Krispos the Emperor

II

From the outside, Phos' high temple seemed more massive than beautiful. The heavy buttresses that carried the weight of the great central dome to the ground reminded Phostis of the thick, columnar legs of an elephant; one of the immense beasts had been imported to Videssos the city from the southern shore of the Sailors' Sea when he was a boy. It hadn't lived long, save in his memory.

A poem he'd read likened the High Temple to a glowing pearl concealed within an oyster. He didn't care as much for that comparison. The Temple's exterior was not rough and ugly, as oysters were, just plain. And its interior outshone any pearl.

Phostis climbed the stairway from the paved courtyard surrounding the High Temple up to the narthex or outer hall. Being only a junior Avtokrator, he was less hemmed round with ceremony than his father; only a pair of Haloga guardsmen flanked him on the stairs.

Many nobles hired bodyguards; none of the other people heading for the service paid Phostis any special heed. The High Temple was not crowded in any case, not for an early afternoon liturgy on a day of no particular ritual import. Instead of going up the narrow way to the screened-off imperial niche, Phostis decided to worship with everyone else in the main hall surrounding the altar. The Halogai shrugged and marched in with him.

He'd been going into the High Temple for as long as his memory reached, and longer. He'd been just a baby when he was proclaimed Avtokrator here. For all that infinite familiarity, though, the Temple never failed to awe him.

The lavish use of gold and silver sheeting; the polished moss-agate columns with the acanthus capitals; the jewels and mother-of-pearl inserts set into the blond oak of the pews; the slabs of turquoise, pure white crystal, and rose quartz laid into the walls to simulate the sky at morning, noon, and eventide— for all these he had perspective; he had grown up among similar riches and lived with them still. But they served only to lead the eye up and up to the great dome that surmounted the altar and the mosaicwork image of Phos in its center.

The dome itself had the feel of a special miracle. Thanks to the sunbeams that penetrated the many small windows set into its base, it seemed to float above the rest of the Temple rather than being a part of it. The play of light off the gold-faced tesserae set at irregular angles made its surface sparkle and shift as one walked along far beneath it. Phostis could not imagine how the merely material might better represent the transcendence of Phos' heaven.

But even the glittering surround of the dome was secondary to Phos himself. The lord with the great and good mind stared down at his worshipers with eyes that not only never closed but also seemed to follow as they moved. If anyone concealed a sin, that Phos would see it. His long, bearded visage was stern in judgment. In his left hand, the good god held the book of life, wherein he recorded each man's every action. With death came the accounting: those whose evil deeds outweighed the good would fall to the eternal ice, while those who had worked more good than wickedness shared heaven with their god.

Phostis felt the weight of Phos' gaze each time he entered the High Temple. The lord with the great and good mind shown in the dome would surely grant justice, but mercy? Few men are arrogant enough to demand perfect justice, for fear they might get it.

The power of that image reached even the heathen Halogai. They looked up, trying to test their stares against the eternal eyes in the dome. As generations of men and women had learned before them, the test was more than any a mere man could successfully undertake. When they had to lower their gaze, they did so almost furtively, as if hoping no one had noticed them withdrawing from a struggle.

"It's all right, Bragi, Nokkvi," Phostis murmured as he sat between them. "No man can count himself worthy to confront the good god."

The big blond northerners scowled. Bragj's cheeks went red; with his fair, pale skin, the flush was easy to track. Nokkvi said, "We are Halogai, young Majesty. Our life is to fear nothing, to let nothing overawe us. In this picture dwells magic, to make us reckon ourselves less than what we are." His fingers writhed in an apotropaic sign.

"Measured against the good god, we are all less than we think ourselves to be," Phostis answered quietly. "That is what the image in the dome shows us."

Both his guards shook their heads. Before they could argue further, though, a pair of blue-robed priests, their pates shaven, their beards bushy and untrimmed, advanced down the aisle toward the altar. Each wore on his left breast a cloth-of-gold circlet, symbol of the sun, the greatest source of Phos' lights. The gem-encrusted thuribles they swung emitted great clouds of sweetly fragrant smoke.

As the priests passed each row of pews, the congregants sitting in it rose to their feet to salute Oxeites, ecumenical patriarch of the Videssians, who followed close behind them. His robe was of gold tissue, heavily overlain with pearls and precious stones. In all the Empire, only the Avtokrator himself possessed more splendid raiment. And, just as footgear all of red was reserved for the Emperor alone, so only the patriarch had the privilege of wearing sky-blue boots.

A choir of men and boys sang a hymn of praise to Phos as Oxeites took his place behind the altar. Their sweet notes echoed and reechoed from the dome, as if emanating straight from the good god's lips. The patriarch raised both hands over his head, looked up toward the image of Phos. Along with everyone in the High Temple save only his own two bodyguards, Phostis imitated him.

"We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind," Oxeites intoned, "by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor."

All the worshipers repeated Phos' creed. It was the first prayer a Videssian heard, being commonly uttered over a new-horn babe; it was the first prayer a child learned; it was the last utterance a believer gasped out before dying. To Phostis, it was as utterly familiar as the shape of his own hands.

More prayers and hymns followed. Phostis continued to make his responses without much conscious thought. The ritual was comforting; it lifted him out of himself and his petty cares of the moment, transformed him into part of something great and wise and for all practical purposes immortal. He cherished that feeling of belonging, perhaps because he found it here so much more easily than in the palaces.

Oxeites had the congregation repeat the creed with him one lust time, then motioned for the worshipers to be seated. Phostis almost left the High Temple before the patriarch began his sermon. Sermons, being by their nature individual and specific, took him out of the sense of belonging he sought from worship. But since he had nowhere to go except back to the palaces, he decided to stay and listen. Not even his father could rebuke him for piety.

The ecumenical patriarch said. "I would like to have all of vou gathered together with me today pause for a moment and contemplate the many and various ways in which the pursuit of wealth puts us in peril of the eternal ice. For in acquiring great stores of gold and gems and goods, we too easily come to consider their accumulation an end in itself rather than a means through which we may provide for our own bodily survival and prepare a path for our progeny."

Our progeny? Phostis thought, smiling. The Videssian clergy was celibate; if Oxeites was preparing a path for his progeny, he had more sins than greed with which to concern himself.

The patriarch continued, "Not only do we too readily value goldpieces for their own sake, those of us who do gain riches, whether honestly or no, often also endanger ourselves and our hope of joyous afterlife by grudging those who lack a share, however small, of our own good fortune."

He went on in that vein for some time, until Phostis felt ashamed to have a belly that was never empty, shoes on his feet, and thick robes and hypocausts to warm him through the winter. He raised his eyes to the Phos in the dome and prayed to the lord with the great and good mind to forgive him his prosperity.

But as his gaze descended from the good god to the ecumenical patriarch, he suddenly saw the High Temple in a new, disquieting light. Till this moment, he'd always taken for granted the flood of goldpieces that had been required to erect the Temple in the first place and the further flood that had gone into the precious stones and metals that made it the marvel it was. If those uncounted thousands of goldpieces had instead fed the hungry, shod the barefoot, clothed and warmed the shivering, how much better their lot would have been!

He knew the temples aided the poor; his own father told and retold the story of spending his first night in Videssos the city in the common room of a monastery. But for Oxeites, who wore cloth-of-gold, to urge his listeners to give up what they had to aid those who had not struck Phostis as nothing less than hypocrisy. And worse still, Oxeites himself seemed to have no sense of that hypocrisy.

Anger drove shame from Phostis. How did the ecumenical patriarch have the crust to propose that others give up their worldly goods when he said not a word about those goods the temples owned? Did he think they somehow acquired immunity from being put to good use—being put to the very use he himself advocated—because they were called holy?

By the tone of his sermon, he very likely did. Phostis tried to understand his way of thinking, tried and failed. The junior Avtokrator again glanced up toward the famous image of Phos. How did the lord with the great and good mind view calls to poverty from a man who undoubtedly possessed not just one but many sets of regalia, the value of any of which could have supported a poor family for years?

Phostis decided the good god would set down grim words for Oxeites in his book of judgment.

The patriarch kept preaching. That he did not realize the contradiction inherent in his own views irked Phostis more with every word he heard. He hadn't enjoyed the courses in logic Krispos ordained for him, but they'd left their mark. He wondered if next he would hear a raddled whore extolling the virtues of virginity. It would, he thought, be hardly less foolish than what he was listening to now.

"We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor," Oxeites proclaimed for the last time. Even without his robes, he would have been tall and slim and distinguished, with a pure white beard and silky ryebrows he surely combed. When he wore the patriarchal vestments, he seemed to the eye the very image of holiness. But his words rang hollow in Phostis' heart.

Most of the worshipers filed out of the High Temple after the liturgy was over. A few, though, went up to the ecumenical patriarch to congratulate him on his sermon. Phostis shook his head, bemused. Were they deaf and blind, or merely out to curry favor? Either way, Phos would judge them in due course.

As he walked down the steps from the Temple to the surrounding courtyard, Phostis turned to one of his guardsmen and said, "Tell me, Nokkvi, do you Halogai house your gods no richly in your own country?"

Nokkvi's ice-blue eyes went wide. He threw back his head and boomed laughter; the long blond braid he wore bounced up and down as his shoulders shook. When he could speak again, he answered, "Young Majesty, in Halogaland we have not so much for ourselves that we can give our gods such spoils as you fashion for your Phos. In any case, our gods care more for blood than for gold. There we feed them well."

Phostis knew of the northern gods' thirst for gore. The holy Kveldulf, a Haloga who came to revere Phos, was reckoned a martyr in Videssos: his own countrymen had slaughtered him when he tried to convert them to worshiping the lord with the great and good mind. Indeed, the Halogai would have been far more dangerous foes to the Empire did they not incessantly shed one another's blood.

Nokkvi stepped down on the flat flagstones of the courtyard. When he turned to look back at the High Temple, his gaze went wolfish. He said, "I tell you this, too, young Majesty: let hut a few shiploads full of my folk free to reive in Videssos the city, and your god, too, will know less of gold and more of blood. Maybe that savor will better satisfy him."

Phostis gestured to turn aside the northerner's words. The Empire was still rebuilding and repeopling towns that Harvas' Halogai had sacked around the time he was born. But even having such a store of riches here in the imperial capital was a temptation not just to the fierce barbarians from the north, hut also to avaricious men within the Empire. Any store of riches was such, in fact.

He stopped, his mouth falling open. All at once, he began to understand how the Thanasioi came by their doctrines.

The great bronze valves of the doorway to the Grand Courtroom slowly swung open. Seated on the imperial throne, Krispos got a sudden small glimpse of the outside world. He smiled; the outside world seemed only most distantly connected to what went on here.

He sometimes wondered whether the Grand Courtroom wasn't even more splendid than the High Temple. Its ornaments were less florid, true, but to them was added the everchanging spectacle of the rich robes worn by the nobles and bureaucrats who lined either side of the colonnade leading from the bronze doors to Krispos' throne. The way between the two columns was a hundred yards of emptiness that let any petitioner think on his own insignificance and the awesome might of the Avtokrator.

In front of the throne stood half a dozen Haloga guardsmen in full battle gear. Krispos had read in the histories of previous reigns that one Emperor had been assassinated on the throne and three others wounded. He did not aim to provide similarly edifying reading for any distant successor.

A herald, distinguished by a white-painted staff, had his place beside the northerners. He took one step forward. The courtiers left off their own chattering. Into the silence, the herald said, "Tribo, the envoy from Nobad, son of Gumush, the khagan of Khatrish, begs leave to approach the Avtokrator of the Videssians." His trained voice was easily audible from one end of the Grand Courtroom to the Other.

"Let Tribo of Khatrish approach," Krispos said.

"Let Tribo of Khatrish approach!" Sprung from the herald's thick chest, the words might have been a command straight from the mouth of Phos.

From a small silhouette in the bright but distant doorway, Tribo grew to man-size as he sauntered up the aisle toward the throne. He slowed every so often to exchange a smile or a couple of words with someone he knew, thereby largely defeating the intimidation built into that walk.

Krispos had expected nothing less; Khatrishers seemed born to subvert any existing order. Even their nation was less than three centuries old, born when Khamorth nomads from the plains of Pardraya overran what had been Videssian provinces. To some degree, they aped the Empire these days, but their ways remained looser than those that were in good form among Videssians.

Tribo paused the prescribed distance from the imperial throne, sinking down to his knees and then to his belly in full proskynesis: some Videssian rituals could not be scanted. As the envoy remained with his forehead pressed against the polished marble of the floor, Krispos tapped the left arm of the throne. With a squeal of gears, it rose several feet in the air. The marvel was calculated to overawe barbarians. From his new height, Krispos said, "You may rise, Tribo of Khatrish."

"Thank you, your Majesty." Like most of his folk, the ambassador spoke Videssian with a slight lisping accent. In Videssian robes, he could have passed for an imperial but for his beard, which was longer and more unkempt than even a priest would wear. The khagans of Khatrish encouraged that style among their upper classes, to remind them of the nomad raiders from whom they had sprung. Tribo was also un-Videssian in his lack of concern for the imperial dignity. Cocking his head to one side, he remarked, "I think your chair needs oiling, your Majesty."

"You may be right," Krispos admitted with a sigh. He tapped the arm of the throne again. With more metallic squeaks, servitors behind the courtroom wall returned him to his former place.

Tribo did not quite smirk, but the expression he assumed shouted that he would have, in any other company. He definitely was less than overawed. Krispos wondered if that meant he couldn't be reckoned a barbarian. Perhaps so: Khatrish's usages were not those of Videssos, but they had their own kind of understated sophistication.

All that was by the way—though Krispos did make a mental note that he need not put the crew of musclemen behind the wall next time he granted Tribo a formal audience. The Avtokrator said, "Shall we to business, then?"

"By all means, your Majesty." Tribo was not rude, certainly not by his own people's standards and not really by the Empire's. either. He just had a hard time taking seriously the elaborate ceremonial in which Videssos delighted. The moment matters turned substantive, his half-lazy, half-insolent manner dropped away like a discarded cloak.

As Avtokrator, Krispos had the privilege of speaking first: "I am not pleased that your master the khagan Nobad son of Gumush has permitted herders from Khatrish to come with their flocks into territory rightfully Videssian, and to drive our farmers away from the lands near the border. I have written to him twice about this matter, with no improvement. Now I bring it to your attention."

"I shall convey your concern to his mighty Highness," Tribo promised. "He in turn complains that the recently announced Videssian tariff on amber is outrageously high and is being collected with overharsh rigor."

"The second point may perhaps concern him more than the first," Krispos said. Amber from Khatrish was a monopoly of the khagan's; his profits on its sale to Videssos helped fatten his treasury. The tariff let the Empire profit, too. Krispos had also beefed up customs patrols to discourage smuggling. In his younger days, he'd been to Opsikion near the border with Khatrish and seen amber smugglers in action. The firsthand knowledge helped combat them.

Tribo assumed an expression of outraged innocence. "The khagan Nobad son of Gumush wonders at the justice of a sovereign who seeks lower tolls from the King of Kings on his western border at the same time as he imposes higher ones to the detriment of Khatrish."

A low mutter ran through the courtiers; few Videssians would have spoken so freely to the Avtokrator. Krispos doubted whether Nobad knew about his discussions with Rubyab of Makuran over caravan tolls. Tribo, however, all too obviously did, and served his khagan well thereby.

"I might reply that any soverign's chief duty is to promote the advantage of his own realm," Krispos said slowly.

"So you might, were you not Phos' vicegerent on earth," Tribo replied.

The mutter from the nobles got louder. Krispos said, "I do not find it just, eminent envoy, for you who are a heretic to use to your own ends my position in the faith as practice within Videssos."

"I crave your Majesty's pardon," Tribo said at once. Krispos stared suspiciously; he hadn't thought things would be that easy. They weren't. Tribo resumed, "Since you reminded me I am a heretic in your eyes, I will employ my own usages and ask you where in the Balance justice lies."

Videssian orthodoxy held that Phos would at the end of time surely vanquish Skotos. Theologians in the eastern lands of Khatrish and Thatagush, however, had needed to account for the eruption of the barbarous and ferocious Khamorth into their lands and the devastation resulting therefrom. They proclaimed that good and evil lay in perfect balance, and no man could be certain which would triumph in the end. Anathemas from Videssos the city failed to bring them back to what the Empire reckoned the true faith; abetted by the eastern khagans, they hurled anathemas of their own.

Krispos had no use for the Balancer heresy, but he had trouble denying that it was just for Khatrish to expect consistency from him. Concealing a sigh, he said, "Room for discussion about how we impose the tariffs may possibly exist."

"Your Majesty is gracious." Tribo sounded sincere; maybe he even was.

"As may be," Krispos said. "I also have complaints that ships from out of Khatrish have stopped and robbed several fishing boats off the coast of our dominions, and even taken a cargo of furs and wine off a merchantman. If such piracy goes on, Khatrish will face the Empire's displeasure. Is that clear?"

"Yes, your Majesty," Tribo said, again sincerely. Videssos' navy was vastly stronger than Khatrish's. If the Avtokrator so desired, he could ruin the khaganate's sea commerce without much effort.

"Good," Krispos said. "Mind you, I'll expect to see a change in what your people do; fancy promises won't be enough." Anyone who didn't spell that out in large letters to a Khatrisher deserved the disappointment he would get. But Tribo nodded; Krispos had reason to hope the message was fully understood. He asked, "Have you any more matters to raise at this time, eminent envoy?"

"Yes, your Majesty, may it please you, I do."

The reply caught Krispos by surprise; the agenda he'd agreed upon with the Khatrisher before the audience was complete. But he said, as he had to, "Speak, then."

"Thank you for your patience, your Majesty. But for the theological, er, discussion we just had, I would not presume to mention this. However: I know you believe that we who follow the Balance are heretics. Still, I must question the justice of inflicting upon us your own different and, if I may say so, more pernicious heresies."

"Eminent sir, I hope you in turn will forgive me, but I haven't the faintest idea of what you're talking about," Krispos answered.

Tribo's look said he'd thought the Emperor above stooping to such tawdry denials. That only perplexed Krispos the more; as far as he knew, he was telling the truth. Then the ambassador said, as scornfully as he could to a sovereign stronger than his own, "Do you truly try to tell me you have never heard of the murderous wretches who call themselves Thanasioi? Ah, I see by your face that you have."

"Yes, I have; at my command, the most holy sir the ecumenical patriarch Oxeites is even now convening a synod to condemn them. But how do you know of their heresy? So far as I have learned, it's confined to the westlands, near our frontier with Makuraner-held Vaspurakan. Few places in the Empire of Videssos lie farther from Khatrish."

"That may be so, your Majesty, but merchants learn the goods most worth shipping a long way are those with the least bulk," Tribo said. "Ideas, so far as I know, have no bulk at all. Perhaps some seamen picked up the taint in Pityos. Be that as it may, we have bands of Thanasioi in a couple of our coastal towns."

Krispos ground his teeth. If Khatrish held Thanasioi, their doctrines had undoubtedly spread to Videssian ports, as well. And that meant Videssos the city probably—no, certainly—had Thanasioi prowling its streets. "By the good god, eminent envoy, I swear we've not tried to spread this heresy to your land. Very much the opposite, in fact."

"Your Majesty has said it," Tribo said, by which Krispos knew that were he addressing anyone save the Avtokrator of the Videssians, he would have called him a liar. Perhaps realizing that even by Khatrisher standards he'd been overblunt, the envoy went on, "I pray your forgiveness, your Majesty, but you must understand that, from the perspective of my master Nobad son of Gumush, stirring up religious strife within our bounds is a ploy Videssos might well attempt."

"Yes, I can see that it might be," Knspos admitted. "You may tell your master, though, that it's a ploy I don't care to use. Since Videssos should have only one faith, I'm not surprised to find other sovereigns holding the same view."

"Please note I intend it for a compliment when I say that, for an Avtokrator of the Videssians, you are a moderate man," Tribo said. "Most men who wear the red buskins would say there should be only one faith through all the world, and that the one which emanates from Videssos the city."

Krispos hesitated before he answered; Tribo's "compliment" had teeth in it. Because Videssos had once ruled all the civilized world east of Makuran, universality was a cornerstone of its dealings with other states and of its theology. To deny that universality would give Krispos' nobles an excuse to mutter among themselves. He wanted them to have no such excuses.

At last he said, "Of course there should be only one faith; how else may a realm count on its folk remaining loyal to it? Hut since we have not met that ideal in Videssos, we would be in a poor position to pursue it elsewhere. Besides, eminent envoy, if you accuse us of introducing a new heresy into Khatrish. you can hardly at the same time accuse us of trying to force your people into orthodoxy."

Tribo's mouth twisted into a smile that lifted only one corner of it. "The first argument has some weight, your Majesty. As for the second one, I'd like it better in a school of logic than I do in the world. You could well hope to throw us into such religious strife that your folk might enter Khatrish and be acclaimed as rescuers."

"Your master Nobad son of Gumush is well served in you, eminent envoy," Krispos said. "You see more facets in a matter than a jeweler could carve."

"Thank you, your Majesty!" Tribo actually beamed. "Coming from a man with twenty-two years on the throne of Videssos, there's praise indeed. I shall convey to his mighty Highness that Videssos is itself plagued by these Thanasioi and not responsible for visiting them upon my country."

"I hope you do, for that is the truth."

"Your Majesty." Tribo prostrated himself once more, then rose and backed away from the throne until he had gone far enough to turn around without offending the Avtokrator of the Videssians. As far as Krispos was concerned, the ambassador could simply have turned his back and walked away, but the imperial dignity did not permit such ordinary behavior in his presence. He sometimes thought of his office as having a personality of its own, and a stuffy one at that.

Before he left the Grand Courtroom, he reminded himself to have the gear train behind his throne oiled.

"Good morning, your Majesty." With a mocking smile on his face. Evripos made as if to perform a proskynesis right in the middle of the corridor.

"By the good god, little brother, let it be," Phostis said wearily. "You're just as much—and just as little—Avtokrator as I am."

"That's true, for now. But I'll forever be just as little Avtokrator as you are, where after a while I won't be just as much. Do you expect me to be happy about that, just because you were born first? I'm sorry, your Majesty—" The scorn Evripos put into the title was withering. "—but you ask too much."

Phostis wished he could punch his brother in the face, as he .1 had when they were boys. But Evripos was his little brother now only in age; he had most of a palm on Phostis in height and was thicker through the shoulders to boot. These days, he'd be the one to do most of the punching in a fight.

"I can't help being eldest, any more than you can help being born second," Phostis said. "Only one of us will be able to rule when the time comes; that's just the way things are. But who better than my brothers to—"

"—be your lapdogs," Evripos broke in, looking down his long nose at Phostis. Like Phostis, he had his mother's distinctive eyes, but the rest of his features were those of Krispos. Phostis also suspected Evripos had more of their father's driving ambition than he himself had ... or perhaps it was simply that Evripos was in a position where ambition stood out more. If events continued in their expected course, Phostis would be the Avtokrator of the Videssians. Evripos wanted the job, but was unlikely to get it by any legitimate means.

Phostis said, "Little brother, you and Katakolon can be my mainstays on the throne. Better to have family aid a man than outsiders—safer, too." If I can trust you, he added to himself.

"So you say now," Evripos retorted. "But I've had to read the historians just as you have. Once one son becomes Emperor, what's left for the others? Nothing, maybe less. They only show up in the books because they've raised a rebellion or else because they get a name for debauchery."

"Who gets a name for debauchery?" Katakolon asked as he came down the corridor of the imperial residence. He grinned at his two grim-faced brothers. "Me, I hope."

"You're well on your way to it, that's certain," Phostis told him. The remark should have been cutting; instead, it came out with an unmistakable ring of envy. Katakolon's grin got wider.

Phostis felt like punching him, too, but he was Evripos' size or bigger. Like Evripos, he favored Krispos in looks. Of the three of them, though, he had the sunny disposition. Being the heir set heavy responsibilities on Phostis. Evripos saw only Phostis standing between him and what he wanted. Both older brothers had better claims to the throne than Katakolon, who didn't seem interested in sitting on it, anyhow. All he wanted was to enjoy himself, which he did.

Evripos said, "His imperial Majesty here is deigning to parcel out to us our subordinate duties once he becomes senior Avtokrator."

"Well, why not?" Katakolon said. "That's how it's going to be, unless Father ties him in a weighted sack and flings him into the Cattle-Crossing. Father might, too, the way they go at each other."

Had Evripos said that, Phostis probably would have hit him. From Katakolon, it was just so many words. Not only was the youngest brother slow to take offense, he had trouble giving it, too.

Katakolon went on, "I know one of the subordinate duties I'd like, come the day: supervising the treasury subbureau that collects taxes from within the city walls."

"By the good god, why?" Evripos said, beating Phostis to the punch. "Isn't that rather too much like work for your taste?"

"That subbureau of the treasury collects tax receipts from and generally has charge of the city's brothels." Katakolon Iicked his lips. "I'm certain any Avtokrator would appreciate the careful "inspection I'd give them."

For once, Phostis and Evripos looked equally disgusted. It wasn't that Evripos failed to delight in venery; he was at least as bold a man of his lance as Katakolon. But Evripos did what he did without chortling about it to all and sundry afterward. Phostis suspected he was disgusted with Katakolon more for revealing a potential vulnerability than for his choice of supervisory position.

Phostis said, "If we don't stick together, brothers, there are plenty in the city who would turn us against one another, for their own benefit rather than ours."

"I'm too busy with my own tool to become anyone else's," Katakolon declared, at which Phostis threw up his hands and stalked away.

He thought about going to the High Temple to ask Phos to grant his brothers some common sense, but decided not to. After Oxeites' hypocritical sermon, the High Temple, an edifice in which he had taken pride like almost every other citizen of Videssos the city and indeed of the Videssian Empire, now seemed only a repository for mountains of gold that could have been better spent in countless other ways. He could hate the ecumenical patriarch for that alone, for destroying the beauty and grandeur of the Temple in his mind.

As he stamped out of the imperial residence, a pair of Halogai from the squadron at the entrance attached themselves to him. He didn't want them, but knew the futility of ordering them back to their post—they would just answer, in their slow, serious northern voices, that he was their post.

Instead, he tried to shake them off. They were, after all, encumbered with mail shirts, helms, and two-handed axes. For a little while, he thought he might succeed; sweat poured down their faces as they sped up to match his own quick walk, and their fair skins grew pink with exertion. But they were warriors, in fine fettle, and refused to wilt in heat worse than any for which their northern home had prepared them. They clung to him like limpets.

He slowed down as he reached the borders of the palace compound and started across the crowded plaza of Palamas. He thought of losing himself among the swarms of people there, but, before he could transform thought to deed, the Halogai moved up on either side of him and made a break impossible.

He was even glad of their presence as he traversed the square. Their broad, mailed shoulders and forbidding expressions helped clear a path through the hucksters, soldiers,

housewives, scribes, whores, artists, priests, and folk of every other sort who used the plaza as a place wherein to sell, to buy, to gossip, to cheat, to proclaim, or simply to gawp.

Once Phostis got to the far side of the plaza of Palamas, he headed east along Middle Street without even thinking about it. He walked past the red granite pile of the government office building before he consciously realized what he'd done: a few more blocks, a left turn, and his feet would have taken him to the High Temple even though the rest of him didn't want to go there.

He glared down at his red boots, as if wondering if his brothers had somehow suborned them. With slow deliberation, he turned right rather than left at the next corner. He made a lew more turns at random, leaving behind the familiar main street of Videssos the city for whatever its interior might bring him.

The Halogai muttered back and forth in their own language. Phostis could guess what they were saying: something to the effect that two guards might not be enough to keep him out of trouble in this part of town. He pushed ahead anyhow, reasoning that although bad things could happen, odds were they wouldn't.

Away from Middle Street and a few other thoroughfares, Videssos the city's streets—lanes might have been a better word, or even alleys—forgot whatever they might have known about the idea of a straight line. The narrow little ways were made to seem narrower still because the upper stories of buildings extended out over the cobblestones toward each other. The city had laws regulating how close together they could come, but if any inspector had been through this section lately, he'd been bribed to look up with a blind eye toward the scrawny strip of blue that showed between balconies.

People on the streets gave Phostis curious looks as he walked along: it was not a district in which nobles in fine robes commonly appeared. No one bothered him, though; evidently two big Haloga guards were enough. A barmaid-pretty girl of about his own age stopped and smiled at him. She drew up one hand to toy with her hair and incidentally show off her breasts to the best advantage. When he didn't pause, she gave him the two-fingered street gesture that implied he was effeminate.

The shops in this part of town kept their doors closed. When a customer opened one, Phostis saw its timbers were thick enough to grace a citadel. But for their doors, probably just as thick, houses presented blank fronts of stucco or brick to the street. Though that was normal in Videssos the city, most dwellings being built around courtyards, here it seemed as if they were making a point of concealing whatever they had.

Phostis was on the point of trying to make his way back to Middle Street and his own part of town when he came upon men in ragged cloaks and worker's tunics and women in cheap, faded dresses filing into a building that at first looked no more prepossessing than any other hereabouts. But on its roof was a wooden tower topped with a globe whose gilding had seen better days: this, too, was a temple to Phos, though as different from the High Temple as could be imagined.

He smiled and made for the entrance. He'd wanted to pray when he left the palaces, but hadn't been able to stomach listening to Oxeites celebrate the liturgy again. Maybe the good god had guided his footsteps hither.

The ordinary people going in to pray didn't seem to think Phos had anything to do with it. The stares they gave Phostis weren't curious; they were downright hostile. A man wearing the bloodstained leather apron of a butcher said, "Here, friend, don't you think you'd be more content praying somewheres else?"

"Somewhere fancy, like you are?" a woman added. She didn't sound admiring; to her the word was one of reproach.

Some of the shabby band of worshipers carried knives on their belts. In a rundown part of the city like this, snatching up paving stones to hurl would be the work of a moment The Halogai realized that before Phostis did, and moved to put themselves between him and what could become a mob.

"Wait," he said. Neither northerner even turned to look at him. Keeping their eyes on the crowd in front of the little temple, they wordlessly shook their heads. He was barely tall enough to peer at the people over their armored shoulders. Pitching his voice to carry to the Videssians, he declared, "I've had my fill of worshiping Phos at fancy temples. How can we hope the good god will hear us if we talk about helping the poor in a building richer than even the Avtokrator enjoys?"

No one had noticed his red boots. Behind the Halogai, they would be all but invisible. Like the people in the streets, the congregants must have taken him for merely a noble out slumming. His words made the city folk pause and murmur among themselves.

After a small pause, the butcher said, "You really mean that, friend?"

"I do," Phostis answered loudly. "By the lord with the great and good mind, I swear it."

Either his words or his tone must have carried conviction, lor the band of worshipers stopped scowling and began to beam. The butcher, who seemed to be their spokesman, said, Friend, if you do mean that, you can hear what our priest, the good god bless him, has to say. We don't even ask that you keep quiet about it afterward, for it's sound doctrine. Am I right, my friends?"

Everyone around him nodded. Phostis wondered whether this congregation employed friend as a general term or if it was just the man's way of speaking. He rather hoped the former was true. The usage might be unusual among Phos' followers, but he liked its spirit.

Still grumbling, the Halogai grudgingly let him go into the temple, though one preceded him and the other followed close behind. A few icons with images of Phos hung on the roughly plastered walls; otherwise, the place was bare of ornament. The altar behind which the priest stood was of carven pine. His blue robe, of the plainest wool, lacked even a cloth-of-gold circle above his heart to symbolize Phos' sun.

The good god's creed and liturgy, though, remained the same regardless of setting. Phostis followed this priest as easily as he had the ecumenical patriarch. The only difference was that this ecclesiastic spoke with an upcountry accent even stronger than that of Krispos, who had worked hard to shed his peasant intonation. The priest came from the west, Phostis judged, not from the north like his father.

When the required prayers were over, the priest surveyed his congregants. "I rejoice that the lord with the great and good mind has brought you back to me once more, friends," he said. His eyes fixed on Phostis and the Haloga guards as he uttered that last word, as if he wondered whether they deserved to come under it.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, he continued: "Friends, we have not been cursed with much in the way of material abundance." Again he gave Phostis a measuring stare. "I praise the lord with the great and good mind for that, for we have not much to give away before we come to be judged in front of his holy throne."

Phostis blinked; this was not the sort of theological reasoning he was used to hearing. This priest took off from the point at which Oxeites had halted. But he, unlike the patriarch, lacked hypocrisy. He was plainly as poor as his temple and his congregation. That in and of itself inclined Phostis to take him seriously.

He went on, "How can we hope to rise to the heavens while weighted down with gold in our belt pouches? I will not say it cannot be, friends, but I say that few of the rich live lives sufficiently saintly to rise above the dross they value more than their souls."

"That's right, holy sir!" a woman exclaimed. Someone else, a man this time, added, "Tell the truth!"

The priest picked that up and set it into his sermon as neatly as a mason taking a brick from a new pile. "Tell the truth I shall, friends. The truth is that everything the foolish rich run after is but a snare from Skotos, a lure to drag them down to his eternal ice. If Phos is the patron of our souls, as we know him to be, then how can material things be his concern? The answer is simple, friends: they cannot. The material world is Skotos' plaything. Rejoice if you have but little share therein; would it were true for all of us. The greatest service we can render to one who knows not this truth is to deprive him of that which ties him to Skotos, thereby liberating his soul to contemplate the higher good."

"Yes," a woman cried, her voice high and breathy, as if in ecstasy. "Oh, yes!"

The butcher who had spoken to Phostis still sounded solid and matter-of-fact. "I pray that you guide us in our renunciation of the material, holy sir."

"Let your own knowledge of moving toward Phos' holy light be your guide, friend," the priest answered. "What you renounce is yours only in this world at best. Will you risk an eternity in Skotos' ice for its sake? Only a fool would act so."

"We're no fools," the butcher said. "We know—" He broke off to give Phostis yet another measuring stare; by this time,

Phostis was sick of them. Whatever he had been about to My, he reconsidered, starting again after a barely noticeable pause: "We know what we know, by the good god."

The rest of the people in the shabby temple knew whatever it was the butcher knew. They called out in agreement, some loudly, some softly, all with more belief and piety in their voices than Phostis had ever heard from the prominent folk who most often prayed in the High Temple. His brief anger at being excluded from whatever they knew soon faded. He wished he could find something to believe in with as much force as these people gave to their faith.

The priest raised his hands to the heavens, then spat between Ills feet in ritual rejection of Skotos. He led the worshipers in Phos' creed one last time, then announced the end of the liturgy. As Phostis turned and left the temple, once more bracketed fore and aft by his bodyguards, he felt a sense of loss and regret on returning to the mundane world that he'd never known when departing from the superficially more awesome setting of the High Temple. An impious comparison crossed his mind: it was almost as if he were returning to himself after the piercing pleasure of the act of love.

He shook his head. As the priest had said, what were those thrashings and moanings, what were any earthly delights, if they imperiled his soul?

"Excuse me," someone said from behind him: the butcher. Phostis turned. So did the Halogai with him. The axes twitched In their hands, as if hungry for blood. The butcher ignored them; he spoke to Phostis as if they were not there: "Friend, you seem to have thought well of what you heard in the temple. That's just a hunch of mine, mind you—if I'm wrong, you tell me and I'll go my way."

"No, good sir, you're not wrong." Phostis wished he'd thought to say "friend," too. Well, too late now. He continued, "Your priest there preaches well, and has a fiery heart like few i've heard. What good is wealth if it hides in a hoard or is wantonly wasted when so many stand in need?"

"What good is wealth?" the butcher said, and let it go at that. If his eye flicked over the fine robe Phostis wore, they did so too fast for the younger man to notice. The butcher went on, "Maybe you would like to hear more of what the holy sir—his name's Digenis, by the way—has to say, and hear it in a more private setting?"

Phostis thought about that. "Maybe I would," he said at last, for he did want to hear the priest again.

Had the butcher smiled or shown triumph, his court-sharpened suspicions would have kindled. But the fellow only gave a sober nod. That convinced Phostis of his sincerity, if nothing more. He decided he would indeed try to have that more private audience with Digenis. He'd found this morning that shaking off his bodyguards was anything but easy. Still, there might be ways ...

Katakolon stood in the doorway to the study, waiting until Krispos chanced to look up from the tax register he was examining. Eventually Krispos did. He put down his pen. "What is it, son? Come in if you have something on your mind."

By the nervous way in which Katakolon approached his desk, Krispos could make a pretty good guess as to what "it" might be. His youngest son confirmed that guess when he said, "May it please you, Father, I should like to request another advance on my allowance." His smile, usually so sunny, had the hangdog air it assumed whenever he had to beg money from his father.

Krispos rolled his eyes. "Another advance? What did you spend it on this time?"

"An amber-and-emerald bracelet for Nitria," Katakolon said sheepishly.

"Who's Nitria?" Krispos asked. "I thought you were sleeping with Varina these days."

"Oh, I still am. Father," Katakolon assured him. "The other one's new. That's why I got her something special."

"I see," Krispos said. He did, too, in a strange sort of way. Katakolon was a lad who generally liked to be liked. With a youth's enthusiasm and stamina, he also led a love life more complicated than any bureaucratic document. Krispos knew a small measure of relief that he'd managed to remember the name of his son's current—or, by the sound of things, soon to be current but one—favorite. He sighed. "How much of an allowance do you get every month?"

"Twenty goldpieces, Father."

"That's right, twenty goldpieces. Do you have any idea how

old I was, son, before I had twenty goldpieces to my name, let alone twenty every month of the year? When I was your age,

"—lived on a farm that grew only nettles, and you ate worms three meals a day," Katakolon finished for him. Krispos glared. His son said, "You make that same speech every time ask you for money, Father."

"Maybe I do," Krispos said. Thinking about it, he was suddenly certain he did. That annoyed him; was he getting predictable as he got older? Being predictable could also be dangerous. But he added, "You'd be better off if you hadn't heard it so many times you've committed it to memory." "Yes, Father," Katakolon said dutifully. "May I please have the advance?"

Sometimes Krispos gave in, sometimes he didn't. The cadaster he'd put down so he could talk with his son brought good news: the fisc had gained more revenue than expected from the province just south of the Paristrian Mountains, the province where he'd been born. Gruffly he said, "Very well. I suppose you haven't managed to bankrupt us yet, boy. But not another copper ahead of time till after Midwinter's Day, do you understand me?"

"Yes, Father. Thank you, Father." Little by little, Katakolon's merry expression turned apprehensive. "Midwinter's Day is still a long way off, Father." Like anyone who knew Krispos well, the Avtokrator's third son also knew he was not in the habit of making warnings just to hear himself talk. When he said something, he meant it.

"Try living within your means," Krispos suggested. "I didn't say I was cutting you off without a copper, only that I wouldn't give you any more money ahead of time till then. The good god willing, I won't have to do it afterward, either. But you notice I didn't demand that."

"Yes, Father." Katakolon's voice tolled like a mourning bell. Krispos fought to keep his face straight; he remembered how much he'd hated to be laughed at when he was a youth. "Cheer up, son. By anyone's standards, twenty goldpieces a month is a lot of money for a young man to get his hands on. You'll be able to entertain your lady friends in fine style during that little while when you're not in bed with them." Katakolon

looked so flabbergasted, Krispos had to smile. "I recall how many rounds I could manage back in my own younger days, boy. I can't match that now, but believe me, I've not forgot ten."

"Whatever you say, Father. I do thank you for the advance, though I'd be even more grateful if you'd not tied that string round its leg." Katakolon dipped his head and went off to pur sue his own affairs—very likely, Krispos thought, in the most literal sense of the word.

As soon as his son was out of earshot, Krispos did laugh. Young men could not imagine what being older was like; they lacked the experience. Perhaps because of that, they didn't believe older men retained the slightest notion of what being young meant. But Krispos knew that wasn't so; his younger self dwelt within him yet, covered over with years but still emphatically there.

He wasn't always proud of the young man he had been; He'd done a lot of foolish things, as young men will. It wasn't because he'd been stupid; he'd just been callow. If he'd know then what he knew now ... He laughed again, this time at himself. Graybeards had been singing that song since the world began.

He went back to his desk and finished working through th tax register. He wrote I have read and approved—Krispos in scarlet ink at the bottom of the parchment. Then, without so much as looking at the report that lay beneath it, he got up from the desk, stretched, and walked out into the hallway. When he got near the entrance to the imperial residence, h almost bumped into Barsymes, who was coming out of th small audience chamber there. The vestiarios' eyes widen slightly. "I'd expected you would still be hard at the morning's assemblage of documents, your Majesty."

"To the ice with the morning's assemblage of documents, Barsymes," Krispos declared. "I'm going fishing."

"Very well, your Majesty. I shall set the preparations in train directly."

"Thank you, esteemed sir," Krispos said. Even something a simple as a trip to the nearest pier was not free from ceremony for an Avtokrator of the Videssians. The requisite twelve para sol bearers had to be rounded up; the Haloga captain had to

he alerted so he could provide the even more requisite squadron of bodyguards.

Krispos endured the wait with the patience that years of waiting had taught him. He chose several flexible cane rods, each a little taller than he was, from a rack in a storage room, and a rather greater number of similar lengths of horsehair line. In the tackle box beside the rack of fishing poles were a good many barbed hooks of bronze. He preferred that metal to iron; though softer, it needed less care after being dunked in salt water.

Off in the kitchens, a servant would be catching him cockroaches for bait. He'd done it himself once, but only once; it scandalized people worse than any of Anthimos' ingenious perversions had ever managed to do.

"All is in readiness, your Majesty," Barsymes announced after a delay shorter than Krispos had expected. He held out to the Emperor an elaborately chased brass box from Makuran. Krispos accepted it with a grave nod. Only tiny skittering noises revealed that inside the elegant artifact were frantic brown-black bugs about the size of the last joint of his thumb.

The palace compound boasted several piers at widely spaced points along the sea wall; Krispos sometimes wondered if they'd been built to give an overthrown Avtokrator the best chance for escape by sea. As he and his retinue paraded toward the one closest to the imperial residence, though, he stopped worrying about blows against the state or against his person. When he stepped down into the little rowboat tied there, he was as nearly free as an Emperor could be.

Oh, true, a couple of Halogai got into another rowboat and followed him as he rowed out into the lightly choppy waters of the Cattle-Crossing. Their strokes were strong and sure; scores of narrow inlets pierced the rocky soil of Halogaland, so its sons naturally took to the ocean.

- And true, a light war galley would also put to sea, in case conspirators mounted an attack on the Avtokrator too deadly for a pair of northern men to withstand. But the galley stayed a good quarter mile from Krispos' rowboat, and even the houndlike Halogai let him separate himself from them by close to a furlong. He could imagine he sat alone on the waves.

In his younger days, he had never thought of fishing as a sport he might favor. It was something he occasionally did to help feed himself when he had the time. Now, though, it gave him the chance to escape not only from his duties but also from his servitors, something he simply could not do on land.

Being the man he was, he'd also become a skillful fisherman over the years; whatever he did, for whatever reasons, he tried to do well. He tied a cork float to his line to keep his hook at the depth he wanted it. To that hook he wired several little pieces of lead from the tackle box to help it have the semblance of natural motion in the water. Then he opened the bait box Barsymes had given him, seized a roach between thumb and forefinger, and impaled it on the hook's barbed tip.

While he was catching the roach, a couple of others leapt out of box and scuttled around the bottom of the rowboat. For the moment, he ignored them. If he needed them later, he'd get them. They weren't going anywhere far.

He tossed the line over the side. The float bobbed in the green-blue water. Krispos sat holding the rod and let his thoughts drift freely. Sea mist softened the outline of the far shore of the Cattle-Crossing, but he could still make out the taller buildings of the suburb known simply as Across.

He turned his head. Behind him, Videssos the city bulked enormous. Past the Grand Courtroom and the Hall of the Nineteen Couches stood the great mass of the High Temple. It dominated the capital's skyline from every angle. Also leaping above the rooftops of other buildings was the red granite shaft of the Milestone at the edge of the plaza of Palamas, from which all distances in the Empire were reckoned.

Sunlight sparked from the gilded domes that topped the dozens—perhaps hundreds—of temples to Phos in the city. Krispos thought back to his own first glimpse of the imperial capital, and the globes flashing like suns themselves under the good god's sun.

The Cattle-Crossing was full of ships: lean war galleys like the one that watched him; trading ships full of grain or building stone or cargoes more diverse and expensive; little fishing boats whose crews scoured the sea not for sport but for survival. Watching them pull their nets up over the side, Krispos wondered whether they might not work harder even than farmers, a question that had never crossed his mind about any other trade.

His float suddenly jerked under the water. He yanked up the rod and pulled in the line. A shimmering blue flying fish twisted at the end of it. He smiled, grabbed it, and tossed it into the bottom of the boat. It wasn't very big. but it would be tasty. Maybe his cook could make it stretch in a stew—or maybe he'd catch another one.

He foraged in the bait box, grabbed another cockroach, and skewered it on the hook to replace the one that had been the luckless flying fish's last meal. The roach's little legs still flaide as it sank beneath the sea.

After that, Krispos spent a good stretch of time staring at the float and waiting for something to happen. Fishing was like that sometimes. He had sometimes thought about asking Zaidas if sorcery could help the business along, but always decided not to. Catching fish was only part of the reason he came out here in the little boat. The other part, the bigger part, was to get away from everyone around him. Making himself a more efficient fisherman might net him more fish, but it would cost him some of the precious time he had to himself.

Besides, if fishing magic were possible, the horny-handed, sun-browned sailors who made their living from their catch would surely employ it. No, maybe not: it might be feasible, hut too expensive to make it worthwhile for anyone not already rich to afford it. Zaidas would know. Maybe he would ask him. And maybe he wouldn't. Now that he thought about it, he probably wouldn't.

His float disappeared again. When he tried to pull up the rod this time, it bent like a bow. He pulled once more, and once more the fish fought back. He walked his hands up to the tip of the rod, then pulled in the line hand over hand. "By the good god, here's a treat indeed!" he exclaimed when he saw the fat red mullet writhing on his hook.

He snatched up a net and slid it up over the fish from below. The mullet was as large as his forearm, and meaty enough to feed several. Had he fished for a living, he could have sold it in the plaza of Palamas for a fine price: Videssos the city's gourmets reckoned it their favorite, even to the point of nicknaming it the emperor of fishes.

Though called red, the mullet had been brownish with yellow stripes when he took it from the sea. It turned a crimson almost the color of his boots, however, as it struggled for its life, then slowly began to fade toward gray.

Mullets were famous for their spectacular color changes. Krispos remembered one of Anthimos' revels, where his predecessor had ordered several of them slowly boiled alive in a large glass vessel so the feasters could appreciate their shifting hues as they cooked. He'd watched with as much interest as anyone else; only looking back on it did it seem cruel.

Perhaps a sauce with garlic-flavored egg whites would do this one justice, he thought; even the head of a mullet pickled in brine was esteemed a delicacy. He'd have to talk with the cook when he went back to the imperial residence.

He gently set the prized catch in the bottom of the rowboat, treating it with far more care than he had the flying fish. If he'd used fishing as anything but an excuse to get away from the palaces, he would have rowed back to the pier with as much celerity as his arms could give him. Instead, he caught another cockroach, rebaited the hook, and dropped the line into the water again.

He quickly made another catch, but it was only an ugly, tasteless croaker. He pulled the barbed hook out of its mouth and tossed it back into the water, then opened the bait box for another bug.

After that, he sat and sat for a long time, waiting for something to happen and accepting with almost trancelike calm the nothing that fate was giving him. The boat shifted gently in the waves. His stomach had been a bit uncertain the first few times he went to sea. With greater familiarity, the motion had come to soothe him; it was as if he sat in a chair that not only rocked but also swiveled. Of course, he did not take the rowboat out on stormy days, either.

"Your majesty!" The call across the water snapped Krispos out of his reverie. He looked back toward the dock from which he'd rowed out, expecting to see someone standing there with a megaphone. Instead, a rowboat was approaching his own as fast as the man in it could ply the blades. He wondered how long the fellow had been hailing him before he noticed.

The Halogai, who had been fishing, too, grabbed for their oars and moved to block the newcomer's path. He paused in his exertion long enough to snatch up a sealed roll of parchment and wave it in their direction. After that. Krispos' bodyguards let him come on, but rowed beside him to make sure he could try nothing untoward if his precious message proved a ruse.

Proskynesis in a rowboat was impractical; the fellow with the parchment contented himself with dipping his head to Krispos. Panting, he said, "May it please your Majesty, I bring a dispatch just arrived from the environs of Pityos." He handed Krispos the parchment across the palm's breadth of water that separated their boats.

As often happened, Krispos had the bad feeling his Majesty was not going to be pleased. Scrawled on the outside of the parchment in a hasty hand was For Krispos Avtokrator—vital that he read the instant received. No wonder the messenger had leapt into a rowboat, then.

Krispos flicked off the wax seal with his thumbnail, then used a scaling knife from the tackle box to slice through the ribbon that held the parchment closed. When he unrolled it, he found the message inside written in the same hand as the warning of urgency on the outer surface. It was also to the point:

Troop Leader Gainas to Krispos Avtokrator: Greetings. We were attacked by Thanasioi two days' march southeast of Pityos. I grieve to report to your Majesty that most of the forces sent there not only yielded themselves up to the heretics and rebels but indeed took their cause against the rest. The leader of this action was the merarch Livanios, the chief aide to our commander Briso.

Because of this, those loyal to you were utterly defeated; the priests we were escorting to Pityos were captured and most piteously massacred. May the good god redeem their souls. Forgive one of my lowly rank for writing to you directly, your Majesty, but I fear I am the senior loyal officer left alive. The Thanasioi must now be reckoned to control the whole of this province. Skotos surely awaits them in the world to come.

Krispos read through the message twice to make sure he'd missed nothing. He started to toss it down with the fish he'd caught, but decided it was too likely to be ruined by seawater. He stowed it in the tackle box instead. Then he seized the row-boat's oars and headed back for the pier. The messenger and the Halogai followed in his wake.

As soon as he reached the dock, he tossed the tackle box up onto the tarred timbers, then scrambled up after it. He grabbed the box and headed for the imperial residence at a trot that left the parasol bearers hurrying after him and complaining loudly as they did their futile best to catch up. Even the Halogai who hadn't gone to sea needed a hundred yards and more before they could assume their protective places around him.

He'd taken the Thanasioi too lightly before. That wouldn't happen now. He wrote and dictated orders far into the night; the only pauses he made were to gulp smoked pork and hard cheese—campaigning food—and pour down a couple of goblets of wine to keep his voice from going raw.

Not until he'd got into bed, his thoughts whirling wildly as he tried without much luck to sleep, did he remember that he'd left the mullet of which he'd been so proud lying in the bottom of the boat.