Krispos Rising

VI

That month of constant attendance on Iakovitzes proved even more wearing than Ordanes had predicted. The physician had compared it to tending a baby. Babies only cried. Iakovitzes used his searing tongue to inform Krispos of all his whims and all Krispos' shortcomings.

By the noble's reckoning, Krispos had plenty of them. Iakovitzes blamed him when the water for sponge baths was too hot or too cold, when Bolkanes' kitchen came up with a meal Iakovitzes found inadequate, when the bedpan was not perfectly placed, and even when his healing leg itched, which it seemed to do most of the time.

As for that bedpan, sometimes Krispos felt like braining Iakovitzes with it. It was, however, his master's one significant advantage over a baby: Iakovitzes, at least, did not foul the bed. In a time that held few large advantages, Krispos cherished the small one.

One afternoon about three weeks after the noble got hurt, someone knocked on the door of his room. Krispos jumped. Few people had come to see Iakovitzes. Krispos opened the door with one hand on his knife. A good-looking youth stared at him with equal suspicion.

"It's all right, Krispos, Graptos," Iakovitzes called from his bed. "In fact, Krispos, it's better than all right. You can take the rest of the day off. I'll see you in the morning."

"Excellent sir?" Krispos said doubtfully.

"Bolkanes arranged this for me," Iakovitzes assured him. "After all, if I'm bedridden, I might as well be bed-ridden, if you see what I mean. And since you're so tiresomely obstinate on the subject—"

Krispos waited to hear no more. He closed the door behind him and hurried down to the stables. If Iakovitzes was going to sport, so would he. The sun was still an hour away from setting when he got to Tanilis' villa.

He had to wait some little time before he saw her; she was settling a dispute between two peasants who dwelt on her land. Neither seemed displeased as they walked past Krispos. He was unsurprised; Tanilis had more than enough sense to dispense justice.

She smiled as Naues led Krispos into her study. "I wondered if I would see you again, after your master's accident," she said. In front of her steward, her voice was perfectly controlled.

"I wondered, too." Krispos also kept his tone casual. He was sure Tanilis would be able to find all the double meanings he put into his words and perhaps some he left out. He went on, "The excellent Iakovitzes seems to be in better spirits these days." He explained who was taking care of the noble, and in what ways.

Naues snorted; the tiny curl of Tanilis' lip looked like less but spoke more. Aloud, she said, "You are welcome here regardless of the circumstances. Mavros may be back for the evening meal, but then again he may not. Now that he is sure he won't be leaving for the city till spring, he gives all his time to one girl, knowing, I suppose, that afterward time and distance will fade the attachment."

Such cool, calculated good sense sounded more like Tanilis than young Mavros; for a moment Krispos was reminded of listening to his own father back in the days when Zoranne was all he'd thought of. He hoped Mavros was clever enough to recognize that his mother was cleverer still.

"Naues, are there any more out there who need me?" Tanilis asked. When her man shook his head, she told him, "Go and warn Evtykhes, then, that Krispos certainly will stay for supper, and that I do have some hope my son will appear, as well."

Mavros did come back to the villa. When he found Krispos there, he condescended to stay for dinner. "How'd you get loose?" he asked. "I thought Iakovitzes wanted you there every minute?" Krispos explained again. Mavros burst out laughing. "Good for the old bugger! He's feeling better, then?"

"Aye, but he's not up and about yet. And with the fall rains due any day now, it's just as he feared. He won't be riding back to the city till spring; he can't even hobble yet, let alone sit a horse."

"Too bad," Mavros said dolefully. "Here I've been champing at the bit for weeks, and now I'll have to wait for months. Such a long time." With a moody sigh, he raised his wine cup to his lips.

Tanilis said, "Be thankful you're young enough that a few months seem a long time to you. To me, next spring feels like the day after tomorrow."

"Well, not to me," Mavros said.

For the most part, Krispos agreed with Mavros; at twenty-two, he thought the world passed too slowly to suit him. Still, even slowness could have its advantages. He said, "From what I've heard, you've got a girl now, so just think of it as having a longer-seeming time to spend with her."

"I wish it were that easy," Mavros said, "but somehow when I'm with her the time flies by, so it never seems like enough no matter how long it is. Which reminds me." He finished his wine, rose, and sketched bows to Tanilis and Krispos. "I promised I'd meet her before the moon came up." Not quite trotting, he left the dining room.

"My poor, bereft son," Tanilis said dryly. "He hasn't set eyes on his beloved for, oh, several hours now. In a way, I suppose, I should be jealous, but he just makes me smile instead."

Krispos thoughtfully ate one of Evtykhes' lemon tarts. Tanilis hadn't told him anything he didn't already know; her practiced sensuality was worlds apart from Mavros' enthusiastic infatuation. Nevertheless, Krispos wished his lover had not made it so plain he was not her beloved.

But no matter what she did, she came to him that night. If she found what they did together distasteful, she hid it marvelously well. Afterward, Krispos leaned up on one elbow. "Why me?" he asked. Tanilis made a questioning noise. "Why me?" Krispos repeated. "Who you are and what you are, you could pick any man within a hundred miles of Opsikion, and he'd come running. So why did you pick me?"

"Because of your looks, your youth, your vigor. Because, having seen you, I could not help picking you."

The words were all Krispos could have hoped to hear. But he also heard the faintest questioning tone in Tanilis' voice, as if she were offering him an explanation to see whether he'd accept it. Though he wanted to, he found he could not. He said, "You could find a dozen who outdo me on any of those at a glance—a hundred or a thousand with a little looking. I gather you haven't, which means you haven't answered me, either."

Now she sat up in bed. Krispos thought it was the first time she took him seriously for his own sake rather than as a cog in what she'd foreseen. After a short pause, she said slowly, "Because you don't take the easy way, but look to see what may lie behind it. That is rare at any age, doubly so at yours."

This time he felt she'd touched truth, but not given him the whole of it. "Why else?" he persisted.

He wondered if his drive to know would anger her, but soon saw it did not. If anything, it raised him in her estimation; when she replied, her voice had the no-nonsense tone of someone conducting serious business. "I'll not deny that the power implied by this—" She reached out to touch the goldpiece on its chain, "—has its own attraction. In and around Opsikion, I have done everything, become everything I could hope to do and become. To set up my own son in Videssos the city, to have a connection to one who may be ... what he may be: that could tempt me almost to anything. But only almost. Reckon me hard if you like, and calculating, and cunning, but you reckon me a whore at your peril." She did not sound businesslike then; she sounded dangerous.

Krispos nodded soberly. As with Iakovitzes, his chief shield against her was stubborn refusal to acknowledge that she could daunt him. "And so?" he asked.

The light from the single lamp in the bedchamber shifted shadows on her face to underscore her every change of expression. With that aid, Krispos saw he'd gained another point. "And so," she said, "I have no interest in men who seek to bed not me but my estates; nor in those who would reckon me only a prize possession, as if I were a hound; nor again in those who care just for my body and would not mind if Skotos dwelt behind my eyes. Do you see yourself in any of those groups?"

"No," Krispos said. "But in a way don't you fall into the first one, I mean with respect to me?" Tanilis stared at him. "You dare—" He admired her for the speed with which she checked herself. After a few seconds, she even laughed. "You have me, Krispos; by my own words I stand convicted. But here I am on the other end of the bargain; and I must say it looks different from how it seemed before."

To you, maybe, Krispos thought.

Tanilis went on,"A final reason I chose you, Krispos, at least after the first time, is that you learn quickly. One of the things you still need to know, though, is that sometimes you can ask too many questions."

She reached up and drew his face down to hers. But even as he responded to her teaching, he remained sure there was no such thing as asking too many questions. Finding the right way and time to ask them might be something else again, he admitted to himself. And this, he thought before all thought left him, was probably not it.

He woke the next morning to rain drumming on the roof. He knew that sound, though he was more used to the softer plashing of raindrops against thatch than the racket they made on tile. He hoped Tanilis' peasants were done with their harvest, then laughed at himself: they were done now, whether they wanted to be or not.

Tanilis, as was her way, had slipped off during the night. Sometimes he woke when she slid out of bed; more often, as last night, he did not. He wondered, not for the first time, if her servants knew they were lovers. If so, the cooks and stewards and serving maids gave no sign of it. He had learned from Iakovitzes' establishment, though, that being discreet was part of being a well-trained servant. And Tanilis tolerated no servant who was not.

He also wondered if Mavros knew. That, he doubted. Mavros was a good many things and would likely grow to become a good many more, but Krispos had trouble seeing him as discreet.

Her hair as perfectly in place as if he had never run his hands through it, Tanilis sat waiting for him in the small dining room. "You'll have a wet ride back to Opsikion, I fear," she said, waving him to the chair opposite her.

He shrugged. "I've been wet before."

"A good plate of boiled bacon should help keep you warm on the journey, if not dry."

"My lady is generous in all things," Krispos said. Tanilis' eyes lit as he dug in.

The road north had already begun to turn to glue. Krispos did not try to push his horse. If Iakovitzes could not figure out why he was late coming back to town, too bad for Iakovitzes.

Krispos wrung out his cloak in Bolkanes' front hall, then squelched up the stairs in wet boots to see how his master was doing. What he found in Iakovitzes' room startled him: the noble was on his feet, trying to stump around with two sticks. The only sign of Graptos was a lingering trace of perfume in the air.

"Hello, look what I can do!" Iakovitzes said, for once too pleased with himself to be snide.

"I've looked," Krispos said shortly. "Now will you please get back in bed where you belong? If you were a horse, excellent sir—" He'd learned the art of turning title to reproach, "—they'd have cut your throat for a broken leg and let it go at that. If you go and break it again from falling because you're on it too soon, do you think you deserve any better? Ordanes told you to stay flat at least another fortnight."

"Oh, bugger Ordanes," Iakovitzes said.

"Go ahead, but make him get on top."

The noble snorted. "No thank you."

Krispos went on more earnestly, "I can't give you orders, excellent sir, but I can ask if you'd treat one of your animals the way you're treating yourself. There's no point to it, the more so since with the fall rains starting you're not going anyplace anyhow."

"Mrmm," Iakovitzes said—a noise a long way from any sort of agreement, but one that, when the noble changed the subject, showed Krispos he had got through.

Iakovitzes continued to mend. Eventually, as Ordanes had predicted, he was able to move about with his sticks, lifting and planting them and his splinted leg so heavily that once people in the taproom directly below his chamber complained to Bolkanes about the racket he made. Since the innkeeper was getting, if not rich, then at least highly prosperous from his noble guest's protracted stay, he turned a deaf ear to the complaints. By the time Iakovitzes could stump about the inn, the rains made sure he did not travel much farther. Outside large towns, Videssos had few paved roads; dirt was kinder to horses' hooves. The price of that kindness was several weeks of impassable soup each fall and spring. Iakovitzes cursed every day that dawned gray and wet, which meant he did a lot of cursing.

Krispos tried to rebuke him. "The rain's a blessing to farmers, excellent sir, and without farmers we'd all starve." The words were several seconds out of his mouth before he realized they were his father's.

"If you like farmers so bloody well, why did you ever leave that pissant village you sprang from?" Iakovitzes retorted. Krispos gave up on changing his master's attitude; trying to get Iakovitzes to stop cursing was like trying to fit the moon in a satchel. The noble's bad temper seemed as constant as the ever-shifting phases of the moon.

And soon enough, Krispos came to curse the fall rains, too. As Iakovitzes grew more able to care for himself, Krispos found himself with more free time. He wanted to spend as much time as he could with Tanilis, both for the sake of his body's pleasure and, increasingly, to explore the boundaries of their odd relationship. Riding even as far as her villa, though, was not to be undertaken lightly, not in the fall.

Thus he was overjoyed, one cold blustery day when the rain threatened to turn to sleet, to hear her say, "I think I will go into Opsikion soon, to spend the winter there. I have a house, you know, not far from Phos' temple."

"I'd forgotten," Krispos admitted. That night, in the privacy of the guest chamber, he said, "I hope I'll be able to see you more often if you come to town. This miserable weather—"

Tanilis nodded. "I expect you will."

"Did you—" Krispos paused, then plunged: "Did you decide to go into Opsikion partly on account of me?"

Her laugh was warm enough that, though he flushed, he did not flinch. "Don't flatter yourself too much, my—well, if I call you my dear, you will flatter yourself, won't you? In any case, I go into Opsikion every year about this time. Should anything important happen, I might not learn of it for weeks were I to stay here in the villa."

"Oh." Krispos thought for a moment. "Couldn't you stay here and foresee what you need to know?"

"The gift comes as it will, not as I will," Tanilis said. "Besides, I like to see new faces every so often. If I'd prayed at the chapel here, after all, instead of coming into Opsikion for the holy Abdaas' day, I'd not have met you. You might have stayed a groom forever."

Reminded of Iakovitzes' jibe, Krispos said, "It's an easier life than the one I had before I came to the city." He also thought, a little angrily, that he would have risen further even if Tanilis hadn't met him. That he kept to himself. Instead, he said, "If you come to Opsikion, you might want to bring that pretty little laundress of yours—Phronia's her name, isn't it?—along with you."

"Oh? And why is that?" Tanilis' voice held no expression whatever.

Krispos answered quickly, knowing he was on tricky ground. "Because I've spread the word around that she's the reason I come here so often. If she's in Opsikion, I'll have a better excuse to visit you there."

"Hmm. Put that way, yes." Tanilis' measuring gaze reminded Krispos of a hawk eyeing a rabbit from on high. "I would not advise you to use this story to deceive me while you carry on with Phronia. I would not advise that at all."

A chill ran down Krispos' spine, though he had no interest in Phronia past any young man's regard for a pretty girl. Since that was true, the chill soon faded. What remained was insight into how Tanilis thought. Krispos' imagination had not reached to concealing one falsehood within another, but Tanilis took the possibility for granted. That had to mean she'd seen it before, which in turn meant other people used such complex ploys. Something else to look out for, Krispos thought with a silent sigh.

"What was that for?" Tanilis asked.

Wishing she weren't so alert, he said, "Only that you've taught me many things."

"I've certainly intended to. If you would be more than a groom, you need to know more than a groom."

Krispos nodded before the full import of what she'd said sank in. Then he found himself wondering whether she'd warned him about Phronia just to show him how a double bluff worked. He thought about asking her but decided not to. She might not have meant that at all. He smiled ruefully. Whatever else she was doing, she was teaching him to distrust first impressions ... and second ... and third... . After a while, he supposed, reality might disappear altogether, and no one would notice it was gone.

He thought of how Iakovitzes and Lexo had gone back and forth, quarreling over what was thought to be true at least as much as over what was true. To prosper in Videssos the city, he might need every bit of what Tanilis taught.

Since Opsikion lay by the Sailors' Sea, Krispos thought winter would be gentler there. The winter wind, though, was not off the sea, but from the north and west; a breeze from his old home, but hardly a welcome one.

Eventually the sea froze, thick enough for a man to walk on, out to a distance of several miles from shore. Even the folk of Opsikion called that a hard winter. To Krispos it was appalling; he'd seen frozen rivers and ponds aplenty, but the notion that the sea could turn to ice made him wonder if the Balancer heretics from Khatrish might not have a point. The broad, frigid expanse seemed a chunk of Skotos' hell brought up to earth.

Yet the locals took the weather in stride. They told stories of the year an iceberg, perhaps storm-driven from Agder or the Haloga country, smashed half the docks before shattering against the town's seawall. And the eparch Sisinnios sent armed patrols onto the ice north of the city.

"What are you looking for, demons?" Krispos asked when he saw the guardsmen set out one morning. He laughed nervously. If the frozen sea was as much Skotos' country as it appeared, demons might indeed dwell there.

The patrol leader laughed, too. He thought Krispos had been joking. "Worse than demons," he said, and gave Krispos a moment to stew before he finished: "Khatrishers."

"In this weather?" Krispos wore a squirrelskin cap with ear-flaps. It was pulled down low on his forehead. A thick wool scarf covered his mouth and nose. The few square inches of skin between the one and the other had long since turned numb.

The patrol leader was similarly muffled. His breath made a steaming cloud around him. "Grab a spear and come see for yourself," he urged. "You're with the chap from the city, right? Well, you can tell him some of what we see around here."

"Why not?" A quick trip back to the armory gave Krispos a spear and a white-painted shield. Soon he was stumbling along the icy surface of the sea with the troopers. It was rougher, more irregular ice than he'd expected, almost as if the waves had frozen instead of breaking.

"Always keep two men in sight," said the patrol leader, whose name, Krispos learned, was Saborios. "You get lost out here by yourself—well, you're already on the ice, so where will your soul end up?" Krispos blew out a smoky sigh of relief to discover he was not the only one who had heretical thoughts.

The guardsmen paid attention to what they were doing, but it was a routine attention, making sure they did nothing they knew to be foolish. It left plenty of room for banter and horseplay. Krispos trudged on grimly in the middle of the line. With neither terrain nor risks familiar to him, he had all he could do just to keep pace.

"Good thing it's not snowing," one of the troopers said. "If it was snowing, the Khatrishers could sneak an army past us and we'd never know the difference."

"We would when we got back," another answered. The first guard chuckled.

Everything looked the same to Krispos; sky and frozen sea and distant land all were shades of white and gray. Anything colorful, he thought, should have been visible for miles. What had not occurred to him was how uncolorful a smuggler could become.

Had the trooper to Krispos' left not almost literally stumbled over the man, they never would have spied him. Even then, had he stayed still, he might have escaped notice: he wore white foxskins and, when still, was invisible past twenty paces. But he lost his head and tried to run. He was no better at it on the slippery ice than his pursuers, who soon ran him down.

Saborios held out a hand to the Khatrisher, who had gone so far as to daub white greasepaint on his beard and face. "You don't by any chance have your import license along, do you?" the patrol leader asked pleasantly. The Khatrisher stood in glum silence. "No, eh?" Saborios said, almost as if really surprised. "Then let's have your goods."

The smuggler reached under his jacket, drew out a leather pouch.

The patrol leader opened it. "Amber, is it? Very fine, too. Did you give me all of it? Complete confiscation, you know, is the penalty for unlicensed import."

'"That's everything, curse you," the Khatrisher said sullenly.

"Good." Saborios nodded his understanding. "Then you won't mind Domentzios and Bonosos stripping you. If they find you've told the truth, they'll even give you back your clothes."

Krispos was shivering in his furs. He wondered how long a naked man would last on the ice. Not long enough to get off it again, he was sure. He watched the smuggler make the same unhappy calculation. The fellow took a pouch from each boot. The patrol leader pocketed them, then motioned forward the two troopers he had named. They were tugging off the Khatrisher's coat when he exclaimed, "Wait!"

The imperials looked to the patrol leader, who nodded. The smuggler shed his white fox cap. "I need my knife, all right?" he said. Saborios nodded again. The smuggler cut into the lining, extracted yet another pouch. He threw down the dagger. "Now you can search me."

The troopers did. They found nothing. Shivering and swearing, the Khatrisher dove back into his clothes. "You might have got that last one by us," Saborios remarked.

"That's what I thought," the smuggler said through chattering teeth. "Then I thought I might not have, too."

"Sensible," Saborios said. "Well, let's take you in. We've earned our pay for today, I think."

"What will you do with him?" Krispos asked as the patrol turned back toward Opsikion.

"Hold him for ransom," Saborios answered. "Nothing else we can do, now that I've seen he's smuggling amber. Gumush will pay to have him back, never fear." Krispos made a questioning noise. Saborios explained, "Amber's a royal monopoly in Khatrish. The khagan likes to see if he can avoid paying our tariffs every so often, that's all. This time he didn't, so we get some for free."

"Does he sneak in enough to make it worth his while?"

"That's a sharp question—I thought you were Iakovitzes' groom, not his bookkeeper. The only answer I know is, he must think so or he wouldn't keep doing it. But not this run, though." The patrol leader's eyes, almost the only part of his face visible, narrowed in satisfaction.

Iakovitzes howled with glee when Krispos told him the story that evening. They were sitting much closer than usual to Bolkanes' big fire; Krispos had a mug of hot spiced wine close at hand. He smiled gratefully when one of the barmaids refilled it. Iakovitzes said. "It'll serve Gumush right. Nothing I enjoy more than a thief having to pay for his own thievery."

"Won't he just raise the price later on to make up for it?' Krispos asked. "The legitimate price, I mean."

"Probably, probably," Iakovitzes admitted. "But what do I care? I don't much fancy amber. And no matter how hard hesqueezes, the world doesn't hold enough gold for him to buy his way out of embarrassment." Contemplating someone else's discomfiture would put Iakovitzes in a good mood if anything would.

A couple of nights later, Tanilis proved coldly furious that the amber had been seized. "I made the arrangements for it myself with Gumush," she said. "Four parts in ten off the going rate here, which still allowed him a profit, seeing as the tariff is five parts in ten. He already has half the money, too. Do you suppose he'll send it back when he ransoms his courier?" Her bitter laugh told how likely that was.

"But ..." Krispos scratched his head. "The Avtokrator needs the money from the tariffs, to pay for soldiers and furs and roads and—"

"And courtesans and fine wines and fripperies," Tanilis finished for him; she sounded as scornful of Anthimos III as Pyrrhos had. "But even if it were only as you say, I need money, too, for the good of my own estates. Why should I pay twice as much for amber as I need to for the sake of a handful of rich men in Videssos the city who do nothing for me?"

"Don't they?" Krispos asked. "Seems to me I wouldn't have come here with my master if the men in the city weren't worried about the border with Khatrish. Or are you such a queen here that your peasants would have fought off the nomad horsemen on their own?" He recalled the Kubratoi descending on his vanished boyhood village as if it had happened only the day before.

Tanilis frowned. "No, I am no queen, so what you say has some truth. But the Avtokrator and Sevastokrator chose peace with Khatrish for their own reasons, not mine."

Remembering Petronas' ambitions against Makuran, Krispos knew she was right. But he said,"It works out the same for you either way, doesn't it? If it does, you ought to be willing to pay for it." He and his fellow villagers had been willing to pay anything within reason to prevent another invasion from Kubrat. Only the Empire's demands reaching beyond reason had detached him from the land, and the rest of the villagers were there still.

"You speak well, and to the point," Tanilis said. "I must confess, my loyalty is to my lands first, and to the Empire of Videssos only after that. What I say is true of most nobles, I think, almost all those away from Videssos the city. To us, the Empire seems more often to check our strength than to protect it, and so we evade demands from the capital as best we can."

The more Krispos talked with Tanilis, the more complex his picture of the world grew. Back in his village, he'd thought of nobles as agents of the Empire and thanked Phos that the freeholders among whom he'd lived owed service to no lord. Yet Tanilis seemed no ally to the will of Videssos the city, but rather a rival. But she was no great friend of the peasants, either; she simply wanted to control them herself in place of the central government. Krispos tried to imagine how things looked from Petronas' perspective. Maybe one day he'd ask the Sevastokrator—after all, he'd met him. He laughed a little, amused at his own presumption.

"What do you find funny?" Tanilis asked.

Krispos' cheeks grew warm. Sometimes when he was with Tanilis, he felt he was a scroll she could unroll and read as she wished. Annoyed at himself for being so open, and sure he could not lie successfully, he explained.

She took him seriously. She always did; he had to give her that. Though he was certain he often seemed very young and raw to her, she went out of her way not to mock his enthusiasms, even if she let him see she did not share many of them. Even more than the sweet lure of her body, the respect she gave him made him want to spend time with her, in bed and out of it. He wondered if this was how love began.

The thought so startled him that he missed her reply. She saw that, too, and repeated herself: "If Petronas would tell you, I daresay you'd learn a great deal. A regent who can keep the reins of power even after his ward comes of age—and in such a way that the ward does not hate him—is a man to be reckoned with."

"I suppose so." Krispos knew he sounded abstracted and hoped Tanilis would not figure out why. Loving her could only complicate his life, the more so as he knew she did not love him.

Slow as the flow of syrup on ice, news dripped into Opsikion through the winter. Krispos heard of the death of khagan Omurtag weeks after it happened; a son named Malomir ascended to the rule of Kubrat. In Thatagush, north and east of Khatrish, a band of Haloga raiders under a chief called Harvas Black-Robe sacked a whole string of towns and smashed the army that tried to drive them away. Some nobles promptly joined forces with the Halogai against their khagan. The King of Kings of Makuran sent a peace embassy to Videssos the city. Petronas sent it back. "By the lord with the great and good mind, I gave Petronas what he wanted here," Iakovitzes said when that report reached him. "Now let's see what he does with it." His chuckle had a gloating tone to it. "Not as much as he wants, I'll wager."

"No?" Krispos helped his master out of a chair. The noble could walk with a stick these days, but he still limped badly; his left calf was only half as big around as his right. Krispos went on carefully, "The Sevastokrator strikes me as a man who generally gets what he wants."

"Oh, aye, he is. Here, I'm all right now. Thanks." Iakovitzes hissed as he put weight on his healing leg. Ordanes had given him a set of exercises to strengthen it. He swore through clenched teeth every time he began them, but never missed a day.

Now he took a couple of steps toward the stairway that led up to his room before he continued. "But what Petronas wants is to overthrow Makuran, and that won't happen. Stavrakios the Great couldn't do it, not when the Empire of Videssos ran all the way up to the border of the Haloga country. I suppose the Makurani Kings of Kings dream of worshiping their Four Prophets in the High Temple in Videssos the city, and that won't happen, either. If Petronas can bite off a chunk of Vaspurakan, he'll have done something worthwhile, at any rate. We can use the metals there and the men, even if they are heretics."

A guardsman coming off duty threw open the door to Bolkanes' taproom. Though he slammed it again right away, Krispos and Iakovitzes both shivered at the icy blast he let in. He stood in the front hall brushing snow off his clothes and out of his beard.

"Beastly weather," Iakovitzes said. "I could ride now, but what's the point? The odds are too good I'd end up a block of ice somewhere halfway between here and the city, and that would be a piteous waste. Come to think of it, you'd freeze, too."

"Thank you for thinking of me," Krispos said mildly.

Iakovitzes cocked an eyebrow. "You're getting better at that innocent-sounding comeback, aren't you? Do you practice in front of a mirror?"

"Er—no." Krispos knew his fencing with Tanilis helped sharpen both his wits and his wit. He hadn't realized anyone else would notice.

"Maybe it's the time you spend knocking around with Mavros," Iakovitzes said. Krispos blinked; his master's guess was good enough to startle him. Iakovitzes went on, "He has a noble's air to him, even if he is young."

"I hadn't really noticed," Krispos said. "I suppose he gets it from his mother."

"Maybe." As he did whenever a woman was mentioned, Iakovitzes sounded indifferent. He reached the stairway. "Give me your hand, will you, for the way up?" Krispos complied. Chill or no, Iakovitzes was sweating by the time he got to the top of the stairs; his leg still did not take kindly to such work.

Krispos went through the usual small wrestling match he needed to get the noble to let go. "After a year with me, excellent sir, don't you believe I'm not interested?" he asked.

"Oh, I believe it," Iakovitzes said. "I just don't take it seriously." Having had, if not Krispos, then at least the last word, he hobbled down the hall toward his room.

Rain pattered on the shutters of the bedroom window. "The second storm in a row with no snow in it," Tanilis said. "No sleet in this one either, or none to speak of. Winter is finally losing its grip."

"So it is." Krispos kept his voice noncommittal. The imminent return of good weather meant too many different things now for him to be sure how he felt about it.

Tanilis sat up in bed and ran a hand through her hair. The gesture, artfully artless, made her bare breasts rise for Krispos' admiration. At the same time, though, she said, "When the rain finally stops, I will be going back to my villa. I don't think you would be wise to visit me there."

Krispos had known she would tell him that, sooner or later. He'd thought he was ready. Actually hearing the words, though, was like taking a blow in the belly—no matter how braced he was, they still hurt. "So it's over," he said dully.

"This part of it," Tanilis agreed.

Again, he'd thought he could accept that, thought he could depart with Iakovitzes for Videssos the city without a backward glance. Had his master not broken his leg, that might well have been true. But wintering in Opsikion, passing so much more time with Tanilis, made it harder than he'd expected. All his carefully cultivated sangfroid deserted him. He clutched her to him. "I don't want to leave you!" He groaned.

She yielded to his embrace, but her voice stayed detached, logical. "What then? Would you turn aside from what I and others have seen for you, would you abandon this—" She touched the goldpiece Omurtag had given him. "—to stay in Opsikion? And if you would, would I look on you with anything but scorn because of it?"

"But I love you!" Krispos said.

Down deep, he'd always been sure telling her that would be a mistake. His instinct proved sound. She answered, "If you stayed here because of that, I surely could never love you. I am already fully myself, while you are still discovering what you can be. Nor in the long run would you be happy in Opsikion, for what would you be here? My plaything, maybe, granted a small respect reflected from the larger one I have earned, but laughed at behind people's hands. Is that the most you want for yourself, Krispos?"

"Your plaything?" That made him angry enough not to listen to the rest of what she said. He ran a rough hand along the supple curves of her body, ending at the edge of the neatly trimmed hair that covered her secret place. "Is that all this has meant? Is that all I've been to you?"

"You know better, or you should," Tanilis said calmly. "How could I deny you've pleased me? I would not want to deny it. But it is not enough. You deserve to be more than a bedwarmer, however fine a bedwarmer you are. And if you stayed with me, you would not find it easy to be anything else. Not only do I have far more experience and vastly greater wealth than you, I do not care to yield to anyone the power I've earned by my own efforts over the years. So what would that leave you?"

"I don't care," Krispos said. Though he sounded full of fierce conviction, even he knew that was not true.

So, obviously, did Tanilis. "Do you not? Very well, then, let us suppose you stay here and that you and I are wed, perhaps on the next feast day of the holy Abdaas. Come the morning after, what do you propose to say to your new stepson, Mavros?"

"My—" Krispos gulped. He had no trouble imagining Mavros his brother. But his stepson? He could not even make himself say the word. He started to laugh, instead, and poked Tanilis in the ribs. She was not usually ticklish, but he caught her by surprise. She yipped and wiggled away. "Mavros my—" He tried again, but only ended up laughing harder. "Oh, a pestilence, Tanilis, you've made your point."

"Good. There's always hope for anyone who can see plain sense, even if I did have to bludgeon you to open your eyes." She turned her head.

"What is it?" Krispos asked.

"I was just listening. I don't think the rain will let up for a while yet." Now her hand wandered, came to rest. She smiled a catlike smile. "By the feel of things, neither will you. Shall we make the most of the time we have left?"

He did not answer, not with words, but he did not disagree.

"Let me give you a hand, excellent sir," Krispos said as a pair of stable boys led out his master's horse, his own, and their pack animals.

"Nonsense," Iakovitzes told him. "If I can't mount for myself, I surely won't be able to ride back to the city. And if I can't do that, I'm faced with two equally unpalatable alternatives: take up residence here, or throw myself off a promontory into the sea. On the whole, I believe I'd prefer throwing myself into the sea. That way I'd never have to find out what's become of my house while I've been gone." The noble gave a shudder of exquisite dread.

"When you wrote you'd been hurt, the Sevastokrator pledged to look after your affairs."

"So he did," Iakovitzes said with a skeptical grunt. "The only affairs Petronas cares anything about, though, are his own. He scowled at the boy who held his horse. "Back away, there. If I can't manage, high time I found out."

The stable boy retreated. Iakovitzes set his left foot in the stirrup, swung up and onto the horse's back. He winced as the newly healed leg took all his weight for a moment, but then he was mounted and grinning in triumph. He'd boarded the horse before, every day for the past week, but each time seemed a new adventure, both to him and to everyone watching.

"Now where's that Mavros?" he said. "I'm still not what you'd call comfortable up here. Anyone who thinks I'll waste time waiting that I could use riding will end up disappointed, I promise you that."

Krispos did not think Iakovitzes was speaking to him in particular; he sounded more as if he were warning the world at large. Krispos checked one last time to make sure all their gear was properly stowed on the packhorses' backs, then climbed onto his own beast.

Bolkanes came to bid his longtime guests farewell. He bowed to Iakovitzes. "A pleasure to serve you, eminent sir."

"I should hope so. I've made your fortune," Iakovitzes answered, gracious to the end.

As the innkeeper beat a hasty retreat, Mavros rode up on a big bay gelding. He looked very young and jaunty, with two pheasant plumes sticking up from his broad-brimmed hat and his right hand on the hilt of his sword. He waved to Krispos and dipped his head in Iakovitzes' direction. "You look like you were all set to take off without me."

"I was," Iakovitzes snapped.

If he thought to intimidate the youth, he failed. "Well, no need for that now, seeing as I'm here," Mavros said easily. He turned to Krispos. "My mother said to be sure to tell you goodbye from her. Now I've done it." One more chore finished, his attitude seemed to say.

"Ah. That's kind of her," Krispos said. Although he hadn't seen or heard from Tanilis in more than a month, she was in his thoughts every day, the memory of her as liable to sudden twinges as was Iakovitzes' leg. A limp in the heart, though, did not show on the outside.

"If you two are done nattering like washerwomen, shall we be off?" Iakovitzes said. Without waiting for an answer, he used knees and reins to urge his horse forward. Krispos and Mavros rode after him.

Opsikion's gate guards still had not learned to take any special notice of Iakovitzes, who, after all, had not come near the edge of the city since the summer before. But the feisty noble had no cause for complaint about the treatment he was afforded. Being with Mavros drew him such a flurry of salutes and guardsmen springing to attention that he said, not altogether in jest, "Anthimos should come here, to see what respect is."

"Oh, I expect he gets treated about as well in his hometown," Mavros said. Iakovitzes had to look at him sharply to catch the twinkle in his eye. The noble allowed himself a wintry chuckle, the most he usually gave wit not his own.

That chuckle, Krispos thought, was the only thing wintry about the day. It was mild and fair. New bright green covered we ground to either side of the road. Bees buzzed among fresh-sprouted flowers. The sweet, moist air was full of the songs of birds just returned from their winter stay in warmer climes.

Though the road climbed swiftly into the mountains, this near

Opsikion it remained wide and easy to travel, if not always straight. Krispos was startled when, with the sun still nearer noon than its setting, Iakovitzes reined in and said, "That's enough. We'll camp here till morning." But when he watched his master dismount, he hardly needed to hear the noble go on, "My thighs are as raw as a dockside whore's the night after the imperial fleet rows into port."

"No wonder, excellent sir," Krispos said. "Flat on your back as you were for so long, you've lost your hardening."

"I don't know about that," Mavros said. "I've had some lovely hardenings flat on my back."

Again, Iakovitzes' basilisk glare failed to wilt him. The noble finally grunted and hobbled off into the bushes, unbuttoning his fly as he went. Watching that slow, spraddling gait, Krispos whistled softly. "He is saddle-sore, isn't he? I guess he thought it couldn't happen to him."

"Aye, looks like he'll have to get used to it all over again. He won't be back from watering the grass right away, either." Mavros lowered his voice as he reached into a saddlebag. "Which means now is as good a time as any to pass this on to you from my mother. A parting gift, you might say. She told me not to give it to you when anyone else could see."

Krispos reached out to take the small wooden box Mavros held. He wondered what sort of last present Tanilis had for him and wondered even more, briefly alarmed, how much she'd told Mavros about what had passed between the two of them. Mavros as stepson, indeed, Krispos thought—she'd known how to cool him down, sure enough. Maybe, though, he said to himself, it's like one of the romances minstrels sing, and she does love me but can't admit it except by giving me this token once I'm safely gone.

The second the box was in his hand, its weight told him Tanilis' gift was the more pragmatic one she'd promised. "Gold?" he said.

"A pound and a half," Mavros agreed. "If you're going to be—what you're going to be—this will help. Money begets money, my mother says. And this will grow all the better since no one knows you have it."

A pound and a half of gold—the box fit easily in the palm of Krispos' hand. For Tanilis, it was not enough money to be missed. Krispos knew that if he were to desert his master and Mavros and make his way back to his village, he would be far and away the richest man there. He could go home as something close to a hero: the lad who'd made good in the big city.

But his village, he realized after a moment, was not home any more, not really. He could no more go back now than he could have stayed in Opsikion. For better or worse, he was caught up in the faster life of Videssos the city. After a taste of it, nothing less could satisfy him.

Rustlings from the bushes announced Iakovitzes' return. Krispos hastily stowed away the box of coins. With a hundred and eight goldpieces in his hands, he thought, he did not need to keep working for Iakovitzes anymore, either. But if he stayed on, he wouldn't have to start spending them. He didn't need to decide anything about that right away, not when he was only a short day's journey out of Opsikion.

"I may live," Iakovitzes said. He grimaced as he sat down on the ground and started pulling off his boots. "Eventually, I may even want to. What have we for supper?"

"About what you'd expect," Krispos answered. "Twice-baked bread, sausage, hard cheese, and onions. We have a couple of wineskins, but it's a ways to the next town, so we ought to go easy if we want to make it last. I hear a stream off that way—we'll have plenty of water to wash things down."

"Water. Twice-baked bread." The petulant set of Iakovitzes' mouth showed what he thought of that. "The next time Petronas wants me to go traveling for him, I'll ask if I can bring a chef along. He does, when he's out on campaign."

"There ought to be crawfish in the stream, and trout, too," Mavros said. "I have a couple of hooks. Shall I go see what I can come up with?"

"I'll start a fire," Krispos said. "Roast fish, crawfish baked in clay ..." He glanced over to see how Iakovitzes liked the idea.

"Could be worse, I suppose," the noble said grudgingly. "See if you can find some early marjoram, too, why don't you, Mavros? It would add to the flavor."

"I'll do my best." Mavros rummaged through his gear till he found the hooks and some light line. "A chunk of sausage should be bait enough for the fish, but what do you suppose I should use to lure out the marjoram?"

Iakovitzes threw a boot at him.

One day when he was close to halfway back to the city, Krispos came across the little jet ornament he'd brought for Sirikia.

He stared at it; the seamstress hadn't crossed his mind in months. He hoped she'd found someone new. After Tanilis, going back to her would be like leaving Videssos for his farming village: possible, but not worth thinking about.

He was no monk on the journey westward; abstinence was not in his nature. But he had finally learned not to imagine himself in love each time his lust needed slaking. Mavros still sighed whenever he left behind another barmaid or dyeshop girl.

The travelers lay over in a town called Develtos to rest their horses. Iakovitzes surveyed the place with a jaundiced eye. His one-sentence verdict summed it up perfectly. "By the good god, it makes Opsikion look like a metropolis."

Mavros spluttered at that, but Krispos knew what his master meant. Develtos boasted a stout wall and had little else about which to boast. Seeing how small and gloomy a town the works protected, Krispos wondered why anyone had bothered to build them in the first place.

"The road does need strongpoints every so often," Iakovitzes told him when he said that aloud. The noble took another long look, sighed in despair. "But we'll have to make our own fun, that's for certain. Speaking of which ..." His gaze traveled back to Krispos.

It was the groom's turn to sigh. Iakovitzes had not bothered him much since Mavros joined them. So far as Krispos knew, he hadn't made advances at Mavros, either. Had Krispos not seen a good-looking young stablehand a couple of towns back wearing one of the noble's rings the morning they set out, he would have wondered if Iakovitzes was fully healed. He'd enjoyed the peace while it lasted.

The inn Iakovitzes picked proved livelier than the rest of Develtos, whose people seemed as dour as the grim gray stone from which their wall and buildings were made. That was not the innkeeper's fault; he was as somber as any of his townsfolk. But a group of close to a dozen mother-of-pearl merchants from the eastern island of Kalavria made the place jolly in spite of its proprietor. Krispos had even met one or two of them back at Opsikion; they'd landed there before heading inland.

"Why didn't you just sail straight on to Videssos the city?" he asked one of the traders over a mug of wine.

"Bring mother-of-pearl to the city?" exclaimed the Kalavrian, a hook-nosed fellow named Stasios. "I might as well fetch milk to a cow. Videssos has more than it needs already. Here away from the sea, though, the stuff is rare and wonderful, and we get good prices."

"You know your business best," Krispos said. From the way the merchants were spending money, they'd done well so far.

The taproom grew gloomy as evening came on. The innkeeper waited longer than Krispos liked before lighting candles; likely he'd hoped his guests would go to bed when it got dark and save him the expense. But the Kalavrians were in no mood for sleep. They sang and drank and swapped stories with Krispos and his companions.

After a while, one of the traders took out a pair of dice. The tiny rattle they gave as he rolled them on the table to test his luck made Iakovitzes scramble to his feet. "I'm going upstairs," he told Krispos and Mavros, "and if the two of you have any sense you'll come with me. You start gambling with Kalavrians and you'll still be at it when the sun comes up again."

The merchants laughed. "So they know our reputation even in the city?" Stasios said. "I'd have bet they did."

"I know you would," Iakovitzes said. "You'd bloody well bet on anything. That's why I'm heading off to bed, to keep from having to stay up with you."

Mavros hesitated, then went upstairs with him. Krispos decided to stay and play. The stakes, he saw with some relief, were pieces of silver, not gold. "We're all friends," one of the traders said, noticing his glance at the money they'd got out. "There'd be no joy in breaking a man, especially since he'd have to stay with us till fall even so."

"Good enough," Krispos answered. Before long, the man to his left threw double sixes and lost the dice. They came to him. He rattled them in his hand, then sent them spinning across the tabletop. Twin ones stared up at the gamblers. "Phos' little suns!" Krispos said happily. He collected all the bets.

"Your first throw!" a Kalavrian said. "With luck like that, no wonder you wanted to stay down here. You knew you'd clean us out."

"They're your dice," Krispos retorted. "For all I knew, you'd loaded them."

"No, that'd be Rhangavve," Stasios said. "He's not with us this year—somebody back home on the island caught him at it and broke his arm for him. He's richer than any of us, though, the cheating bastard."

Krispos won a little, lost a little, won a little more. Eventually he found himself yawning and not being able to stop. He got up from the table. "That's enough for me," he said. "I want to be able to ride tomorrow without falling off my horse."

A couple of Kalavrians waved as he headed for the stairs. More had eyes only for the spinning bone cubes. Behind the bar, the innkeeper sat dozing. He jerked awake every so often. "Aren't you gents tired, too?" he asked plaintively, seeing Krispos leave. The traders laughed at him.

Krispos had just got to the head of the stairs when he saw someone quietly emerging from Iakovitzes' room. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. Then he relaxed. Though only a couple of tiny lamps lit the hall, he recognized Mavros. The youth leaned back into the doorway for a moment, murmured something Krispos could not hear, and went to his own room. It was farther down the hall than Iakovitzes', so he turned his back on Krispos and did not notice him.

Krispos frowned as he opened his door, then barred it behind him. He tried to tell himself what he'd seen didn't mean what he thought it did. He could not make himself believe it. He knew what a good-night kiss looked like, no matter who was giving it.

He asked himself what difference it made. Living in Iakovitzes' household had taught him that the grooms who let the noble take them to bed were not much different from the ones who declined, save in their choice of pleasures. If Mavros enjoyed what Iakovitzes offered, it was his business and none of Krispos'. It did not make him any less cheerful, clever, or enthusiastic.

That thought consoled Krispos long enough to let him undress and get into bed. Then he realized it was his business after all. Tanilis had charged him to treat Mavros as a younger brother. No matter how his perspective had changed, he knew it would not be easy if his younger brother acted as Mavros had.

He sighed. Here was something new and unwelcome to worry about. He had no idea what to say to Mavros or what to do if, as seemed likely, Mavros answered, "So what?" But he found he could not sleep until he promised himself he would say something.

Even getting the chance did not prove easy. Some of the Kalavrians were still gambling when he and Mavros came down for breakfast the next morning, and this was one conversation he did not want overheard.

For that matter, some of the Kalavrians were still gambling when Iakovitzes came down for breakfast quite a bit later. He rolled his eyes. "You'd bet on whether Phos or Skotos will triumph at the end of time," he said in disgust.

Stasios and a couple of others looked up from the dice. "You know, we just might," he said. Soon the bleary-eyed merchants started arguing theology as they played.

"Congratulations," Mavros told Iakovitzes.

"By the ice, what for?" Iakovitzes was listening to the Kalavrians as if he could not believe his ears.

With a sly grin, Mavros answered, "How many people can boast they've invented a new heresy before their morning porridge?"

Krispos swallowed wrong. Mavros pounded him on the back. Iakovitzes just scowled. Through the rest of the day, he remained as sour toward Mavros as he was with anyone else. Krispos began to wonder if he'd made a mistake. But no, he knew what he'd seen.

As the last of the all-night gamblers among the Kalavrians went upstairs, the traders who had gone to bed began drifting down once more. The game never stopped. Krispos fretted. Having to wait only made him more nervous about what he'd say to Mavros.

After checking the horses the next morning, Iakovitzes decided to ride on. "Another day wouldn't hurt the beasts, I suppose, but another day stuck in Develtos with those gambling maniacs would do me in," he said.

He was too good a horseman to push the pace with tired animals and rested them frequently. When he went off to answer nature's call at one of those stops, Krispos found himself with the opportunity he'd dreaded. "Mavros," he said quietly.

"What is it?" Mavros turned toward him. When he saw the expression on Krispos' face, his own grew more serious. "What is it?" he repeated in a different tone of voice.

Now that he was at the point, Krispos' carefully crafted speeches deserted him. "Did you end up in bed with Iakovitzes the other night?" he blurted.

"What if I did? Are you jealous?" Mavros looked at Krispos again. "No, you're not. What then? Why should you care?"

"Because I was bid to be your brother, remember? I never had a brother before, only sisters, so I don't quite know how to do that. But I do know I wouldn't want any kin of mine sleeping with someone just to get in his good graces."

If Mavros knew about him and Tanilis, Krispos realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he'd throw that right back at him, no matter how unfairly. But Mavros must not have. He said, "Why do I need to get in Iakovitzes' good graces? Aye, he lives at the capital, but I could buy and sell him. If he gives me too bad a time, I'd do it, too, and he knows it."

Krispos started to answer, abruptly stopped. He'd judged Mavros' situation by his own, and only now did he see the two were not the same. Unlike him, Mavros had a perfectly satisfactory life to return to if the city did not suit him. With such independent means, though, why had he yielded to Iakovitzes? That was a question Krispos could ask, and did.

"To find out what it was like, why else?" Mavros said. "I've had plenty of girls, but I'd never tried it the other way round. From the way Iakovitzes talked it up, I thought I was missing something special."

"Oh." The straightforward hedonism in the reply reminded Krispos of Tanilis. He needed a moment to get up the nerve to ask, "And what did you think?"

Mavros shrugged. "It was interesting to do once, but I wouldn't want to make a habit of it. As far as I'm concerned, girls are more fun."

"Oh," Krispos said again. He felt foolish. "I guess I should have kept my big mouth shut."

"Probably you should have." But Mavros seemed to reconsider. "No, I take that back. If we are to be brothers, then you have the right to speak to me when something troubles you—and the other way round, too, I suppose."

"That's only fair," Krispos agreed. "This whole business takes some getting used to."

"Things my mother arranges usually do," Mavros said cheerfully, "but they have a way of working out right in the end. And if this particular arrangement works out right in the end—" He broke off. They were altogether alone except for Iakovitzes off somewhere in the bushes, but he was still wary of speaking about what Tanilis had seen. Krispos thought the better of him for it. He was a good deal more than wary himself.

"What were you two gossiping about?" Iakovitzes asked when he came back a couple of minutes later.

"You, of course," Krispos said in his best innocent voice.

"A worthy topic indeed." Iakovitzes was noticeably smoother mounting than he had been back at Opsikion. He used his legs and the reins to get his horse moving once more. Krispos and Mavros followed him toward the city.