I left the palace grounds by one of the landward gates.  There were six troopers on guard there, with nothing of the air of relaxation that had characterized the two at the river stairs a few watches before.  One, politely but unmistakably barring the way, asked me if I had to leave so early.  I identified myself and said that I was afraid I must - that I still had work to do that night (as indeed I did) and would have a hard day facing me the next morning as well (as indeed I would).

"You're a hero then."  The soldier sounded slightly more friendly.  "Don't you have an escort, Lictor?"

"I had two clavigers, but I dismissed them.  There's no reason I can't find my way back to the Vincula alone."

Another trooper, who had not spoken previously, said, "You can stay inside until morning.  They'll find you a quiet place to bunk down."

"Yes, but my work wouldn't get done.  I'm afraid I must leave now."

The soldier who had been blocking my way stood aside.  "I'd like to send a couple of men with you. if you'll wait a moment, I'll do it.  I have to get permission from the officer of the guard."

"That won't be necessary," I told him, and left before they could say more.  Something - presumably the committer of the murders my sergeant had told me of - was clearly stirring in the city; it seemed almost certain that another death had occurred while I was in the archon's palace.  The thought filled me with a pleasant excitement - not because I was such a fool as to imagine myself superior to any attack, but because the idea of being attacked, of risking death that night in the dark streets of Thrax, lifted some part of the depression I would otherwise have felt.  This unfocused terror, this faceless menace of the night, was the earliest of all my childhood fears; and as such, now that childhood was behind me, it had the homey quality of all childhood things when we are fully grown.

I was already on the same side of the river as the jacal I had visited that afternoon, and had no need to take boat again; but the streets were strange to me and in the dark seemed almost a labyrinth built to confound me.  I made several false starts before I found the narrow way I wanted, leading up the cliff.

The dwellings to either side of it, which had stood silent while they waited for the mighty wall of stone opposite them to rise and cover the sun, were murmurous with voices now, and a few windows glowed with the light of grease lamps.  While Abdiesus reveled in his palace below, the humble folk of the high cliff celebrated too, with a gaiety that differed from his chiefly in that it was less riotous.  I heard the sounds of love as I passed, just as I had heard them in his garden after leaving Cyriaca for the last time, and the voices of men and women in quiet talk, and bantering too, here as there.  The palace garden had been scented by its flowers, and its air was washed by its own fountains and by the great fountain of cold Acis, which rushed by just outside.  Here those odors were no more; but a breeze stirred among the jacals and the caves with their stoppered mouths, bringing sometimes the stench of ordure, and sometimes the aroma of brewing tea or some humble stew, and sometimes only the clean air of the mountains.