Krispos the Emperor

I

Krispos sopped a heel of bread in the fermented fish sauce that had gone over his mutton. He ate the bread in two bites, washed it down with a final swallow of sweet, golden Vaspurakaner wine, set the silver goblet back on the table.

Before he could even let out a contented sigh, Barsymes came into the little dining chamber to clear away his dishes. Krispos cocked an eyebrow at the eunuch chamberlain. "How do you time that so perfectly, esteemed sir?" he asked. "It's not sorcery, I know, but it always strikes me as magical."

The vestiarios hardly paused as he answered, "Your Majesty, attention to your needs is the proper business of every palace servitor." His voice was a tone for which Videssian had no name, halfway between tenor and contralto. His long, pale fingers deftly scooped up plates and goblet, knife and fork and spoon, set them on a vermeil tray.

As Barsymes worked, Krispos studied his face. Like any eunuch gelded before puberty, the vestiarios had no beard. That was part of what made him look younger than he was, but not all. His skin was very fine, and had hardly wrinkled or sagged through the many years Krispos had known him. Being a eunuch, he still had a boy's hairline, and his hair was still black (though that, at least, might have come from a bottle).

Suddenly curious, Krispos said, "How old are you, Barsymes? Do you mind my asking? When I became Avtokrator of the Videssians, I would have sworn on Phos' holy name that you had more years than I. Now, though, I'd take oath the other way round."

"I would not have your Majesty forsworn either way," Barsymes answered seriously. "As a matter of fact, I do not know my exact age. If I were forced to guess. I would say we were not far apart. And, if your Majesty would be so gracious as to forgive me, memories are apt to shift with time, and you have sat on the imperial throne for—is it twenty-two years now? Yes, of course; the twenty-year jubilee was summer before last."

"Twenty-two years," Krispos murmured. Sometimes the day when he walked down to Videssos the city to seek his fortune after being taxed off his farm seemed like last week. He'd had more muscle than brains back then—what young man doesn't? The only trait he was sure he kept from his peasant days was a hard stubbornness.

Sometimes, like tonight, that trek down from his village seemed so distant, it might have happened to someone else. He was past fifty now, though like Barsymes he wasn't sure just how old he was. The imperial robes concealed a comfortable potbelly. His hair had gone no worse than iron gray, but white frosted his beard, his mustache, even his eyebrows. Perverse vanity kept him from the dye pot—he knew he was no boy any more, so why pretend to anyone else?

"Will your Majesty forgive what might perhaps be perceived as an indiscretion?" Barsymes asked.

"Esteemed sir, these days I'd welcome an indiscretion," Krispos declared. "One of the things I do miss about my early days is having people come right out and tell me what they think instead of what they think will please me or what's to their own advantage. Go on; say what you will."

"Nothing of any great moment," the vestiarios said. "It merely crossed my mind that you might find it lonely, eating by yourself at so many meals."

"Banquets can be dull, too," Krispos said. But that wasn't what Barsymes meant, and he knew it. Here in the residence where the Avtokrator and his family had more privacy than anywhere else (not much, by anyone else's standard— Barsymes, for instance, was in the habit of dressing Krispos every morning), meals should have been a time when everyone could just sit around and talk. Krispos remembered many such meals—happy even if sometimes short on food—in the peasant huts where he'd grown to manhood.

Maybe if Dara were still alive ... His marriage to his predecessor's widow began as an alliance of convenience for both of them, but despite some quarrels and rocky times it had grown into more than that. And Dara had always got on well with their sons, too. But Dara had gone to Phos' light, or so Krispos sincerely hoped, almost ten years before. Since then ...

"Evripos and Katakolon, I suppose, are out prowling for women," Krispos said. "That's what they usually do of nights, anyhow, being the ages they are."

"Yes," Barsymes said tonelessly. He had never prowled for women, nor would he. Sometimes he took a sort of melancholy pride in being above desire. Krispos often thought he must have wondered what he was missing, but he'd never have the nerve to ask. Only those far from the palace quarter imagined the Avtokrator as serene and undisputed master of his household.

Krispos sighed. "As for Phostis, well, I just don't know what Phostis is up to right now."

He sighed again. Phostis, his eldest, his heir—his cuckoo's egg? He'd never known for sure whether Dara had conceived by him or by Anthimos. whom he'd overthrown. The boy's— no, young man's now—looks were no help, for he looked like Dara. Krispos' doubts had always made it hard for him to warm up to the child he'd named for his own father.

And now ... Now he wondered if he'd been so nearly intolerable as he was growing into manhood. He didn't think so, but who does, looking back on his own youth? Of course, his own younger years were full of poverty and hunger and fear and backbreaking work. He'd spared Phostis all that, but he wondered if his son was the better for it.

He probably was. There were those in Videssos the city who praised the hard, simple life the Empire's peasants led. who even put into verse the virtues that life imbued into those peasants. Krispos thought they were full of the manure they'd surely never touched with their own daintily manicured fingers.

Barsymes said, "The young Majesty will yet make you proud." Fondness touched his usually cool voice. Since he could have no children of his own, he doted on the ones he'd helped raise from infancy.

"I hope you're right," Krispos said. He worried still. Was Phostis as he was because of Anthimos' blood coming through? The man Krispos had supplanted in Dara's bed and then in the palaces had had a sort of hectic brilliance to him, but applied it chiefly in pursuit of pleasure. Whenever Phostis did something extravagantly foolish, Krispos worried about his paternity.

Was Phostis really spoiled from growing up soft? Or, asked the cold, suspicious part of Krispos that never quite slept and that had helped keep him on the throne for more than two decades, was he just getting tired of watching his father rule vigorously? Did he want to take the Empire of Videssos into his own young hands?

Krispos looked up at Barsymes. "If a man can't rely on his own son, esteemed sir, upon whom can he rely? Present company excepted, of course."

"Your Majesty is gracious." The vestiarios dipped his head. "As I said, however, I remain confident Phostis will satisfy your every expectation of him."

"Maybe," was all Krispos said.

Accepting his gloom, Barsymes picked up the tray and began to take it back to the kitchens. He paused at the doorway. "Will your Majesty require anything more of me?"

"No, not for now. Just make sure the candles in the study are lit, if you'd be so kind. I have the usual pile of parchments there waiting for review, and I can't do them all by daylight."

"I shall see to it," Barsymes promised. "Er—anything besides that?"

"No, eminent sir, nothing else, thank you," Krispos said. He'd had a few women in the palaces since Dara died, but his most recent mistress had seemed convinced he would make her relatives rich and powerful regardless of their merits, which were slender. He'd sent her packing.

Now—now his desire burned cooler than it had in his younger days. Little by little, he thought, he was beginning to approach Barsymes' status. He had never said that out loud and never would, for fear both of wounding the chamberlain's feelings and of encountering his pungent sarcasm.

Krispos waited a couple of minutes, then walked down the hall to the study. The cheerful glow of candlelight greeted him from the doorway: As usual, Barsymes gave flawless service. The stack of documents on the desk was less gladsome. Sometimes Krispos likened that stack to an enemy city that had to be besieged and then taken. But a city had to be captured only once. The parchments were never vanquished for good.

He'd watched Anthimos ignore administration for the sake of pleasure. Perhaps in reaction, he ignored pleasure for administration. When the pile of parchments was very high, as tonight, he wondered if Anthimos hadn't known the better way after all. Without a doubt, Anthimos had enjoyed himself more than Krispos did now. But equally without a doubt, the Empire was better served now than it had been during Anthimos' antic reign.

Reed pens and the scarlet ink reserved for the Avtokrator of the Videssians alone, stylus and wax-covered wooden tablets, and sky-blue sealing wax waited in a neat row at the left edge of the desk, like regiments ready to be committed to battle against the implacable enemy. Feeling a moment's foolishness, Krispos saluted them, clenched right fist over his heart. Then he sat down and got to work.

Topping the pile was a tax report from the frontier province of Kubrat, between the Paristrian Mountains and the Istros River, north and east of Videssos the city. When Krispos' reign began, it had been the independent khaganate of Kubrat, a barbarous nation whose horsemen had raided the Empire for centuries. Now herds and farms and mines brought gold rather than terror south of the mountains. Solid progress there, he thought. He scrawled his signature to show he'd read the cadaster and approved its revenue total.

The second report was also from Kubrat. Even after most of a generation under Videssian rule, the prelate of Pliskavos reported, heresy and outright heathenism remained rife in the province. Many of the nomads would not turn aside from their ancestral spirits to worship Phos, the good god the Empire followed. And the folk of Videssian stock, subject for centuries to the invaders from the steppe, had fallen into strange usages and errors because they were so long cut off from the mainstream of doctrine in Videssos.

Krispos reinked the pen, reached into a pigeonhole for a blank parchment. Krispos Avtokrator to the holy sir Balaneus:

Greetings, he wrote, and then paused for thought. The pen scratched across the sheet as he resumed: By all means keep on with your efforts to bring Kubrat and its inhabitants back to the true faith. The example of our new, perfectly orthodox colonists should help you. Use compulsion only as a last resort, but in the end do not hesitate: as we have only one Empire, so we must have only one faith within it. May Phos shine his light on your work.

He sanded the letter dry, lit a stick of sealing wax at one of the candles on the desk, let several drops fall on the letter, and pressed his ring into the blob of wax while it was still soft. A courier would take the letter north tomorrow; Balaneus ought to have it in less than a week. Krispos was pleased with the prelate and his work. He was also pleased with his own writing; he hadn't done much of it before he became Emperor, but had grown fluent with a pen since.

Another tax report followed, this one from a lowland province in the westlands, across the strait called the Cattle-Crossing from Videssos the city. The lowland province yielded four times as much revenue as Kubrat. Krispos nodded, unsurprised. The lowlands had soil and climate good enough for two crops a year, and had been free of invasion for so long that many of the towns there had no walls. That would have been unimaginable—to say nothing of suicidal—in half-barbarous Kubrat.

The next report was sealed; it came from the latest Videssian embassy to Mashiz, the capital of Makuran. Krispos knew he had to handle that one with careful attention: the Kings of Kings of Makuran were the greatest rivals Videssian Avtokrators faced, and the only rulers they recognized as equals.

He smiled when he broke the seal and saw the elegant script within. It was almost as familiar as his own hand. "Iakovitzes to the Avtokrator Krispos: Greetings," he read, moving his lips slightly as he always did. "I trust you are cool and comfortable in the city by the sea. Were Skotos' hell to be charged with fire rather than the eternal ice, Mashiz would let the dark god get a good notion of what he required."

Krispos' smile broadened. He'd first met Iakovitzes when he was nine years old, when the Videssian noble ransomed his family and other peasants from captivity in Kubrat. In the more than forty years since, he'd seldom known the plump little man to have a kind word for anyone or anything.

Warming to his theme (if that was the proper phrase), Iakovitzes continued, "Rubyab King of Kings has gone and done something sneaky. I have not yet learned what it is, but the little waxed tips to his mustaches quiver whenever he deigns to grant me an audience, so I presume it is something not calculated to make you sleep better of nights, your Majesty. I've spread about a few goldpieces—the Makuraners coin only silver, as you know, so they lust for gold as I do after pretty boys—but without success as yet. I keep trying."

The smile left Krispos' face. He'd sent Iakovitzes to Makuran precisely because he was so good at worming information out of unlikely places. He read on: "Other than his mustaches, Rubyab is being reasonably cooperative. I think I shall be able to talk him out of restoring that desert fortress his troops won in our last little skirmish for the donative you have in mind. He also seems willing to lower the tolls he charges caravans for permission to enter Videssos from his realm. That, in turn, may, should, but probably will not, enable those thieves to lower their prices to us."

"Good," Krispos said aloud. He'd been after Makuran to lower those tolls since the days of Rubyab's father Nakhorgan. If the King of Kings finally intended to yield there, and to restore the fortress of Sarmizegetusa, maybe Iakovitzes was reading too much into waggling waxed mustachios.

Another cadaster followed Iakovitzes' letter from Makuran. Krispos wondered if Barsymes deliberately arranged the parchments to keep him from being stupefied by one tax list after another. The vestiarios had served in the palaces a long time now; his definition of perfect service grew broader every year.

After scrawling I have read it—Krispos at the bottom of the tax document, Krispos went on to the parchment beneath it. Like Balaneus' missive, this one also came from an ecclesiastic, here a priest from Pityos, a town on the southern coast of the Videssian Sea, just across the Rhamnos River from Vaspurakan.

"The humble priest Taronites to Krispos Avtokrator: Greetings. May it please your Majesty, I regret I must report the outbreak of a new and malignant heresy among the peasants and herders dwelling in the hinterlands of this Phos-forsaken municipality."

Krispos snorted. Why that sort of news was supposed to please him had always been beyond his comprehension. Formal written Videssian, he sometimes thought, was designed to obscure meaning rather than reveal it. His eyes went back to the page.

"This heresy strikes me as one particularly wicked and also as one calculated as if by the foul god Skotos to deceive both the light-minded and those of a certain type of what might in other circumstances be termed piety. As best I can gather, its tenets are—"

The more Krispos read, the less he liked. The heretics, if Taronites had things straight, believed the material world to have been created by Skotos, not Phos. Phos' light, then, inhabited only the soul, not the body in which it dwelt. Thus killing, for example, but liberated the soul from its trap of corrupting flesh. Arson was merely the destruction of that which was already dross. Even robbery had the salutary effect on its victim of lessening his ties to the material. If ever a theology had been made for brigands, this was it.

Taronites wrote, "This wickedness appears first to have been perpetrated and put forward by a certain Thanasios, wherefrom its adherents style themselves Thanasioi. I pray that your Majesty may quickly send both many priests to instruct the populace hereabouts on proper doctrine and many troops to lay low the Thanasioi and protect the fearful orthodox from the depredations. May Phos be with you always in your struggle for the good"

On the petition, Krispos wrote, Your requests shall be granted. Then he picked up stylus and tablet and scribbled two notes to himself, for action in the morning: to see Oxeites the ecumenical patriarch on sending a priestly delegation to Pityos, and to write to the provincial governor to get him to shift troops to the environs of the border town.

He read through the note from Taronites again, put it down with a shake of his head. A naturally argumentative folk, the Videssians were never content simply to leave their faith as they had found it. Whenever two of them got together, they tinkered with it: theological argument was as enjoyable a sport as watching the horses run in the Amphitheater. This time, though, the tinkering had gone awry.

He used the third leaf of the waxed tablet for another self-reminder: to draft an imperial edict threatening outlawry for anyone professing the doctrines of Thanasios. Patriarch, too, he scribbled. Adding excommunication to outlawry would strengthen the edict nicely.

After that, he was relieved to get back to an ordinary, unthreatening tax register. This one, from the eastern province of Develtos, made him feel good. A band of invading Halogai from the far north had sacked the fortress of Develtos not long after he became Avtokrator. This year, for the first time, revenues from the province exceeded what they'd been before the fortress fell.

Well done, he wrote at the bottom of the register. The log-othetes and clerks who handled cadasters for the treasury would know he was pleased. Without their patient, usually unloved work, Videssos would crash to the ground. As Emperor, Krispos understood that. When he'd been a peasant, he'd loved tax collectors no better than any other kind of locust.

He got up, stretched, rubbed his eyes. Working by candlelight was hard, and had grown harder the past few years as his sight began to lengthen. He didn't know what he would do if his eyes kept getting worse: would he have to have someone read each petition to him and hope he could remember enough to decide it sensibly? He didn't look forward to that, but had trouble coming up with any better answer.

He stretched again, yawned until his jaw creaked. "The best answer right now is some sleep," he said aloud. He lit a little lamp at one of the candles, then blew them out. The smell of hot wax filled his nostrils.

Most of the torches in the hallway had gone out. The guttering flames of those that still burned made Krispos' shadow writhe and swoop like something with a life of its own. The lamp he carried cast a small, wan pool of light around him.

He walked past Barsymes' chamber. He'd lived there once himself, when he'd been one of the rare vestiarioi who were not eunuchs. Now he occupied the room next door, the imperial bedchamber. He'd slept there longer than in any other quarters he'd ever had. Sometimes that just seemed a simple part of the way his world worked. Tonight, though, as often happened when he thought about it, he found it very strange.

He opened the double doors. Inside the bedchamber, someone stirred. Ice ran up his back. He stooped to pluck a dagger from his scarlet boot, filled his lungs to shout for help from the Haloga guards at the entranceway to the imperial residence. Avtokrators of the Videssins too often died in unpeaceful ways.

The shout died unuttered; Krispos quickly straightened. This was no assassin in his bed, only one of the palace serving maids. She smiled an invitation at him.

He shook his head. "Not tonight, Drina," he said. "I told the esteemed sir I intended to go straight to sleep."

"That's not what he said to me, your Majesty," Drina answered, shrugging. Her bare shoulders gleamed in the lamplight as she sat up taller in bed. The lamp left most of the rest of her in shadow, making her an even greater mystery than woman ordinarily is. "He said to come make you happy, so here I am."

"He must have misheard." Krispos didn't believe that, not for a minute. Barsymes did not mishear his instructions. Every so often he simply decided not to listen to them. This seemed to be one of those nights. "It's all right, Drina. You may go."

In a small voice, the maid said, "May it please your Majesty, I'd truly sooner not. The vestiarios would be most displeased if I left you."

Who rules here, Barsymes or I? But Krispos did not say that, not out loud. He ruled the Empire, but around the palaces what was pleasing to the vestiarios had the force of law. Some eunuch chamberlains used their intimacy with the Avtokrator for their own advantage or that of their relatives. Barsymes, to his credit, had never done that. In exchange, Krispos deferred to him on matters affecting only the palaces.

So now he yielded with such grace as he could: "Very well, stay if you care to. No one need know we'll sleep on opposite sides of the bed."

Drina still looked worried but, like any good servant, knew how far she could safely push her master. "As you say, your Majesty." She scurried over to the far side of the bed. "Here, you rest where I've been lying. I'll have warmed it for you."

"It's not winter yet, by the good god, and I'm no invalid," Krispos said with a snort. But he pulled his robe off over his head and draped it on a bedpost. Then he stepped out of his sandals, blew out the lamp, and got into bed. The warm silk of the sheets was kind to his skin. As his head met the down-filled pillow, he smelled the faint sweetness that said Drina had rested there before him.

For a moment, he wanted her in spite of his own weariness. But when he opened his mouth to tell her so, what came out was an enormous yawn. He thought he excused himself, but fell asleep so fast he was never sure.

He woke up some time in the middle of the night. That happened more and more often as the years went by. He needed a few seconds to realize what the round smoothness pressed against his side was. Drina breathed smoothly, easily, carefree as a sleeping child. Krispo envied her lack of worry, then smiled when he thought he was partly responsible for it.

Now he did want her. When he reached over her shoulder to cup her breast in his hand, she muttered something drowsy and happy and rolled onto her back. She hardly woke up as he caressed her and then took her. He found that kind of trust strangely touching, and tried hard to be as gentle as he could.

Afterward, she quickly slipped back into deep sleep. Krispos got out of bed to use the chamber pot, then lay down beside her again. He, too, was almost asleep when he suddenly wondered, not for the first time, whether Barsymes knew him better than he knew himself.

The trouble with the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, Phostis thought, was that the windows were too big. The ceremonial hall, named back in the days when Videssian nobles actually ate reclining, was cooler in summer than most, thanks to those large windows. But the torches, lamps, and candles needed for nighttime feasts were lodestones for moths, mosquitoes, water bugs, even bats and birds. Watching a crisped moth land in the middle of a bowl of pickled octopus tentacles did not inflame the appetite. Watching a nightjar swoop down and snatch the moth out of the bowl made Phostis wish he'd never summoned his friends to the feast in the first place.

He thought about announcing it was over, but that wouldn't do, either. Inevitably, word would get back to his father. He could already hear Krispos' peasant-accented voice ringing in his ears: The least you could do, son, is make up your mind.

The imagined scolding seemed so real that he whipped his head around in alarm, wondering if Krispos had somehow snuck up behind him. But no—save for his own companions, he was alone here.

He felt very much alone. One thing his father had succeeded in doing was to make him wonder who cared for him because he was himself and who merely because he was junior Avtokrator and heir to the Videssian throne. Asking the question, though, often proved easier than answering it. so he had lingering suspicions about almost everyone he knew.

"You won't need to look over your shoulder like that forever, your Majesty," said Vatatzes. who was sitting at Phostis' right hand. He trusted Vatatzes further than most of his friends; being only the son of a mid-level logothete, the youth was unlikely to have designs on the crown himself. Now he slapped Krispos on the shoulder and went on, "Surely one day before too long, you'll be able to hold your feasts when and as you like."

One more word and he would have spoken treason. Phostis' friends frequently walked that fine line. So far. to his relief, nobody had forced him to pretend not to hear something. He. too, wondered—how could he help but wonder?—how long his father would stay vigorous. It might be another day, it might be another twenty years. No way to tell without magic, and even that held risks greater than he cared to take. For one thing, as was but fitting, the finest sorcerous talent in the Empire shielded the Avtokrator's fate from those who would spy it out. For another, seeking to divine an Emperor's future was in and of itself a capital crime.

Phostis wondered what Krispos was doing now. Administering affairs, probably: that was what his father usually did. A couple of years before. Krispos had tried to get him to share some of the burden. He'd tried, too, but it hadn't been pleasant work, especially because Krispos stood behind him while he shuffled through parchments.

Again, he could almost hear his father: "Hurry up, boy! One way or another, you have to decide. If you don't do it, who will?"

And his own wail: "But what if I'm wrong?"

"You will be, sometimes." Krispos had spoken with such maddening certainty that he wanted to hit him. "You try to do a couple of things: You try not to make the same mistake twice, and you take the chance to set one right later if it comes along."

Put that way, it sounded so easy. But after a couple of days of case after complex case, Phostis concluded ease in anything—fishing, sword-swallowing, running an empire, anything—came only with having done the job for years and years. As most young men do, he suspected he was brighter than his father. He certainly had a better education: He was good at ciphering, he could quote secular poets and historians as well as Phos' holy scriptures, and he didn't talk as if he'd just stepped away from a plow.

But Krispos had one thing he lacked: experience. His father did what needed doing almost without thinking about it, then went on to the next thing and took care of that, too. Meanwhile Phostis himself floundered and bit his lip, wondering where proper action lay. By the time he made one choice, three more had grown up to stare him in the face.

He knew he'd disappointed his father when he asked to be excused from his share of imperial business. "How will you learn what you need to know, save by this work?" Krispos had asked.

"But I can't do it properly," he'd answered. To him, that explained everything—if something didn't come easy, why not work at something else instead?

Krispos had shaken his head. "Wouldn't you sooner find that out now, while I'm here to show you what you need, then after I'm gone and you find the whole sack of barley on your back at once?"

The rustic metaphor hadn't helped persuade Phostis. He wished his family's nobility ran back farther than his father, wished he wasn't named for a poor farmer dead of cholera.

Vatatzes snapped him out of his gloomy reverie. "What say we go find us some girls, eh, your Majesty?"

"Go on if you care to. You'll probably run into my brothers if you do." Phostis laughed without much mirth, as much at himself as at Evripos and Katakolon. He couldn't even enjoy the perquisites of imperial life as they did. Ever since he'd discovered how many women would lie down with him merely on account of the title he bore, much of the enjoyment had gone out of the game.

Some nobles kept little enclosures where they hand-raised deer and boar until the animals grew tame as pets. Then they'd shoot them. Phostis had never seen the sport in that, or in bedding girls who either didn't dare say no or else turned sleeping with him into as cold-blooded a calculation as any Krispos made in the age-long struggle between Videssos and Makuran.

He'd tried explaining that to his brothers once, not long after Katakolon, then fourteen, seduced—or was seduced by—one of the women who did the palace laundry. Exalted by his own youthful prowess, he'd paid no heed whatever to Phostis. As for Evripos, he'd said only. "Do you want to don the blue robe and live out your life as a monk? Suit yourself, big brother, but it's not the life for me."

Had he wanted a monastic life, it would have been easy to arrange. But the sole reason he'd ever considered it was to get away from his father. He lacked both a monkish vocation and a monkish temperament. It wasn't that he sought to mortify his flesh, but rather that he—usually—found loveless or mercenary coupling more mortifying than none.

He often wondered how he would do when Krispos decided to marry him off. He was just glad that day had not yet arrived. When it did, he was sure his father would pick him a bride with more of an eye toward advantage for the imperial house than toward his happiness. Sometimes marriages of that sort worked as well as any others. Sometimes—

He turned to Vatatzes. "My friend, you know not how fortunate you are. coming from a family of but middling rank. All too often, I feel my birth more as a cage or a curse than as something in which to rejoice."

"Ah, your Majesty, you've drunk yourself sad, that's all it is." Vatatzes turned to the panpiper and pandoura player who made soft music as a background against which to talk. He snapped his fingers and raised his voice. "Here, you fellows, give us something lively now, to lift the young Majesty's spirits."

The musicians put their heads together for a moment. The man with the panpipes set them down and picked up a kettle-shaped drum. Heads came up all through the Hall of the Nineteen Couches as his hands evoked thunder from the drumhead. The pandoura player struck a ringing, fiery chord. Phostis recognized the Vaspurakaner dance they played, but it failed to gladden him.

Before long, almost all the feasters snaked along in a dance line, clapping their hands and shouting in time to the tune. Phostis sat in his place even when Vatatzes tugged at the sleeve of his robe. Finally, with a shrug, Vatatzes gave up and joined the dance. He prescribed for me the medicine that works for him, Phostis thought. He didn't want to be joyous, though. Discontent suited him.

When he got to his feet, the dancers cheered. But he did not join their line. He walked through the open bronze doors of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, down the low, broad marble stairs. He looked up at the sky, gauging the time by how high the waning gibbous moon had risen. Somewhere in the fifth hour of the night, he judged—not far from midnight.

He lowered his eyes. The imperial residence was separated from the rest of the buildings of the palace compound and Ncreened off by a grove of cherry trees, to give the Avtokrator and his family at least the illusion of privacy. Through the trees, Phostis saw one window brightly lit by candles or lamps. He nodded to himself. Yes, Krispos was at work there. With peasant persistence, his father kept on fighting against the immensity of the Empire he ruled.

As Phostis watched, the window went dark. Even Krispos occasionally yielded to sleep, though Phostis was sure he would have evaded it if he could.

Somebody stuck his head out through one of the Hall's many big windows. "Come on back, your Majesty." he called, voice blurry with wine. "It's just starting to get bouncy in here."

"Go on without me," Phostis said. He wished he'd never gathered the feasters together. The ease with which they enjoyed themselves only made his own unhappiness seem worse by comparison.

He absently swatted at a mosquito; there weren't as many out here, away from the lights. With the last lamps extin-guished in the imperial residence, it fell into invisibility behind the cherry grove. He started walking slowly in that direction; he didn't want to get there until he was sure his father had gone to bed.

Haloga guardsmen stood outside the doorway. The big blond northerners raised their axes in salute as they recognized Phostis. Had he been a miscreant, the axes would have gone up. too, but not as a gesture of respect.

As always, one of the palace eunuchs waited just inside the entrance. "Good evening, young Majesty," he said, bowing politely to Phostis.

"Good evening, Mystakon," Phostis answered. Of all the eunuch chamberlains, Mystakon was closest to his own age and hence the one he thought most likely to understand and sympathize with him. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder how Mystakon felt, going through what should have been ripe young manhood already withered on the vine, so to speak. "Is my father asleep?"

"He is in bed, yes," Mystakon answered with the peculiarly toneless voice eunuchs could affect to communicate subtle double meanings.

Phostis, however, noticed no subtleties tonight. All he felt was a surge of relief at having got through another day without having to confront his father—or having his father confront him. "I will go to bed, too, prominent sir," he said, using Mys-takon's special title in the eunuch hierarchy.

"Everything is in readiness for you, young Majesty," Mystakon said, a tautology: Phostis would have been shocked were his chamber not ready whenever he needed it. "If you would be so kind as to accompany me—"

Phostis let the chamberlain guide him down the hallways he could have navigated blindfolded. In the torchlight, the souvenirs of long centuries of imperial triumph seemed somehow faded, indistinct. The conical helmet that had once belonged to a King of Kings of Makuran was just a lump of iron, the painting of Videssian troops pouring over the walls of Mashiz was a daub that could have depicted any squabble. Phostis shook his head. Was he merely tired, or was the light playing tricks on his eyes?

His bedchamber lay as far from Krispos' as it could, in a tucked-away corner of the imperial residence. It had stood empty for years, maybe centuries, until he chose it as a refuge from his father not long after his beard began to sprout.

The door to the chamber stood ajar. Butter-yellow light trickling through the opening said a lamp had been kindled. "Do you require anything further, young Majesty?" Mystakon asked. "Some wine, perhaps, or some bread and cheese? Or I could inquire if any mutton is left from that which was served to your father."

"No, don't bother," Phostis said, more sharply than he'd intended. He tried to soften his voice. "I'm content, thank you. I just want to get some rest."

"As you say, young Majesty." Mystakon glided away. Like many eunuchs, he was soft and plump. He walked in soft slippers, silently and with little mincing steps. With his robes swirling around him as he moved, he reminded Phostis of a beamy merchant ship under full sail.

Phostis closed and barred the door behind him. He took off his robe and got out of his sandals. They were all-red, like his father's—about the only imperial prerogative he shared with Krispos, he thought bitterly. He threw himself down on the bed and blew out the lamp. The bedchamber plunged into blackness, and Phostis into sleep.

He dreamed. He'd always been given to vivid dreams, and this one was more so than most. In it he found himself pacing, naked and fat, through a small enclosure. Food was everywhere-—mutton, bread and cheese, jar upon jar of wine.

His father peered at him from over the top of a wooden fence. Phostis watched Krispos nod in sober satisfaction ... and reach for a hunting bow.

Next thing he knew, he was awake, his heart pounding, his body bathed with cold sweat. For a moment, he thought the darkness that filled his sight meant death. Then full awareness returned. He sketched Phos' sun-circle above his chest in thanks as he realized his nightmare was not truth.

That helped calm him, until he thought of his place at court. He shivered. Maybe the dream held some reality after all.

Zaidas went down on his knees before Krispos. then to his belly, letting his forehead knock against the bright tesserae of the mosaic floor in full proskynesis. "Up. up," Krispos said impatiently. "You know I have no great use for ceremonial."

The wizard rose as smoothly as he had prostrated himself. "Yes, your Majesty, but you know the respect a mage will show to ritual. Without ritual, our art would fall to nothing."

"So you've said, many times these past many years," Krispos answered. "Now the ritual is over. Sit, relax; let us talk." He waved Zaidas to a chair in the chamber where he'd been working the night before.

Barsymes came in with a jar of wine and two crystal goblets. The vestiarios poured for Emperor and mage, then bowed himself out. Zaidas savored his wine's bouquet for a moment before he sipped. He smiled. "That's a fine vintage, your Majesty."

Krispos drank, too. "Aye, it is pleasant. I fear I'll never make a proper connoisseur, though. It's all so much better than what I grew up drinking that I have trouble telling what's just good from the best."

Zaidas took another, longer, pull at his goblet. "What we have here, your Majestry, is among the best, let me assure you." The mage was a tall, slim man, about a dozen years younger than Krispos—the first white threads were appearing in the dark fabric of his beard. Krispos remembered him as a skinny, excitable youth, already full of talent. It had not shrunk with his maturity.

Barsymes returned, now with a tureen and two bowls. "Porridge with salted anchovies to break your fast, your Majesty, excellent sir."

The porridge was of wheat, silky smooth, and rich with cream. The anchovies added piquancy. Krispos knew that if he asked his cook for plain, lumpy barley porridge, the man would quit in disgust. As with the wine, he knew this was better, but sometimes he craved the tastes with which he'd grown up.

When his bowl was about half empty, he said to Zaidas, "The reason I asked you here today was a report I've had from the westlands about a new heresy that seems to have arisen there. By this account, it's an unpleasant one." He passed the mage the letter from the priest Taronites.

Zaidas read it through, his brow furrowing in concentration. When he was done, he looked up at Krispos. "Yes, your Majesty, if the holy sir's tale is to be fully credited, these Thanasioi seem most unpleasant heretics indeed. But while there is some considerable connection between religion and sorcery, I'd have thought you'd go first to the ecclesiastical authorities rather than to a layman like me."

"In most cases, I would have. In fact, I've already directed the ecumenical patriarch to send priests to Pityos. But these heretics sound so vile—if, as you say, Taronites is to be believed—that I wondered if they have any connection to our old friend Harvas."

Zaidas pursed his lips, then let air hiss out between. Harvas—or perhaps his proper name was Rhavas—had dealt the Empire fierce blows in the north and east in the first years of Krispos' reign. He was, or seemed to be, a renegade priest of Phos who had gone over to the dark god Skotos and thus prolonged his own wicked life more than two centuries beyond its natural terms. With help from Zaidas, among others, Videssian forces had vanquished the Halogai that Harvas led at Pliskavos in Kubrat; his own power was brought to nothing there. But he had not been taken, alive or dead.

"What precisely do you wish me to do, your Majesty?" Zaidas asked.

"You head the Sorcerers' Collegium these days, my friend, and you were always sensitive to Harvas' style of magic. If anyone can tell through sorcery whether Harvas is the one behind these Thanasioi, I expect you're the man. Is such a thing possible, what with the little we have to go on here?" Krispos tapped Taronites' letter with a forefinger.

"An interesting question." Zaidas looked through rather than at Krispos as he considered. At last he said, "Perhaps it may be done, your Majesty, though the sorcery required will be most delicate. A basic magical principle is the law of similarity, which is to say, like causes yield like effects. Most effective in this case, I believe, would be an inversion of the law in an effort to determine whether like effects—the disruption and devastation of the Empire now and from Harvas' past depredations—spring from like causes."

"You know your business best," Krispos said. He'd never tried to learn magical theory himself; what mattered to him were the results he might attain through sorcery.

Zaidas, however, kept right on explaining, perhaps to fix his ideas in his own mind. "The law of contagion might also prove relevant. If Harvas was in physical contact with any of these Thanasioi who then came into contact with the priest Taronites, directly or indirectly, such a trace might appear on the parchment here. Under normal circumstances, two or three intermediate contacts would blur the originator beyond hope of detection. Such was Harvas' power, however, and such was our comprehension of the nature of that power, that it ought to be detectable at several more removes."

"Just as you say," Krispos answered agreeably. Perhaps because of his lectures at the Sorcerers' Collegium. Zaidas had a knack for expounding magecraft so clearly that it made sense to the Avtokrator, even if he lacked both ability and interest in practicing it himself. He asked, "How long before you will be ready to try your sorcery?"

That faraway look returned to Zaidas' eyes. "I shall of course require the parchment here. Then the research required to frame the precise terms of the spell to be employed and the gathering of the necessary materials ... not that those can't proceed concurrently, of course. Your Majesty, were it war, I could try tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight. I would be more confident of the results obtained, though, if I had another couple of days to refine my original formulation."

"Take the time you need to be right," Krispos said. "If Harvas is at the bottom of this, we must know it. And if he appears not to be, we must be certain he's not concealing himself through his own magic."

"All true, your Majesty." Zaidas tucked the letter from Taronites into the leather pouch he wore on his belt. He rose and began to prostrate himself again, as one did before leaving the Avtokrator's presence. Krispos waved a hand to tell him not to bother. Nodding, the wizard said, "I shall begin work at once."

"Thanks, Zaidas. If Harvas is on the loose—" Krispos let the sentence slide to an awkward halt. If Harvas was stirring up trouble again, he wouldn't sleep well until the wizard-prince was beaten ... or until he was beaten himself. In the latter case, his sleep would be eternal.

Zaidas knew that as well as he did. "One way or the other, your Majesty, we shall know," he promised. He bustled off to begin shaping the enchantments he would use to seek Harvas' presence.

Krispos listened to his footfalls fade down the corridor. He counted himself lucky to be served by men of the quality of Zaidas. In his less modest moments, he also thought their presence reflected well on his rule: would such good and able men have served a wicked, foolish master?

He got up from his seat, stretched, and went out into the corridor himself. Coming his way was Phostis. Both men, young and not so young, stopped in their tracks, Krispos in the doorway, his heir in the middle of the hall.

Among all the other things Phostis was, he served as a living reminder that Krispos' rule would not endure forever. Krispos remembered taking him from the midwife's arms and holding him in the crook of his elbow. Now they were almost of a height; Phostis still lacked an inch, maybe two, of Krispos' stature, but Dara had been short.

Phostis was also a living reminder of his mother. Take away his neatly trimmed dark beard—these days thick and wiry, youth's downiness almost gone—and he wore Dara's face: his features were not as craggy as Krispos', and his eyes had the same distinctive small fold of skin at the inner corner that Dara's had.

"Good morning, Father," he said.

"Good morning." Krispos answered, wondering as always if he was Phostis' father. The young man did not look like him, but he did not look like Anthimos, either. Phostis did not have Krispos' native obstinacy, that was certain; the one time he'd tried showing the lad how the Empire worked, Phostis quickly lost interest. Krispos' heart ached over that, but he'd seen enough with Anthimos to know a man could not be forced to govern against his will.

Good morning was as much as Krispos and Phostis usually had to say to each other. Krispos waited for his eldest son to walk by without another word, as was his habit. But Phostis surprised him by asking, "Why were you closeted with Zaidas so early, Father?"

"There's some trouble with heresy out in the westlands." Krispos spoke matter-of-factly to keep Phostis from knowing he was startled. If the youngster did want to learn, he would teach him. More likely, though, Krispos thought with a touch of sadness, Phostis asked just for Zaidas' sake; the wizard was like a favorite uncle to him.

"What sort of heresy?" Phostis asked.

Krispos explained the tenets of the Thanasioi as well as he could from Taronites' description of them. This question surprised him less than the previous one; theology was Videssos' favorite intellectual sport. Laymen who pored over Phos" holy scriptures were not afraid to try conclusions with the ecumenical patriarch himself.

Phostis rubbed his chin as he thought, a gesture he shared with Krispos. Then he said, "In the abstract, Father, the doctrines sound rigorous, yes, but not necessarily inspired by Skotos. Their followers may have misinterpreted how these doctrines are to be applied, but—"

"To the ice with the abstract," Krispos growled. "What matters is that these maniacs are laying the countryside to waste and murdering anyone who doesn't happen to agree with them. Save your precious abstract for the schoolroom, son."

"I simply started to say—" Phostis threw his hands in the air. "Oh, what's the use? You wouldn't listen anyhow." Muttering angrily under his breath, he marched down the corridor past Krispos.

The senior Avtokrator sighed as he watched his son's retreating back. Maybe it was better when they just mouthed platitudes at each other: then they didn't fight. But how Phostis could find anything good to say about heretics who were also bandits was beyond Krispos. Only when his heir had turned a corner and disappeared did Krispos remember that he'd interrupted the lad before he finished talking about the Thanasioi.

He sighed again. He'd have to apologize to Phostis the next time he saw him. All too likely, Phostis would take the apology the wrong way and that would start another fight. Well, if it did, it did. Krispos was willing to take the chance. By the time he thought of going down the corridor and apologizing on the spot, though, it was too late. Phostis had already left the imperial residence.

Krispos went about the business of governing with only about three-fourths of his attention for the next couple of days. Every time a messenger or a chamberlain came in, the Avtokrator forgot what he was doing in the hope the fellow would announce Zaidas' sorcery was ready. Every time he was disappointed, he went back to work in an evil temper. No miscreants were pardoned while Zaidas prepared his magic.

When at last—within the promised two days, though Krispos tried not to notice that—Zaidas was on the point of beginning, he came himself to let the Emperor know. Krispos set aside with relief the cadaster he was reading. "Lead on, excellent sir!" he exclaimed.

One difficulty with being Avtokrator was that going anywhere automatically became complicated. Krispos could not simply walk with Zaidas over to the Sorcerers' Collegium. No, he had to be accompanied by a squad of Haloga bodyguards, which made sense, and by the dozen parasol bearers whose bright silk canopies proclaimed his office—which, to his way of thinking, didn't. Throughout his reign, he'd fought hard to do away with as much useless ceremonial as he could. He knew he was losing the fight; custom was a tougher foe than Harvas' blood-maddened barbarians had ever been.

At last, though, not too interminably much later, he stood inside Zaidas' chamber on the second story of the Sorcerers' Collegium. One big blond axeman went in there with him and the wizard; two more guarded the doorway. The rest waited outside the building with the parasol bearers.

Zaidas drew forth the parchment on which Taronites had written his accusations against the Thanasioi. He also produced another parchment, this one yellowed with age. Seeing Krispos' raised eyebrow, he explained, "I took the liberty of visiting the archives, your Majesty, to secure a document indited personally by Harvas. My first spell will compare them against each other to determine whether a common malice informs both."

"I see," Krispos said, more or less truthfully. "By all means carry on as if I were not here."

"Oh, I shall, your Majesty, for my own safety's sake above any other reason," Zaidas said. Krispos nodded. That he understood completely; he'd seized the crown after Anthimos, intent on destroying him by sorcery, botched an incantation and slew himself instead.

Zaidas intoned a low-voiced prayer to Phos, ending by sketching the sun-circle over his heart. Krispos imitated the gesture. The Haloga guard did not; like most of his fellows in Videssos the city, he still followed his own nation's fierce and gloomy gods.

The wizard took from a covered dish a couple of red-brown, shriveled objects. "The dried heart and tongue of a porpoise," he said. "They shall confer invincible effect on my charm." He cut strips off them with a knife, as if he were whittling soft wood, then tossed those strips into a squat bowl of bluish liquid. With each additional fragment, the blue deepened.

Stirring his mix left-handed with a silver rod, Zaidas chanted over the bowl and used his right hand to make passes above it. He frowned. "I can feel the wickedness we face here," he said, his voice tight and tense. "Now to learn whether it comes from one parchment or both."

He took the stirring rod and let a couple of drops of the mixture in the bowl fall on a corner of the letter from the archives, the one Harvas had written. The liquid flared bright red, just the color of fresh-spilled blood.

Zaidas drew back a pace. Though he was a layman, he drew the sun-circle again, even so. "By the good god," he murmured, now sounding shocked and shaken. "I never imagined a response as intense as that. Green, even perhaps yellow, but—" He broke off, staring at Harvas' letter as if it were displaying its fangs.

"I take it you expect the petition from Taronites to do the same if Harvas has a hand in turning the Thanasioi loose on us," Krispos said.

"I sincerely hope the solution does not turn crimson, your Majesty," Zaidas said. "That would in effect mean Harvas lurked just outside the temple wherein Taronites was writing. But the change of color will indicate the degree of relationship between Harvas and these new heretics."

More cautiously than he had before, the wizard daubed some of the liquid onto Taronites' letter. Krispos leaned forward, waiting to see what color the stuff turned. He did not know whether it would go red, but he expected some change, and probably not a small one. By Zaidas' choice of words, so did he.

But the liquid stayed blue.

Both men stared at it; for that matter, so did the bodyguard. Krispos asked, "How long must we wait for the change to take place?"

"Your Majesty, if it was going to occur, it would have done so by now," Zaidas answered. Then he checked himself. "I must always bear in mind that Harvas is a master of concealment and obfuscation. Being such, he might be able to evade this test, porpoise heart or no. But there is a cross check I do not think he can escape, try as he might."

The wizard picked up the two parchments, touched the damp spots on them together. "Being directly present in the one letter, Harvas' essence cannot fail to draw forth from the other any lingering trace of him." He held the two parchments against each other long enough to let a man draw five or six breaths, then separated them.

The blue smear on Taronites' petition remained blue, not green, yellow, orange, red, or even pink. Zaidas looked astonished. Krispos was not only astonished but also profoundly suspicious. He said, "Are you saying this means Harvas has nothing whatever to do with the Thanasioi? I find that hard to believe."

"So do I, your Majesty," Zaidas said. "If you ask what I say, I say the connection between the two is all too likely. My magic, however, seems to be saying something else again."

"But is your magic right, or have you just been deceived?" Krispos demanded. "Can you tell me for certain, one way or the other? I know you understand how important this is, not just to me but to Videssos now and in the future."

"Yes, your Majesty. Having faced Harvas once, having seen the evils he worked and those to which he inspired his followers, I know you want to be as positive as possible as to whether you—and we—confront him yet again."

"That is well put," Krispos said. He doubted he could have been so judicious himself. Truth was, as soon as he'd seen Taronites' letter, the fear of Harvas rose up in his mind like a ghost in one of the romances that the booksellers hawked in the plaza of Palamas. No matter what Zaidas' magical tests said about the Thanasioi, his own terror spoke louder to him. So he went on, "Excellent sir, have you any other sorceries you might use to find out whether this one is mistaken?"

"Let me think," Zaidas said, and proceeded to do just that for the next several minutes, standing still as a statue in the center of his study. Suddenly he brightened. "I know something which may serve." He hurried over to a cabinet set against one wall and began opening its small drawers and rummaging through them.

The Haloga guardsmen moved to place himself between Krispos and Zaidas, in case the wizard suddenly whipped out a dagger and tried to murder the Avtokrator. This he did though Zaidas was a longtime trusted friend, and though the chamber doubtless held weapons far more fell than mere knives. Krispos smiled but did not seek to dissuade the northerner, who was but doing his duty as he reckoned best.

Zaidas let out a happy grunt. "Here we are." He turned around, displaying not a dagger but rather a piece of highly polished, translucent white stone. "This is nicomar, your Majesty, a variety of alabaster. When properly evoked, it has the virtue of generating both victory and amity. Thus we shall see if any amity, so to speak, lies between the two letters now in our possession. If so, we shall know Harvas indeed has a hand in the heresy of the Thanasioi."

"Alabaster, you say?" Krispos waited for Zaidas to nod, then continued: "Some of the ceiling panels in the imperial residence are also of alabaster, to let in more light. Why don't, ah, victory and amity always dwell under my roof?" He thought of his unending disagreements with Phostis.

"When properly evoked, I said, the stone brings forth those virtues," Zaidas answered, smiling. "The evocation is not easy, nor is the effect lasting."

"Oh." Krispos hoped he didn't sound too disappointed. "Well, go ahead and do what you need to do, then."

The wizard prayed over the gleaming slab of nicomar and anointed it with sweet-smelling oil, as if it were being made a prelate or an Emperor. Krispos wondered if he would be able to feel the change in the stone, as even a person of no sorcer-ous talent could feel the curative current that passed between a healer-priest and his patient. To him, though, the nicomar remained simply a stone. He had to trust that Zaidas knew what he was about.

With a final pass that seemed to require nearly jointless fingers, Zaidas said, "The good god willing, we are now ready to proceed. First I shall examine the letter known to have been written by Harvas."

He set the nicomar over the place where he had previously splashed his magical liquid. Fierce red light blazed through the stone. Krispos said, "This tells us what we already knew."

"So it does, your Majesty," Zaidas answered. "It also tells me the nicomar is performing as it should." He lifted the thin slab of stone and held it over a brass brazier from which the pungent smoke of frankincense coiled slowly toward the ceiling. Before Krispos could ask what he was doing, he explained: "I fumigate the nicomar to remove from it the influence of the parchment it just touched. Thus on the crucial test to come, the workings of the law of contagion shall not be permitted to influence the result. Do you see?"

Without waiting for Krispos' reply, the wizard set the polished alabaser down on the letter from Taronites. Krispos waited for another flash of red. But only a steady blue light penetrated the nicomar. "What does that mean?" Krispos asked, half hoping, half dreading Zaidas would tell him something other than the obvious.

But the wizard did not. "Your Majesty, it means that, so far as my sorcery can determine, no relationship whatever exists between the Thanasioi and Harvas."

"I still find that hard to believe," Krispos said.

"As I told you before, so do I," Zaidas answered. "But if you have a choice between believing whatever you happen to feel at the moment and that which has evidence to support it, which course will you take? I trust I know you well enough to know what you would say were it a matter of law rather than one of magic."

"There you have me," Krispos admitted. "You are so confident in what these conjurations tell you, then?"

"I am, your Majesty. Were it anyone but Harvas, the first lest alone would have contented me. With the confirmation of its import by the nicomar, I would stake my life on the accuracy of what I have divined today."

"You may be doing just that, you know," Krispos said with u grim edge to his voice.

Zaidas looked startled for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, that's so, isn't it? Harvas on the loose once more would terrify the bravest." He spat on the floor between his feet to show his rejection of the evil god Skotos, the god Harvas had for a patron. "But by Phos, the lord with the great and good mind, I tell you again that Harvas is in no way connected to the Thanasioi. Misguided they may be; guided amiss by Harvas they are not."

He sounded so certain that Krispos had to believe him despite his own misgivings. As the sorcerer had said, evidence counted for more than vague feelings. And if Harvas' dread hand did not lie behind the Thanasioi, why, how dangerous could they possibly be? The Avtokrator smiled. Over the past couple of decades, he'd faced and overcome enough merely human foes to trust he had their measure.

"Thank you for relieving my mind, excellent sir. Your reward will not be small," he told Zaidas. Then, because the wizard had a habit of putting such rewards into the treasury of the Sorcerers' Collegium, he added, "Keep some for yourself this time, my friend. I command it."

"You needn't fear for that, your Majesty," Zaidas said. "In fact, I have already received the same instruction from one I reckon higher in rank than you."

Normally, the only entity a Videssian would reckon higher in rank than his Avtokrator was Phos. Krispos, though, knew perfectly well about whom Zaidas was talking. Chuckling, he said, "Tell Aulissa I say she is a good, sensible woman and makes you an excellent wife. Be sure you listen to her, too."

"I will pass your words to her as you say them," Zaidas promised. "With some other women. I might not, for fear of inflaming their notions of how important they are in the scheme of things. But since my dear Aulissa is as sensible as you say, I know she'll accept the compliment for what it's worth and not a copper more."

"The two of you are a good deal alike that way," Krispos said. "You're lucky to have each other."

Even when Dara was still alive, he'd sometimes envied Zaidas and Aulissa their tranquil happiness. They seemed to know each other's needs and adjust to each other's foibles as if they were two halves of the same person. His own marriage had not been like that. He and Dara got along well enough on the whole, but they'd always had their fall storms and wintry blizzards along with the warmth of summer. Zaidas and his wife seemed to live in late spring the year round.

The wizard said, "Besides, your Majesty, Aulissa has noted that Sotades is now twelve years old. The boy will soon begin his serious schooling, which, as she pointed out, requires serious quantities of gold."

"Ah, yes," Krispos said wisely, though as Avtokrator he had not had to worry about the expense of educating his sons: every scholar in the city was eager to have any or all of them as his pupils. Having taught the Emperor's child could only improve a savant's reputation . . . and one of those children would likely be Avtokrator himself one day. In Krispos' experience, scholars were no more immune to seeking influence than any other men.

"I am relieved for you, your Majesty, and for the Empire of Videssos," Zaidas said, nodding toward the table where he'd carried out his magic.

"I'm relieved, too." Krispos picked up the letter from Harvas which the wizard had used and quickly read it. It was the one wherein Harvas declared he had cut out Iakovitzes' tongue because the diplomat's freedom with it displeased him. Krispos was not sorry to put down the parchment. That had been far from the worst of Harvas' atrocities. Being spared the worry of another round of them was worth a goodly sum of gold.

When the Avtokrator left the conjuration chamber, the Haloga guard fell in behind him. The two axemen who had stood watch at the doorway preceded him out of the Sorcerers' Collegium. The parasol bearers had been sitting around outside the building and passing the time with the rest of the squad of imperial guards. Their canopies fluttered in agitation when the Avtokrator reappeared. After a moment, though, they formed themselves into the neat pairs that always accompanied Krispos in public.

On the trip back to the palace compound, their presence was pure ostentation, for almost the entire short journey was under covered colonnades. Not for the first time—not for the hundredth—Krispos wished he'd been able to get away with cutting the stifling ceremonial that surrounded him every hour of the day and night. But by the horror that thought evoked in the palace staff, in officials of the government, and even among his guards, he might have proposed offering sacrifice to Skotos on the altar of the High Temple. Fights against custom just were not winnable.

He turned around, glanced back north toward the Sorcerers' Collegium. He would reward Zaidas well indeed, not least for relieving his mind. If the Thanasioi had come up with their foolish heresy all on their own, he was sure he would have no trouble putting them down. In his two decades and more as Avtokrator, after all, he'd gone from one triumph to another. Why should this struggle be any different?