Come From the Holy Fire

The urgent demand of making arrangements for Valens’ triumphal parade and the festivities to follow made an excellent cover for Petrus to arrange certain meetings, which might otherwise have attracted the attention of Antoninos the historian, or one of his other rivals at court.

For one of particular import in the Subura, a disreputable district of the city, he brought along the young Sixtus scion from Valens’ retinue. Beforehand, however, Petrus had coached him carefully on controlling the flow of information through his psychic tether. Much would be discussed which his political allies, the Sixti, ought to know, but his uncle ought not.

This was all, of course, for Valens’ own good. In the aftermath of Chrysos’ slaying, Petrus had at least convinced him to keep the discovery that the monster had carried– or, more accurately, had been– Euphemios’ lost treasury under wraps, let some guards and servants who were deep in Petrus’ pocket attend to butchering the corpse and secreting away the valuables. But, while he was willing to push for a position on the imperial dias, Valens still insisted that they ought to pressure Alexios into naming him co-emperor, or naming Valens his heir and retiring to a monastery, or some such amicable compromise.

Valens said they had no personal quarrel with Alexios, and he was not wrong. All the same, the man had to go.

The people of the Subura were perhaps more strongly afflicted than any with that cynical malaise that naturally comes over the rump-state of a fallen empire. They believed as a first principle that the State was, regardless of who controlled it, merely an engine of extraction– one that, perhaps centuries ago, had fed wealth from conquest and plunder to their ancestors, but had long since run out of fresh victims and begun to devour the very people who kept its wheels turning. It was no small vindication, then, that they whispered a different narrative among themselves as the eunuch and the adventurer-nobleman passed disguised among the crowds.

“I tell you,” one Nephilic leatherworker said to a customer at his storefront, “I saw them monster-hunters sailing back into port, with one of ‘em gold teeth in their boat, and their leader was Valens. I’d remember that man’s face if it’d been two hundred years. And, plain as day, he could see! Now, I didn’t worry too much when Hypatios first marched in, considering he was a man of action, but he and his whole line have been a bunch of delicate palace-princes ever since. ‘Bout time we got back to an emperor who wasn’t afraid of getting dirty with the troops; maybe then my suppliers up north would stop going missing every time them Bolthoi got uppity.”

Valens’ identity was getting out, and the whole street was buzzing with talk like this. On the whole, Alexios’ decision to cast out the Nikaphoreans– spurred on by Petrus, of course– was liked by more people than not, but his father Hypatios II had not been perceived as a proactive ruler against the dangers the Empire faced, and most had little faith Alexios would do better. Whether this was a fair judgement or not, replacing him with Valens would send a clear rallying-cry to the common folk, that they might crush all lurking dangers and perhaps even reverse the course of their civilization’s decline.

There was some irony, then, in who they were going to meet, at least in part.

They rounded a corner and came to the home of Mercurios, a second-position chariot racer of the Blues– not the one who actually won races for their team, but the supporting racer whose job was to guard their star against aggressive maneuvers from the other teams.

Now, Petrus was practically obligated by custom to plan a race as a follow-up to Valens’ triumph, and the star racer of the Blues was hiding from the law somewhere in the city catacombs, along with the second of the Yellows, after Alexios had tried and failed to execute them both.

The man who answered the door for them was not affiliated with the Blues, but a priest in a red-and-gold cassock, the team chaplain of the Yellows. Though he was not yet old, Petrus had known this man by reputation for decades. He had been one of the most vocal clerics in the city in pushing back on Nikaphorean teachings, and had been picked up by the chariot team not favored by the Hypatioi, in an effort to build up a rebellious, counter-cultural image. His sermons had grown less fiery of late, and he seemed not to have a clear idea what to do with the moral victory once he attained it.

Despite the abundance of morning sunlight, the main room within was shuttered tight and lit with a pair of oil lamps. The Yellows’ chaplain sat at a wide table, across from a man he famously despised, a Holy Fool in tattered gray robes.

One of these days, Petrus intended to send the Nikaphorean preacher known as Herakleos the Stylite to the gallows. He had no friends in this meeting. But, for now, he was useful to everyone at this table.

In addition to the Nikaphorean and the representatives from the two major racing teams, there were leaders from the two second-rate teams, the Reds and the Blacks. In all the activities of the teams– recruiting racers, running protection rackets, serving as sorts of political parties for popular demonstrations to organize around– these two teams functioned as junior-league shadows of the Blues and Yellows, respectively.

Yes, the charioteers and their supporting organizations played a key role in Aureliopolitan politics as voices and figureheads for the masses. Historically, an emperor would attach himself to one team, his rivals in the Senate and among the other wings of the Imperial bureaucracy to the other, and a constant background noise of protests and counter-protests, occasionally spilling over into minor riots and turf wars, would give both sides in the higher-order struggle a constant finger on the pulse of popular opinion.

But Alexios had managed to make enemies of both of teams.

Petrus took a seat, folding his fingers under his chin. “The triumph will happen in three days. On the fourth will be the race.”

The second of the Blues nodded. “Where will Valens be, at the beginning of the third race?”

“Alexios and I will have him, of course, in the imperial box, for the first two sprints. I should be able to get both of us down to the Blues pit at the top of the third. Ideally, our signal will be getting our two fugitives up out of the catacombs and onto the track.”

The Yellows’ priest turned up a hand. “That can be arranged, so long as you can keep the Vigla and the Palace Guard out of the central section of the catacombs.”

“I’ll do you one better, and post those tunnels full of guards I’ve paid off.”

“That will work just as well, I think.”

The leader of the Blacks, who had not sat but leaned against a far wall, nodded at the ragged ascetic. “And what do we need the Nikaphoreans for? Or your friend, there?”

“This is one of the Sixtus boys. Not the governor of Lyria, the youngest one. I’ve arranged for some of their household men-at-arms to be in the city. Once the rioting reaches the acropolis gates, they’ll see to getting them open. I may have half the guard in my pocket, but none of them can be seen openly turning their coats before we have the throne room, if we want them to be a credible arm of the new regime.”

Petrus eyed the Nikaphorean hard, and shifted his folded hands up to cover his mouth, disguising the Lunar spell he now incanted. Reading the man’s face, and using the Lunar Discipline’s powers over thought and perception to glean the high-level landscape of his emotions, he picked up on surprise, and worry. The whole city had struggled to get any communications in or out of its walls, except by overland riders and the handful of ship-captains who’d had the courage and skill to slip past Chrysos. Petrus had access to horseback messengers, of course, but had deliberately waited long enough to finalize his arrangements with the patriarch of the Sixti– off governing Temonia– until the timing demanded the use of carrier pigeons. As far as he could tell, the Nikaphorean knew something about this, but hadn’t expected Petrus to be able to get any messages to or from Temonia by air. That lent credence to his theory, about why the carrier pigeons kept disappearing.

“Those Nikaphoreans who remain in the city have, as far as I can tell by my efforts to remove them, supremely skilled covert agents, perhaps possessed of… unorthodox abilities.”

Now the Stylite was visibly sweating. Petrus didn’t know everything about their capabilities, but he knew enough to make the man fear for every one of their secrets.

“Your agents will create diversions for one Lucius Rufinus and one Atia Lyrios. They must be kept in the dark about this plan; they would inform Valens of it immediately, and we must be able to force his cooperation through surprise when the time comes. For certain reasons of logistics, I cannot guarantee they will be with Valens when the plan is set into motion, nor anywhere their safety can be easily ensured. They are not to be harmed, but they must be taken out of the picture until Valens is re-enthroned– undamaged by your agents, undamaged by the mob, and kept in the city until all is said and done.”

The Nikaphorean frowned, trying to regain his composure. “And what do we gain from helping you? Revenge on Alexios for turning against us, perhaps, but we came to power in the first place because we sided against Valens, the first time he sat the throne. And you, eunuch, are widely believed to be the true force in the palace behind our expulsion…”

“Simon the wheelwright. Number three, Auric Way.”

“What?”

“Patroclus of Troa. Number seventeen, Lovers’ Lane.”

Now, the heretic’s look was one of abject horror. “How many of our people have you–”

“Everyone important. If you help us, I offer you one last chance to take your movement west, to relocate everyone who did not go a year ago to the Kingdom of the Aleani. One way or another, not one Nikaphorean will remain in the Empire by the time another year is out.”