Hewspear nodded. “I had hoped… well, it doesn’t much matter what I hoped. An old man’s hopes don’t matter a tremendous amount.” Then he stood taller, and there was steel in his voice. “And yet. My grandchild is my last link to my son, and I won’t have it severed by the likes of her.”
That was unexpected, and although I suddenly felt like continuing this exchange could only end with me being saddened, disappointed, or horrified, I proceeded just the same. “What are you going to do?”
Hewspear kept his gaze ahead, steady, stern, suddenly not very grand-fatherly at all. “She will allow me to see my blood, and not poison him against me, or she will find herself driven from the city, never to return, leaving behind her child, her sister, her mother, and all that she holds dear. She will decide her own fate. I’d hoped to be less severe with her, but I have few enough years left, and my patience is not what is once was.”
After passing twenty or so of the prime Towers and all the barracks and granaries and stables between them, we left the wall and headed west, through residential districts, and then past Tanner’s Lane, with its overpowering stench of urine, feces, and decaying flesh, and I saw several children out already carrying bags, looking for shit in the streets and alleys. While tanners were often relegated to the outskirts of the cities because of the terrible smell and filth, with the Towers girding the entirety of Sunwrack, the best they could do was position them in the poorest district. A few blocks later we were free of the stench.
Everything had looked so orderly from high up in Jackal Tower, but on the ground it was chaos. The moneychanger’s lodge was full of people shouting and holding different currencies. Livestock was everywhere-oxen pulling cairns, goats with peculiar wavy horns, foraging pigs. Criers with staffs lined with bells marched among the Thurvacians, calling out something about this market or that bazaar. Girls and boys in simple shrifts carried trays and boxes of peaches, dates, and oranges to be had for pennies.
We crossed another plaza and round fountain, pigeons bursting up into the air at our approach and settling back to the ground after we passed. Some temporary tents and stalls sold merchandise, but the main attraction here was the halls where cloth and spices were sold, and the plaza was even more thick with colorful Thurvacians than pigeons, only they scattered more slowly.
Several streets later, we eventually emerged into a more open space where the buildings gave way, across a plaza from a massive structure larger than any castle or citadel. Straight ahead of us, up several stone steps, was the rounded frontage to an immense building that looked to be much longer on two sides. It was a dozen or more stories tall, the bottom level replete with hundreds of columns, the middle with arched spaces between still more columns, and the upper level with thinner columns still.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Hewspear answered, “This, my young scholar, is the Imperial Hippodrome. There are a few smaller hippodromes on the outskirts of Sunwrack, one of them Jackal, but none remotely approaching the size and grandeur of this one.”
It was an extraordinary sight, I had to admit. There were two towering freestanding columns in the plaza in front of the Imperial Hippodrome that were impossible to miss, rising nearly as high as the hippodrome itself. As we got closer, I saw that both columns were carved with elaborate bas reliefs from top to bottom. Starting at the base and spiraling up, the frieze on each column told a different story of some military campaign, with incredibly detailed images of Syldoon warriors, some mounted and charging their way across a plain, others in tight infantry formation marching toward Anjurians in some epic battle, astoundingly ornate. There had to be thousands of figures on each one-soldiers primarily, but also Memoridons, sailors, engineers, builders, camp followers, and on and on.
The left column had a statue of a golden sun flaring at the top, while the one on the right had a golden statue of a leopard roaring.
When I asked about that, Braylar replied, “The statue on the left is dedicated to the imperial seat itself, with the sigil of the blazing sun; the one on the right is replaced each time a new emperor claims the throne, in this case bearing Cynead’s emblem, as he hails from the Leopard Tower.”
Imperial guards flanked the main entrance to the hippodrome, splendid in their alternating obsidian and gold enameled scale corselets and gleaming helms, crowned with the black horsehair plumes, each with the finely worked quiver and bow at their hips, long embattled shields at their sides, and spears with oddly spiraling spearheads on top.
The bas relief motif was continued on the columns supporting the hippodrome proper, though on a much smaller scale, with the carvings of each column depicting the animals or objects that correlated to the various Towers: cranes or eagles in flight, lions lounging, a boar charging out of the brush, a chariot thundering over the ground, horses rearing, a galleon cresting a wave, goats navigating a slim cliff on a mountain, griffins battling in midair.
We passed between the largest exterior columns and into the Imperial Hippodrome. It was open to the sky, though there was some kind of canvas cover at the top that extended out to provide some relief from the sun or rain for those seated in the top section. There was a vast oval field in the center, rich dark earth, nearly black, and on either end, several smaller rectangular sections, fenced off. But only smaller in comparison-they were still much larger than any list the Anjurians jousted in.
Vendurro saw me staring and laughed. “The middle there, that’s where they hold the holiday races. Well, any old races they want, really. And mock pitched battles.”
“And those other fenced off sections, on either end?”
“Training. Grappling. Archery. Drills.”
Commander Darzaak led our small group up the stairs between the rows of benches. There looked to be roughly three-quarters of the Towers accounted for already. They were assembling in the same general area of the stadium, but leaving rows between each group. Some men glanced around suspiciously, a few from various Towers that had alliances of some sort exchanged greetings and small talk, but most simply ignored the fact that there were any other Towers in the immediate vicinity.
We chose a row further up from the field, with only a few Towers filing in behind us. The Emperor was nowhere to be seen yet. Even with the distance between them, and some Towers still entering, the hippodrome could have seated a hundred thousand spectators, so the hundreds of Syldoon were still dwarfed by the space.
After the last of the Tower Commanders and attendants were seated, I was surprised to see the Memoridons enter and move to the highest rows, sliding behind the assembly like silent shadows, witnesses but separate even from the Towers they served.
I was about to ask if that was strange when the broad wooden gates on the far end of the hippodrome opened inward. Four Imperial soldiers led the procession, leopard skin cloaks hanging from clasps on their lamellar cuirasses so they draped on the ground behind them. They bore large brass horns, so slender near the mouthpiece they looked like something floral and fragile, gently widening as they curled under the arm and back up over the shoulder until they ended in a broad bell. Four horn blasts silenced the Towers and announced the arrival of what could only be the Emperor.
Several men followed the hornblowers in, a pair each carrying huge wooden drums with skins so large they must have been sewn from the hides of several beasts. The horns kept blowing as the men set the drums up at an angle on wooden stands near the center of the hippodrome, directly in front of the assembled Towers.
The hornblowers took positions on the outside, the blasts coming until a bare-chested man stood behind each of the drums, and they ceased as the drummers began to play, booming their instruments until they were slick with sweat and then suddenly ceasing. The horns broke in again immediately with three quick bursts before stopping as well. The silence stretched on until I nearly whispered a question to Vendurro. But as I was leaning in to do so, it was suddenly broken.