." Ajax reached the end of the barn before turning around. He had gone far enough for Math to feel genuine fear that he had lost his chance.

"I won't ask you to," Ajax said. He looked directly at Math. "Just know that work for me comes first, before anything else. If you leave things undone, you'll be out of a job." He paused. "To save me from having to .

watch you, do you give me your word to put race work before everything else? That's all I ask." Nobody had ever asked Math for his word before. Alarmed and flattered at the same time, he spat into his hand to seal the oath.

He knew perfectly well that Ajax planned to work him to exhaustion so that he would not have time to go down to the docks. That had been more than half a year ago, at the winter solstice.

Now it was nearly the equinox. And Ajax had become distracted by the need to win the emperor's race. It had not been his idea.

Anyone could see that Ajax would rather have spent another half year learning every detail about his horses. But he had promised to race and he had promised to win.

He had spat into his palm and sworn by his Greek bear-gods, for Gordianus and for the shade of Math's mother, just as Hannah had said.

So Ajax had been busier than usual. Math had taken advantage of that and gone back to the docks. There, he had found himself free and happy.

Until today. Today, Pantera the Leopard had stepped from a boat. Math had followed him up the hill. And by the time Math came back down again, his life had changed. He had failed in the eyes of a man he did not even know.