THE AIR WAS COOLER outside, and the sounds of tumult from the Colosso were muted and far away.  Afternoon was settling toward evening, and the hulking, pale sun reddened on her haunches above the low towers of Meidua.  In the distance our acropolis and the black castle of my home loomed like a thunderhead.  And I was alone.  The men and women ambling along the street outside the arena and the circus grounds might have been members of another species, so distant did they seem.

Perhaps my father was right to doubt me.  If I could not endure the violence of the Colosso, how could I be expected to rule a prefecture as he did?  How could I be expected to make the hard and bloody choices that are the soul of ruling?  As I hurried from the coliseum, past the hippodrome and the grand bazaar, my mind turned to House Orin, to the shattered halls on Linon half a system away.  I told myself I could not have done such a thing, that I was not so strong or so cruel.  I thought of the dead slaves, of the gladiator's boot smashing the whitened flesh until the head crunched beneath it.  I walked faster, wishing I could walk fast enough to leave the world entirely.

Immediately beyond the circus grounds, the city rose to loftier heights, its streetlamps already lighted as the towers carved their shadows on narrow streets.  A shuttle winged its way overhead, and in the far distance I could just make out the fusion contrail of a lifter rocket streaking heavenward.  I wished I were aboard it, bound for somewhere - anywhere - else.  I knew I should be heading back - to my own shuttle at least, if not to the box and the games - but the thought of returning to the coliseum, of seeing Crispin at his bloody game, filled me with disquiet.  I stopped a moment in the shadow of a triumphal arch, watching groundcars move past as they wove slowly through the heavy foot traffic so near the coliseum. A stiff wind blew up from around the bend in the road, carrying with it the scents of salt and sea and the cawing of distant birds.  The fading day was fair with a faint chill hinting at the end of summer, and I shrugged my jacket a little closer about me.  I would walk home, I decided, and damn Father and what he'd have to say about it.  It was not too far from the castle: a few miles west and north up the winding streets, hooking around a bend in the limestone bluffs toward the stairs and the Horned Gate.

So I set off along the esplanade, moving parallel to the Redtine and up toward the falls with their great locks.  Beside me the river thrummed with little fishing junks and heavy barges carrying trade goods from up-river.  The sound of men's voices carried far over the water, raucous and rough.  I lingered there a moment, watching an old-fashioned dromon crewed by serfs go by, pressing against the slow current of the great river on its way back toward the distant mountains.  Faintly over the waters I heard the cry of their oarmaster and the banging of the drum.  "Row on for home, my lads," he cried, words in time with the drumbeat.  "Row on for home."

I stopped for a moment, watching the old-style ship until a freight tanker painted with the Marlowe devil blocked it from sight.  The serfs didn't stand a chance.  They were forbidden the technologies allowed to our guild workers, and so they made do with the sweat of their brows and the strength of their arms.

I had half a mind then to turn back, to make for the wharfs and the fish market I'd often toured in my youth.  There was a Nipponese man there who rolled fish with rice in a corner store, and in Lowtown there were performers who pitted animals against one other.  But I was mindful of my danger, a palatine nobleman walking openly down the street dressed in the finery befitting his station.  I twisted the signet ring on my thumb self-consciously and fiddled with the slim bracelet of my terminal.  Instinct told me to call for backup - to at least alert Kyra that I was not going to meet her at the shuttle.

But I was protective of my privacy, as are all young men faced with difficult periods in their lives.  Turning away from the riverside, I waited until the groundcars stopped rolling and crossed the front street, following a winding avenue upslope past blinking storefronts and stands selling produce and Chantry icona of printed plastic and false marble.  I politely declined one woman's offer to braid my hair, then ignored her angry shouts that someone with my long hair must be a catamite.  It was fashionable in those days for men to wear their hair short, as Crispin or Roban did, but I - and perhaps this was an emblem of my failures as an heir - preferred to ignore the populace.  I wanted to point out to the woman that her archon wore his hair long, too, but I restrained myself and left her screaming on the corner.