Trumpets and horns which curved around the player's body sounded harshly together. A military procession was entering from the other side of the stage.

As long as I live…, Hedia thought. She remembered Latus screaming and her own swollen throat; and she smiled with polite courtesy, because it was her duty now to smile.

The antics of the monkeys had amused Alphena, so she regretted it when they and their gilded perches slipped down into the sub-floors beneath the stage. Were there really monkeys on the Pillars of Hercules?

Varus will know. She glanced toward her brother, but Saxa and Hedia were seated in the way. It didn't really matter anyway.

Corylus would know if the monkeys were authentic too; or anyway, he might know…

Alphena realized she was staring toward her brother's friend in the audience. She scowled, furious with herself and with Corylus also. He was so- She drew her eyes away with a quick intake of breath. Corylus was enough of a scholar to impress Varus, who was a good judge of that sort of thing, and enough of an athlete to impress Lenatus, the ex-soldier whom Saxa had hired as family trainer and manager of the small gymnasium in Saxa's townhouse. His swordsmanship impressed Alphena too.

The actors marching across the long stage were supposed to be soldiers, or at least some of them were. Alphena eyed the hodgepodge of equipment with a critical eye.

Most of the helmets had been worn by the City Watch before becoming so battered they'd been replaced, but there were also gladiatorial helmets and various examples from the legions and the non-citizen cavalry squadrons. The remainder, a good quarter of the total, was odds and ends of foreign gear in leather, bronze and iron. The impresario in charge of this mime seemed to have found it cheaper to buy real cast-offs than it would have been to manufacture dummies.