Krispos the Emperor

VI

Krispos paced the palace corridors like a caged animal. The fall rains were done; now sleet and snow came down from the cold gray heavens. The occasional clear days or even, once or twice, clear weeks were salt in his wounds: If they but lasted, he could fare forth once more against the Thanasioi.

One long stretch of good weather sorely tempted him, but he restrained himself: he knew too well it would not hold. But each successive bright morning gave a fresh twist of the knife. That once, he welcomed the blizzard that blew in. Though it trapped him, it let him feel sagacious.

Now Midwinter's Day, the day of the winter solstice, drew near. Krispos ticked off the passing days on the calendar one by one, but somehow they raced too swiftly even so. He faced the coming solstice with more resignation than joy. Midwinter's Day was the greatest festival of the religious year, but he found himself in no mood to celebrate.

Not even previewing the mime troupes that would perform in the Amphitheater restored his good humor. Among other things, Midwinter's Day gave folk more license than any other festival, and a good many of the skits poked fun at him for failing to put down the Thanasioi. More than one teased him for losing Phostis, too.

Not only would he have to watch this foolishness from the imperial box on the spine of the Amphitheater, he'd have to be seen to laugh. An Avtokrator who couldn't take what the mimes dished out quickly forfeited the city mob's fickle favor.

He took advantage of the imperial dignity to complain loud and often. At last Mystakon, the eunuch chamberlain who had most often served Phostis, said, "May it please your Majesty, I am of the opinion that the young Majesty, were he able, would gladly assume the duty you find onerous."

Krispos felt his cheeks flame. "Yes, no doubt you're right," he mumbled. After that, he bottled his forebodings up inside himself.

Perhaps in one of Barsymes' efforts to cheer him, the serving maid Drina showed up in his bed again after a particularly trying day. This time he actively wanted her, or at least his mind did. His body, however, failed to rise to the occasion despite her ingenuity.

When it became clear nothing was going to happen, she said, "Now don't you fret, your Majesty. It happens to everyone now and again." She spoke so matter-of-factly, he got the idea she was talking from experience. She added, "I'll tell you something else, too: you foolish men make more of a much about it than women ever do. It's just one of those things."

"Just one of those things," Krispos echoed between clenched teeth. Drina wrapped a robe around her and slipped out of the imperial bedchamber, leaving him alone in the darkness. "Just one of those things," he repeated, staring up at the ceiling. "Just one more thing that doesn't work."

Maybe Drina knew better than to gossip, or maybe—and more likely, given the way news of any sort raced through the palaces—the servitors knew better than to show the Avtokrator they knew anything. Back in his own days as vestiarios, he'd chattered about Anthimos, though never where Anthimos could listen. At any rate, he heard no sniggers, which relieved him in a way altogether different from the one he'd sought with Drina.

Compared to failing in bed, the ordeal of facing public mockery on Midwinter's Day suddenly seemed much more bearable. When the day finally dawned, cold and clear, he let Barsymes pour him into his finest ceremonial robe as if it were chain mail to armor him against the taunts he expected.

The procession from the palaces to the Amphitheater took him past bonfires blazing in the plaza of Palamas. People dressed in their holiday best—women with lace at their throat and ankles, perhaps with a couple of bodice buttons undone or skirts slit to show off a pretty calf; men in robes with fur collars and cuffs—leapt over the fires, shouting "Burn, ill-luck!"

"Go on, your Majesty, if you care to," Barsymes urged. "It will make you feel better."

But Krispos shook his head. "I've seen too much to believe ill-luck's so easy to get rid of, worse luck for me."

Preceded by the dozen parasol bearers protocol required, flanked by bodyguards, the Avtokrator crossed the racetrack that circled the floor of the Amphitheater and took his place on the seat at the center of the spine. Looking up to the top of the great oval was like looking up from the bottom of a soup tureen, save that the Amphitheater was filled with people, not soup. To the folk in the top rows, Krispos could have been only a scarlet dot; to anyone shortsighted up there, he was surely invisible.

But everyone in the Amphitheater could hear him. He thought of that as magic of a sort, though in fact it was nothing more—or less—than cleverly crafted acoustics. When he spoke from the Emperor's seat, it was as if he spoke straight into the ear of all the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who packed the arena.

"People of Videssos," he said, and then again, after his first words won quiet, "people of Videssos, after today the sun, the symbol of the lord with the great and good mind, turns to the north once more. Try as Skotos will, he has not the power to pull it from the sky. May the solstice and the days that follow it give everyone a lesson: even when darkness seems deepest, longer, brighter days lie ahead. And when darkness seems deepest, we celebrate to show we know it cannot rule us. Now let the Midwinter's Day festivities begin!"

He knew the cheer that rose had more to do with his opening the festival than with what he'd said. Nonetheless, the noise avalanched down on him from all sides until his head rang with it; just as from the Emperor's seat his voice flew throughout the Amphitheater, so every sound within the stone bowl was focused and magnified there.

Though he'd known in advance his speech would be largely ignored, he spoke, as always, from the center of what most concerned him at the moment. The people would forget his words the moment they were gone; he tried to take them to heart. When things seemed blackest, carrying on was never easy. But if you didn't carry on, how could you make your way to better times?

Squeals of glee greeted the first mime troupe to appear. The crowd's laughter dinned around Krispos as the performers, some dressed as soldiers, others as horses, pretended to be stuck in the mud. Even if they did lampoon his ill-fated campaign in the westlands, he found himself amused at first. Their act was highly polished, as were most that appeared in the Amphitheater. Rotten fruit and sometimes stones greeted troupes that did not live up to what the city folk thought their due.

The next group of mimes put on a skit whose theme puzzled Krispos. One of their number wore a costume that turned him into a skeleton. The other three seemed to be servants. They brought him ever more elaborate meals, finally wheeling out a prop feast that looked sumptuous enough to feed half the people in the Amphitheater. But the fellow in the skeleton suit refused everything with comic vehemence, and finally lay stiff and still in the dirt of the racetrack. His underlings picked him up and hauled him away.

The audience didn't quite know what to make of that show, j either. Most of them sat on their hands. A few roared laughter; a couple of shouts of "Blasphemy!" rang out.

Krispos got up and walked over to Oxeites the patriarch, who sat a few yards down the spine from his own place. "Blasphemy?" he asked. "Where is the blasphemy—for that matter, where is the point?—in refusing food, most holy sir? Or does the blasphemy lie in mocking that refusal?"

"Your Majesty, I do not know." The patriarch sounded worried to admit it. Well he might; if he could not untie a theological knot, who in Videssos the city could?

All the performers in the professional mime troupes were male. It wasn't that way in peasant villages like the one where Krispos had grown up; he smiled to remember the village women and girls doing wicked impressions of their husbands and brothers. But the fellow who played a woman in the next troupe seemed so feminine and so voluptuous that the Avtokrator, who knew perfectly well what he was, found lubricious thoughts prancing through his mind all the same.

The performer turned his—or her—wiles on another member of the troupe, one dressed in a robe of priestly blue. The cleric proved slaveringly eager to oblige.

The crowd howled laughter. No one yelled "Blasphemy!" Krispos turned to Oxeites again. He contented himself with raising a questioning eyebrow; if he spoke from the Emperor's seat, the whole Amphitheater would hear him.

Oxeites coughed in embarrassment. "There was, your Majesty, an, ah, unfortunate incident concerning celibacy while you were, ah, on campaign."

Krispos walked over to the patriarch's chair so he could talk without being overheard. "I saw no written reports on this, most holy sir. Did you think it would escape my notice? If so, do not make such a mistake again. When a priest drags the reputation of the temples through the bathhouses, I will find out about it. Have I made myself clear enough?"

"Y-yes, your Majesty." The patriarch was as pale as the pearls that ran riot over his regalia. Keeping unsavory secrets secret was part of the game of Videssian bureaucracy, secular and ecclesiastical alike. Getting found out meant you'd lost a round in that game.

The Avtokrator began to hope the mimes, poke fun at him as they might, would largely forget Phostis' kidnapping. That hope lasted until the next troupe came on and lampooned him for misplacing his eldest son; by the way the actor in fancy robes portrayed Krispos, his heir might have been a gold coin that had fallen through a hole in his belt pouch. The fellow kept looking behind prop bushes and under stones, as if certain he'd turn up the vanished heir in a moment.

The audience thought it all very funny. Krispos looked over to see how his other two sons were taking the mimes. He'd seldom seen such rage on Katakolon's face; his youngest son seemed ready to grab a bow and do his best to slaughter the whole troupe. The pretty girl next to Katakolon had her face carefully blank, as if she wanted to laugh but didn't dare.

A few seats away, Evripos was laughing as hard as some tinker up near the top row of the Amphitheater. He happened to catch Krispos' eye. He choked and grew sober as abruptly as if he'd been caught in some unnatural act. Krispos nodded grimly, as if to say Evripos had better keep himself quiet. He knew his second son hungered for the throne; in Evripos' shoes, he would have hungered for it, too. But displaying exultation because his brother had disappeared would not do.

By the time the last troupe made its bows and left the Amphitheater, the year's shortest day was almost done. By then, several troupes had satirized Phostis' kidnapping. Krispos endured it as best he could. Evripos sat so still, he might have been carved from stone.

To end the show, Krispos spoke to the crowd. "Tomorrow the sun will come sooner and leave the sky later. Once again Skotos—" He spat in rejection of the evil god. "—has failed to steal the light. May Phos bless you all, and may your days also be long and filled with light."

The crowd cheered, almost universally forgetting they'd giggled at the Avtokrator's expense bare minutes before. That was the way of crowds, Krispos knew. He'd started learning how to manipulate the Videssian mob while still a groom in Petronas' service, to help push out Anthimos' then-vestiarios so he could take the eunuch's place. The decades that had passed since had done little to increase his respect for the people in a collective body.

He got up from the Emperor's seat and took a few steps away from the acoustical focus. Only then could he privately talk aloud, even to himself. "Well, it's over," he said. He'd got through it, his family had got through it, and he didn't think any of the skits had done him permanent harm. Given the way the preceding few months had gone, he could hardly have hoped for better.

Twilight deepened quickly as, in the company of parasol bearers and Haloga bodyguards, he made his way out of the Amphitheater. He, of course, had his own special exit. Had he wanted to, he could have gone straight back to the palaces under a covered way. But walking through the plaza of Pala-mas, as he had on the way to the mime show in the Amphitheater, gave him a chance to finger the pulse of the city. Ceremonial separated him from his subjects too much as things were. When he got a chance like this, he took it, and so he headed back toward the imperial residence through the square.

More bonfires burned there now than had when he went into the Amphitheater. People coming out of the mime show queued up to jump over them and burn away the year's accumulated misfortune. A few turned their heads as the Emperor and his retinue went by. One or two even called out, "Joy on the day, your Majesty!"

"And to you and yours," he called back. On impulse, he added, "May I beg to steal a place in line?"

Men and women scrambled out of the way to give him what he'd asked for. Some of the Halogai stayed close by him; others, knowing Videssian ways, hurried to the far side of the fire. Krispos took a running start. The scarlet imperial boots were less than perfect footgear for running, but he managed. Leaping with all his strength, he yelled, "Burn, ill-luck!" as he soared over and through the flames. Maybe, as he'd said earlier in the day, it would do no good. But how could it do harm?

He landed heavily, staggering. One of the guardsmen grabbed his arm and steadied him. "Thanks," he said. His heart pounded, his breath came quick. A run and a jump—was that exerting himself? When he first took the throne, he'd have laughed at the idea. Now it seemed less funny. He shrugged. The only alternative to getting older was not getting any older. This wasn't perfect, but it was better.

A couple of bonfires over, a young man stooped to ignite a torch. He waved it over his head. Sparks flew through the night. The young man weaved among slower-moving people in the square. Still waving his torch, he shouted, "The gleaming path! Phos bless the gleaming path!"

For a moment, the cry did not register with Krispos. Then he stopped in midstride, stared, and pointed toward the young man. "That is a Thanasiot. Arrest him!"

Thinking back afterward, he realized he could have handled things better. Some of his guards dashed after the Thanasiot. So did some people in the crowd. Others, mistaking Krispos' target, chased the wrong man—several wrong men—and got in the way of those pursuing the right one. Shouts and fistfights erupted.

The young heretic kept right on running and kept right on chanting the Thanasiot war cry. To Krispos' horror, he cast his torch into one of the wood-and-canvas market stalls that were closed for the Midwinter's Day celebration. Flames clung and began to grow.

All at once Krispos, a lump of ice in his belly, wished the holiday had seen a blizzard or, better yet, a driving rainstorm.

Rain in the westlands when I didn t want it, he thought wildly, but none now when I can really use it. The weather was not playing fair.

Neither were the Thanasioi. That first arsonist, no longer obvious for what he was as soon as he'd thrown his torch, vanished into the crowd. But others of his kind dashed here and there, waving torches and yelling acclaim for the gleaming path. In fewer than half a dozen minutes, more than half a dozen fires began to burn.

The people in the plaza of Palamas surged like the sea in storm, some toward the blazes but many more away from them. Fire in Videssos the city—fire in any town—was a great terror, for the means of fighting it were so pitifully few. Great fires, with winds whipping walls of flame ahead of them, had slain thousands and burned out whole quarters of the city. Most of those—all of them, as far as Krispos knew—sprang from lightning or accident. To use fire in a city—in the city—as a weapon ... Krispos shivered. The Thanasioi were not playing fair, either.

He tried to pull himself together. "Bucket and siphon men!" he yelled to one of the chamberlain. "Fetch them on the double!"

"Aye, your Majesty." The eunuch pelted into the palace compound. A company of firemen was stationed there, attached to the imperial guards. Several other companies had bases in other parts of the city. They were brave, they were skilled, they were even useful if they could get to a fire before it went wild. But if the Thanasioi were throwing torches around in the Forum of the Ox as well as the plaza of Palamas, and in the coppersmiths' district, and over by the High Temple, some of those blazes would surely get loose.

Krispos shouted, "Twenty goldpieces for every arsonist slain, fifty for every one taken alive!" With luck, the price differential would keep cutthroats from murdering innocent bystanders and then claiming a reward.

"Will you retire to the palaces, your Majesty?" Barsymes asked.

"No." Krispos saw he'd surprised the vestiarios. He explained, "I want to be seen fighting this madness. I'll do it from the plaza here."

"As you say, your Majesty," Barsymes answered in the peculiarly toneless voice he used when he thought Krispos was making a mistake.

Before long, Krispos, too, wondered if he hadn't made a mistake. Messengers who ran to the palaces didn't find him there. Because of that, he learned later than he should have that not only arson but also full-scale rioting had broken out in some of the poorer districts of the city. The two went hand in hand in every Avtokrator's nightmares: arson might leave him without a capital to rule, while riots could keep him from ruling at all.

But setting up his headquarters out where the people could see him had advantages, too. Not only did he shout for men to form a bucket brigade from the nearest fountain, he pitched in and passed buckets himself. "This is my city as well as yours," he told anyone who would listen. "We all have to work together to save it if we can."

For a while, that looked anything but certain. A bucket brigade was hopelessly inadequate to put out a fire once it got going. Even if some excited citizens didn't know that much, Krispos did. At his direction, the fellows at the far end of the brigade concentrated on wetting down the buildings and market stalls around the growing blaze to try to keep it from spreading.

He was beginning to think even that would be beyond their power when someone yelled, "Here's the fire company!"

"Oh, Phos be praised," Krispos panted. Already his shoulders ached from unaccustomed exertion; tomorrow, he suspected, he would be stiff and sore all over. Well, he'd worry about that tomorrow. Tonight, fighting the fire counted for more. He silently thanked the good god that, while he'd put on weight since he came to the throne, he hadn't got so fat as to kill himself if he had to do physical labor.

Instead of a hand bucket, the fire crew carried a great wooden tub on poles like those of a sedan chair. They filled it at the fountain, then—with shouts of "Gangway!"—dashed to the fire. Instead of dumping the big bucket on the blaze, two of the men worked a hand pump mounted in the bucket, while a third directed the stream of water that issued from the nozzle of an oiled canvas hose.

The bucket brigade shifted its efforts to keeping the tub full. Even so, it emptied faster than they could pour water into it.

The firemen snatched it up by its cradle, filled it at the fountain again, then lugged it back with much swearing and grunting. The pumpers worked like men possessed; the fellow at the hose, a gray-haired veteran named Thokyodes, played his stream right at the heart of the blaze.

That second tubful began to give the fire company the upper hand. The blaze had eaten two or three stalls and damaged a couple of others, but it would not turn into a conflagration. Thokyodes came over to Krispos and greeted him with a crisp military salute, clenched fist over heart. "You called us in good time, your Majesty. We've managed to save this lot."

"Not the first service you've done the city—or me," Krispos answered; Thokyodes had served on the fire crews for longer than Krispos had been Emperor. "I wish I could tell you to stand easy the rest of the night, but I fear we'll have more fires set."

"Ah, well. Midwinter's Day is always a nervous time for us." Thokyodes stopped, staring at the Avtokrator. "Set, did you say? This wasn't just one of the bonfires' blowing embers that caught?"

"I wish it had been," Krispos said. "But no, no such luck. The Thanasioi are raising riot, and when they riot, they seem to like to burn, too. The less anyone has, the better they're pleased."

Thokyodes made a horrible face. "They're fornicating crazy, begging your pardon, your Majesty. Those bastards ever see anybody who's burned to death? They ever smelled a burned corpse? They ever try rebuilding what's been burned down?"

"I don't think they care about any of that. All they want is to get out of the material world as fast as they can."

"Send 'em on to me, then," Thokyodes growled. He carried a hatchet at his belt, to break down a wall so he could use his siphon or break through a door if he needed to effect a rescue. Now he grabbed the oak handle as if he had something else in mind for the tool. "Aye, I'll send 'em on to the ice real soon, I will, by the good god. Start their own fires, will they?" Like any fireman, he had a fierce, roaring hatred for arsonists of any sort, religious or secular.

A messenger came up to Krispos. Blood ran down his face from a scalp wound. When Krispos exclaimed over it, the man shook off his concern. "I'll live, your Majesty. The rock glanced off, and my father always told me I had a hard head. Glad the old man was right. But I'm here to tell you it's getting worse than just riots in the poor part of town south of Middle Street. It's regular war—they're fighting with everything they have. Not just rocks like what got me, but bows and shortswords and I don't know what all else."

"Do you know where the barracks are in the palace compound, and can you get there without falling over?" Krispos asked. When he got nods to both questions, he went on, "Rout out Noetos' regiment of regulars. If the Thanasioi want to pretend they're soldiers, let's see how well they do facing soldiers instead of the city watch."

"Aye, your Majesty," the messenger said. "You ought to send some priests out, too, for the heretics have one at their head, leather-lunged blue-robe name of—I think—Digenis."

Krispos frowned; while he knew he'd heard the name before, he needed a little while to place it. When he did, he snarled something that made the messenger's eyes widen. "That's the blue-robe Phostis fell in love with before he got kidnapped," he ground out. "If he's a Thanasiot—"

He stopped. If Digenis was a Thanasiot, did that mean Phostis had joined the heresy, too? Thinking so appalled Krispos, but he also realized that just about everything he did appalled Phostis, if for no other reason than because he did it. And if his eldest had become a Thanasiot, had he really been kidnapped at all? Or had he run off to join the rebels of his own free will?

One way or another, Krispos had to have answers. He said, "Pass the word—a hundred goldpieces for this Digenis alive, and may the lord with the great and good mind have mercy on anyone who slays him, for I'll have none."

"I'll make your wishes—your commands—known, your Majesty." The messenger took off at a dead run.

Krispos had no time to brood on the fellow's news; two men dashed into the plaza of Palamas from different directions, each screaming "Fire!" at the top of his lungs. "Thokyodes!" Krispos yelled. The veteran asked both panicky men a few sharp questions, decided whose plight was more urgent, and went off with that fellow. The other man stamped his feet and looked about ready to burst. Krispos hoped he wouldn't lose all that he owned by the time the fire company got back.

A bitterly cold wind began to blow out of the northwest, the direction from which the winter storms came. Krispos would have welcomed one of those storms, but bright stars glittered in a blue-black sky. No storm tonight; maybe, he thought, tasting the wind, no storm tomorrow, either. Of course not. He needed one.

Some of the palace servitors scurried about the plaza of Palamas, setting up awnings to protect him from whatever weather might come. Since he'd decided to make his headquarters here, the servants would see that he had such comforts as they could provide. Barsymes eyed him, daring him to make something of it. He kept quiet.

Along with the servitors, people of every sort swarmed through the plaza—soldiers, messengers, firemen, and revelers determined to celebrate Midwinter's Day as they pleased no matter what was going on around them. The skinny fellow in the dark tunic didn't look the least out of place as he worked his way up to Krispos. When he got to within a couple of paces of the Avtokrator, he pulled out a dagger and screamed, "Phos bless the gleaming path!"

He stabbed overhand, which was less than wise. Krispos threw up a hand and caught the fellow's wrist before the knife struck home. The would-be assassin twisted and tried to break free, screaming all the while about the gleaming path. But Krispos had learned to wrestle from an army veteran about the time his beard began to sprout, and he had gained his first fame in Videssos the city by outgrappling a Kubrati champion. Shouting and twisting were not nearly enough to break away from him.

He bore the knifeman to the cobbles, squeezing hard on the tendons inside his wrist. Involuntarily, the Thanasiot's hand opened. When the knife fell out, the fellow tried to roll and grab for it. Krispos brought up a knee, hard, between his legs. It was unsporting but extremely effective. The fellow stopped screaming about the gleaming path and started screaming in good earnest.

A Haloga's axe came down with a meaty thunk. The screams rose to a brief high note, then stopped. Krispos scrambled to his feet to keep his robes from soaking up the quickly spreading pool of blood.

"I'd like to have asked him some questions," he said mildly.

"Honh!" the bodyguard answered, a northern exclamation full of contempt. "He attacked you, your Majesty; he did not deserve to live, even for a moment."

"All right, Trygve," Krispos said. If he criticized the northerner too harshly, Trygve was liable to decide the knifeman had managed to come so close to the Emperor because of his own failing, and slay himself to make up for it. The Halogai were wonderful guards, but they had to be handled very differently from Videssians. Krispos had spent twenty years groping toward an understanding of their gloomy pride; given another twenty, he thought he might come close.

Thokyodes and his fire company returned to the plaza of Palamas. The fellow whose earlier plea they'd rejected fell on them like a starving bear. Without so much as a chance to draw breath, they hurried away in his wake. Krispos wondered if they'd find anything left to save.

From out of the palace complex, their armor clashing about them, marched the troops who had served as Krispos' rear guard in the ill-fated western campaign. They looked angry, first at being confined to barracks on Midwinter's Day and then at getting called out not to celebrate but to fight. As they grimly tramped through the plaza of Palamas, Krispos reflected that he wouldn't have cared to get in their way this evening.

A few minutes later, the noise floating into the square from the rest of the city suddenly redoubled. It did not sound like happy noise. Happy was the grunt that came from Trygve's throat. "Your soldiers, they go breaking heads." To him, the prospect seemed blissful.

Krispos watched the stars wheel slowly across the sky. He caught himself yawning. Though he was far more likely than most Videssians to stay up well into the night—who, after all, could better afford candles than the Avtokrator?—he still went to bed early by choice. Well, tonight he had no choice.

A trooper came back to report on the fighting south of Middle Street. He didn't seem to notice his iron pot of a helmet had been knocked sideways on his head. Saluting, he confirmed the headgear's mute testimony: "Your Majesty, them whoresons is putting up a regular battle, they is. They's been ready for it awhile, too, or I miss my guess."

"Don't tell me they're beating the regiment," Krispos exclaimed. You'd better not tell me that, he thought, or some of my officers won't be officers by this hour of the night tomorrow.

But the trooper shook his head. "Oh, nothing like that. They has spunk, aye, and more stay to 'em than I'd have looked for from a mob, but they ain't got armor and they ain't got many shields. We can hurt them a lot more than they can hurt us."

"Tell Noetos to do what he has to do to put them down," Krispos said. "Remind him also to make every effort to seize the priest Digenis, who I've heard is leading the rioters."

"Aye, there's a blue-robe flouncing about, shouting all sorts of daft nonsense. I figures we'd just knock him over the head." Krispos winced; somehow rumor seemed to spread every word but the one he wanted spread. "But if you want him took alive, we'll try and manage that."

"There's a reward," Krispos said, which made the messenger hurry back toward the brawl.

Waiting was hard. Krispos would much rather have been with a fire company or the regiment of soldiers. They were actually doing something. But if he did it with them, he'd lose track of how all his forces in the city were doing, save only the one he was with. Sometimes standing back to look at the whole mosaic was better than walking right up to it and peering closely at one tile. Better, maybe, but not easier.

Without his noticing, the servitors had fetched cots from the imperial residence—or perhaps from a barracks—and set them under the awning they'd erected. Evripos dozed on one, Katakolon on another. The girl who'd come to the Amphitheater with him was gone. Krispos knew his son would sooner have been in her bed than the one he occupied, but he felt a certain amount of amused relief that Katakolon hadn't dared leave. The boy knew better than that, by the good god.

Glancing over at Evripos, Krispos was surprised at how badly he wanted to wake him and put him to work. The lad—no, Evripos had shown himself the fair beginnings of a man—could have given him another pair of eyes, another pair of hands. But Krispos let him sleep.

Even though the fires in the plaza of Palamas were long since extinguished, Krispos smelled smoke from time to time, wafted from blazes elsewhere in the city. The wind, fortunately, had died down. With luck, it would not spread flames and embers in one of those running fires that left whole quarters bare behind them; rebuilding after one like that took years.

Krispos sat down on his cot. Just for a few minutes, he told himself. He dimly remembered leaning over sideways, but didn't know he'd fallen asleep until someone yelled, "Your Majesty! Wake up, your Majesty!"

"Wuzzat? I am awake," Krispos said indignantly. But the gluey taste in his mouth and the glue that kept trying to stick his eyelids together gave him the lie. "Well, I'm awake now," he amended. "What's toward?"

"We've nailed Digenis, your Majesty," the messenger told him. "Had a couple of lads hurt in the doing, but he's in our hands."

"There's welcome news at last, by the lord with the great and good mind," Krispos breathed. With it, he really did come all the way awake. He must have been out for two hours or so; the buildings to the southeast were silhouetted against the first gray glow of morning twilight. When he got to his feet, twinges in the small of his back and one shoulder announced how awkwardly he'd rested. That wouldn't have happened in his younger days, but it happened now.

"We're bringing the bastard—begging your pardon for speaking so of a priest, your Majesty, but he's a right bastard if ever there was one—anyhow, we're bringing him back here to the plaza," the messenger said. "Where will you want him after that?"

"In the freezingest icepit of Skotos' hell," Krispos said, which jerked a startled laugh from the soldier who'd carried him the news. The Avtokrator thought fast. "He shouldn't come here, anyway—too much chance of his getting loose. Head up Middle Street—he'll be coming that way, yes?—and tell the men to haul him to the government office building there and secure him in one of the underground gaol cells. I'll be there directly myself."

Pausing only long enough to return the messenger's salute, Krispos shook Katakolon awake and ordered him to fetch Zaidas to the government office building. "What? Why?" asked Katakolon, who'd slept through the messenger's arrival. His eyes went wide when his father explained.

Haloga officers booted their men back to consciousness to guard Krispos on the way down Middle Street. With his usual quiet efficiency, Barsymes—who probably had not slept at all—started spreading word of where the Avtokrator would be so any sudden urgent word could quickly reach him.

The government office building was a granite pile of no particular loveliness. It housed bureaucrats of station insufficiently exalted to labor in the palaces, records of antiquity great enough that they were not constantly consulted, and, below-ground, prisoners who rated more than a fine but less than the headsman. It looked like a fortress; in seditions past, it had served as one.

Today's riot, though, did not lap around it. Some of the Halogai deployed at the doorway in case trouble should approach. Others accompanied Krispos into the entry hall, which was quiet and, but for their torches, dark. Krispos took the stairway down.

Noise and light and strong odors of torch smoke, stale food, and unwashed humanity greeted him on the first basement floor. The prison guards hailed him with salutes and welcoming shouts—his coming was enough out of the ordinary to make their labor seem worthwhile again.

A senior guard said, "The one you're after, your Majesty, they're holding him in cell number twelve, down that hallway there." The wine on his breath added a new note to the symphony of smells. It being the morning after Midwinter's Day, Krispos gave no sign he noticed, but made a mental note to check whether the fellow drank on duty other days, as well.

Instead of the usual iron grillwork, cell number twelve had a stout door with a locked bar on the outside. The gaoler inserted a big brass key, twisted, and swung the bar out of the Avtokrator's way. Flanked by a pair of Halogai, Krispos went in.

A couple of soldiers from Noetos' regiment already stood guard over Digenis, who, wrists tied behind him and ankles bound, lay on a straw pallet that had seen better years. "Haul him to his feet," Krispos said roughly.

The guard obeyed. Blood ran down Digenis' face from a small scalp wound. Those always bled badly, and, being a priest, Digenis had no hair to shield his pate from a blow. He glared defiance at Krispos.

Krispos glared back. "Where's Phostis, wretch?"

"Phos willing, he walks the gleaming path," Digenis answered, "and I think Phos may well be willing. Your son knows truth when he hears it."

"More than I can say for you, if you follow the Thanasiot lies," Krispos snapped. "Now where is he?"

"I don't know," Digenis said. "And if I did, I'd not tell you, that's certain."

"What's certain is that your head will go up on the Milestone as belonging to a proved traitor," Krispos said. "Caught in open revolt, don't think you'll escape because you wear the blue robe."

"Wealth is worth revolting against, and I don't fear the headsman because I know the gleaming path will lead me straight to the lord with the great and good mind," Digenis said. "But I could be as innocent as any man the temples revere as holy and still die of your malice, for the patriarch, far from being the true leader of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, is but your puppet, mouthing your impious words."

Stripped of the venom with which he spoke them, Digenis' words held a certain amount of truth: if Oxeites turned against Krispos, he would soon find himself out of the ecumenical patriarch's blue boots. But none of that mattered, not here, not now. "You're captured for no ecclesiastical offense, sirrah, but for the purely secular crimes of rebellion and treason. You'll answer for them as any other rebel would."

"I'll sing hymns to Phos thanking you for freeing me from the stench-filled world that strives unceasingly to seduce and corrupt my soul," Digenis said. "But if you do not travel the gleaming path yourself, no hymns of mine will save you. You'll go to the ice and suffer for all eternity, lured to destruction by Skotos' honied wiles."

"Given a choice between sharing heaven with you and hell with Skotos, I believe I'd take Skotos," Krispos said. "He at least does not pretend to virtues he lacks."

Digenis hissed like a viper and spat at Krispos, whether to ward off the dark god's name or from simple hatred, the Avtokrator could not have said. Just then Zaidas came into the cell. "Hello," he said. "What's all this?" He set down the carpetbag in his left hand.

"This," Krispos said, "is the miserable excuse for a priest who sucked my son into the slimy arms of the Thanasioi. Wring what you can from the cesspit he calls a mind."

"I shall of course make every effort, your Majesty, but ..." Zaidas' voice trailed away. He looked doubtful, an expression Krispos was unused to seeing on his face. "I fear I've not had the best of luck, probing for the heretics' secrets."

"You gold-lovers are the heretics," Digenis said, "casting aside true piety for the sake of profit."

Emperor and wizard both ignored him. "Do your best," Krispos said. He hoped Zaidas would have better fortune with Digenis than he had with other Thanasiot prisoners or with learning what sort of magic screened him away from finding Phostis. Despite the rare sorcerous tools and rarer scrolls and codices in the Sorcerers' Collegium, the chief wizard had been unable to learn why he was unable to seek Phostis out by sorcery.

Zaidas started pulling sorcerous gear from the bag. "I'll try the two-mirror test, your Majesty," he said.

Krispos wanted to hear confidence in his voice, wanted to hear him say he would have the truth out of Digenis no matter what the renegade priest did. What he heard, with ears honed by listening behind the words of thousands of petitioners, officers, and officials, was doubt. Doubt from Zaidas fed his own doubt: because magic drew so strongly from the power of belief, if Zaidas didn't truly believe he could make Digenis speak, he'd likely fail. He'd already failed on a Thanasiot with the two-mirror test.

"What other strings do you have to your bow?" the Emperor asked. "How else can we hope to pull answers from him?" He could hear his own delicacy of phrase. He wanted Zaidas to think about alternatives, but didn't want to demoralize the mage or suggest he'd lost faith in him ... even if he had.

Zaidas said, "Should the two-mirror test fail, our strongest hope of learning truth goes with it. Oh, a decoction of henbane and other herbs, such as the healers use, might loosen this rascal's tongue, but with it he'd spew as much gibberish as fact."

"One way or another, he'll spew, by the good god," Krispos said grimly, "if not to you, then to the chap in the red leathers."

"Torment my flesh as you will," Digenis said. "It is but the excrement of my being; the sooner it slides down the sewer, the sooner my soul soars past the sun to be with the lord with the great and good mind."

"Go on," Krispos told Zaidas. Worry on his face, the wizard set up his mirrors, one in front of Digenis, the other behind him. He got a brazier going; clouds of fumigants rose in front of the mirrors, some sweet, some harsh.

But when the questioning began, not only did Digenis stand mute, so did his image in the mirror behind him. Had the spell been working as it should have, that second image would have given out truth in spite of his efforts to lie or remain silent.

Zaidas bit his lip in angry, mortified frustration. Krispos sucked in a long, furious breath. He'd had the bad feeling Digenis would remain impervious to interrogation of any sort. The vast majority of men broke under torture. Maybe the priest would, or maybe he'd spill his guts under the influence of one of Zaidas' potions. But Krispos wasn't willing to bet on either.

As if to rub in his determination, Digenis said, "I shall praise Phos' holy name for every pang you inflict on me." He began to sing a hymn at the top of his lungs.

"Oh, shut up," Krispos said. Digenis kept on singing. Someone scratched at the door to the cell. Axe ready to strike, a Haloga pulled it open. A priest started to walk in, then drew back in alarm at the upraised axe blade. "Come on, come on," Krispos told him. "Don't stand there dithering—just tell me what you want."

"May it please your Majesty," the priest began nervously, and Krispos braced for trouble. The blue-robe tried again: "M-may it please your Majesty, I am Soudas, an attendant at the High Temple. The most holy ecumenical patriarch Oxeites, who was commemorating the day by celebrating a special liturgy there, directed me to come to you on hearing that the holy priest Digenis had been captured, so to speak, in arms, and bade me remind your Majesty that ecclesiastics are under all circumstances immune from suffering bodily torment."

"Oh, he did? Oh, they are?" Krispos glared at the priest, who looked as if he wished he could sink through the floor— though that would only have put him in a deeper level of the jail. "Doesn't the most holy ecumenical patriarch recall that I took the head of one of his predecessors for treason no worse than this Digenis has committed?"

"If you mentioned the fate of the formerly most holy Gnatios—may Phos grant his soul mercy—I was instructed to point out that, while capital punishment remains your province, it is a matter altogether distinct from torture."

"Oh, it is?" Krispos made his glare fiercer still. It all but shriveled Soudas, but the priest managed a shaky nod. Krispos dropped his scowl to his red boots; could he have scowled at his own face, he would have done it. The part of him that weighed choices like a grocer weighing out lentils swung into action. Could he afford a row with the regular temple hierarchy while at the same time fighting the Thanasiot heretics? Reluctantly, he decided he could not. Growling like a dog that has reached the end of its chain and so cannot sink its teeth into a man it wants to bite, he said, "Very well, no torture. You may tell the patriarch as much. Generous of him to let me use my own executioners as I see fit."

Soudas bobbed his head in what might have been a nod, then wheeled about and fled. Digenis hadn't missed a note of his hymn. Krispos tried to console himself by doubting whether the renegade would have broken under torment. But he craved the chance to find out.

The Avtokrator swung toward Zaidas. The wizard had listened to his talk with the priest. Zaidas was anything but a fool; he could figure out for himself that the burden on him had just grown heavier. If he couldn't pry secrets from Digenis, those secrets would stay unknown for good. The wizard licked his lips. No, he was not long on confidence.

Digenis ended his hymn. "I care not if you go against the patriarch," he said. "His doctrine is false in any case, and I do not fear your torments."

Krispos knew a strong temptation to break Digenis on the rack, to tear at his flesh with red-hot pincers, not so much in the hope that he would tell where Phostis was—if in fact he knew—but to see if he so loudly despised torment after suffering a good deal of it. Krispos had enough control over himself to recognize the temptation as base and put it aside, but he felt it all the same.

Digenis not only remained defiant but actually seemed to seek out martyrdom. "Your refusal to liberate me from my polluting and polluted envelope of flesh is but another proof of your own foul materialism, your rejection of the spiritual for the sensual, the soul for the penis, the—"

"When you go to the ice, I hope you bore Skotos with your stupid maunderings," Krispos said, a sally that succeeded in making Digenis splutter in outrage and then, better still, shut up. The Emperor added, "I've wasted enough time on you." He turned to Zaidas. "Try anything and everything you think might work. Bring in whatever colleagues you need to give you aid. One way or another, I will have answers from this one before the dark god takes him forever."

"Aye, your Majesty." Zaidas' voice was low and troubled. "The good god willing, others from the Sorcerers' Collegium will have more success than I at smashing through his protective shell of fanaticism."

Accompanied by his bodyguards, Krispos left the cell and the subterranean jail. About halfway up the stairs to the entrance hall, one of the Halogai said, "Forgive me. Majesty, but may I ask if I heard the blue-robe aright? Did he not blame you there for failing to flay him?"

"Aye, that's just what he did, Frovin," Krispos answered.

The northerner's blue eyes mirrored his confusion. "Majesty, I do not understand. I do not fear hurt and gore; that were unmanly. But neither do I run forth and embrace them like man clasping maid."

"Nor do I," Krispos said. "A streak of martyrdom runs through some of the pious in Videssos, though. Me, I'd sooner live for the good god than die for him."

"Spoken like a man of sense," Frovin said. The other bodyguards rumbled approval, down deep in their chests.

When he went outside, the gray light of winter dawn was building. The air smelled of smoke, but with stoves, fireplaces, and braziers by the tens of thousands, the air of Videssos the city always had a smoky tang to it. No great curtains of black billowed up into the lightening sky. If the Thanasioi had thought to burn down the city, thus far they'd failed.

Back in the plaza of Palamas, Evripos still slept. To Krispos' surprise, he found Katakolon in earnest conversation with Thokyodes the fire captain. "If you're sure everything's out in that district, why don't you get some rest?" his youngest son was saying. "You won't do us or the city any good if you're too worn to answer the next summons."

"Aye, that's good advice, young Majesty," Thokyodes answered, saluting. "We'll kip right out here, if that suits—and if you can find us some blankets."

"Barsymes!" Katakolon called. Krispos nodded approvingly—Katakolon might not know where things were, but he knew who would. His son spotted him. "Hello, Father. Just holding things together as best I could; Barsymes told me you were busy with that madman of a priest."

"So I was. I thank you for the help. Do we have the upper hand?"

"We seem to," Katakolon said, more caution in his voice than Krispos was used to hearing there.

"Good enough," Krispos said. "Now let's see if we can keep it."

Toward midmorning, riot flared again in the quarter south of Middle Street. The soldiers Krispos had sent in the night before stayed loyal, much to his relief. Better still, the wind stayed calm, which gave Thokyodes' crew a fighting chance against the blazes set by the heretics and rioters—not identical groups; some of the brawlers arrested were out for what they reckoned piety, others just for loot.

When messengers reported that spasm spent, Krispos raised cups of wine with both Katakolon and Evripos, convinced the worst was past. Then another messenger arrived, this one a jailer from under the government office building. "What now?" Krispos asked.

"It concerns the matter of the prisoner Digenis the priest," the fellow answered.

"Well, what about him?" Krispos said, wishing the goaler wouldn't talk like what he was now that he'd come away from the cells and into the sun.

"Your Majesty, he has refused alimentation," the man declared. Krispos' upraised eyebrow warned him he'd better talk straighter than that. He did try: "Your Majesty, he won't eat his victuals. He declares his intention to starve himself to death."

For the first time since he grew old enough to jump over a bonfire instead of falling into one, Phostis did no leaping on Midwinter's Day. Whatever ill-luck he'd accumulated over the past year remained unburned. He wasn't mewed up in his monklike cell in the keep of Etchmiadzin; he'd been allowed out and about for some weeks. But no fires blazed on street corners anywhere in the town.

Dark streets on Midwinter's Day struck him as unnatural, even while he accompanied Olyvria and—inevitably— Syagrios to one of Etchmiadzin's temples. The service was timed for sunset, which came early not only became this was the shortest day of the year but also because the sun, instead of descending to a smooth horizon, disappeared behind the mountains to the west.

Night came down like an avalanche. Inside the temple, whose strong, blocky architecture spoke of Vaspurakaner builders, darkness seemed absolute; the Thanasio: unlike the orthodox, did not celebrate the light on Midwinter's Day but rather confronted their fear of the dark. Not a torch, not a candle burned inside the temple.

Standing there in the midst of blackness, Phostis peered about, trying to see something, anything. For all the good his eyes did, he might as well have been blindfolded again. His shiver had nothing to do with the cold that filled the temple along with night. Never had the menace of Skotos seemed so real, so close.

Seeking assurance where sight gave none, he reached out and clasped Olyvria's hand in his own. She squeezed back hard; he wondered if this eerie, silent ritual was as hard on her, on all the Thanasioi, as it was on him.

"Someone will start screaming soon," he whispered, not least to keep himself from becoming that someone. His breathless voice seemed to echo through the temple, though he knew even Olyvria could hardly hear him.

"Yes," she whispered back. "It happens sometimes. I remember when—"

He didn't find out what she remembered. Her words were lost in a great exhalation of relief from the whole congregation. A priest carrying a single candle strode up the aisle toward the altar. Every eye swung toward that glowing point as if drawn by a lodestone.

"We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind," the priest intoned, and everyone in the temple joined in the creed with greater fervor than Phostis had ever known, "by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor."

The congregation's amens came echoing back from the conical dome that surmounted the altar. Often, to Phostis, Phos' creed had become mere words to be quickly gabbled through

without thinking on what they meant. Not now. In the cold and frightening dark, they, like the tiny flame from the candle the priest held on high, took on new meaning, new importance. If they were not, if light was not—what then? Only black, only ice. Phostis shivered again.

The priest moved the candle to and fro and said, "Here is the soul, adrift in a creation not its own, the sole light floating on an ocean of darkness. It moves here, it moves there, always surrounded by—things." Coming out of the gloom that prevailed even at the altar, the word had a frightening power.

"But the soul is not a—thing," the priest went on. "The soul is a spark from the infinite torch of Phos, trapped in a world made by the foe of sparks and the greater foe of greater sparks. The things that surround us distract us from the pursuit of goodness, holiness, and piety, which are all that truly matter.

"For our souls endure forever, and will be judged forever. Shall we then turn toward that which does not endure? Food turns to dung, fire to ash, fine raiment to rags, our bodies to stench and bones and then to dust. What boots it, then, whether we gorge on sweetmeats, toast our homes till we sweat in the midst of winter, drape ourselves with silks and furs, or twitch to the brief deluded passions—miscalled pleasures—that spring from the organs we better use to void ourselves of dross?"

Contemplating infinite judgment, contemplating infinite punishment for the sins he, like any mortal, had surely committed, made Phostis want to tear his grip free from Olyvria's. Anything involving base matter in any way was surely evil, surely sufficient to cast him down to the ice forevermore.

But Olyvria clung to him harder than she had before. Maybe, he told himself, she needed comfort and reassurance. Granting her that spiritual boon might outweigh his guilt for noticing how warm and smooth her skin was. He did not let go of her hand.

The priest said, "Each year, the lord with the great and good mind warns us we cannot presume his mercy will endure forever. Each year, all through fall, Phos' sun sinks lower in the sky. Each year, our prayers call it back to rise higher once more, to grant warmth and light even to the wicked figments of reality that spring from the dark heart of Skotos.

"But beware! No mercy, not even the good god's, endures forever. Phos may yet sicken on our great glut of sins. One year—maybe one year not far from now, given the wretched state of mankind; maybe even next year; maybe even this year—one year, I say, the sun may not turn back toward the north the day after Midwinter's Day, but rather go on sinking ever southward, sinking until only a little crimson twilight remains on the horizon, and then—nothing. No light. No hope. No blessings. Forever."

"No!" someone wailed. In an instant, the whole congregation took up the cry. Among the rest was Olyvria, her voice clear and strong. Among them, after a moment, was Phostis himself: the priest had a gift for instilling fright. Among them even was Syagrios. Phostis hadn't thought the ruffian respected Phos or feared Skotos.

Through all the outcry, Olyvria's fingers remained laced with his. He didn't really think about that; he just accepted it gratefully. Instead of feeling alone in the cold blackness that could have come straight from Skotos, he was reminded others fought the dark with him. He needed that reminder. Never in all his years of worshiping at the High Temple had he known such fear of the dark god.

The priest said, "With fasting and lamentation we may yet show Phos that, despite our failings, despite the corruption that springs from the bodies in which we dwell, we remain worthy of the sign of his light for yet another year, that we may advance farther down the gleaming path praised by the holy Thanasios. Pray now, and let the lord with the great and good mind know what is in your hearts!"

If before the temple had echoed to the shouts of the congregation, now, even louder, it was filled with the worshipers' prayers. Phostis' went up with the rest. In the riches and light of the High Temple it was easy to believe, along with the ecumenical patriarch and his plump, contented votaries, that Phos would surely vanquish Skotos at the end of days. Such sublime confidence was harder to maintain in the dark of a chilly temple with a priest preaching of light draining out of the world like water from a tub.

At first, all Phostis heard was the din of people at noisy prayer. Then, little by little, he noticed individual voices in the din. Some repeated Phos' creed over and over: Videssos' universal prayer prevailed among Thanasioi and their foes alike. Others sent up simple requests: "Give us light." "Bless my wife with a son this year, O Phos." "Make me more pious and less lustful!" "Heal my mother's sores, which no salve has aided!"

Prayers like those would not have seemed out of place back in the High Temple. Others, though, had a different ring to them. "Destroy everything that stands in our way!" "To the ice with those who will not walk the gleaming path!" "O Phos, grant me the courage to cast aside the body that befouls my soul!" "Wreck them all, wreck them all, wreck them all!"

He did not care for those; they might have come from the throats of baying wolves rather than men. But before he could do more than notice them, the priest at the altar raised a hand. Any motion within his candle's tiny circle of light was as-toundingly noticeable. The congregation fell silent at once, and with it Phostis' concerns.

The priest said, "Prayer alone does not suffice. We do not walk the gleaming path with our tongues; the road that leads beyond the sun is paved with deeds, not words. Go forth now and live as Thanasios would have had you live. Seek Phos' blessings in hunger and want, not the luxuries of this world that are but a single beat of a gnat's wings against the judgment yet to come. Go forth! This liturgy is ended."

No sooner had he spoken than acolytes bearing torches came into the worship area from the narthex to light the congregants' way out. Phostis blinked; his eyes filled with tears at what seemed the savage glare, though a moment later he realized it was not so bright after all.

He'd dropped Olyvria's hand the instant the acolytes entered—or perhaps she'd dropped his. In more light than a single candle flame, he dared not risk angering Syagrios ... and, even more to the point, angering Livanios.

Then palace calculation surged forward unbidden in his mind. Would Livanios throw his daughter at the heir apparent to the throne? Did he seek influence through the marriage bed? Phostis filed that away for future consideration. But no matter what Livanios intended, the feel of Olyvria's hand in his had been the only warmth he'd known, physical or spiritual, through the Thanasiot service.

He'd thought the temple's interior cold, and so it had been. But there, at least, some hundreds of people crowded together had given a measure, albeit a small one, of animal warmth.

Out on the night-black streets of Etchmiadzin, with the wind whipping knifelike down from the hills, Phostis rediscovered what true cold meant.

The heavy wool cloak he wore might have been made of lace, for all the good it did to keep off the wind. Even Syagrios hissed as the blast struck him. "By the good god," he muttered, "I'd not mind jumping over a bonfire tonight, or even into one, just so as I could get warm."

"You're right." The words were out of Phostis' mouth before he remembered to be surprised at agreeing with Syagrios about anything.

"Fires and displays are not the way of the gleaming path," Olyvria said. "I remember them. too. from the days before my father accepted Thanasios' way. He says it's better to make your soul safe than to worry about what happens to your body."

The priest in the temple had said the same. From him, it sank deep into Phostis' heart. From Livanios, even through Olyvria as intermediary, the words did not mean as much. The heresiarch mouthed Thanasiot slogans, but did he live by them? As far as Phostis could see, he remained sleek, well fed, and worldly.

Hypocrite. The word tolled like a warning bell on a rocky coast. Hypocrisy was the crime of which Phostis had in his mind convicted his father, most of the capital's nobles, the ecumenical patriarch, and most of the clergy, as well. The quest for unvarnished truth was what had drawn him to the Thanasioi in the first place. Finding Livanios anything but unvarnished made him doubt the perfection of the gleaming path.

He said, "I wouldn't mind seeing the time of the sun-turning as one of rejoicing as well as sorrow. After all, it does ensure life for another year."

"But life in the world means life in things which are Skotos," Olyvria said. "Where's to rejoice over that?"

"If it weren't for material things, life would come to an end, and so would mankind," Phostis countered. "Is that what you want: to fade away and vanish?"

"Not for myself." Olyvria's shiver, like Phostis' back in the temple, had little to do with the weather. "But there are those who do want exactly that. You'll see some of them soon, I think."

"They're daft, if you ask me," Syagrios said, though his voice lacked its usual biting edge. "We live in this world along with the next one."

Olyvria argued that. If there was one thing Videssians would do at any excuse or none, it was argue theology. Phostis kept out of the argument, not least because he inclined to Syagrios' side of it and did not want to offend Olyvria by saying so out loud.

The memory of her hand remained printed in his mind. It called up that other memory he had of her, the one from the chamber off the passageway under Digenis' temple back in the city. That latter memory was suited for Midwinter's Day, at least as he'd known it before. It was a time of festival, even of license. As the proverb put it, "Anything can happen on Midwinter's Day."

Had this been a holiday of the sort with which he was familiar, he might—somewhere down deep in him, in a place below words, he knew he would—have tried to get her off by herself. And he suspected, she would have gone with him, even if only for the one night.

But here in Etchmiadzin, seeking sensual pleasure on Midwinter's Day did not bear thinking about. Rejection was the mildest return he could expect. More likely was some sort of mortification of his flesh. Though he had increasing respect for the asceticism of the gleaming path, his flesh had lately suffered enough mortification to suit him.

Besides, Syagrios would make a eunuch of him—and enjoy doing it—if he got himself into trouble of that sort.

The ruffian broke off his disputation with Olyvria, saying, "However you care to have it, my lady. You know more about this business than me, that's for sure. All I know now is that this here poor old smashed nose of mine is going to freeze off if I don't get to somewheres with a fire."

"There I cannot disagree with you," Olyvria said.

"Let's us head back to the keep, then," Syagrios suggested. "It'll be warm—well, warmer—in there. 'Sides, I can dump his Majestyhood here back in his room and get me a chance to relax a bit."

To the ice with you, Syagrios. The thought stood pure and crystalline in the center of Phostis' mind. He wanted to scream it. Only a healthy regard for his own continued survival kept him from screaming it. He was, then, at most an imperfect Thanasiot. Like Olyvria, he remained enamored of the fleshly envelope his soul wore, no matter what the source of that flesh.

The narrow, muddy lanes of Etchmiadzin were almost pre-ternaturally dark. Night travel in Videssos the city was undertaken with torchbearers and guards, if for any legitimate purpose. Only footpads there cherished the black of night. But no one in Etchmiadzin tonight carried a light or seemed concerned over becoming a robber's victim. Cries rose into the dark sky, but they were only the lamentations the priest had commanded of his congregants.

The bulk of the fortress and the stars it obscured helped mark the path back from the temple. Even the torches above the gates were out. Livanios went that far in adhering to the tenets of the Thanasioi.

Syagrios grumbled under his breath. "Don't like that," he said. "Just anybody could come wandering in, and who'd be the wiser till too late?"

"Who's in the town save our own folk and a few Vaspurakaners?" Olyvria said. "They have their own rites and leave ours alone."

"They'd better," Syagrios replied. "More of us than there is of them."

Only inside the keep did light return. Livanios' caftan-wearing advisor sat at a table gnawing the leg of a roasted fowl and whistling a cheery tune Phostis did not know. If he'd heard the order for fasting and lamentation, he was doing a good job of ignoring it.

Syagrios lit a candle from a torch set in a soot-blackened sconce. With it in one hand and his knife in the other, he urged Phostis up the spiral stairway. "Back to your room now," he said. Phostis barely had time to nod to Olyvria before the twist of the stairs made her disappear.

The corridor that led to his little chamber was midnight black. He turned to Syagrios, pointing at the candle. "May I light a lamp in my room from that?"

"Not tonight," Syagrios said. "I got to watch you instead of roisterin', so you get no more enjoyment than me."

Once inside, Phostis drew off his cloak and put it over the blanket on his pallet. He did not take off his tunic as he got

under them both and huddled up in a ball to try to warm himself as fast as he could. He looked back toward the door, beyond which Syagrios surely lurked. "Roistering, is it?" he whispered. He might be a poor Thanasiot himself, but he knew a worse one.