"They are an honourable family!" someone else interjected.

Fotius left them to debate. He crossed the ground towards the cluster of Blues. He felt angry and hot. He struck the imposter on one shoulder. This close, he could smell a scent on the man. Perfume? In the Hippodrome?

"By Jad's Light, who are you?" he demanded. "You aren't a Blue, how dare you speak in our name?"

The man turned. He was bulky, but not fat. He had odd, pale green eyes, which now regarded Fotius as if he were some form of insect that had crawled out of a wine flask. Fotius actually wondered, amid his own turbulent thoughts, how anyone's tunic could remain so crisp and clean here this morning.

The others had overheard. They looked at Fotius and the man who said, contemptuously, in a clipped, precise voice, "And you are the Accredited Record Keeper of the Blues in Sarantium, dare I suppose? Hah. You probably can't even read."

"Maybe he can't," said Pappio, striding up boldly, "but you wore a Green tunic last fall to our end-of-season banquet. I remember you there. You even made a toast. You were drunk!"

The man seemed, clearly, to classify Pappio as close kin to whatever crashing thing Fotius was. He wrinkled his nose. "And men are forbidden by some new ordinance to change their allegiance now? I am not allowed to enjoy and celebrate the triumphs of the mighty Asportus?"

"Who?" Fotius said.

"Astorgus," the man said quickly. "Astorgus of the Blues."

"Get out of here," said Daccilio, who had been one of the Blue faction leaders for as long as Fotius could remember, and who had carried the banner at this year's Hippodrome opening ceremonies. "Get out, now!"

"Take off that blue tunic first!" someone else rasped angrily. Voices were raised. Heads turned in their direction. From all over the Hippodrome the too-synchronized frauds were still crying the name of Flavius Daleinus. With a roiling, hot anger that was actually a kind of joy, Fotius grabbed a fistful of the imposter's crisp blue tunic in his sweaty hands.