We descended from the ridge in the early morning and I got a better view of Spartova itself.
I had never been to a city of this scale before, a true capital, outside of Heliqar. The desert was Heliqar's defense. Elias had written that most cities relied on walls. At one time, he claimed there were things called cannons that could be used to breach them. But the massive expense in metal required to build one meant that cannons were off limits to even Olympos itself and had not been used, even in the original siege of Spartova that completed the Third Empire.
Most cities sprawled outside their walls. Tanneries, stockyard, stone masons needed room to work. Cheaper inns by the road could catch travelers before they got to the expensive real estate within the walls. Unlicensed market stalls evaded taxes. Prosperous cities bloomed out of their walls. They couldn't help it.
The road to Spartova was filled with orderly trains of wagons. The road was well maintained, the drainage channels were clear. There were no structures within a clear zone that had been maintained around the walls. The ground had been kept flat and unobstructed. Anything crossing could be seen and met before it reached the walls. That clearing may have been more important than the top three stories of the wall in discouraging sieges.
From the ridge I had taken the buildings away from the clear zone as the city's outskirts. This was not correct. They were supply depots far enough apart to prevent fire from spreading. Each had a low stone roof, no windows. I guessed most were granaries from the ventilation design. Some were larger and had loading ramps. They were armories or equipment stores. Spartova had looked at what could be stored outside the city without compromising its defense and it had built exactly what was required at exactly the distance that its siege engineers had determined was safe.
As we approached, the column compressed: four men abreast, arms length between ranks. The men had done it out of habit. Probably this was drilled in the Agoge. I looked back once for Bastien. He was twelve rows behind me. He met my eyes and gave a quarter nod before going back to watching the road.
The road widened into a processional avenue lined with carved stone posts. Each taller than a man and each capped with a hoplite's helmet facing the road.
While I was still studying the artistry of the helmets, the gates appeared. I had estimated the height of the walls, but I had been wrong. They were cliffs of black basalt. The glassy stone took in the light, swallowed it whole and didn't let any escape.
The gates were open. Closed gates would have meant the city was trying to protect itself from you. Open gates meant that you were not a threat worth closing for. They swallowed us.
Carved into every available face of the black basalt were the reliefs. One showed a pile of heads with a scribe counting. A spear piercing the eye of a kneeling man. Another Hoplite received levy from a set of kneeling Helots in a field, as if providing tribute.
The reliefs began at ground level and rose at least as high as a brakthar. Layer after layer. All with the same wordless message.
At one point we reached a depiction of the Agoge. The size difference between the boys and the adult figures was unmistakable. Some lifted stones. Others ran. Some were being scourged. There was no sorrow, no shame. Just correctness.
Another was a burning city with the residents being sorted. Each group had writing beneath: "agriculture," "mining," "stone carving." The enemy city was being carved up like a slab of meat, each part digested separately. There was a place for each person, whether in the grave or in the scribal pool, each served the state's purpose.
I looked so intently I forgot to step and the guard behind me almost walked into my back.
Then there was the map. A carved, bird's-eye rendering of the world as the Hegemony saw it, with Spartova at its center. Every road led here. Every border was drawn in a lighter line than the Hegemony's own. Each border seemed almost eager to be erased by the march of Hoplite boots. The carver had rendered the other nations' cities at smaller scale, their construction less solid, their borders unresolved.
The carvings were made, not for the population, but as a proof written by a mathematician exists for its own sake as much as for any who doubt. The reliefs were written proof that this is not only the way things are but this is the way they must be. As if the Spartovan way was provably correct.
Once inside the city, the sound was not as expected either. There were people in the city, workers moving in purposeful groups. Wagons were being loaded. But there were no vendors screaming about their wares. No argument. No negotiation. No attempt to convince. Heliqar's market sounded like a thousand conversations being screamed in your ears all at once.
Spartova sounded like a workshop where everyone knew their job and was doing it. Sometimes people watched the column pass. Their interest was brief. We had our purpose. They had theirs. They went back to theirs.
We walked past depots, garrisons, and Helot residences. Some in gray carried ledgers and document cases. Most were moving supplies in wheelbarrows or wagons.
In Heliqar there were places where the system showed its inner workings: the transit office, the court registry, the garrison headquarters. You felt the weight of those places when you entered. You felt authority.
In Spartova, there was no such place because everywhere was such a place. It wasn't a city, it was an institution. Residents were not people. They were components of a machine built to unfathomably tight tolerances.
We stopped in the yard of a military building, about three hundred paces from the citadel's outer wall.
Ruvuk dismounted and gave a series of orders to his second that I was not close enough to hear. Then he turned and walked to where I stood in the column and stopped in front of me.
"Your men will be held in the garrison block," he said. "You will be held separately in the inner ward. The stones will remain with you as instruments of your function. You will be given appropriate quarters."
I got a look at Bastien. He knew what was happening before the guards touched his arm and he turned to look at me once before they closed the gap. He was very far away already and I watched him until he was around the corner of the block.
Then I saw Olen. He was counting heads, trying to find me among them. He found me, and for a moment he looked at me. I held his eyes as long as I could. Whether what I gave him was a promise or just a performance, I did not know. Then the column closed and he was gone.
The guards assigned to me were two officers I had not seen before, which was deliberate. Ruvuk was just ensuring that against all odds a relationship could not develop.
"This way," one of them said. I went.
The cell was in the inner ward, one floor below ground level, with a single barred window set high in the outer wall at street level. A sleeping platform built into the stone. A lamp on a hook. A water jug. A drain in the corner. It was clean.
On the table there was a piece of parchment and a stick of charcoal. Ruvuk had provided the same at the fort. The parchment belonged to him. Anything I put on it, he would read. He had given it because the stress would work on me and the charcoal would eventually be a relief I could not resist. It was not a kindness. It was a collection instrument.
I sat on the sleeping platform and looked at the square of gray sky visible through the bars.
Outside the window somewhere, a bell sounded. Like at Ruvuk's fort, it would be a schedule marker. Probably the signal for a shift change. It was answered from somewhere else in the city, and then from somewhere further. The whole city was a great machine. It adjusted itself, confirming that all parts were in their correct positions.
I was one of those parts now. I had been placed in my cell and the door had been locked and the system had moved on. Tomorrow or the day after, I would be summoned for something Ruvuk needed. Until then I was in storage.
I looked at the parchment for a long time.
Then I looked away from it and began, in my head, to work.