The Belt of Gold by Cecelia Holland

always do your best.” It would have been best if she had died with Shimon, especially since she had mishandled the list. If John Cerulis’s soldiers had overcome the barbarians, they certainly had the list by now. She waved away Theophano, still brimming over with promises, and with a gesture dismissed her. The girl’s voice ceased abruptly and she hurried out of the room.
    Irene walked the length of the carpet. This was her personal library, long and narrow, lined with books. The silk curtains over the windows painted the sunlight as it streamed through the eastern side of the room and laid strips of transparent purple and yellow color over the heavy cream-colored carpet, a gift from the upstart ruler of Merv and Baghdad. In the end window, which the early sun as yet only grazed, hung a string of silver bells that chimed as the wind turned it. She stood listening to this random music, thinking of John Cerulis, who wanted her throne.
    He would be there, in the Hippodrome, in the enclosed box his family had kept for generations. When she came out into the Imperial balcony, he would bow, and she would lift her hand, accepting his greeting, while in the background his people and her people killed one another.
    His people did. Her people—possibly she should not have used Theophano, who was young and more passionate than wise. Of course that had been her credential, her willingness to supply passion in the right places.
    Damn that list. Who had it now? She imagined the barbarians finding it, musing over it like apes with the tools of Archimedes, using it thereafter for an outhouse wiper, that precious piece of paper that had cost so much in blood and time and Irene’s concentration.
    She turned around, abrupt, decisive, putting that image out of her mind. It was time to do other things. With a clap of her hands, she summoned her pages out of the corners, ready for her commands.

4
    Race day. He knew it as soon as he woke up, before he even opened his eyes.
    He got out of bed, his body so charged with excitement that it seemed an effort to keep his feet solidly on the floor. His servant brought him his clothes. In silence Michael allowed himself to be dressed. His body felt like a cold case for the fiery life within. The servant who put clothes on the case and the other servants who brought in his breakfast and opened the windows and took away his chamber pot were only shadows at the periphery of the world.
    In what he always thought of as his mundane life, he was a prince, with obligations at court. Dressed in his court clothes, he walked from his quarters in the Bucoleon Palace, an old rambling building at the very tip of the Imperial Rock, up the terraced slope to the Church of the Holy Wisdom, where with thousands of shadows round him he heard the Word of Christ and received communion. He prayed for the continuance of the Empire and good health and long life for his cousin the Basileus, but he asked for nothing for himself. He knew that he needed no help from Jesus Christ to win.
    Outside the church, on the porch, his uncle Prince Constantine met him. They did not speak, but Constantine took Michael’s hand and wrung it with a fierce grip and looked into his eyes and nodded, and Michael saw his excitement and managed to smile at him. Constantine was too old to race anymore, but once he had driven in the Hippodrome, although never with the success of his nephew Michael. He had won once or twice—one year he had taken two challenges for the Golden Belt. Now he lived through Michael, advising him, helping him with the horses, thrashing out strategies, keeping quiet when—rarely, but sometimes—Michael lost.
    They went back down through the Palace grounds toward the lower entrance to the Hippodrome, but before they reached it, a page came from the Empress and ordered Michael into her presence.
    He could not argue; all that did was waste more of the precious time she was already stealing so much