Bridge of the Separator

X

At the same time, Rhavas remembered Videssos the city very well and had forgotten a great deal about it. He knew that Middle Street ran west from the Silver Gate to the High Temple and the Amphitheater and the palace quarter. He knew the squares through which the capital's chief boulevard would pass. The buildings all seemed familiar to him.

What he'd forgotten were the people. Videssos the city was much larger than Skopentzana. Swarms of people packed Middle Street. They shouted and cursed and elbowed, everyone trying to get ahead of everyone else. His tonsure won him no special respect. "Watch where you're going, holy sir!" was one of the kinder things people yelled at him.

Because everybody wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, the jams were even worse than they would have been otherwise. People and wagons thrust out from cross streets when and as they could. If they'd waited for openings, they might have waited forever, or at least till nightfall. Instead, they charged forward and made everyone else wait for them.

From the Silver Gate to the palaces was only a couple of miles. Rhavas needed close to two hours to get where he was going. By the time he did, he was shouting and waving a fist at the idiots all around him as if he'd never been away.

The city's biggest market square, the plaza of Palamas, lay just east of the palace quarter. That let cooks and other servitors get what they needed with the greatest possible convenience. But the square wasn't just for the Avtokrator's staff. Everyone in the capital either bought or sold there—often both.

In rapid succession, men tried to sell Rhavas cabbages, amber beads, pewter spoons, silver spoons, gold spoons, vinegar, wine, rope, lamps, olive oil, onions, fermented fish sauce, and their allegedly beautiful alleged sisters. "No," he said. "No!" he exclaimed. "No!" he shouted. But nothing held back the tide of hucksters.

And then, after what seemed like forever, he reached the Milestone, the black stone column from which all distances in the Empire of Videssos were reckoned. The Milestone also had another function: the heads of executed miscreants were displayed there as a warning to others not to do likewise.

When Rhavas had lived in the capital before, the occasional murderer or robber found at least part of his final resting place at the base of the Milestone. But the Empire was at peace then. Now the Milestone seemed like a tree with a great crop of fruit in front of it. And the placards below almost every head on display said, "Traitor."

If so many were traitors—and Rhavas was sure a good many did back Stylianos, which was bound to look like treason to Maleinos—how much were these heads doing to deter treason? Not much, not so far as he could tell. He wondered if his cousin would feel the same after hearing an explanation of that point of view. Converting Maleinos to the worship of Skotos would probably be easier.

Then Rhavas rode into the palace quarter. The hubbub of the plaza of Palamas faded behind him. People who did not belong in this part of the city knew better than to venture in. For the first time since passing through the Silver Gate, Rhavas found himself not trapped in a surging crowd. These paths through lawns and gardens and elegant buildings were quiet, almost deserted.

A man whose hairy arms were white to the elbows with flour—a baker—nodded to Rhavas. "Can I do something for you, holy sir?" he asked—politely, but with the air of a man who needed to like the answer he heard if there wasn't going to be trouble afterward.

"I certainly hope so," Rhavas said. "I am his Majesty's cousin, escaped from the sack of Skopentzana and newly returned to the capital."

The baker's jaw dropped. Whatever he'd expected by way of reply, that wasn't it. "The Avtokrator's . . . cousin?" he said, as if unsure he'd heard correctly.

"That's right." Rhavas gave his name and station.

"I've never heard of you, uh, holy, uh, very holy sir," the baker said. Then he decided he'd better hedge his bets: "That doesn't mean anything, of course. Why don't you, uh, go on to the throne room? They'll know what to do with you there. You know how to find the place?"

"Yes, I know," Rhavas answered, not rising to the challenge. If he didn't know how to get to the throne room, he wasn't likely to be the Avtokrator's cousin. And if he wasn't the Avtokrator's cousin, they would know what to do with him—and to him—there. He wouldn't enjoy it, though.

"Here, why don't I come with you anyway?" the baker said.

"All right—why don't you?" Rhavas said agreeably. "You won't get a reward for proving me a fraud, though, because I'm not."

"I didn't say you were." No, the baker wasn't taking any chances with someone who might really turn out to be important.

He also had a little more shrewdness than Rhavas would have guessed. He didn't guide the newcomer to the throne room, but followed Rhavas' lead, his own features carefully blank. If Rhavas didn't know the way, he would betray himself. But he truly did. If the baker was impressed, he didn't show it.

The splendid bronze doors to the throne room were closed. Guards in mail stood in front of them. The men watched impassively as Rhavas dismounted, tied up his horse, and walked over to the base of the stairway. He asked, "Is anyone in the throne room who has served his Majesty since the earliest days of his reign?"

"Who wants to know, and why?" one of the soldiers asked with studied insolence.

Rhavas answered as he had with the baker. The guard lost a good deal of his high-and-mighty air. He put his head together with his comrades. Then he tugged at the handle to one of the doors. It swung smoothly on silent hinges despite its great weight. He ducked inside.

When he came back, he was followed by a dignified, gray-bearded man in a splendid silk robe. Rhavas bowed to the official. "Good day, Markianos," he said. "It's been a long time, eminent sir, hasn't it?"

Some of Markianos' dignity fell away. "It really is you, Rhavas!" he exclaimed. "When the guard told me a priest who claimed to be his Majesty's cousin was here, I hardly dared believe it. We learned some time ago of Skopentzana's piteous overthrow. Welcome home, by the good god!" He sketched Phos' sun-sign.

So did Rhavas, as he knew he had to do. "Piteous indeed, however much I wish it were otherwise," he said. "But here I am, home, as you say, at last."

Both the guard and the baker who'd accompanied Rhavas to the throne room stared in amazement. They hadn't believed him. Their eyes got even wider when Markianos swept down the stairs and embraced him, saying, "His Majesty will be glad to hear of your arrival. You may be sure of that—every bulwark against the rebel he can find means much to him."

"Yes, I believe that," Rhavas said. "I rode past a couple of battlefields. The smell of death hovers over them even now."

"Times are hard." Markianos paused. "They are, but you have come here, and we should rejoice. Would you have me inform the Avtokrator of your arrival?"

"If you would be so kind, eminent sir." Rhavas bowed again. The rituals of politeness at the imperial court were much more elaborate and much more exacting than anything in Skopentzana. Rhavas hoped he could remember enough not to embarrass himself with some gaffe that would make him out to be a bumpkin, a ruffian, a country cousin in the flesh.

"Well, why don't you come with me, then?" Markianos said. "I believe his Majesty is in the imperial residence right now."

"Should we disturb him?" Rhavas asked. The imperial residence was the only place where the Avtokrator of the Videssians got even a semblance of privacy. Everywhere else he went, he was on display. Had Rhavas been in that predicament, he would have hated it. Judging other men by his own standards, he assumed his cousin hated being on display, too.

But Markianos said, "When he learns you've come home again, he'll be glad to stop whatever he's doing and greet you." He looked sly. "In fact, I expect a reward for bringing him the news."

"You do me too much honor," Rhavas murmured. Markianos shook his head. Rhavas didn't argue with him; what point to it? But whatever reward the courtier got, Rhavas judged he wouldn't keep it, not after the returned ecclesiastic made his theological opinions plain.

Markianos told the guards to see to Rhavas' horses. Rhavas knew that meant one of the guards would go get a groom and then resume his post. That was all right. A groom would do a better job with the steppe ponies than a soldier was likely to.

More guards stood in front of the residence, which was dwarfed by the throne room and the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, the great formal dining hall. Elegant dinners in the capital were eaten reclining. That was a formality much less common in the provinces, and one Rhavas hadn't missed in Skopentzana.

The guards nodded respectfully to Markianos as he went up the low, broad stairs. Rhavas waited below. Markianos pointed down to him, no doubt explaining who he was. The courtier did not presume to enter the residence unaccompanied. One of the guards ducked inside to fetch a chamberlain. The chamberlain, a hook-nosed man with a thick black beard—probably a Vaspurakaner, from the western land constantly disputed between Videssos and Makuran—escorted Markianos inside.

Rhavas stood in the sunshine. It was warm on his shaven skull. After so long in Skopentzana, he did not think he would ever complain about heat and humidity again. He was probably wrong, but that was how he felt now.

"Is he?" That voice from the entranceway was familiar. "By the good god, he is! Welcome back, cousin!"

"Your Majesty," Rhavas said. He was not just cousin to Maleinos II, Avtokrator of the Videssians. He was also Maleinos' subject. He had to show the Avtokrator he understood that. He prostrated himself before Maleinos, going down on his knees and then on his belly, knocking his forehead against the ground. "Your Majesty!"

"Rise, rise," Maleinos told him as quickly as ritual allowed. Had the Avtokrator made him grovel there for some time, it would have been a sign of imperial displeasure. As things were, Maleinos hurried down the stairs and embraced him as soon as he was on his feet. Rhavas kissed his cousin on both cheeks. Maleinos returned the greeting in just the same way, another sign that Rhavas was in high favor. "I feared you lost," the Avtokrator said.

"More than a few times, your Majesty, I feared myself lost," Rhavas replied.

"You look—older." Maleinos laughed a sour laugh. "And so do I, worse luck. Fifteen years will do that to you." Actually, Rhavas didn't think his cousin looked fifteen years older. They were close to the same age. Maleinos' beard had about as much gray in it as Rhavas', but his hair was still dark, and had hardly receded at all, even at the temples; Rhavas would have been balding even if he weren't tonsured. Nor was Maleinos' face—a little broader, a little fleshier than Rhavas'—heavily lined. At first glance, the Avtokrator seemed nearer thirty than past forty.

But when you looked at Maleinos' eyes . . . When you looked at his eyes, he seemed closer to sixty. There he had crow's feet, and heavy dark pouches under the lower lids. Being Avtokrator wasn't easy. Being Avtokrator in troubled times had to prove doubly wearing.

"You haven't had it easy lately," Rhavas said, and couldn't help adding, "The Empire hasn't had it easy lately."

"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth!" his cousin exclaimed. "If I could have the last couple of years to do over again . . ." He ruefully shook his head. "Phos doesn't grant wishes like that, however much I wish he did. I don't suppose I can blame him. If he did, he'd stay too busy to tend to anything else."

"No doubt," Rhavas said tonelessly.

Maleinos didn't notice anything wrong with the way he sounded. The Avtokrator slapped him on the back. "Come into the residence with me. Drink some wine. Tell me about your journey. You saw the downfall of Skopentzana?"

"I did, your Majesty," Rhavas replied. "I was in the middle of it, and lucky to get out. I hadn't been out for long before an earthquake, ah, finished the city's overthrow." Did I summon that earthquake? I didn't believe it then, but I do now.

"Terrible thing," Maleinos said. "The lord with the great and good mind only knows how we're going to set things right up in the far northeast. I curse Stylianos to Skotos' ice for pulling the garrisons from the frontier forts." He spat between his feet.

So did Rhavas, a beat slower than he might have. Again, fortunately, the Avtokrator didn't notice. Rhavas said, "It isn't just the far northeast, your Majesty. North of the Paristrian Mountains, the barbarians do as they please."

"Curse Stylianos," Maleinos said again. Unlike Rhavas', his curses had no effect. Rhavas had not seen the rebel general since some time before leaving to become prelate of Skopentzana. He had no idea where in the Empire Stylianos was. All that being so, he hadn't tried a curse of his own, judging it unlikely to succeed.

His cousin led him up into the imperial residence. Alabaster panels set into the ceiling let in a pale, cool light that gave the corridors the feel almost of being underwater. Hunting mosaics picked out in bright tesserae of stone and gilded glass brightened the floor under his feet.

On tables and on the walls were trophies of past Videssian triumphs: a helmet belonging to a Makuraner King of Kings that Stavrakios had captured when he seized Mashiz, the bow case of a Khamorth chieftain, a pair of huge two-handed swords from Halogaland. Just for a moment, Rhavas thought of Ingegerd, of what might have been, of what should have been. He shook his head. What point to regret now? It was over. It was done. It was as it had been.

On my head be it. He shook that thought aside, too.

Also hanging on the wall was a portrait of Stavrakios: a tough-looking, bandy-legged man who, but for his gilded armor, seemed more like a veteran underofficer than an Avtokrator. Maleinos' eyes flicked toward it, too. He said, "I often wonder what he would do in a mess like this."

"He didn't have to fight a civil war," Rhavas said.

"He didn't know how lucky he was, either," Maleinos said bitterly.

"No doubt you're right, your Majesty," Rhavas said. "If only you could have defeated the rebel quickly—"

Maleinos rounded on him. "Not you, too!" the Avtokrator snarled. "You weren't anywhere close by when his men and mine fought, and you still have the nerve to tell me what I should have done? You were raised in this city, all right. You're as fickle as everybody else who comes from here, too."

Rhavas did the only thing he could: he ate crow. Bowing, he said, "I beg your pardon, your Majesty. I meant no offense; I swear it." He bowed again, ready to go through a second prostration if he had to.

But his cousin, after scowling for a moment, shook his head and sighed. "Let it go, Rhavas; let it go. I've had too many people playing general around me—that's all. It's always easier to brag afterward about what you would have done than it is to make sure beforehand that everything works just so."

"I understand." Rhavas understood that pushing it would be a mistake. He also understood that the Avtokrator, while less successful against Stylianos than he wished he were, was also more successful than he might have been. People said Stylianos was the best soldier Videssos had known since Stavrakios' day. Even staying in the field against him was no small achievement. Maleinos, of course, was unlikely to see things from that point of view.

"Here." The Avtokrator waved Rhavas into a small dining chamber that looked out on a courtyard full of flowers. A servant brought a jar of wine and a pair of golden cups. The man poured for Maleinos and Rhavas, then bowed and silently withdrew.

Both men raised their hands to the heavens. They spat in ritualized rejection of Skotos. Like the chameleon—a lizard common here but unknown in Skopentzana—Rhavas took his color from his surroundings. He raised his goblet and drank. The golden vintage sliding down his throat startled him out of his hypocrisy. "Thank you, your Majesty!" he exclaimed. "I'd forgotten there were grapes like this. They don't come up to the north, believe me. It's like sipping sweet sunshine."

"I like that. You always did know how to turn a phrase." Maleinos drank, too, and smiled. "You make me enjoy it more on account of the thoughts you put in my mind. Sweet sunshine—a pretty conceit." He took another sip and savored it, then leaned across the small, marble-topped table and got down to business. "Tell me how Skopentzana fell. Tell me how you escaped. Tell me what you saw on the way south. You passed through lands the rebel held, eh?"

"Yes," Rhavas admitted cautiously. Would the Avtokrator blame him for that?

"Tell me about what you saw there, too," Maleinos said. "Tell me all about that. What are his soldiers like? Is their discipline good? What about their morale? Do the people seem contented, or would they rise against him if they saw an excuse?"

"You may or may not know by now that he is minting his own coins, with the claim that he is Avtokrator," Rhavas said.

"I did know that, as a matter of fact," his cousin said grimly. "Well, a son of a whore is still a bastard no matter what he claims to be. But you did well to tell me. For now, on with your tale."

"It will take some time," Rhavas said. And some selection, he added, but only to himself.

"I have the time," Maleinos said. "Go on."

Rhavas did. He left out anything that had to do with his curses, and especially with what they might mean. He emphasized the way the Khamorth were spreading over the countryside, adding, "Some of the towns still in Videssian hands when I passed through them likely belong to the barbarians now."

Maleinos growled, down deep in his chest. The noise reminded Rhavas of the sound an angry bear might make. "One day, the lord with the great and good mind willing, I'll find a way to set this right," the Avtokrator ground out.

"I hope you do, your Majesty. North of the mountains, though, Videssian authority has for the most part simply collapsed," Rhavas said. His cousin growled again; Rhavas wasn't sure Maleinos knew he was doing it. He also wasn't sure the Avtokrator understood how complete the collapse was, and how little chance he might have of doing anything about it. Rhavas gave a small mental shrug. Till the civil war ended—if it ever did—neither Maleinos nor Stylianos could do much about the plainsmen's incursions.

When Rhavas got to his journey through the territory Maleinos' imperial rival held, his cousin questioned him sharply about every tiny detail he had seen. Despite his anger at what the Khamorth had done north of the Paristrian Mountains, Maleinos was more interested in Stylianos and his backers. They were closer—and they were Videssians.

At last—not least after mentioning the Khamorth he'd seen in the meadow just outside the Long Walls—Rhavas fell silent. He'd drunk enough wine to lubricate his throat, enough that it also left his head on the edge of spinning.

Maleinos poured his own goblet full. He nodded across the table to Rhavas. "You have a good eye, very holy sir. I remember you always did note the telling detail. The gift, plainly, has grown and not receded since you went north. You are the better for it."

"I thank you, your Majesty. These are hard times for the Empire, as I said before."

"Hard times? Phos!" Maleinos muttered. "We haven't known times like these since . . ." He shook his head. "To the ice with me if we've ever known times like these before. If a quarter of what you say is true, we'll have Skotos' own time reclaiming the far northeast."

"Yes, that may well be so," Rhavas answered cautiously. No, the Avtokrator didn't see the whole picture. Rhavas had no idea how Videssos would reconquer any of the land north of the mountains. The far northeast, up where Skopentzana lay, was only a small part of that.

Maleinos gulped the wine. He filled the goblet yet again, then gulped that, too. Shaking his head, he said, "You will doubtless think me a horrible sinner, cousin, but I tell you straight out there are times when I wonder if Phos hasn't gone to sleep and let Skotos loose in the world." He spat in rejection of the dark got, then let out an embarrassed—and drunken—chuckle. "Now go ahead and scream Heresy! at me. It's not like I haven't earned it."

Instead of screaming, Rhavas stared at the man who'd ruled the Empire of Videssos for the past twenty years. "You are not the first man I have heard say such a thing," Rhavas said slowly.

"No, eh?" Maleinos chuckled again. "My bet is, I wouldn't envy the last poor bugger who was dumb enough to open his mouth like that where you could hear. He's probably still sorry he did."

"Your Majesty . . ." Rhavas hesitated. He wished he hadn't poured down so much wine himself; he wanted clear wits for this. The Avtokrator might—might—be able to get away with joking about theology. A prelate would have a much harder time of it. Yet if Maleinos could be won over to his cause . . . "Your Majesty, I have wondered about this myself."

There. He'd said it. He waited for the sky to fall, or for Maleinos to shout for the guards and have him thrown out of the imperial residence on his ear. That didn't happen. What did happen was that his cousin the Avtokrator stared at him in turn. "You have had this thought, very holy sir?" Maleinos echoed.

"So I have, your Majesty," Rhavas replied.

"I can hardly believe it," Maleinos told him. "Everyone knows you're a pillar of orthodoxy."

"I am not a blind man. I can see what goes on around me. I have to think about what it means," Rhavas said. "If evil prevails, if good falls back . . . What can that possibly mean?"

"It can mean trouble. It will mean trouble. The ecumenical patriarch has declared that it means the lord with the great and good mind is testing our resolve," Maleinos said. "I must tell you, I incline this way myself—in public. To say the other, to maintain it openly, is to invite madness into the Empire."

"Madness is here, whether we invited it or not," Rhavas said. "Shall we pretend nothing has gone wrong in Videssos and everything is the same as it was a couple of years ago?"

"Videssos is already upside down in too many other ways," Maleinos said. "I don't want priests getting unruly and throwing things at each other, too. Stylianos would start screaming that I was a heretic, and I can't stand that. I can't afford it, either. Do you understand me?"

"Your Majesty, are we not right to follow the truth wherever it leads?" Rhavas asked stiffly.

The Avtokrator glared at him. "You are trying to cause a scandal." He might have been a father laying down the law to a scapegrace son. Rhavas wouldn't have cared for that tone even from an older man. It really rankled from someone his own age. Oblivious—or maybe just indifferent—to his anger, Maleinos went on, "There will be no theological scandals while I rule here. There most especially will be no theological scandals started by a kinsman of mine while I rule here. Whatever else happens, that had better not. Do I make myself plain enough, cousin?" His voice was heavy with menace.

"You are unmistakably plain, your Majesty," Rhavas answered.

"Good. We'll say no more about it, then." Maleinos was confident he could have his way when and as he chose. Such confidence was part of what being Avtokrator of the Videssians was all about.

And Rhavas did say no more about it . . . then.

Coming back to Videssos the city meant coming back to the High Temple. To Rhavas, that was much more important than coming back to his cousin, though he had the good sense to make sure Maleinos knew nothing of his opinion.

The High Temple's beauty was only part of its appeal. Every time Rhavas saw its grand—even grandiose—shape shouldering its way over other buildings to dominate the skyline, he sneered at the temple in Skopentzana where he'd served so long. A ridiculous, provincial structure, and one surely downfallen now, to the Khamorth and to the earthquake that had finished the ruination the barbarians had begun.

Just as the temple in Skopentzana had been at the center of Rhavas' life in the far northeast, so the High Temple lay at the center of the ecumenical patriarch's life—and at the center of theological life for the whole Empire. Maleinos granted Rhavas quarters in the imperial residence. He would go that far for a cousin. After their first meeting, though, the Avtokrator had little to do with him. Maleinos had more urgent things to worry about. Like a spider at the center of its web, he kept all his senses alert for the slightest touch of Stylianos.

Left to his own devices, Rhavas became a theologian again. As prelate, he hadn't had the time to do as much serious theological work as he would have liked. The book he'd written up in Skopentzana was as dead as the murdered city and, probably, the scribe who'd put the fair copy down on parchment. He missed it less than he'd expected to. His thoughts had gone in different—radically different—directions since.

Before long, Kameniates summoned him to the High Temple and the patriarchal residence. He was not too surprised; his name would have been bandied about as a possible successor to the patriarchal throne even while his body was far, far away. What with his accomplishments and his ancestry, that seemed inevitable as the sunrise.

Kameniates was in his late sixties, his long white beard wispy as clouds on a breezy spring afternoon. He had big, bushy eyebrows, too, and tufts of hair growing out of his ears, which Rhavas found repulsive. The present holder of the patriarchate had neither disgraced himself nor covered himself with glory; he seemed more a placeholder than anything else.

"Most holy sir," Rhavas murmured, respecting his office if not his person. He bowed very low. "It is a privilege to make your acquaintance at last, after so many years so far from the heart of the Empire."

"I am also pleased to meet you," Kameniates said, though Rhavas hadn't mentioned anything about pleasure. The patriarch added, "Even though you were translated to a distant city, your name was ever in my ear."

By the way he said it, Rhavas might have been translated into a foreign language rather than another ecclesiastical situation. And Kameniates had probably listened with no small worry whenever Rhavas' name came up, too. If the present patriarch annoyed the Avtokrator enough, he could become the former patriarch in the blink of an eye. And Rhavas was the logical one to succeed him.

"It's good to be back in the imperial city," Rhavas said now. "Even so, I would rather have stayed in Skopentzana. That would mean the Empire was still strong beyond the mountains."

"Your sentiments do you credit," Kameniates said.

Hadn't Ingegerd told him something like that? How much good had his sentiments done her? None at all, as he knew only too well. But Kameniates didn't need to know about Ingegerd. There were, in fact, quite a few things Kameniates didn't need to know about. Rhavas didn't intend to tell him, either. All he said was, "I thank you, most holy sir."

Kameniates coughed once or twice. "You will forgive me, very holy sir, but some of the stories that come out of the north speak of doctrines being preached there that are, ah, not completely orthodox."

Maybe the ecumenical patriarch already knew about some things of which he should have been ignorant. Rhavas said, "You will forgive me, most holy sir, but stories speak of all sorts of things."

Before Kameniates could reply, a young priest brought in wine and honey cakes covered with chopped pistachios and almonds. Up in Skopentzana, the same recipe would have used walnuts, and probably butter in place of oil. Rhavas went through the ritual of wine without a flaw, conscious of Kameniates' eye on him. The patriarch ate with every sign of enjoyment. He said, "Some of the stories are truly strange."

"Many things that have happened in the north since the civil war began are truly strange," Rhavas answered. "I could begin with the abandonment of the frontier forts and go on to speak of the fall not only of Skopentzana but also of many lesser towns and cities. The Empire has spent centuries carrying civilization to that part of the world. Much of what we did, I fear, is lost forever."

"Surely you exaggerate," Kameniates said around a mouthful of honey cake. "Once this civil strife does finally end, we'll set our house in order soon enough."

He sounded comfortably certain. And why shouldn't he be comfortable? Nothing bad had happened here, and he hadn't gone where anything had. Rhavas said, "Most holy sir, you would have an easier time unscrambling an egg than you would restoring life the way it was north of the mountains."

"Well, you may be right," Kameniates said—an infuriating way to change the subject. Actually, he didn't change it, but swung it back toward what he'd been talking about before: "The stories I've heard from up there, though, haven't got much to do with the Khamorth. They have more to say about our own priests."

"Ah?" Rhavas made a noncommittal noise, and forced himself to follow it with a chuckle. "I'm one of those priests. Maybe the stories are about me."

Kameniates laughed uproariously. "I beg your pardon, but what I'd heard of you didn't make me think you were such a funny fellow," he said. What he would have said had he known Rhavas wasn't joking was no doubt very different. As things were, he went on, "I doubt you're a priest who slays by dark sorcery. I doubt you're a priest who's turned his back on the lord with the great and good mind." What did that prove? Only that what he'd heard about Rhavas—what he knew he'd heard about Rhavas—bore little relationship to the truth.

Rhavas said nothing about sorcery of any sort. He did say, "Most holy sir, I am going to call for a general synod of the priests and prelates and monks and abbots within the Empire."

"You are?" Kameniates looked at him in astonishment. "Why?"

Yes, that was comfort speaking. Comfort brought with it the inability to understand what might bother a man like Rhavas, a man who had seen the worst both his own folk and the barbarians could do. "Why, most holy sir? Because recent events have compelled me to reevaluate the fundamental relationship between the lord with the great and good mind and the dark god."

That put it as abstractly as Rhavas knew how. He waited to see what Kameniates would make of it, and to see how long the ecumenical patriarch needed to realize exactly what he was saying. The longer Kameniates took, the stupider Rhavas reckoned him. Much more slowly than he should have, Kameniates finally figured out what Rhavas' innocuous-sounding words had to mean. When he did, he got it into a handful of words of his own, blurting, "You worship the dark god!"

"No," Rhavas said, meaning, Yes. "But I do think our easy lives in the Empire have left us complacent. We have taken Phos and his power for granted for a very long time. As we gain more experience with the world as it really is, shouldn't we use that experience to help us understand who the stronger god is?"

"Heresy!" Kameniates sketched Phos' sun-sign and spat in rejection at the same time, as if he urgently needed to do both and couldn't decide which to take care of first.

"Asking a question is not heresy." Rhavas kept his voice mild.

"Asking this question is," the ecumenical patriarch declared. "Don't play logic-chopping games with me. If you say Skotos may be stronger than Phos, what do you do but undermine the faith?"

He was right. Rhavas knew as much. He gave back the only answer he could: "What if I speak the truth in saying that, most holy sir? Everything I have seen lately makes me believe I do."

"What if you speak the truth? Well, so what?" There was cynicism to rock even Rhavas. "So what?" Kameniates repeated. "Do you want people going around robbing and raping and killing because they think the dark god wants them to? Do you want them thinking they've got nothing to look forward to but the eternal ice when they die? Does that do anybody any good? I don't think so, and neither do you, not if you've got a copper's worth of sense."

Rhavas had raped and killed, thinking Skotos wanted him to. He still thought so, and he still thought it was important. He said, "I am the prelate of a city of the first rank." The Empire of Videssos had six or eight of those. The city was not one of them; it was in a class by itself. Rhavas went on, "Because of what I am, I have the right to call for a synod on doctrinal matters. I have the right, and I intend to use it."

"I have the right to tell you you're a troublemaking idiot, and I intend to use that," Kameniates retorted. "Go ahead. Put out your call for a synod. You'll get one. It's within your rights, as you say. And you'll be sorrier afterward than you ever thought you could be. Do you understand that? You will be asking your fellow ecclesiastics to condemn you for the worst heresy we know. And they will. Being the Avtokrator's kin won't save you, not if you try to worship Skotos. Nothing will save you if you do that."

"We'll see." Rhavas thought about telling him what Arotras had said, and about what Maleinos had. In the end, he held his peace. Arotras was too small a fish to matter, and too vulnerable. And the Avtokrator could speak for himself in his own good time. It wasn't Rhavas' place to speak for him. If Rhavas hadn't understood that himself, Maleinos had made it very clear in short order.

"If you go forward, you are the one who will see," Kameniates said. "What you propose is madness."

"There, most holy sir, we agree," Rhavas replied. "Madness has swallowed the world. You want everyone to think that isn't so. You want people to believe things are the way they've always been. You want them to think everything is fine, and all they need to do is go on the way they always have. I'm sorry, but that won't do the job any more."

"Nothing else will," Kameniates said. They eyed each other, both of them realizing they'd been doing nothing but talking at cross purposes.

"We'll see," Rhavas said once more. "Oh, yes. We will indeed."

When Maleinos summoned Rhavas into his presence, Rhavas was glad to go. He even prostrated himself before his imperial cousin without the slightest notion anything was amiss. Even going down on your belly before the Avtokrator of the Videssians was a singular honor: most people never had the chance to do so.

Maleinos spoke to his servants: "I would talk with my cousin alone. Leave us." Watching them shuffle out of the audience chamber in the imperial residence made Rhavas prouder yet. Then Maleinos looked at him with a face full of winter and said, "You bloody fool."

"What?" Rhavas blinked.

"That's, 'What, your Majesty?'" Maleinos snarled. "Get on your belly again,cousin "—he turned that into a curse—"and tell me why I shouldn't take your head this instant."

He wasn't joking. Rhavas realized that, and did prostrate himself again. He was groveling in front of his cousin before he remembered that he had but to say the word, and Maleinos was a dead man. Whether he himself could survive saying the word was a different question.

With his forehead knocking against the floor, he quavered, "What—what's wrong, your Majesty?"

"Phos!" Maleinos exclaimed. "Are you really that naïve? I think you may be. I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. Get up, you miserable idiot, and I'll tell you."

Cautiously, Rhavas rose. "Yes, your Majesty?"

"You've decided to have a synod convened," Maleinos growled.

"Yes, your Majesty." Now Rhavas was on firmer ground.

"No, very holy sir," the Avtokrator said. "No. I didn't think you were such a blockhead, especially after we talked before. What will happen when the synod comes to order? I'll tell you what. Stylianos will start screaming, 'Look! Maleinos' cousin worships Skotos! Maleinos must worship Skotos, too!'—that's what. And that would do me a whole lot of good, wouldn't it?"

Once that was pointed out to him, Rhavas saw it plainly enough. "But you said—" he began.

Maleinos cut him off with a sharp chopping motion of his right hand. If he'd held a sword, he might have taken Rhavas' head with it just then. In tones of infinite disgust, he said, "What I tell my cousin over wine when we're both getting sozzled is one thing. If I don't want to remember it the next morning, I don't have to. What I say publicly, or what anybody in my family says publicly, is something else again. We talked about that, too, but you seem to have forgotten it. Now do you follow me, very holy sir?"

"Yes, your Majesty," Rhavas answered. "But there is something you may not see."

"Oh?" An ominous rumble came into the Avtokrator's voice. "And what, pray tell, is that?"

"The truth is the truth no matter whether we're talking about it over wine with no one else around or in front of a crowd in the market square—or in front of priests and prelates in the High Temple," Rhavas said.

His cousin scowled at him. "I told you what the truth was. The truth is, no kinsman of mine is going to cause that kind of trouble right now. I can't afford it, and the Empire can't afford it, either. Do I make myself plain enough?"

Rhavas gathered himself. He had always favored Maleinos in the civil war, not just because they were kin but because he himself was—well, he had been—a sound conservative by nature, opposed to change in general and to usurpation in particular. He was still opposed to usurpation. Change in general . . . "Your Majesty, I honor you and I obey you to the extent I can, but here I will go where my studies of the good god and of the dark lord take me. I do not see what else I can do, not if I want to cleave to the truth."

"You . . . defy me?" Maleinos sounded as if he couldn't believe his ears. People didn't defy the Avtokrator of the Videssians every day.

"I do not wish to defy you, your Majesty," Rhavas replied. "I only wish to follow the truth."

"Piss on the truth—and piss on you, too," Maleinos snapped. "You are no cousin of mine. I disown you. I cast you out. Take whatever you have out of here: you, your goods, your horses—your shadow, too. You are no part of this family. You never shall be, not again. Go." He pointed dramatically toward the door.

If Rhavas hadn't been his kinsman, the Avtokrator would have ordered him slain. The ecclesiastic was sure of that. He said, "As you wish, your Majesty. I am Rhavas, a priest. It is enough."

"You will be Rhavas the anathematized. You will be Rhavas the excommunicated. You will be Rhavas the condemned. I wash my hands of you." Maleinos actually did make hand-washing motions. "If you call for a synod, none of what happens to you will be my doing. It will not need to be. You will do it to yourself."

"I'll take the chance," Rhavas said.

Maleinos didn't answer. He just stood there, pointing toward the door. And out the door Rhavas went.

Having always been a wealthy man—having always been the Avtokrator's cousin—Rhavas knew little about how the poor in Videssos the city lived. Suddenly, he was one of them. He could have stayed at a monastery for nothing for as long as he was willing to work, but he fought shy of that. It smacked of hypocrisy. Monks gathered together to worship Phos. Rhavas aimed to uproot that worship and replace it with something . . . with something truer, he thought.

If he ran out of money altogether, worrying about hypocrisy would become a luxury he couldn't afford. For now, he indulged it.

He sold the steppe ponies. Now that he'd come to Videssos the city, he couldn't imagine wanting to leave again. The first dealer he approached looked dubious—a look he probably practiced every morning in front of a mirror. The man said, "Don't know that I can give you much for 'em, holy sir." He sounded artistically mournful as he went on, "Who'd want such shaggy little beasts?"

"They are Khamorth ponies. You will know what they are and what they can do at least as well as I do. You waste my time and you insult my intelligence if you pretend otherwise." Rhavas' voice was icy cold. "You waste my time at your peril—please believe me. Shall we go on from there, or shall I find a trader who is not so full of himself?"

The horse dealer blinked. He wasn't used to blunt talk like that. He licked his lips. Something in Rhavas' talk put the fear of Phos in him, a fear he'd thought long forgotten. What tried to be a laugh came out sounding more like a raven's croak. The man asked, "Well, what do you want for 'em, holy sir?" Rhavas told him what he wanted. The dealer started to laugh again, but thought better of it. Instead, he said, "I'll give you half that."

Rhavas said, "I told you not to waste my time. Few men get more than one warning from me. You can count yourself lucky—or you can go on being a fool. Was my price fair, or not? Will you make a profit when you sell after buying at that price, or not?"

When the dealer started to come out with the usual bluster, he had the good fortune to look into Rhavas' eyes first. What he saw there made him give back a pace, sketch the sun-sign, and mutter, "Phos!"

"That is not an answer," Rhavas said implacably. "What is your answer?"

"I'll—I'll pay what you want, holy sir. Just don't—don't do anything." The horse trader's voice rose to a frightened whine.

"I am not doing anything. I have not done anything. I will not do anything." Rhavas could even make demonstrating verb tenses intimidating. He held out his hand. The dealer gave him what he'd asked, down to the last copper. When Rhavas went away, the man let out a sigh of relief.

"What's with you?" one of his competitors asked. "You look like a goose walked over your grave."

"I wish it was only a goose," the man exclaimed. "It felt more like one of those long-nosed beasts from across the Sailors' Sea."

"An elephant?" the other trader said.

"That's it." The dealer nodded. "Maybe two of 'em."

Rhavas' landlord, a professionally nosy man named Lardys, didn't understand him. Why wouldn't a priest stay in a monastery instead of taking a room over a tavern? Rhavas didn't try to explain. After he took a barmaid to bed, Lardys stopped asking questions. He thought he knew what kind of priest Rhavas was.

By contrast, Rhavas did not think he was that kind of priest at all. His moral code remained as stern as it ever had—compromise was not a word often found in his vocabulary. But the premises from which he reasoned had changed. If Skotos was more powerful than Phos . . . People in the Empire said, When you come to Videssos the city, eat fish.

As with anything else, convening a synod required several formal steps before the wheels started rolling. An expert on ecclesiastical law, Rhavas was intimately familiar with them. The demand had to be made publicly. He chose the most public way he knew: he went to the High Temple to do it there.

The service was as rich and magnificent as he remembered. Priests swung censers, perfuming the air with costly frankincense and myrrh. The patriarch's golden robes, encrusted with pearls and precious stones, were almost as grand as those the Avtokrator wore. The Temple itself was even more splendid than the rituals it housed. The pews were of cedar and sandalwood and other rare and costly timber. The walls showed Phos' heavens, picked out in turquoise and glowing rose quartz and glistening mother-of-pearl.

And in the dome above the central altar, the image of Phos looked down upon his worshipers. Small windows pierced the base of the dome, admitting rays of light that made the gold tesserae of the mosaic sparkle and shimmer. The sunbeams also made the dome seem to float above the rest of the temple, as if it were a true piece of the heavens insubstantially tethered to earth.

Phos himself had a gaze that made anyone who tried to meet it think twice. The good god was stern in judgment. His dark and shadowed eyes warned that men were not worthy of him. Always before, when Rhavas had lived in Videssos the city, that divine stare had frightened him and made him wonder, Am I worthy of heaven? Now . . .

Now he wondered if Phos was worthy of heaven. Having changed allegiance made him see the divine liturgy in a whole new way. It might have been the shrill crying of children frightened by the darkness. But the darkness was there, whether it frightened them or not. Didn't they see that? Better to admit as much and go on than to hold up useless candles and pretend their feeble light stretched everywhere. Wasn't it? Rhavas thought so.

Kameniates preached a sermon almost frighteningly unmemorable. Rhavas knew he himself made a better theologian than a preacher. He also knew he could have outpreached Kameniates in his sleep. The present ecumenical patriarch had no great name as a scholar, either. He was an ecclesiastical bureaucrat, a functionary who could have been replaced by a dozen other functionaries without changing much and, indeed, without having many people notice.

As men began rising from their seats—up in the grilled-off gallery, women would be doing the same—Rhavas also rose, calling out, "Most holy sir!"

"Yes? What is it?" Kameniates made a mistake by recognizing him and letting him go on. The patriarch realized as much a heartbeat later. His mouth twisted in dismay. It was too late for that, though. Now he couldn't step away from the altar and pretend he hadn't seen the other ecclesiastic.

"I am Rhavas, prelate of Skopentzana, newly returned to Videssos the city through chaos and war." Rhavas pitched his voice to carry, and the High Temple helped him. Perfect in so many other things, it was perfect in acoustics as well. No one in the building had any trouble hearing him.

"From Skopentzana? He's come all the way from Skopentzana?" He heard exclamations like those from near and far, even from the women's galleries. He thought he caught flashes of motion from behind the grillwork in the balcony as women crowded close to get a better look at him.

Most reluctantly, Kameniates asked, "And what would you, Rhavas of Skopentzana?" He might have ignored Rhavas even yet, but he couldn't ignore that buzz of excitement and interest.

"I would call for the convocation of a synod of priests and prelates and monks and abbots to examine the premises of our holy faith, as is my right as a prelate," Rhavas replied proudly.

That set off a fresh buzz. Men and women chattered among themselves. Videssians who weren't professional theologians were passionate amateurs. As soon as Rhavas talked about looking at how the faith was put together, he had their interest, if not their support.

"And how do you propose to alter the definitions we have accepted for so long?" the ecumenical patriarch inquired of him, as if he did not know. Kameniates might not make much of a theologian, but he was a clever bureaucrat. He knew what would likely draw popular backing, and what would not.

Rhavas also knew that if he said, I want to cast out the worship of Phos and start giving reverence to Skotos instead, his audience would become a mob and tear him to pieces right there on the floor of the High Temple. Kameniates, no doubt, would cheer them on, if he didn't join in and grab one of Rhavas' ankles for a hearty yank of his own.

He didn't say that, then, even if it was what he meant. What he did say was, "I would like the assembled ecclesiastics to consider how our view of the constant struggle between dark and light is to be measured against events, and what support there is in the holy scriptures for the alterations I shall propose."

At that, Kameniates looked alarmed. Being no great scholar, he wouldn't know off the top of his head what texts might support Rhavas. He did know Rhavas had the gift for scholarship he so conspicuously lacked. If the prelate of Skopentzana implied there were texts to bolster his views, then that might well be so.

People started buzzing again. Unlike the patriarch, they didn't know what Rhavas had in mind. Some of their guesses were good, others wildly foolish. But they didn't sound furious and outraged, the way they would have if he'd been more explicit. They sounded . . . intrigued.

Kameniates heard that, too, and looked even less happy than he had when he answered Rhavas' call. He said, "I see no good reason to change the doctrines that have served us well for so long, and—"

"Is the truth not reason enough?" Rhavas broke in loudly.

By the patriarch's expression, it wasn't. By his expression, it didn't come close. But men started calling, "Yes, by the good god!" and, "What are you afraid of, most holy sir?" After horse racing, theology might have been the most popular spectator sport in Videssos.

"Yes, most holy sir, what are you afraid of?" Rhavas jeered.

Kameniates turned very read. "I fear nothing—nothing, do you hear me?" His voice rose to an angry shout. "Do you want your synod, your cursed synod, Rhavas? Well, by the lord with the great and good mind, you can have it! Do you want to be anathematized and excommunicated? You can have that, too, and you will. I told you as much before in private, and now I say it in public. To the ice with you, you vile heretic, and the sooner the better!"

Now the men around Rhavas stared at the ecumenical patriarch in astonishment. Like most bureaucrats, Kameniates was not normally a man of strong character. Such an outburst from him shook his congregation like an earthquake. Remembering the earthquake that had shaken Skopentzana down, Rhavas wished he'd found another comparison, but he couldn't help that now.

And Kameniates' fury was only approaching its peak. He pointed toward the entranceway. "Get out!" he cried. "Get out, I say! You are banned from the High Temple until the synod that condemns you—and it will."

Rhavas thought about cursing and killing the patriarch then and there, just for the sake of the chaos it would cause. He thought about it, but then shook his head. Why kill Kameniates when he'd just goaded him into promising to convene that synod? If Kameniates fell over dead now, a new patriarch wouldn't be in place for weeks, if not for months. When he was, he wouldn't necessarily feel bound by his predecessor's promises. Rhavas would have to figure out how to irk him into doing what he wanted.

Instead of giving Kameniates death, then, Rhavas gave him his most elegant courtier's bow. Kameniates gaped, plainly not knowing what to make of that. "Let it be just as you say, most holy sir," Rhavas told him. "If you fear to go where the truth may lead you until you have the force of a synod all around you, well, that may be a pity, but it is also your privilege. My own view is that you are a coward, but I suppose I could be wrong."

Kameniates got redder yet. Rhavas smiled; he hadn't thought the patriarch could. Kameniates was too angry to do anything but gobble incoherently. Guessing the only thing that could inflame him further would be to leave quickly and quietly, Rhavas started to do just that.

He hadn't taken more than a few steps, though, before a man asked him, "Very holy sir, where do you think our present doctrines are mistaken?"

"After civil war, after disaster in the north, I'm surprised you need to ask that question," Rhavas replied.

The man frowned. "What do you mean?"

"About what you think I mean," Rhavas told him. "Look at the state of the world, such as it is. An answer will come to you. If you are honest with yourself, I expect it will be the right one."

He left the fellow expostulating in his wake. But he hadn't gone far before another man asked him almost the identical question. He gave this one almost the identical answer. Where the first man had floundered and refused to follow Rhavas' response to the only place where it could lead, the second man took the point at once. He took it, but he didn't like it. Turning pale, he exclaimed, "You can't mean that!"

"With all proper respect, sir, I not only can, but I do," Rhavas said. "And now, if you will excuse me . . ."

He gave his explanation twice more before leaving the High Temple. He didn't linger to see whether those men understood him. In the end, what difference did it make? Some people knew what he was saying. They would spell it out so even fools could see. And gossip spread faster than wildfire.

No one followed him back to his lodging. That was a relief. He wondered how long he had before people would, and how long before rocks and softer, smellier things started flying in through the window. Then he wondered if such things would content the people who disagreed with him. They might try to set the tavern and the rooms over it on fire instead.

Those who set fires were madmen. Everybody knew that. Fires ranked right up there with earthquakes as the worst things that could happen to a city—and fires came far more often. With so many open flames in a place like Videssos the city, it was probably a miracle they happened as seldom as they did. When a fire got loose, any kind of breeze could push it faster than people could put it out. And if a fire got loose when a gale was blowing . . . Rhavas shuddered. Great swaths of a city went up in flames at times like that.

Of course, those who set fires to prove their theology were not likely to care if a quarter of Videssos the city burned, as long as Rhavas' ashes were among the rest. Rhavas bared his teeth. As a matter of fact, he felt the same way about those who disagreed with him. If he burned them all, though, who would be left to worship along with him?

When he walked into the taproom, Lardys sent him a quizzical look. "You don't look so real happy, holy sir," the taverner remarked. "Feel like a mug of wine to take out some of the kinks?" Before Rhavas could answer, he added three words torture couldn't have pulled from him most of the time: "On the house."

"Thank you," Rhavas said. "I don't know if that will help, but I don't see how it could hurt."

Lardys dipped up a mugful. "What's eating you, anyway?" he asked, and held up a hasty hand. "You don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it's nobody's business."

"I don't mind talking." Rhavas explained, as he had on the floor and in the narthex of the High Temple.

When he finished, the innkeeper whistled softly. "You don't think small, do you?" He paused, considering. Doing what he did, he'd seen a lot of the world's evils here in this taproom. "Makes a deal of sense when you think about it, eh?"

"Seems that way to me," Rhavas said. "The ecumenical patriarch, you understand, has a different opinion."

"Well, curse the ecumenical patriarch," Lardys said gaily.

"Yes, curse him," Rhavas agreed. He suddenly finished the wine at a gulp, wondering what he'd done, wondering if he'd done anything. He hadn't intended to, but what did that prove? One way or the other, he would know before very long.

"Dig up his bones!" Lardys added, pouring wine for himself. That was the traditional Videssian cry of riot and rebellion. More often than not, it was aimed at the Avtokrator, but anyone who got on the wrong side of the city mob could face it.

"Dig up his bones," Rhavas echoed. Would Kameniates' bones need digging up before long? If they did, would people make the connection between him and Rhavas? Would a mob gather in the street here shouting, Dig up Rhavas' bones!? Before long, again, Rhavas would find out. "Let me have another," he told the tapman. This time, he set a coin on the bar.

"Here you go." Lardys finished his own cup and poured another for himself after giving Rhavas a refill. "I've got a question for you, holy sir: if things are the way you say they are, does that mean we all go to the ice after we die?"

"I haven't worked that out yet," Rhavas said uncomfortably—it was a better question than he'd expected. "It would seem to follow, though, wouldn't it?"

"Ah, well." The man behind the bar shrugged. "The company's bound to be better there than up above, then, isn't it?"

Eternity didn't seem to bother him. Maybe the idea of it was too big for him to grasp. Maybe, on the other hand, he hoped to find a loophole so that he would end up in Phos' heaven even if everyone else went to the ice. Rhavas didn't think either Phos or Skotos had loopholes like that; each was, in his own way, perfect.

"If bad is good and good is bad, so to speak, we're going to have to change a lot of the way we behave," Lardys observed. "You see a pretty girl you want, you just go ahead and jump on her. Why not? What difference will it make?"

He had a way of penetrating to the essence of things. Rhavas wished he would have chosen a different example. What had happened with Ingegerd still weighed on his conscience. Logically, it shouldn't have. Rhavas knew that. His own reasoning had already followed the innkeeper's. He wasn't comfortable with it, though, no matter how logical it was. He hadn't grown up thinking that way. Once he'd reformed the temples' doctrine, others would. They would think and feel the way they were supposed to under the new dispensation.

How to put that into words? Rhavas did his best: "I expect things will sort themselves out. It will take time, that's all."

"Ah, well," Lardys said again. "What doesn't?" He gestured toward Rhavas' mug. "Drink up, holy sir, and I'll pour you some more. Next one's on me. You've given me something new to chew on, and that doesn't happen every day."

"Thank you very much," Rhavas answered gravely. "You are a clever man. You might have done well to go into the priesthood so you could use your wits to best advantage."

"No, thanks." Lardys shook his head. "You use your wits plenty keeping an inn going, believe you me you do. And—meaning no offense, mind you—I don't reckon I'd make much of a priest on account of I like using my prick too well."

Having become acquainted with the pleasures of the flesh, Rhavas found that hard to gainsay. He wondered how he'd done without for so much of his life. The only answer he could see was that he hadn't known what he was missing. He supposed that was why priests took their vocations as youths. If they got experience first, they wouldn't want to abandon women—or, some of them, boys.

"The rules there will likely change, too," he said.

"I bet they would!" The innkeeper's laugh was raucous and lewd and rude. He eyed Rhavas with a strange, almost a morbid, curiosity. "Do you really think you can make the temples turn everything upside down, holy sir, or are you just talking to hear yourself talk?"

"What I say I can do, I can do," Rhavas declared, maybe a little louder than he needed to. "The truth is the truth. If I see it more clearly than others, I can make them see it, too—and I have a duty to make them see it."

"Better you than me, pal. That's all I've got to tell you." Lardys whistled: a low, mournful note. "Yeah, better you than me. You take on something that big, you're bound to lose whether you're right or you're wrong. You understand what I'm telling you? If the mouse runs into the tree or the tree falls on the mouse, the mouse loses either way."

"I am not a mouse," Rhavas said, and plucked at his bushy beard. "You can tell because my whiskers are different."

The taverner laughed louder than the joke deserved; he'd been drinking, too. The next round, Rhavas bought for both of them. They ended up killing a good part of the afternoon, and tried to solve the secrets of the universe while they were at it.

Out in the streets, people started yelling about something or other. "I wonder what's going on," Rhavas said, more than a little blearily.

"To the ice with 'em." Lardys giggled. "To the ice with everybody who doesn't come in and buy some wine. To the ice with . . . everybody." He giggled again.

But then someonedid come in, and they both demanded, "What's all the fuss about?"

"You haven't heard yet?" the man said in amazement. He rolled his eyes when they both shook their heads. He rolled his eyes, but he told them: "The patriarch is dead!"

Rhavas woke with a hangover the likes of which he hadn't had since . . . He couldn't remember when, if ever, he'd woken with such a thick head.Yes, curse him, he'd said, not meaning very much by it—and Kameniates breathed no more.

Groaning, Rhavas stood up. That made his head hurt more. So did bending to reach under the bed for the chamber pot. He tried to piss away all the wine he'd drunk the day and the night before, but it was still working its will on him. "Coming out!" he called—croaked, really—and threw the slops out the window. An irate screech from below said he hadn't given the people in the street long enough to get clear. That was a hazard of city life anywhere. It happened—well, it had happened—in Skopentzana, too.

He was none too steady on his feet as he went down to the taproom. He blinked and squinted. It was no brighter in there than it had been the day before—less so, if anything, for the morning was cloudy—but it certainly seemed as if it were. Lardys was already down there behind the bar. He looked more than a little the worse for wear, too.

"Wine," Rhavas said in a ghastly voice. "A cup of wine and some raw cabbage, if you have any. Maybe that will get some of the thunder out of my head."

"I have cabbage, if you want it." The taverner didn't doubt he would want a hair of the dog that had bitten him. A mug already stood in front of the man. As he dipped up another, he went on, "Or I have tripe soup. A bowl eased me—some."

"Tripe soup and cabbage, maybe," Rhavas said. "But wine. Oh, yes. Wine." Automatically, he went through the proper Videssian ritual. Several other people were having breakfast in there. A hungover priest was one thing—something to smile at, in fact. A hungover priest who didn't seem to reject Skotos . . . Rhavas didn't want to have to start killing so early in the day.

His hands shook as he raised the cup to his lips. When the wine hit his stomach, he wondered if it would stay down. He gulped a couple of times and told his inside to behave themselves. To his relief, they did. He crunched cabbage and spooned up the greasy, spicy soup. Little by little, his headache receded.

"Better," he said when he got to the bottom of the soup bowl. "Not good, but better."

"I know what you mean," Lardys said in tones almost as mournful as his own. The man's laugh had a distinctly hollow ring. "See if I ever curse anybody again for the rest of my days."

Rhavas stared. The fellow actually thought that his curse had killed Kameniates? Rhavas started to laugh, too. Once he started, he had trouble stopping. By the time he managed to bring the spasm—almost the seizure—under control, everyone in the place was looking at him.

"You all right, holy sir?" Lardys asked doubtfully.

"I . . . suppose so," Rhavas answered, still wheezing. A couple of tears trickled from the corners of his eyes. "Oh, dear. I'm sorry. If I didn't laugh, I would weep."

"The most holy Kameniates deserves our tears," an old man said, sketching the sun-sign. "Who now will lead the temples in this troubled time?"

That was as good a question as any the innkeeper had asked. If Rhavas hadn't quarreled with his cousin, his name likely would have headed the list of three candidates Maleinos presented to the small synod that would choose Kameniates' successor. They would know exactly which of the three the Avtokrator expected them to choose, too.

I was a fool, Rhavas thought. If he were the ecumenical patriarch himself, he could have presented his views on the faith from a position of strength. As things were, he would have to throw them in the faces of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

He shook his head. One of the reasons old Neboulos sent him to Skopentzana all those years ago was to teach him to get along with people. That hadn't worked out so well as the old patriarch would have wished.

No help for it now. He was what he was, and he believed what he believed. He believed he would prevail despite everything. Oddly, he felt more convinced of it than ever, despite all the things that hadn't gone the way he would have liked.

"What do you know of the prelates and clerics, holy sir?" the old man asked him. "Who do you suppose will succeed the most holy sir?"

"An interesting question," Rhavas answered. "I've been out of the city for a while, though, and I don't know the important men in the temples as well as I should."

"I know who it would be if the barbarians hadn't jumped on us," Lardys said. "Doesn't the Avtokrator have a cousin or a nephew who's a priest up in one of those places? Agderos, I think it is. To the ice with me if I remember what the fellow's name is."

"Skopentzana. It was Skopentzana," Rhavas said. Agderos was even farther north: a small port on the Northern Sea. Not much point to having a big port up there, not when the ocean itself froze most winters.

"Was it, holy sir? I didn't think so, but I won't argue with you," the taverner said. "Wherever it was, that nephew would be the chap with the inside track. But he's probably dead now, what with everything up there being such a mess."

"Yes, he probably is," Rhavas said.

But maybe not. Maybe Maleinos would decide blood was not only thicker than water but also thicker than bad doctrine. I ought to try to see him and find out, Rhavas thought. Maybe I can persuade him I'm milder than he thinks I am. Maybe I can persuade him I'm milder than I really am, too. The worst Maleinos could tell him was no. And if he heard no, how was he worse off?