Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 by M. C. Scott Page A

towards a leather-worker’s stand set back amongst half a dozen others, where he fingered a tooled woman’s belt with images of storks and cranes set about it, the better to bring on a child.
    To Pantera, he said, ‘Parthian horses are weak in the hocks and can’t manage the constant tight turns of a chariot track for more than half a season. We need horses that will last all year, if not longer. There will be another team here today that will be the one to take with us to Rome. We will buy it, and its driver, and all who come with it, and make it our own. In time, if the horses prove suitable, we will race them ourselves.’
    A wave of a finger saw one of the Ubians reach into his purse to buy the belt.
    The stall-tender, crimson with shock, or pleasure, or terror, fell to his knees, protesting in halting Latin that it must be a gift, that he could not possibly accept money from his emperor whom he adored and who was doing him the most exceptional honour of attending his unworthy stall.
    He was given a gold coin in any case, which was a hundred times the worth of what he might have dared ask for the belt. The air rang with the emperor’s praises as they passed on.
    Notoriously, Nero said of himself that he was the most popular emperor Rome had ever seen. In Coriallum in northern Gaul, if only on that day, it was true.
    The imperial group moved deeper into the sprawl of booths and stalls. Pie-vendors bawled their wares. Bolts of woollen cloth, plain or dyed, lay in neat rows on wooden planks, to be untidied by a thousand feeling fingers by the day’s end. A healer’s booth was marked by a rag of torn white linen showing that the occupant was a woman and would undertake a childbirth. Closer to the horses, harness-makers plied their wares. Nero stopped at several to feel the quality of the leather, but, to the chagrin of the vendors, did not buy.
    Keeping abreast of his emperor, watching ahead on both sides for signs of ill intent, Pantera said, ‘Talk in the tavern this morning was that the team of black colts from Gallia Lugdunensis running under the White banner might win the race if the magistrate’s horses all died in the traces. Blue and Green were not words on the lips of anyone sober enough to think.’
    ‘Truly?’ Nero raised a delicately plucked brow. ‘The magistrate seemed to think the local team was good. But they drew Green in the lottery for colour, and while it may be for Ceres and the vernal season, in our experience it is always unlucky. Perhaps we make it so by believing it; we are emperor and such things are not unknown, but it cannot be changed. Come, we shall go to the horse barns and view the second teams. Sometimes the ones that do not race are better than those that do.’
    Pantera spun in alarm. ‘My lord, as your bodyguard, I must protest—’
    He fell silent as Nero caught his arm. Men around them looked away, too quickly. The Ubians raced forward, laying hands to their sword hilts, but not yet drawing. Akakios was already there. His knife blade glanced in the blustery sun. Its tip was dulled with a brown, waxy resin.
    Nero dismissed them all with a wave of one finger, as an infant might wave away a wasp.
    ‘Walk with us alone, Leopard,’ he said. ‘We would speak to you in private.’
    Given no option, Pantera followed where his emperor led, leaving Akakios and his poison behind. To their left and in front, stall-tenders fell silent and bowed. Word of their coming was spreading even as they walked.
    Ahead were the four horse barns, with their thin oak-planked sides and roofs thatched with reed from the river’s edge. Grassy avenues the width of a chariot’s length kept them apart. Manure heaps smouldered at the end of each, ripening the air.
    The colours flew above them, snapping in the wind: Red for Mars, battle and summer, which had been taken by the magistrate and not entered in the colour lottery the day before when the other three teams drew their ribbon. In that lottery,