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confirmed from the Imperial Precinct-that he had
arranged to meet the Chancellor there and be escorted afterwards by
Gesius to the Attenine Palace to pay his last respects.
    The condition of Daleinus's body and what remained of his clothing
when the dead man was carried on a bier to his home, and then later
to his final resting place in the family mausoleum, was such that a
widely reported rumour about his attire that morning was also not
amenable to official confirmation.
    The clothing had all burned-with or without the much-discussed strip
of purple-and most of the elegant aristocrat's skin had been charred
black or scorched entirely away. What remained of his face was
horrifying, the features beneath the once-distinguished silver hair a
melted ruin. His oldest son and the nephew had also died, and four of
his entourage. The surviving son, it was reported, was now blind and
unfit to be seen. He was expected to take clerical vows and withdraw
from the City.
    Sarantine Fire did that to men.
    It was one of the secrets of the Empire, shielded with ferocity, for
it was the weapon that had guarded the City-thus far-from incursions
over the water. Terror ran before that molten, liquid fire that set
ships and men alight, burning upon the sea.
    It had never, in living memory or in any of the military chronicles,
been used within the walls, or indeed in any land engagement of the
armies.
    This, of course, directed informed suspicion upon the Strategos of
the Navy and, indeed, any other military commanders who might have
been able to suborn the naval engineers entrusted with the technique
of training the liquid fire through a hose, or launching it through
space upon the seafaring enemies of Sarantium.
    In due course a number of appropriate persons were subjected to
expert questioning. Their deaths did not, however, serve the ultimate
goal of determining who it was who had arranged the hideous
assassination of a distinguished patrician. The Strategos of the
Navy, a man of the old school, elected to end his life, but left
behind a letter declaring his innocence of any crimes and his mortal
shame that such a weapon, entrusted to his care, had been used in
this way. His death was, accordingly, not a useful one either.
    It was reliably reported that three men had wielded the siphon
apparatus. Or five. That they were wearing the colours and had the
Bassanid-style clothing and the barbarian moustaches and long hair of
the most extreme Green partisans. Or of the Blues. Further, that they
wore the light brown tunics with black trim of the Urban Prefect's
men. It was recounted that they had fled east down an alley. Also
west. Or through the back of a house on the exclusive, shaded street
where the Daleinoi's City mansion could be found. It was declared,
with conviction, that the assassins had been Kindath in their silver
robes and blue caps. No evident motive commended itself for this, but
those worshippers of the two moons might well do evil for its own
sake. Some ensuing, sporadic attacks in the Kindath Quarter were
judged excusable by the Urban Prefect, as a way of discharging
tensions in the City.
    All the licensed foreign merchants in Sarantium were advised to keep
to their allotted quarters of the City until further notice. Some of
those who recklessly did not-curious, perhaps, to observe the
unfolding events of those days-suffered predictable, unfortunate
consequences. The assassins of Flavius Daleinus were never found. In
the meticulous tally of the dead in that difficult time, ordered and
executed by the Urban Prefect at the command of the Master of
Offices, there was a report of three bodies found washed ashore four
days later by soldiers patrolling the coast to the east of the triple
walls. They were naked, skin bleached grey-white by the sea, and sea
creatures had been at their faces and extremities.
    No connection was ever made between this finding and the events of
the terrible night the Emperor Apius went to the god, to be