In fact, on the night Apius breathed his last in the Porphyry Room of the Attenine Palace there was no rain in the City. An occasional flash of lightning had been seen and one or two growls of thunder heard earlier in the evening, well north of Sarantium, towards the grainlands of Trake-sia. Given the events that followed, that northern direction might have been seen as portent enough.

The Emperor had no living sons, and his three nephews had rather spectacularly failed a test of their worthiness less than a year before and had suffered appropriate consequences. There was, as a result, no Emperor Designate in Sarantium when Apius heard-or did not hear-as the last words of his long life, the inward voice of the god saying to him alone, "Uncrown, the Lord of Emperors awaits you now."

The three men who entered the Porphyry Room in the still-cool hour before dawn were each acutely aware of a dangerously unstable situation. Gesius the eunuch, Chancellor of the Imperial Court, pressed his long, thin fingers together piously, and then knelt stiffly to kiss the dead Emperor's bare feet. So, too, after him, did Adrastus, Master of Offices, who commanded the civil service and administration, and Valerius, Count of the Excubitors, the Imperial Guard.

"The Senate must be summoned," murmured Gesius in his papery voice. "They will go into session immediately."

"Immediately," agreed Adrastus, fastidiously straightening the collar of his ankle-length tunic as he rose. "And the Patriarch must begin the Rites of Mourning."

"Order," said Valerius in soldier's tones, "will be preserved in the City. I undertake as much."