The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora Read Online Free PDF

with holes of waxy flesh where his eyes should have been. That could be us.
    “I don’t think I can do this,” Comito whispered.
    I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, holding tight in case she tried to bolt. “Everything’s going to be fine.” A thief and a liar—next I’d be swindling my own mother.
    The four prancing bronze horses guarding the Black Gate stared down at us, their patina long since green with age. Most of the crowd climbed the stairs to take their seats under the sky, but we passed a group of men placing bets on charioteers as we followed the path to the arena floor. We’d visited the Hippodrome before, but always with Father while he trained the bears. Then it had been silent, the wooden benches empty except for the occasional crust of stale bread or empty wineskin.
    “You girls interested in some pregame entertainment?” One of the gamblers waggled his hips at us while his friends laughed.
    “Not with you.” I pulled Comito along, but her feet dragged.
    “They’d probably pay us,” she said.
    “No,” I said. “We haven’t sunk that low.”
    At least not yet.
    I gasped as we passed through the entrance arch and the walls opened up. The Kathisma, the loge shrouded in purple for the Emperor, was vacant, but the Hippodrome was a hive crawling with a hundred thousand people, the loud hum of their voices crowding out my thoughts. The floor of sand stretched before us with the Blue administration on one side and the Greens on the other, while the consulsat directly across from us, a fat man in a snug white tunica clutching the consular scepter with its golden eagle. On the floor, the bronze charioteer statues of the
spina
stood frozen in a line stretching from the twisted Delphi Column, its three gilded snakeheads balancing the golden bowl looted from the famed Temple of Apollo. Next to it, the pink granite of the towering Egyptian obelisk pierced the night sky. The Mediterranean had seemed too vast to cross when we’d left Cyprus. Tonight the Hippodrome’s floor seemed even larger.
    A slave at the consul’s elbow held the red and purple prize
mappa
that would signal the start of the games. Our chance would be lost once he took that cloth.
    “It’s now or never,” I said to Comito.
    We started to walk. The crowd seemed to quiet, but that was likely a trick of my ears. I couldn’t hear anything; I couldn’t see anything other than the dais filled with Greens to my right. Asterius sat in the middle, dressed in a white tunica edged with emerald satin, a merry grin on his face as he laughed at some joke and tore a chunk of meat off a chicken bone. I hoped he’d choke on it.
    We tossed flower petals as we passed bronze statues of horses and charioteers, festooning the ground with white and purple as sand scratched my bare feet. Asterius saw us as we ran out of flowers. If looks could have killed, Comito and I would have been smitten to dust in that moment. The fool should have known this was coming—custom dictated private quarrels be settled publicly. Just not this publicly.
    My smile worsened his glare. I gave Comito a tiny nod, and we recited the words we’d practiced on the way to the bathhouse earlier, hoping our voices would carry to the rest of the crowd.
    “Life, health, and prosperity to you, valiant Greens, O noble men,” we shouted in unison as the stands quieted. “Our father who served you was taken to God, and we bow to your Christian mercy.”
    It was the Greens’ turn to acknowledge us. Asterius made us wait until the crowd began to murmur.
    Now the show truly began. Our life had to be more dramatic than any show on the stage of the Kynêgion if we were to sway the crowd and persuade the Greens. We clutched each other and fell to our knees amidst the strewn flower petals, cheeks pressed together. “Our father is dead, our mother defenseless, our family homeless and destitute. We, the daughters of Acacius, Keeper of the Bears, seek your infinite mercy. To you Christian