Krispos the Emperor

IX

Wall, roofs, streets, new leaves—all glistened with rain under the bright sun. It made them seem to Krispos brighter and more vivid than they really were, as if the shower—or perhaps the season—had washed the whole world clean.

The clouds that had dropped the rain on Videssos the city were now just small, gray, fluffy lumps diminishing toward the east. The rest of the sky was the glorious blue the enamel makers kept trying—and failing—to match with glass paste.

With the wary eye of one who has had to watch the weather for the sake of his crops, Krispos looked not east at the receding rain clouds but west, whence new weather would come. He tasted the breeze between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. That it came straight off the sea gave it a salt tang he'd not had to worry about in his peasant days, but he'd learned to allow for that. He sucked in another breath, tasting that one, too.

When at last he spat it out, he'd made up his mind. "Spring is really here," he declared.

"Your Majesty has in the past been remarkably accurate with such predictions," Barsymes said, as close as he ever came to alluding to Krispos' decidedly unimperial birth.

"It matters more this year than most," Krispos said, "for as soon as I can be sure—or at least can expect—the roads will stay dry, I have to move against the Thanasioi. The less chance they have of getting loose and raiding, the better off the west-lands and the whole Empire will be."

"The city has stayed quiet since Midwinter's Day, for which Phos be praised."

"Aye." Whenever Krispos prayed, he made a point of reminding the good god how grateful he was for that. He still did not completely trust the calm that had prevailed through winter and now up to the borderland of spring: he kept wondering whether he was walking on a thin crust of ice over freezing water—the images from Skotos' hell seemed particularly fitting. If the crust ever broke, he might be dragged down to doom. But so far it had held.

"I believe your Majesty handled the matter of the priest Digenis with as much discretion as was practicable," the vestiarios said.

"Just letting him go out like a guttering taper, you mean? All he wanted to do was raise a ruction. Smothering his end in silence is the best revenge on him; if Phos is kind, the chroniclers will forget his name as the people have—so far— forgotten to rally to the cause he preached."

Barsymes looked at him out of the corners of his eyes that had seen so much. "And when you fare forth on campaign, your Majesty, will you then leave Videssos the city ungarrisoned?"

"Oh, of course," Krispos answered, and laughed to make sure his vestiarios knew he was not in earnest. "Wouldn't that be lovely, beating the Thanasioi in the field and coming back to find my capital closed against me? It won't happen, not if I can find any way around it."

"Whom shall you name to command the city garrison?" Barsymes asked.

"Do you know, esteemed sir, I was thinking of giving the job to Evripos." Krispos spoke in a deliberately neutral tone. If Barsymes had anything to say against the appointment of his middle son, he didn't want to intimidate the eunuch into keeping his mouth shut.

Barsymes tasted the appointment with the same sort of thoughtful attention Krispos had given to the weather. After a similar pause for that consideration, the vestiarios answered, "That may serve very nicely, your Majesty. By all accounts, the young Majesty acquitted himself well in the westlands."

"He did," Krispos agreed. "Not only that, soldiers followed where he led, which is a magic that can't be taught. I'll also leave behind some steady officer who can try to keep him from doing anything too rash if the need arises."

"That's sensible," Barsymes replied, saying by not saying that he would have reckoned Krispos daft for doing anything else. "It will be valuable experience for the young Majesty, especially if—if other matters do not eventuate as we would desire."

"Phostis still lives," Krispos said suddenly. "Zaidas' sorcery continues to confirm that, and he's fairly sure Phostis is in Etchmiadzin, where the rebels seem to have their headquarters. He's made real headway in penetrating the masking sorcery since we realized it springs from Makuran." His briefly kindled enthusiasm faded fast. "Of course, he has no way of telling what Phostis believes these days."

There lay the nut of it, as was Krispos' way, in one sentence. The Avtokrator shook his head. Phostis was so young; who could say what latest enthusiasm he'd seized on? At that same age, Krispos knew he'd had a good core of solid sense. But at just past twenty, he'd been a peasant still, and he could imagine no stronger dose of reality than that. Phostis had grown up in the palaces, where flights of fancy were far more easily sustained. And Phostis had always taken pleasure in going dead against whatever Krispos had in mind.

"What of Katakolon?" Barsymes asked.

"I'll take him with me—I'll need one spatharios. at any rate," Krispos said. "He did tolerably well in the westlands himself, and rather better than that during the Midwinter's Day riots. One thing these past few months have taught me: all my sons need such training in command as I can give them. Counting on Phos' mercy instead of providing for the times to come is foolish and wasteful."

"Few have accused your Majesty of harboring those traits— none truthfully."

"For which, believe me, you have my thanks," Krispos said. "Find Evripos for me, would you? I've not yet told him what I have in mind."

"Of course, your Majesty." Barsymes went back inside the imperial residence. Krispos stood and enjoyed the sunshine. The cherry trees around the residence were putting on leaves; soon, for a few glorious weeks, they'd be a riot of sweet pink and white blossoms. Krispos' thoughts drifted away from them and back toward raising troops, moving troops, supplying troops ...

He sighed. Being Avtokrator meant having to worry about things you'd rather ignore. He wondered if the rebels he'd put down ever realized how much work the job of ruling the Empire really was. He certainly hadn't, back when he took it away from Anthimos.

If I thought Livanios wouldn't botch things, I ought to give him the crown and let him see how he likes it, he thought angrily. But he knew that would never happen: the only way Livanios would take the crown from him was by prying it out of his dead fingers.

"What is it, Father?" Evripos asked, coming up in Barsymes' wake. The wariness in his voice was different from what Krispos was used to hearing from Phostis. Phostis and he simply disagreed every chance they got. Evripos resented being born second; it made his opinions not worth serious disagreement.

Or it had made them so. Now Krispos explained what he had in mind for his son. "This is serious business," he emphasized. "If real trouble does come, I won't want you throwing out orders at random. That's why I'll leave a steady captain with you. I expect you to heed his advice on matters military."

Evripos had puffed out his chest with pride at the trust Krispos placed in him. Now he said, "But what if I think he's wrong, Father?"

Obey him anyhow, Krispos started to say. But the words did not pass his lips. He remembered when Petronas had maneuvered him into the position of vestiarios for Anthimos. The then-Avtokrator's uncle had made it very clear that he expected nothing but obedience to him from Krispos. He remembered asking Petronas a question very similar to the one he'd just heard from Evripos.

"You have command," he said slowly. "If you think your advisor is wrong, you'd better do what you reckon right. But you have to remember, son, that with command comes responsibility. If you choose to go against the officer I give you and your course goes wrong, you will answer to me. Do you understand?"

"Aye, Father, I do. You're telling me I'd better be sure—and even if I am sure, I'd better be right. Is that the meat of it?"

"That's it exactly," Krispos agreed. "I'm not putting you in this place as part of a game, Evripos. The post is not only real but also important. A mistake would be important, too, in how much damage it could do. So if you go off on your own, against the advice of a man older and wiser than you are, what you do had better not turn out badly, for your sake and the Empire's both."

With the prickliness of youth, Evripos bristled like a hedgehog. "How do you know this officer you'll appoint for me will be smarter than I am?"

"I didn't say that. You're as smart as you'll ever be, son, and I have no reason to doubt that's very smart indeed. But you're not as wise as you're going to be, say, twenty years from now. Wisdom comes from using the wits you have to think on what's happened to you during your life, and you haven't lived long enough yet to have stored up much of it."

Evripos looked eloquently unconvinced. Krispos didn't blame him; at Evripos' age, he hadn't believed experience mattered, either. Now that he had a good deal of it, he was sure he'd been wrong before—but the only way for Evripos to come to the same conclusion was with the slow passage of the years. He couldn't afford to wait for that.

His middle son said, "Suppose this officer you name suggests a course I think is wrong, but I go along with it for fear of what you've just said. And suppose it does turn out to be the wrong course. What then, Father?"

"Maybe you should be pleading your case in the courts, not commanding men in the field," Krispos said. But the question was too much to the point to be answered with a sour joke. Slowly, the Avtokrator went on, "If I put you in the post, you will be the commander. When the time comes, making the judgment will be up to you. That's the hardest burden anyone can lay on a man. If you don't care to bear it, speak up now."

"Oh, I'll bear it. Father. I just wanted to be sure I understood what you were asking of me," Evripos said.

"Good," Krispos said. "I'll give you one piece of advice and one only—I know how you won't much care to listen. It's just this: if you have to decide, do it firmly. No matter how much doubt, no matter how much fear and trembling you feel, don't let it show. Half the business of leading people is just keeping up a solid front."

"That may be worth remembering," Evripos said, as big a concession as Krispos knew he was likely to get. His son asked, "What will Katakolon be doing while I'm here in the city?"

"He'll go the westlands as my spatharios. Another campaign will do him good, I think."

"Ah." If Evripos wanted to take issue with that, he didn't find any way to manage it. After a pause a tiny bit longer than a more experienced man would have given, he nodded brusquely and changed the subject. "I hope I'll serve as you'd have me do, Father."

"I hope you will, too. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't. If the lord with the great and good mind hears my prayers, you'll have a quiet time of it. I don't really want you to see action here; you'd better understand that. The less fighting there is, the happier I'll be."

"Then why take the army out?" Evripos asked.

Krispos sighed. "Because sometimes it's needful, as you know very well. If I don't go to the fighting this summer, it will come to me. Given that choice, I'd sooner do it on my own terms, or as nearly as I can."

"Aye, that makes sense," Evripos said after a moment's thought. "Sometimes the world won't let you have things all as you'd like them."

He was probably speaking from bitterness at not being first in line for the throne. Nonetheless, Krispos was moved to reach out and set a hand on his shoulder. "That's an important truth, son. You'd do well to remember it." It was, he thought, a truth Phostis hadn't fully grasped—but then Phostis, as firstborn, hadn't had the need. Each son was so different from the other two ... "Where's Katakolon? Do you know?"

Evripos pointed. "One of the rooms down that hallway: second or third on the left, I think."

"Thanks." Later, Krispos realized he hadn't asked what his youngest son was doing. If Evripos knew, he kept his mouth shut, a useful ploy he might well have picked up from his father. Krispos walked down the hallway. The second chamber on the left, a sewing room for the serving women, was empty.

The door to the third room on the left was closed. Krispos worked the latch. He saw a tangle of bare arms and legs, heard a couple of horrified squawks, and shut the door again in a hurry. He stood chuckling in the hall until Katakolon, his robe rumpled and his face red, came out a couple of minutes later.

He let Katakolon steer him down the corridor, and was anything but surprised to hear the door open and close behind him. He didn't look back, but started to laugh. Katakolon gave him a dirty look. "What's so funny?"

"You are," Krispos answered. "I do apologize for interrupting."

Katakolon's glare got blacker, but he seemed confused as well as annoyed. "Is that all you're going to say?"

"Yes, I think so. After all, it's nothing I haven't seen before. Remember, I was Anthimos' vestiarios." He decided not to go into detail about Anthimos' orgies. Katakolon was too likely to try imitating them.

Looking at his youngest son's face, Krispos had all he could do to keep from laughing again. Katakolon was obviously having heavy going imagining his rather paunchy, gray-bearded father reveling with an Avtokrator who, even after a generation, remained a byword for debauchery of all sorts.

Krispos patted his son on the back. "You have to bear in mind, lad, that once upon a time I wasn't a creaking elder. I had the same yen for good wine and bad women as any other young man."

"Yes, Father," Katakolon said, but not as if he believed it.

Sighing, Krispos said, "If you have too much trouble picturing me with a zest for life, try to imagine Iakovitzes, say, as a young man. The exercise will do your wits good."

He gave Katakolon credit: the youth visibly did try. After a few seconds, he whistled. "He'd have been something, wouldn't he?"

"Oh, he was," Krispos said. "He's still something, come to that."

All at once, he wondered if Iakovitzes had ever tried his blandishments on Katakolon. He didn't think the old lecher would have got anywhere; like his other two sons, his youngest seemed interested only in women. If Iakovitzes had ever tried to seduce Katakolon or one of the other boys, they'd never brought Krispos the tale.

"Now let me tell you why I interrupted you at a tender moment—" Krispos explained what he had in mind for the most junior Avtokrator.

"Of course, Father. I'll come with you, and help as I can," Katakolon said when he was done; of the three boys, he was the most tractable. Even the stubborn streak he shared with his brothers and Krispos was in him good-natured. "I don't expect I'll be busy every moment, and some of the provincial lasses last summer were tastier than I'd have expected away from the capital. When do we start out?"

"As soon as the roads are dry." Dry himself, Krispos added, "You won't be devastating the local girls by leaving quite yet."

"All right," Katakolon said. "In that case, if you'll excuse me—" He started down the hall, more purpose in his stride than on any mission for his father. Krispos wondered if he'd burned that hot at seventeen. He probably had, but he had almost as much trouble believing it as Katakolon did in placing him at one of Anthimos' revels.

Livanios addressed his assembled fighters: "Soon we fare forth, both to fight and to advance along the gleaming path. We shall not go alone. By the lord with the great and good mind, I swear our trouble will not be raising men but rather making sure we are not overwhelmed by those who would join us. We shall spread across the countryside like a fire through grassland; no one and nothing can hold us back."

The men cheered. By their look, a good many of them were herders from the westlands' central plateau: lean, weatherbeat-en, sunbaked men intimately acquainted with grass fires. Now they carried javelins in their hands, not staves. They were not the best-disciplined troops in the world, but fanaticism went a long way toward making up for sloppy formations.

Phostis cheered when everyone else did. Standing there silent and glum would have got him noticed, and not in a way he wanted. He was trying to cultivate invisibility, the way a farmer cultivated radishes. He wished Livanios would forget he existed.

The heresiarch was in full spate: "The leeches who live in Videssos the city think they can suck our life's blood forever. We'll show them they're wrong, by the good god, and if the gleaming path leads through the smoking ruins of the palaces built from poor men's blood, why then, it does."

More cheers. Phostis didn't feel quite such a hypocrite in joining these: the ostentatious wealth the capital held was what had made him flirt with the doctrines of the Thanasioi in the first place. But Livanios' speech was a harangue and nothing more. If any Avtokrator of recent generations was sensitive to the peasant's plight, it was Krispos. Phostis was sick of hearing how his father had been taxed off his land, but he knew the experience made Krispos want not to visit it on anyone else.

"We'll hang up the fat ecclesiastics by their thumbs, too," Livanios shouted. "Whatever gold the Emperors don't get, the clerics do. Has Phos the need for fancy houses?"

"No!" the men roared back, and Phostis with them. In spite of everything, he still had some sympathy for what Thanasios had preached. He wondered if Livanios could truly say the same. And he wondered still more just how much hold Artapan had on the rebel leader. He was no closer to knowing that for certain than he had been on the day when he and Olyvria first became lovers.

Whenever she crossed his mind, his blood ran hotter. Digenis would have scolded him, or more likely given up on him as an incorrigible sinner and sensualist. He didn't care. He wanted her more with every passing day—and he knew she also wanted him.

They'd managed to join twice more since that first time: once late at night up in his little cell while the guard snored down the hall and once in a quiet corridor carved into the stone beneath the keep. Both couplings were almost as hurried and frantic as the first had been; neither was what Phostis had in mind when he thought of making love. But they inflamed him and Olyvria for more.

Was what he felt the love of which the romancers sang? He knew little firsthand of love; around the palaces, seduction and hedonism were more often on display. His own father and mother seemed to have got on well, but he'd still been a boy when Dara died. Zaidas and Aulissa were called a love match, but the wizard—aside from being Krispos' crony, which of itself made him suspect—had to be close to forty: could an old man really be in love?

Phostis couldn't tell if he was in love himself. All he knew was that he missed Olyvria desperately, that when they were apart every moment dragged as if it were an hour, that every stolen hour together somehow flashed by like a moment

Lost in his own thoughts, he missed Livanios' last few sentences. They brought loud cheers from the assembled soldiers. Phostis cheered, too, as he had all through the heresiarch's speech.

Then one of the fighters who knew who he was turned round and slapped him on the back. "So you're going to fight with us for the gleaming path, are you, friend?" the fellow boomed. His grin had almost as many gaps as Syagrios'.

"I'm going to what?" Phostis said foolishly. It wasn't that he didn't believe his ears: more that he didn't want to.

"Sure—like Livanios said just now." The soldier wrinkled his brow, trying to recall his chief's exact words. "Take up the blade against maternalism—something like that, anyways."

"Materialism," Phostis corrected before he wondered why he bothered.

"Yeah, that's it," the soldier said happily. "Thank you, friend. By the good god, I'm right glad the Emperor's son's taken up with righteousness."

Moving as if in a daze, Phostis made his way toward the citadel. Fighters who recognized him kept coming up and congratulating him on taking up arms for the Thanasiot cause. By the time he got inside, he was sore and bruised, while his wits had taken a worse pummeling than his back.

Livanios was using his name to raise the spirits of the Thanasiot warriors: so much was clear. But life in the palace, while it left Phostis ignorant of love, made him look beneath the surface of machinations with as little effort as he used to breathe.

Not only would his name spur on the followers of the gleaming path, it would also dismay those who clove to his father. And if he fought alongside the Thanasioi, he might never be reconciled with Krispos.

Further, Livanios might arrange a hero's death for him. That would embarrass the Avtokrator as much as having him alive and fighting, and would hurt Krispos a good deal more. And it would serve Livanios' ends very well indeed.

Syagrios found Phostis. Phostis might have guessed the ruffian would come looking for him. From the nasty grin on Syagrios' face, he'd known about Livanios' scheme before the heresiarch announced it to his men. In fact, Phostis thought with the taut nerves of a man who genuinely has been persecuted, Syagrios might well have come up with it himself.

"So you're going to be a man before your mother, are you, stripling?" he said, making cut-and-thrust motions right in front of Phostis' face. "Go out there and make the gleaming path proud of you, boy."

"I'll do what I can." Phostis was aware of the ambiguity, but let it lay. He did not want to hear Syagrios speak of his mother. He wanted to smash the ruffian for presuming to speak of her. Only a well-founded apprehension that Syagrios would smash him instead kept him from trying it

That was yet another thing the romances didn't talk about. Their heroes always beat the villains just because they were heroes. No writer of romances, Phostis was certain, had ever met Syagrios. For that matter, both sides here thought they were heroes and their foes villains. I swear by the good god I'll never read another romance again as long as I live, Phostis thought.

Syagrios said, "I don't know what you know about weapons, but whatever it is, you better practice it. Whoever you fight ain't gonna care that you're the Avtokrator's brat."

"I suppose not," Phostis said in a hollow voice that set Syagrios laughing anew. He'd actually had some training; his father had thought he'd find it useful. He didn't mention it. The more hopeless a dub everyone took him for, the less attention people would pay him.

He went up the black spiral stairway to his little chamber. When he opened the door, his mouth fell open in astonishment: Olyvria waited inside. He was not too surprised, however, to shut the door behind him as fast as he could. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Do you want to get us both caught?"

She grinned at him. "What could be safer?" she whispered back. "Everyone in the keep was down in the courtyard listening to my father."

Phostis wanted to rush to her and take her in his arms, but that brought him up short. "Yes, and do you know what your father said?" he whispered, and went on to explain exactly what Livanios had announced.

"Oh, no," Olyvria said, still in a tiny voice. "He wants you dead, then. I prayed he wouldn't."

"That's what I think, too," Phostis agreed bitterly. "But what can I do about it?"

"I don't know." Olyvria reached out to him. He hurried over to her. Her touch made him, if not forget everything else, then at least reckon it unimportant for as long as he held her. But he remembered how careful they had to be even while her thighs clasped his flanks; what should have been sighs of delight came from both of them as tiny hisses.

As they'd grown used to doing, they set their clothes to rights as fast as they could when they were through. Not for them the pleasure of lying lazily by each other afterward. "How will we get you out of here?" Phostis whispered. Before Olyvria could say anything, he found the answer for himself: "I'll go downstairs. Whoever's out there—probably Syagrios— will follow me. Once we're gone, you can come down, too."

Olyvria nodded. "Yes, that's very good. It should work: few of the rooms in this hallway have people in them, so I'm not likely to be seen till I'm safely down." She looked at him with some of her old calculation. He liked the soft looks he usually got from her these days better. But she said, "You wouldn't have found a plan so fast when we first brought you here."

"Maybe not," he admitted. "I've had to take care of a good many things I wasn't in the habit of doing for myself." He touched the very tip of her breast through her tunic, just for a moment. "Some of them I like better than others."

"You don't mean I'm your first?" That thought almost startled her into raising her voice; he made an alarmed gesture. But she was already shaking her head. "No, I couldn't have been."

"No, of course not," he said. "You're the first who matters, though."

She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. "That's a sweet thing to say. It must not have been easy for you, growing up as you did."

He shrugged. He supposed the problem was that he just thought too much. Evripos and especially Katakolon seemed to have had no trouble enjoying themselves immensely. But all that was by the way. He got to his feet. "I'll leave you now. Listen to make sure everything's quiet before you come out." He took a step toward the door, stopped, then turned back to Olyvria. "I love you."

Her arched eyebrows lifted. "You hadn't said that before. I love you—but then you know I must, or I wouldn't be here in spite of my father."

"Yes." Phostis thought he knew that, but he'd been raised to see plots, so sometimes he found them even when they weren't there. Here, though, he had to—and wanted to—take the chance.

He stepped into the hallway. Sure enough, there sat Syagrios. The ruffian leered at him. "So you found out you can't hide in there, did you? Now what are you going to do, head down and celebrate that you got turned into a soldier?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Phostis answered. He had the somber satisfaction of seeing Syagrios' jaw sag. After lighting a taper to keep from killing himself on the dark stairway, he headed down toward the ground floor of the keep. Syagrios muttered under his breath but followed. Phostis had all he could do to keep from whistling on the stairs: letting Syagrios know he'd put one over on him wouldn't do.

Outside the southern end of the great double wall that warded the landward side of Videssos the city lay a broad stretch of meadow on which the Empire's cavalry practiced their maneuvers. Fresh new grass poked through the mud and the dead grayish remains of last year's growth as Krispos came out to watch his soldiers exercise.

"Don't be too hard on them too soon, your Majesty," Sarkis urged. "They're still ragged from being cooped up through the winter."

"I know that—we have done this business a few times before," Krispos answered, amiably enough. "But we'll go on campaign as soon as weather and supplies allow, and if they're still ragged then, it will cost lives and maybe battles."

"They won't be." Sarkis put grim promise into his voice. Krispos smiled; he'd hoped to hear that note.

A company rode hard toward upright bales of hay that simulated an enemy. They drew up eighty or ninety yards away, plied the targets with arrows as rapidly as they could draw bow, and then, at an officer's command, yanked out their swords and charged the imaginary foe with fierce and sanguinary roars.

The iron blades glittering in the bright sun made a fine martial spectacle. Nonetheless, Krispos turned to Sarkis and remarked, "This whole business of war would be a lot easier if the Thanasioi didn't fight back any harder than those bales."

Sarkis' doughy face twitched in a grin. "Isn't it the truth, your Majesty? Every general wants every campaign to be a walkover, but you can make yourself a reputation that will live forever if you get one of those in a lifetime. The trouble is, you see, the chap on the other side wants his walkover, too, and doesn't much care to cooperate in yours. Rude and inconsiderate of him, if you ask me."

"At the very least," Krispos agreed. After the company of archers reassembled well beyond the hay bales, another unit approached and pelted the targets with javelins. Farther away, a regiment split in two to get in some more realistic mounted swordwork. They tried not to hurt one another in practices like that, but Krispos knew the healers would have some extra work tonight.

"Their spirits seem as high as you could hope for," Sarkis said judiciously. "No hesitation about going out for another crack at the heretics, anyhow." He used the word with no irony whatever, though his own beliefs were anything but orthodox.

Krispos didn't twit him about it, not today. After some thought, he'd figured out the difference between the Vaspurakaners' heterodoxy and that of the Thanasioi. The "princes" might not want any part of that version of the faith that emanated from Videssos the city, but they also weren't interested in imposing their version on Videssos the city. Krispos could live with that.

He said, "Where do you suppose the Thanasioi will pop up this season?"

"Wherever they can make the worst nuisances of themselves," Sarkis answered at once. "Livanios proved how dangerous he is last year. He won't hurt us in a small way if he has the chance to hurt us in a big one."

Since that accorded all too well with Krispos' view of the situation, he only grunted by way of reply. Not far away, a youngster in gilded chain mail rode up to the hay-bale targets and flung light spears at them. Katakolon's aim wasn't bad, but could have been better.

Krispos cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, "Everybody knows you can use your lance, son, but you've got to get the javelin down, too!"

Katakolon's head whipped around. He spotted his father and stuck out his tongue at him. Ribald howls rose from the horsemen who heard. Sarkis' chuckle held dry amusement. "You'll give him a reputation that way. I suppose it's what you have in mind."

"As a matter of fact, yes. If you're a lecher at my age, you're a laughingstock, but young men pride themselves on how hard they can go—so to speak."

"So to speak, indeed." Sarkis chuckled again, even more dryly than before. Then he sighed. "We ought to get some practice in ourselves. Battles take funny turns sometimes."

"So we should." Krispos sighed, too. "The good god knows I'll be sore for a long time after I start working, though. I begin to see I won't be able to go out on a campaign forever."

"You?" Sarkis ran a hand along his own corpulent frame. "Your Majesty, you're still svelte. I've put almost another me inside my mail here."

Krispos made an imperial decision. "I'll start exercising— tomorrow." The trouble with being Avtokrator was that none of the demands of the job went away when you concentrated on any one thing. You had to plug leaks everywhere at once, or some of them would get beyond the plugging stage while you weren't watching.

He went back to the palaces to make sure he didn't fall too far behind on matters of trade and commerce. He was examining customs reports from Prista, the imperial outpost on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea, when someone tapped on the door to the study. He glanced up, expecting to see Barsymes or another of the chamberlains. But it was none of them—it was Drina.

His frown was almost a scowl. She should have known better than to bother him while he was working. "Yes?" he said curtly.

Drina looked more than nervous—she looked frightened. She dropped to her knees and then to her belly in a full proskynesis. Krispos took a couple of seconds to wonder about the propriety of having the woman who warmed his bed prostrate herself before him. But by the time he decided she needn't bother, she was already rising. But she kept her eyes to the floor; her voice was small and her stammer large as she began, "May it p-please your Majesty—"

With that start, it probably wouldn't Krispos almost said as much. The only thing that held him back was a strong suspicion she'd flee if he pressed her too hard. Since she'd braved bearding him at his work, whatever she had on her mind was important to her. Trying at least to sound neutral, he asked, "What's troubling you, Drina?"

"Your Majesty, I'm pregnant" she blurted.

He opened his mouth to answer her, but no words came out. After a little while, he realized she didn't need to keep looking at the back of his throat. He needed two tries to close his mouth, but managed in the end. "You're telling me it's mine?" he got out at last.

Drina nodded. "Your Majesty, I didn't—I mean, I haven't— so it must—" She spread her hands, as if that would help her explain better than her tongue, which seemed as fumbling as Krispos'.

"Well, well," he said, and then again, because it let him make noise without making sense, "Well, well." Another pause and he produced a coherent sentence, then a second one: "I didn't expect that to happen. If it was the night I think it was, I didn't expect anything to happen."

"People never do, your Majesty." Drina tried a wary smile, but still looked ready to run away. "But it does happen, or there wouldn't be any more people after a while."

The Thanasioi would like that, he thought. He shook his head. Drina was too much a creature of her body and her urges ever to make a Thanasiot, just as he was himself. "An imperial bastard," he said, more to himself than to her.

"Is it your first, your Majesty?" she asked. Now fear and a peculiar sort of pride warred in her voice. She held her chin a little higher.

"The first time I've fathered a child since Dara died, you mean? No," Krispos said. "It happened twice before, as a matter of fact but once the mother miscarried and the other time the babe lived but a couple of days. Phos' choice, not mine, if that's what you're wondering. Both were years ago; I thought my seed had gone cold. I hope your luck will be better."

Hearing that, she let her face open up like a flower suddenly touched by the sun. "Oh, thank you, your Majesty!" she breathed.

"Neither you nor the child will ever want," Krispos promised. "If you don't know I care for my own, you don't know me." For the past twenty years, the whole Empire had been his own. Maybe that was why he worried so much about every detail of its life.

"Everyone knows your Majesty is kind and generous." Drina's smile got wider still.

"Everyone doesn't know any such thing," he answered sharply. "So you don't misunderstand, here are two things I won't do: number one, I won't marry you. I won't let this babe disturb the succession if it turns out to be a boy. Trying to get me to break my word about that will be the fastest way you can think of to make me angry. Do you have that?"

"Yes," she whispered. The smile flickered.

"I'm sorry to speak so plain to you, but I want to leave you in no doubt about these matters," Krispos said. "Here is the second thing: if you have a swarm of relatives who descend on me looking for jobs with no work for high pay, they'll go home to wherever they came from with stripes on their backs. I already told you I won't stint on what I give you, and of course you may share that with whomever you like. But the fisc is not a toy and it does have a bottom. All right?"

"Your Majesty, how can the likes of me argue with whatever you choose to do?" Drina sounded frightened again.

The plain answer was that she couldn't. Krispos didn't say that; it would just have alarmed her further. What he did say was: "Go and tell Barsymes what you've just told me. Tell him I said you're to be treated with every consideration, too."

"I will, your Majesty. Thank you. Uh, your Majesty—"

"What now?" Krispos asked when she showed no sign of saying anything more than uh.

"Will you still want me?" she said, and then stood there as if she wished the mosaic floor would open and swallow her up. Like most Videssians, she was olive-skinned; Krispos thought he saw her blush anyhow.

He got up, came around the desk, and put an arm around her. "I expect so, now and again," he said. "But if you have some young man waiting under the Amphitheater for the next race, so to speak, don't be shy about saying so. I wouldn't have you do anything you don't care to." He'd watched Anthimos take advantage of so many women that moderation came easy to him: anything Anthimos did was a good bet to have been wrong.

"It's not that," Drina said quickly. "I just—worry that you'll forget about me."

"I already said I wouldn't. I do keep my word." Thinking she needed more reassurance than words, he patted her on the backside. She sighed and snuggled against him. He let her stay for a bit, then said, "Go on, go see Barsymes. He'll take care of you."

Snuffling a little, Drina went. Krispos stood in the study, listening to her footsteps fade as she walked down the hall. When he couldn't hear them any more, he returned to his seat and to the customs reports he'd been reviewing. But he soon found he had to shove aside the parchments: he couldn't concentrate on what was in them.

"An imperial bastard," he said quietly. "My bastard. Well, well, what am I going to do about that?"

He was a man who believed in making plans as implicitly as he believed in Phos. Fathering a child at his age wasn't in any of those he'd made so far. No help for it, he told himself. I'll have to come up with some new ones.

He knew he might not need them; so many children never lived to grow up. As in so many things, though, better to have and not need than to need and not have. Besides, you always hoped your children lived unless you were a fanatical Thanasiot who thought all life ought to vanish from the earth and be quick about it, too.

If he had a daughter, things would stay simple. When she grew up, he'd do his best to make sure she married someone well disposed to him. That was what marriages were for, after all: joining together families that could be useful to each other.

If he had a son, now ... He clicked his tongue between his teeth. That would complicate matters. Some Avtokrators had their bastards made into eunuchs; some had risen to high rank in the temples or at the palace. It was certainly one way of guaranteeing the boy would never challenge his legitimate sons for the throne: being physically imperfect, eunuchs could not claim imperial rank in Videssos or Makuran or any other country he knew of.

Krispos made that clicking noise again. He wasn't sure he had the stomach for that, no matter how expedient it might be.

He stared down at the delicately veined marble desktop, wondering what to do. He was so lost in his thoughts, the tap on the door frame made him jump. He looked up. This time it was Barsymes.

"I am given to understand congratulations are in order, your Majesty?" the vestiarios said carefully.

"Thank you, esteemed sir. I'm given to understand the same thing myself." Krispos managed a rueful laugh. "Life has a way of going off on its own path, not the one you'd choose for it."

"Very true. As you have requested, every care will be given to the mother-to-be. As part of that care, I gather you will want to ensure, so far as is feasible, that she does not acquire an exaggerated notion either of her own station or that of her offspring."

"You've hit in the center of the target, Barsymes. Can you imagine me, say, disinheriting the sons I have for the sake of a by-blow? Not a cook could find a better recipe for civil war after I'm gone."

"What you say is true, your Majesty. And yet—" Barsymes stepped out into the hallway, looked right and left. Even after he was sure no one save Krispos could hear him, he lowered his voice. "And yet, your Majesty, one of your sons may be lost to you, and you've not expressed entire satisfaction with any of them."

"But why should I expect the next one to be any better?" Krispos said. "Besides, I'd have to wait twenty years to have any idea what sort of man he is, and who says I have twenty years left? I might, aye, but the odds aren't the best. So I'd sooner discommode the one young bastard than the three older legitimate boys."

"I would not think of faulting the logic; I merely wondered if your Majesty had fully considered the situation. I see you have: well and good." The vestiarios ran pale tongue across paler lips. "I also wondered if you were, ah, besotted with the mother of the child-to-be."

"So I'd do stupid things to keep her happy, you mean?" Krispos said. Barsymes nodded. Krispos started to laugh, but restrained himself—that would have been cruel. "No, esteemed sir. Drina's very pleasant, but I've not lost my head."

"Ah," Barsymes said again. He seldom showed muchemotion, and this moment was no exception to the rule; nonetheless, Krispos thought he heard relief in that single syllable.

I've not lost my head. That might have been the watchword for his reign, and for his life. If it had left him on the coldblooded side, it had also given the Empire of Videssos more than two decades of steady, sensible rule. There were worse exchanges.

He remembered the thought he'd had before. "Esteemed sir, may I ask a question that might perturb you? Please understand my aim is not to cause you pain, but to learn."

"Ask, your Majesty," Barsymes replied at once. "You are the Avtokrator; you have the right."

"Very well, then. To make sure dynastic problems don't come up, Avtokrators have been known to make eunuchs of their bastard offspring. You know your life as only one who lives it can. What have you to say of it?"

The vestiarios gave the question his usual grave consideration. "The pain of the gelding does not last forever, of course. I have never known desire, so I do not particularly pine for it, though that is not true of all my kind. But being set aside forever from the general run of mankind—there is the true curse of the eunuch, your Majesty. So far as any of us knows, it has no balm."

"Thank you, esteemed sir." Krispos put the thought in the place where bad ideas belong. He felt an urgent need to change the subject. "By the good god!" he exclaimed, as heartily as he could. Barsymes raised an interrogative eyebrow. He explained: "No matter how smoothly things go, I'll never hear the end of teasing about this from my sons. I've given them a hard time about their affairs, but now I'm the one who's gone and put a loaf in a serving maid's oven."

"I pray your Majesty to forgive me, but you've forgotten something," Barsymes said. Now it was Krispos' turn to look puzzled. The vestiarios went on, "Think what the eminent Iakovitzes will say."

Krispos thought. After a moment, he pushed back his seat and hid under the desk. He'd seldom made Barsymes laugh, but he added one to the short list. He laughed, too, as he re-emerged, but he still dreaded what would happen the next time he saw his special envoy.

Phostis made sure the sword fit loose in its sheath. It was not a fancy weapon with a gold-chased hilt like the one he'd carried before he was kidnapped: just a curved blade, a leather-wrapped grip, and an iron hand guard. It would slice flesh as well as any other sword, though.

The horse they gave him wasn't fit to haul oats to the imperial stables. It was a scrawny, swaybacked gelding with scars on its knees and an evil glint in its eye. By the monster of a bit that went with the rest of its tack, it must have had a mouth made of wrought iron and a temper worthy of Skotos. But it was a horse, and the Thanasioi let him ride it. That marked a change for the better.

It would have been better still had Syagrios not joined the band to which Phostis had been attached. "What, you thought you'd be rid of me?" he boomed when Phostis could not quite hide his lack of enthusiasm. "Not so easy as that, boy."

Phostis shrugged, in control of himself again. "If nothing else, we can spar at the board game," he said.

Syagrios laughed in his face. "I never bother with that dung when I'm out fighting. It's for slack times, when there's no real blood to be spilled." His narrow eyes lit up with anticipation.

The raiders rode out of Etchmiadzin that afternoon, a party of about twenty-five heading south and east toward territory the men of the gleaming path did not control. Excitement ran high; everyone was eager to bring Thanasios' doctrines a step closer to reality by destroying the material goods of those who did not follow them.

The band's leader, a tough-looking fellow named Themistios, seemed almost as unsavory as Syagrios. He put the theology in terms no one could fail to follow: "Burn the farms, burn the monasteries, kill the animals, kill the people. They go straight to the ice. Any of us who fall, we walk the gleaming path beyond the sun and stay with Phos forever."

"The gleaming path!" the raiders bawled. "Phos bless the gleaming path!"

Phostis wondered how many such bands were sallying forth from Etchmiadzin and other Thanasiot strongholds, how many men stormed into the Empire with murder and martyrdom warring for the uppermost place in their minds. He also wondered where the main body of Livanios' men would fare. Syagrios knew. But Syagrios, however much he liked to brag and jeer, knew how to keep his mouth shut about things that mattered.

Soon Phostis' concerns became more immediate. Not least among them was seeing if he couldn't inconspicuously vanish from the raiding band. He couldn't. The horsemen kept him in their midst; Syagrios clung to him like a leech. Maybe when the fighting starts, he thought.

For the first day and a half of riding, they remained in territory under Thanasiot rule. Peasants waved from the fields and shouted slogans at the horsemen as they trotted past. The riders shouted back less often as time went by: muscles unused since fall were claiming their price. Phostis hadn't been so saddle sore in years.

Another day on horseback brought the raiders into country where, instead of cheering, the peasants fled at first sight of them. That occasioned argument among Phostis' companions: some wanted to scatter and destroy the peasants and their huts, while others preferred to press ahead without delay.

In the end, Themistios came down in favor of the second group. "There's a monastery outside Aptos I want to hit," he declared, "and I'm not going to waste my time with this riffraff till it's smashed. We can nail peasants on the way home." With a large, juicy target thus set before them, the raiders stopped arguing. It would have taken a very bold man to quarrel with Themistios, anyhow.

They came to the monastery a little before sunset. Some of the monks were still in the fields. Howling like demons, the Thanasioi rode them down. Swords rose, fell, and rose again smeared with scarlet. Instead of prayers to Phos, screams rose into the reddening sky.

"We'll burn the building!" Themistios shouted. "Even monks have too fornicating much." He spurred his horse straight toward the monastery gate and got inside before the startled monks could slam it shut against him. His sword forced back the first blue-robe who came running up, and a moment later more of his wolves were in there with him.

Several of the raiders carried smoldering sticks of punk. Oil-soaked torches caught quickly. Syagrios pressed one into Phostis' hand. "Here," he growled. "Do some good with this." Or else, his voice warned. So did the way he cocked his sword.

Phostis threw the torch at a wall. He'd hoped it would fall short, and it did, but it rolled up against the wood. Flames crackled, caught, and began to spread. Syagrios pounded him on the back, as if he'd just been initiated into the brotherhood of wreckers. Shuddering, he realized he had.

A monk waving a cudgel rushed at him, shouting something incoherent. He wanted to tell the shaven-headed holy man it was all a dreadful mistake, that he didn't want to be here and hadn't truly intended to harm the monastery. But the monk didn't care about any of that. All he wanted to do was smash the closet invader—who happened to be Phostis.

He parried the blue-robe's first wild swipe, and his second. "By the good god, cut him!" Syagrios shouted in disgust. "What do you think—he's going to get tired and go away?"

Phostis didn't quite parry the third blow. It glanced off his shin, hard enough to make him bite his lip against the pain. He realized with growing dismay that he couldn't just try to hold off the monk, not when the fellow wanted nothing more than to kill him.

The monk drew back his club for yet another swing. Phostis slashed at him, feeling the blade bite. Behind him, Syagrios roared with glee. Phostis would cheerfully have killed the ruffian for forcing him into a position where he either had to hurt the monk or get himself maimed or killed.

None of the other raiders had any such compunctions. Several had dismounted, the better to torture the monks they overcame. Screams echoed down the halls that had resounded with hymns of praise to Phos. Watching the Thanasioi at their work—or was it better called sport?—Phostis felt his stomach lurch like a horse stepping into a snow-covered hole.

"Away! Away!" Themistios shouted. "It'll burn now, and we have more to do before we head home."

What does he have in mind? Phostis thought. About the only thing that fit in with what the raiders had done at the monastery was torching a home for penniless widows and orphans. Videssos the city had several such; he wondered if Aptos was a big enough town to boast any.

He never got the chance to find out, for as he and the Thanasioi rode away from the monastery, a troop of imperial soldiers came storming after them from out of Aptos. Faint in the distance but growing louder fast, Phostis heard a wary cry he'd never imagined could sound so welcome: "Krispos! The Avtokrator Krispos! Krispos!"

A good many of the Thanasioi had bows as well as sabers. They started shooting at the imperials. The garrison troops, like most imperial cavalry, were archers, too. They shot back. The advantage lay on their side, because they wore mail shirts and helmets while almost all the Thanasioi were unarmored.

Phostis yanked his horse's head around and booted the animal toward the imperials. All he thought about was giving himself up and doing whatever penance the patriarch or some other ecclesiastic set him for his sins in the monastery. Among the things he forgot was the saber he clutched in his right fist.

To the onrushing cavalrymen, he must have looked like a fanatical Thanasiot challenging them single-handed so he could go straight from death to the gleaming path beyond the sun. An arrow whistled past his ear. Another one buried itself in the ground by the horse's forefoot. Another one hit him in the shoulder.

At first he felt only the impact, and thought a kicked-up stone had grazed him. Then he looked down and saw the pale ash shaft sticking out of him. His eyes focused on the gray goose feathers of the fletching. How stupid, he thought. I've been shot by my own father's men.

All at once, the pain struck, and with it weakness. His own blood ran hot down his chest and began to stain his tunic. He swayed in the saddle. More arrows hissed past.

Syagrios came up beside him at a gallop. "Have you gone out of your head?" he yelled. "You can't fight them all by yourself." His eyes went wide when he saw Phostis was wounded. "See what I'm telling you? We got to get out of here."

Neither Phostis' wits nor his body was working very well. Syagrios saw that, too. He grabbed the reins away from the younger man and led Phostis' horse alongside his own. The horse was nasty, and tried to balk. Syagrios was nastier, and wouldn't let it. A couple of other Thanasioi came back to cover their retreat.

The weight of armor on the imperial cavalrymen slowed them in a long chase. The raiders managed to stay in front until darkness let them give the imperials the slip. Several were hurt by then, and a couple of others lost when their horses went down.

Phostis' world focused on the burning in his shoulder. Everything else seemed far away, unimportant. He scarcely noticed when the Thanasioi halted beside a little stream, though not having to fight to stay in the saddle was a relief.

Syagrios advanced on him with a knife. "We'll have to tend to that," he said. "Here, lie flat."

No one dared light a fire. Syagrios held his head close to Phostis to see what he was doing as he cut the tunic away from the arrow. He examined the wound, made an abstracted clucking noise, and pulled something out of the pouch he wore on his belt.

"What's that?" Phostis asked.

"Arrow-drawing spoon," Syagrios answered. "Can't just pull the fornicating thing out; the point'll have barbs. Hold still and shut up. Digging in there will hurt, but you won't be as torn up inside this way. Now—"

In spite of Syagrios' injunction, Phostis groaned. Nor were his the only cries that rose to the uncaring sky as the raiders did what they could for their wounded comrades. Now darkness didn't much matter; Syagrios was working more by feel than by sight as he forced the narrow, cupped end of the spoon down along the arrow's shaft toward the head.

Phostis felt the spoon grate on something. Syagrios grunted in satisfaction. "Here we go. Now we can get it out. Wasn't too deep—you're lucky."

The taste of blood filled Phostis' mouth: he'd bitten his lip while the ruffian guddled for the arrow. He could smell his own blood, too. He choked out, "If I were lucky, it would have missed me."

"Ha," Syagrios said. "Can't say you're wrong there. Hold on, now. Here it comes, here it comes—yes!" He got the spoon out of the wound, and the arrow with it. He grunted again. "No blood spurting—just a dribble. I'd say you'll make it."

In place of a canteen, the ruffian carried a wineskin on his belt. He poured a stream of wine onto Phostis' wound. After the probing with the spoon and the drawing of the arrow, the abused flesh felt as if it were being bathed with fire. Phostis thrashed and swore and clumsily tried to hit Syagrios left-handed.

"Easy there, curse you," Syagrios said. "Just hold still. You wash out a wound with wine, it's less likely to rot. You want pus and fever? You may get 'em anyways, mind, but wouldn't you rather bump up your odds?"

He wadded up a rag, pressed it to Phostis' shoulder to soak up the blood that still oozed from the wound, and tied it in place with another strip of cloth. "Thank you," Phostis got out, a little slower than he should have: he still struggled with the irony of being treated by a man he despised.

"Any time." Syagrios set a hand on his good shoulder. "I never would've thought it, but you really do want to walk the gleaming path, don't you? You laid out that monk fine as you please, and then you were ready to take on all the imperials at the same time. More brave than smart, maybe, but to the ice with smart, sometimes. You done better'n I would've dreamed."

"To the ice with smart, sometimes," Phostis repeated wearily. At last he'd found what it took to satisfy Syagrios: be too cowardly to refuse what he was ordered and then botch what he'd intended as a desertion. The moral there was too elusive for him. He let out a long, worn sigh.

"Yeah, sleep while you can," Syagrios said. "We'll have some fancy riding to do tomorrow before we're sure we've broken loose from the stinking imperials. But I've got to get you back to Etchmiadzin. Now that I know for sure you're with us, we'll have all kinds of things we can use you for."

Sleep? Phostis wouldn't have imagined it possible. Even though the worst of the agony had left his shoulder now that the arrow was out, it still ached like a rotting tooth and throbbed in time to his pulse. But as the wild excitement of the ride and the fight faded, exhaustion rolled over him like a great black tide. Rough ground, aching shoulder—no matter. He slept hard.

He woke from a dream where a wolf was alternately biting and kicking him to find Syagrios shaking him back to consciousness. The shoulder still hurt fiercely, but he managed a nod when the ruffian asked if he could ride.

He did his best to forget as much as he could of the journey back to Etchmiadzin. However much he tried, he couldn't forget the torment of more wine poured into his wound at every halt. The shoulder got hot, but only right around the hole in it so he supposed the treatment, no matter how agonizing, did some good.

He wished a healer-priest would look at the wound, but had not seen any such among the Thanasioi. That made theological sense: if the body, like all things of this world, sprang from Skotos. what point to making any special effort to preserve it? Such an attitude was easy enough to maintain as an abstract principle. When it came down to Phostis' personal body and its pain, abstract principles got trivial fast.

The rising foothills ahead seemed welcome, not because Etchmiadzin was the home the Thanasioi had hoped it would become for him, but because they meant the imperial soldiers would not catch him on the road and finish the job of killing him. And, he reminded himself, Olyvria would be back at the fortress. The aching wound kept him from being as delighted about that as he would have been otherwise.

When the raiders drew near the valley that cupped Etchmiadzin. Themistios rode up to Syagrios and said, "My men and I will follow the gleaming path against the materialists now. Go as Phos wills you; we cannot follow any farther."

"I can take him in from here easy enough," Syagrios answered, nodding. "Do what you need to do, Themistios, and may the good god keep his eyes on you and your lads."

Singing a hymn with Thanasiot lyrics, the zealots wheeled their horses and rode back out of the holy work of slaughter and destruction. Syagrios and Phostis kept on toward the stronghold of Etchmiadzin.

"We'll get you patched up proper, make sure that arm's all right before we send you out again." Syagrios said as the gray stone mass of the fortress came in view. "Might be just as well I'm here, too, in case we need to settle anything while Livanios is in the field."

"Whatever you say." All Phostis wanted was a chance to get down from his horse and not have to mount again for, say, the next ten years.

Etchmiadzin seemed strangely spacious as he and Syagrios rode through the muddy streets toward the fortress. Wits dulled by pain and fatigue. Phostis needed longer than he should have to figure out why. At last he realized that most of the soldiers who had swelled the town through the winter were off glorifying the lord with the great and good mind by laying waste to what they reckoned the creations of his evil foe.

Only a couple of sentries stood guard at the fortress gate. The inner ward felt empty without warriors at weapons practice or listening to one of Livanios' orations. Most of the heresiarch's chief aides seemed to have gone with him; at least no one came out of the keep to take a report from Syagrios.

As Phostis soon discovered, that was because the keep was almost empty, too. His footsteps and Syagrios' echoed down the halls that had been crammed with soldiers. At least life did exist inside. A trooper came out of the chamber where Livanios had been wont to hold audiences as if he were Avtokrator. Seeing Phostis leaning on Syagrios, he asked the ruffian, "What happened to him?"

"What does it look like?" Syagrios growled. "He just found out he's been chosen patriarch and he can't even walk for the joy of it." The Thanasiot gaped; Phostis fought not to giggle as he watched the fellow realize Syagrios was being sarcastic. Syagrios pointed to the stained bandage on his shoulder. "He got shot in a scrape with the imperials—he did good."

"All right, but why bring him back here?" the soldier said. "He don't look like he's hurt too bad."

"You likely can't tell under all the dirt and stuff, but this is the Emperor's brat." Syagrios answered. "We need to take a little more care with him than with your regular fighter."

"Why?" Like any Videssian, the Thanasiot was ready to argue about his faith on any excuse or none. "We're all alike on the gleaming path."

"Yeah, but Phostis here has special worth," Syagrios returned. "If we use him right, he can help us put lots of new people on the gleaming path."

The soldier chewed on that: literally, for he gnawed at his lower lip while he thought. At last, grudgingly, he nodded. "The doctrine may be sound."

Syagrios turned his head to mutter into Phostis' ear, "The clincher is, I'd have chopped him into raven's meat if he said me nay." He gave his attention back to the trooper. "Is anybody left alive in the kitchens? We're starved, and not on purpose."

"Should be someone there," the fellow answered, though he frowned at Syagrios' levity.

Phostis had not had much appetite since he was wounded. Now his belly rumbled hungrily at the thought of food. Maybe that meant he was getting better.

The smell of bean porridge and onions and bread in the kitchens made his insides growl all over again. Bowls were piled in great stacks there, against a need that had for the moment gone. Only a handful of people sat at the long tables. Phostis' heart gave a lurch—one of them was Olyvria.

She looked around to see who the newcomers were. Phostis must have been as grimy as Syagrios had said, for she recognized the ruffian first. Then her eyes traveled from Phostis' face to the stained bandage on his shoulder and back again. He saw them widen. "What happened?" she exclaimed as she hurried over to the two men.

"I got shot," Phostis answered. Keeping his tone as light as he could, he went on, "I'll probably live." He couldn't say anything more, but did his silent best to urge her not to give anything away. Having Syagrios find out—or even suspect— they were lovers would be more likely fatal than the shaft the cavalryman had put into him.

They were lucky. Syagrios evidently didn't suspect, and so wasn't alert for any small clues they might have given him. He boomed, "Aye, he fought well—better'n I had any reason to think he would, my lady. He was riding toward the imperials when one of 'em got him. I drew the arrow myself and cleaned the wound. It seems to be healing well enough."

Now Olyvria looked at Phostis as if she didn't know what to make of him. She probably didn't: he hadn't gone out intending to fight, let alone well enough to draw praise from Syagrios. But self-preservation had made him swing his sword against the monk with the club, and the ruffian thought he'd been attacking the imperials, not trying to give himself up to them. The world got very strange sometimes.

"Could I please have some food before I fall over?" he asked plaintively.

Between them, Syagrios and Olyvria all but dragged him to a table, sat him down, and brought back bread, hard crumbly cheese, and wine he reckoned fit only for washing out wounded shoulders. He knocked back a hefty mug of it anyhow, and felt it mount quickly to his head. In between bites of bread and cheese, he gave Olyvria a carefully edited version of how he'd ended up on the pointed end of an arrow.

"I see," she said when he was through. He wasn't sure she did, but then he wasn't exactly sure himself of the wherefores of everything that had happened. She turned to Syagrios. Speaking carefully herself, and as if Phostis were not sitting across from her, she said, "When he was ordered to go out raiding, I thought the plan might be to expend him to bring woe to his father."

"That was in your father's mind, my lady," Syagrios agreed, also ignoring him, "but he doubted the lad's faith in the gleaming path. Since it's real, he becomes worth more to us alive than dead. That's what I figured, anyways."

"Let's hope you're right," Olyvria said with what Phostis hoped was a good imitation of dispassion.

He kept munching on the loaf of bread. The falser he was to what Syagrios thought him to be, the better off he did. What was the lesson there? That Syagrios was so wicked being false to him turned good? Then how to explain the way the ruffian had cared for him, brought him back to Etchmiadzin, and now poured more of that vile but potent wine into his mug?

He raised it left-handed. "Here's to—using my other arm soon."

Everyone drank.