Krispos the Emperor

VII

The man's eyes twitched back and forth in their sockets. It was like no motion Phostis had ever seen before; watching made him queasy. Voice calm but weak, the man said, "I can't see you, not really, but that's all right. It goes away in a few days, I'm told by those who have come this way before me."

"That's g-good." Phostis knew he sounded shaky. It shamed him, but he couldn't help it.

"Fear not," the man said. He'd been introduced to Phostis as Strabon. He smiled radiantly. "Soon, I know, I shall join the lord with the great and good mind and cast aside this flesh that has too long weighed me down."

Strabon had, Phostis thought, already cast aside almost all of his flesh. His face was a skull covered with skin; his neck seemed hardly thicker than a torch. Withered branches might have done for his arms, and claws for his hands. Not only had he no fat left on his bones, he had no muscle, either. He was bone and tendon and skin, nothing more. No, one more thing: the joy that lit his blind eyes.

"Soon," he repeated. "It's been six weeks, a few days over, since last I polluted my soul with aliment. Only a man who was fat to begin with will last much above eight, and never was I in the habit of glutting myself. Soon I shall fare beyond the sun and look on Phos face to face. Soon."

"Does—does it hurt?" Phostis asked. Beside him, Olyvria sat calmly. She'd seen these human skeletons before, often enough so now she was easy with the husk of Strabon.

Syagrios had not come into the hut; Phostis heard him pacing around outside the door.

Strabon said, "No, boy, no; as I told you, fear not. Oh, my belly panged in the early days, I'll not deny, as Skotos' part of me realized I had determined to cut my essential self free of it. But no, I feel no pain, only longing to be free." He smiled again. Save for the faintest tinge of pink, his lips were invisible.

"But to linger so—" Phostis shook his head, though he knew Strabon could not see that. Then he blurted, "Could you not also have refused water, and so made a quicker end of it?"

The corners of Strabon's gash of a mouth turned down. "Some of those who are most holy do as you say. Sinner that I am, I had not the fortitude for it."

Phostis stared at him. Never in his comfortable life back at the palaces had he dreamed he'd be talking with a man in the last stages of deliberately starving himself to death. Even if he had dreamed that, could he have imagined the man would reproach himself for lack of fortitude? No; impossible.

The lids fell over Strabon's twitching eyes; he seemed to doze. "Is he not a miracle of piety?" Olyvria whispered.

"Well, yes, that he is." Phostis scratched his head. Back in Videssos the city, he'd despised the temple hierarchy for wearing bejeweled vestments and venerating Phos in temples built by riches taken—stolen—from the peasantry. Better, he'd thought, a simple but strong worship, one that sprang from within and demanded nothing of anyone save the single pious individual.

Now before him he saw personified, and indeed taken to an extreme he'd never imagined, an example of such worship. He had to respect the religious impulse that had led Strabon to make himself into a collection of twigs and branches, but he was less sure he considered it an ideal.

Yet such self-destruction was implicit in Thanasiot doctrine, for those who had the courage to follow where logic led. If the world of the senses was but a creation of Skotos', what course more logical than to remove one's precious and eternal soul from that swamp of evil and corruption?

Rather hesitantly, he turned toward Olyvria. "However holy he may be, I'd not care to imitate him. Granted, the world is not all it might be, but leaving it this way strikes me as—oh,

I don't know—as running away from the fight against wickedness rather than joining it."

"Ah, but the body itself is evil, boy," Strabon said. He hadn't been asleep after all. "Because of that, any fight is foredoomed to failure." His eyes closed again.

Olyvria spoke in a low voice. "For the many, there may be much truth in what you say, Phostis. As I told you back on Midwinter's Day, I'd not have the bravery to do as Strabon does. But I thought you ought to see him, to celebrate and admire what the soul can do if it so wills."

"I see it," Phostis said. "It is indeed a marvel. But something to celebrate? Of that I'm less certain."

Olyvria looked at him severely. Had she been standing, her hands would have gone onto her hips. As it was, she breathed out in exasperation. "Even the dogma you grew up with has room for asceticism and mortifying the flesh."

"That's true," he said. "Too much care for this world and you have fat, contented priests who might as well not be priests at all. But now, seeing Strabon here, I think there may be too little care for the world, as well." His voice fell to a whisper, so he would not disturb the fitfully sleeping relic of a man. This time, Strabon did not respond.

Phostis listened to himself with some surprise. I sound like my father, he thought. How many times, back at the palaces, had he watched and listened to Krispos steering a middle course between schemes that might have proved spectacular successes or even more spectacular disasters? How many times had he sneered at his father for that moderation?

"What he does affects no one but himself," Olyvria said, "and will surely earn him eternity in communion with Phos."

"That's true," Phostis repeated. "What he does by himself affects him alone. But if one man and one woman in four, say, decided to walk the gleaming path in his exact footprints, that would affect those who declined to do so very much indeed. And Strabon's way, if I rightly understand it, is the one Thanasiot doctrine favors."

"For those whose spirits let them take it, yes," Olyvria said. Phostis looked from Strabon to her, then back again. He tried to envision her features ravaged by starvation, her bright eyes writhing blindly in their sockets. He'd never been the most imaginative of young men. More often than not, he felt that to be a lack. It seemed a blessing now.

Strabon coughed himself awake. He tried to say something, but the coughs went on and on, deep wet ones that wracked the sack of bones he had become. "Chest fever," Phostis whispered to Olyvria. She shrugged. If it was, he thought, the Thanasiot zealot might be dead by evening, for how could he have any strength in his body to fight off illness?

Olyvria stood to go. Phostis was far from sorry to get up with her. When he no longer saw the wasted figure lying on the bed, he felt more alive himself. Maybe that was illusion sprung from the animal part of him and from Skotos; he could not say. But he knew he would have trouble overcoming that animal part. Was his soul a prisoner of his body, as the Thanasioi proclaimed, or a partner with it? He would have to think long and hard on that.

Outside Strabon's hut, Syagrios paced up and down the muddy street, whistling a tune and spitting through his uneven teeth. Phostis watched him grin and swagger. When he tried to visualize the ruffian starving himself, his thoughts ran headlong into a blank wall. He simply could not see it happening. Syagrios was an ugly specimen, but a vivid one for all that.

"So what did you think of the boneyard?" he asked Phostis, spitting again.

Olyvria rounded on him, tight black curls flying in fury. "Show proper respect for the pious and holy Strabon!" she blazed.

"Why? Soon enough he'll be dead, and then it'll be up to Phos, not to the likes of me, to figure out what he deserves."

Olyvria opened her mouth, then closed it again. Phostis made a mental note that Syagrios, while indubitably uncouth, was far from stupid. Too bad, he thought. Aloud, he said, "If a few people choose to make their end that way, I don't see that it much matters to the world around them—and, as Olyvria says, they are pious and holy. But if many decide to end their lives, the Empire will shake."

"And why shouldn't the Empire shake, pray?" Olyvria asked.

Now Phostis had to pause and consider. An unshaken Empire of Videssos was almost as much of an article of faith for him as Phos' creed. And why not? For seven centuries and more, Videssos had given folk in a great swathe of the world reasonable peace and reasonable security. True, there had been disasters, as when steppe nomads took advantage of Videssian civil war to invade the north and east and form their own khaganates in the ruins of imperial provinces. True, every generation or two fought another in the long string of debilitating wars with Makuran. But, on the whole, he remained convinced life within the Empire was likelier to be happy than anywhere outside it.

But when he said as much, Olyvria answered, "So what? If life in this world is but part of Skotos' trap, what matter if you're happy as the jaws close? Better then that we should be unhappy, that we should recognize everything material as part of the lure that draws us down to the ice."

"But—" Phostis felt, himself floundering. "Suppose— hmm—suppose everyone in the westlands, or most people, starved themselves to death like Strabon. What would happen after that? The Makuraners would march in unopposed and rule the land forever."

"Well, what if they did?" Olyvria said. "The pious men and women who'd abandoned the world would be safe in Phos' heaven, and the invaders would surely go to the ice when their days were done."

"Yes, and the worship of Phos would go out of the world, for the Makuraners reverence their Four Prophets, not the good god," Phostis said. "No one who worshiped Phos would be left, and Skotos would have the victory in this world. The realm beyond the sun would gain no new recruits, but the dark god would have to carve new caverns into the ice." He spat in ritual rejection of Skotos.

Olyvria frowned. The very tip of her tongue poked out of her mouth for a moment. Her voice was troubled as she said, "This argument has more weight than I would have looked for."

"No it don't," Syagrios said with a raucous laugh. "The two of you's quarreling over whether you'd like your cow's eggs better poached or fried. Truth is, a cow ain't about to lay no eggs—and whole flocks of people ain't about to starve themselves to death, neither. Come to that, is either one o' you ready to stop eatin' yet?"

"No," Olyvria said quietly. Phostis shook his head.

"Well, then," Syagrios said, and laughed even louder.

"But if you're not ready to leave the world behind, how can you be a proper Thanasiot?" Phostis asked with the relentless logic of the young.

"That's a bloody good question." Syagrios whacked Phostis on the back, almost hard enough to knock him sprawling into the muck that passed for a street. "You ain't as dumb as you look, kid." The day was gloomy, the sky an inverted bowl full of thick gray clouds. The gold ring in Syagrios' ear glinted nonetheless. In Etchmiadzin he did not wear it to deceive those not of his faith, for the Thanasioi ruled the town. But he did not take it out, either.

"Syagrios, to say one can be a good Thanasiot only through starvation contradicts the faith as the holy Thanasios set it forth, which you know perfectly well." Olyvria sounded as if she were holding onto patience with both hands.

Syagrios caught the warning in her voice. Suddenly he reverted to being a guardsman rather than an equal. "As you say. my lady," he answered. Had Phostis told him the same thing, the ruffian would have torn into him in argument and likely j with fists and booted feet, as well.

But Phostis, though prisoner in Etchmiadzin, was not Olyvria's servitor. Moreover, he actively enjoyed theological disputation. Turning to Olyvria, he said, "But if you choose to live in Skotos' world, surely you compromise with evil, and compromise with evil takes you to the ice, not so?"

"But not everyone is or can be suited to leaving the world of his own will," Olyvria said. "The holy Thanasios teaches that those who feel they must remain in Skotos' realm may yet gain merit along two byroads of the gleaming path. In one, they may lessen the temptations of the material for themselves and for those around them."

"Those who follow that byroad would be the men your father leads," Phostis said.

Olyvria nodded. "Them among others. But it is also virtuous to content yourself with simple things: black bread instead of white, coarse cloth rather than fine. The more you do without, the less you subject yourself to Skotos."

"Yes, I see the point," Phostis said slowly. The more you burn and destroy, also, he thought, but kept that to himself. Instead of mentioning it, he asked, "What is the second byroad you spoke of?"

"Why, ministering to those who have chosen the path of greater abnegation," Olyvria answered. "By helping them as they advance along the gleaming path, those who stay behind bask in their reflected piety, so to speak."

"Hmm," Phostis said. At first hearing, that sounded good. But after a moment, he said, "How does that make their dealings with those of greater holiness different from any peasant's dealings with a noble?"

Olyvria gave him an exasperated glare. "It's different because the usual run of noble wallows in corruption, thinking mostly of his purse and his, ah, member, and so a peasant who serves such a man is but drawn deeper into the sensual mire. But our pious heroes reject all the lures of the world and inspire others to do likewise to the degree that is in their power."

"Hmm," Phostis said again. "Something to that, I suppose." He wondered how much. A good noble of the non-Thanasiot sort helped the peasants on his land get through hard times, defended them against raiders if he lived near a frontier, and didn't go around seducing their women. Phostis knew a good many nobles, and knew of a good many more. He wondered how maintaining one's dependents rated against the individual pursuit of piety. The good god knew for certain, but Phostis doubted whether anyone merely human did.

Before he could say as much, a familiar figure from Livanios' miniature court at the keep came stamping up the street: the fellow who seemed to be the heresiarch's chief wizard. Despite all his time in Etchmiadzin, Phostis still had not learned the man's name. Now he wore a thick wool caftan with bright vertical stripes, and on his head a fur cap with ear-flaps that might have come straight off the plains of Pardraya.

He touched his forehead, lips, and chest in greeting to Olyvria, gave Phostis a measuring stare, and ignored Syagrios. "He's going into Strabon's house," Phostis said. "What does he want with someone who likely won't be here two weeks from now and may riot be here tomorrow?"

"He visits everyone he can who chooses to leave the world of evil things," Olyvria answered. "I don't know why; if he's as curious as most mages, perhaps he seeks to learn as much as he can about the world to come while still remaining in this one."

"Maybe." Phostis supposed one did not cease to be a mage, or a tanner, or a tailor, on becoming a Thanasiot. "What is he called, anyhow?"

Olyvria paused visibly before she answered. Syagrios stepped into the breach: "He doesn't like people knowin' his name, for fear they'll work magic with it."

"That's silly. He must not be much of a wizard, then," Phostis said. "My father's chief mage is named Zaidas, and he doesn't care who knows it. He says if you can't protect yourself from name magic, you have no business taking up sorcery in the first place."

"Not all wizards have the same ways," Olyvria said. Since that was too obviously true to require comment, Phostis let it go.

The fellow in the caftan came out of Strabon's house a couple of minutes later. He did not look happy, and was muttering under his breath. Not all the muttering sounded like Videssian; Phostis wondered if he was from nearby Vaspurakan. Of what was in the imperial language, Phostis caught only one phrase: "Old bastard's not ripe yet." The wizard stalked away.

"Not ripe yet?" Phostis said after he'd rounded a corner. "Not ripe for what?"

"I don't know," Syagrios said. "Me, I don't mess with mages or their business and I don't want them messin' with me."

That was a sensible attitude for anyone, and especially, Phostis thought, for somebody like Syagrios, who was likely to be "messed with" by mages when said mages were on the track of objects mysteriously vanished. Phostis smiled at his automatic contempt for the bruiser who'd become his keeper. Syagrios saw the smile and gave him a hard, suspicious stare. He did his best to look innocent, which was rendered more difficult because he was guilty.

Syagrios changed the subject. "How's about we go find some food? Standin' on my pins all mornin', me, I could hack steaks off a donkey and eat 'em raw."

"Get out of here, you beast! Out of my sight!" Olyvria snarled, her voice breaking with fury. "Out! Away! How dare you—how could you be so dense, so blockheaded—as to talk about food after we've just seen the pious Strabon dedicating himself to escaping the world and advancing along the gleaming path? Get out!"

"No," Syagrios said. "Your father told me to keep an eye on this one—" He pointed at Phostis. "—and that there's just what I aim to do."

Up till then, that stolid remark had been proof against anything Olyvria would throw at it. Indeed, Olyvria had not tried to contest it. Now, though, she said, "Where will he go? Do you think he'll kidnap me?"

"I don't know and I don't care," Syagrios answered. "I just know what I got told to do."

"Well, I tell you to go away. I can't abide the sight or sound of you after what you just said," Olyvria said. When he shook his head, she added, "If you don't, I'll tell my father what you said just now. Do you want to undergo the penance you'd receive for mocking the holy faith?"

"I didn't," Syagrios said, but he seemed suddenly doubtful. Whether he had or he hadn't, Livanios was apt to believe Olyvria rather than him. It was most unfair. All at once, Phostis understood why he himself had not had many friends as a boy. If he ran to tell his father about a quarrel, his father was the Avtokrator. If the Avtokrator—or Livanios now—ruled against you, to whom could you appeal?

Bitterness gusted through Phostis. The Avtokrator, in those lost boyhood days, was only too likely to rule against him, not for. His father had never truly warmed to him; from time to time he wondered what he'd done wrong, to make Krispos find fault with everything about him. He doubted he'd ever find out.

Olyvria said to Syagrios, "Go on, I tell you. I'll be responsible for seeing Phostis doesn't run out of Etchmiadzin. And I tell you this, too: if you say me nay once more, you'll be sorry for it."

"All right, then, my lady." The ruffian turned what should have been a title of respect into one of reproach. "On you the blame, and almost I hope you end up wearing it." Syagrios strode off with the straight, proud back of a man who's had the last word.

Watching him go, Phostis felt a burden lift from his spirit, as if the sun had come out to brighten a gloomy day. He also had to stifle a burst of laughter. In spite of having just come out of starving Strabon's house, he was hungry.

Since unlike Strabon he was not about to waste away and die of hunger, he kept that to himself. He didn't want Olyvria rounding on him as she had on Syagrios. If anything was more likely to bring back the watchdog, he couldn't imagine what it might be.

Olyvria was looking at him with a quizzical expression. He realized she was left as much at a loss by Syagrios' departure as was he. "What shall we do now?" she asked, perhaps hoping he could think of something.

Unfortunately, he couldn't. "I don't know," he answered. "I really haven't seen enough of Etchmiadzin to know what you can do around here." Not much before the Thanasioi took over the town, and less now, he guessed.

"Let's just amble about, then, and see where our feet take us," she said.

"That's all right with me." Short of a trip to the torturer, anything Olyvria suggested would have been all right with Phostis. He looked for grass to sprout in the streets, flowers to burst into bloom, and birds to start singing in winter, all because she'd managed to outbluff Syagrios.

Their feet led them to a street of dyers. That the men there followed the gleaming path didn't keep their shops from smelling of stale piss, just like the establishments of perfectly orthodox dyers back in Videssos the city. In the same way, Thanasiot carpenters had hands crisscrossed with scars and Thanasiot bakers faces permanently reddened from peering into hot ovens.

"It all seems so—ordinary," Phostis said after a while. Dull was the other word that came to mind, but he suppressed it. "For most folk, it's as if being a Thanasiot doesn't change much in their lives."

That bothered him. To his way of thinking, heresy and orthodoxy—whichever was which in this dispute—should have been easy to tell apart at a glance. But, on further reflection, he wondered why. Unless they chose Strabon's path out of the world, the Thanasioi had to make their way in it, and only so many ways of doing that were possible. The dyeshops probably stank of urine in Mashiz, too; carpenters would sometimes gouge themselves with chisels; and bakers would need to make sure their loaves didn't burn.

Olyvria said, "The difference is the gleaming path, it's standing aside from the world as well as one can, not thinking riches the only end in life, seeking to satisfy the spirit rather than the baser impulses of the body."

"I suppose so," Phostis said. They walked a little farther while he ruminated on that. Then he said, "May I ask you something? For all the ribbons on my cage, I know I'm pretty much a prisoner here, so I don't mean to make you angry, but there is something I'd like to learn, if giving the answer doesn't offend you."

Olyvria turned toward him. Her eyes were wide with curiosity, her mouth slightly open. She looked very young, and very lovely. "Ask," she said at once. "You're here to learn about the gleaming path, after all. How will you learn if you don't ask?"

"All right, I will." Phostis thought for a little while; the question he had in mind needed to be framed carefully. At last he said, "In the room in the tunnel under Digenis' temple, what you said there—"

"Aha!" Olyvria stuck out her tongue at him. "I thought it would be something about that, just from the way you went all around it like a man feeling for a goldpiece in the middle of a nettle patch."

Phostis felt his face heat. By the way Olyvria giggled, his embarrassment was also plain to the eye. Even so, he stubbornly plowed ahead; in some ways—though he would have hotly denied it—he was very much like Krispos. "What you said under there, when you tried to lure me to you, about the pleasure of love being sweet, and no sin?"

"What about it?" Olyvria lost some—though not all—of her mischievous air as she saw how serious he was.

What he really wanted to ask was how she knew—or, even more to the point, what she would have done had he lain down on the bed beside her and taken her in his arms. But he did not think he was in a position where he could safely put either of those questions. So instead he said, "If you hold to Thanasios' gleaming path as strongly as you say, how could you make such a claim? Doesn't it go straight against everything you profess to believe?"

"I could answer that any number of ways," Olyvria said. "I could tell you, for instance, that it was none of your business."

"So you could, and I would beg your pardon," he said. "I said from the start that I didn't want to offend you."

Olyvria went on as if he had not spoken: "Or I could say I was doing as Digenis and my father bade me do, and trusted them to judge the rights and wrongs of it." Her eyes twinkled again. He knew she was toying with him, but what could he do about it?

"Or," she went on, maddeningly disingenuous, "I could say Thanasios countenanced dissimulation when it serves spreading the truth, and that you have no idea what my true feelings on the subject are."

"I know I don't. That's what I was trying to find out, your true feelings on the subject." Phostis felt like an old, spavined plowhorse trying to trap a dragonfly without benefit of net. He tramped on, straight ahead, while Olyvria flitted, evaded, and occasionally flew so close to the end of his nose that his eyes crossed when he tried to see her clearly.

"Those are just some examples of what I might say," she noted, ticking them off on her fingertips. "If you'd like others, I might also say—"

As if the old plowhorse suddenly snorted and startled the beautiful, glittering insect, he broke in, "What would you say that's so, by the good god?"

"I'd say—" But then Olyvria shook her head and looked away from him. "No, I wouldn't say anything at all, Phostis. Better if I don't."

He wanted to shake truth from her, but she was not a salt cellar. "Why?" he howled, months of frustration boiled into a single despairing word.

"Just—better if I don't." Olyvria still held her head averted. In a small voice, she added, "I think we ought to go back to the fortress now."

Phostis didn't think that, nor anything like it, but walked with her all the same. In the inner ward stood Syagrios, talking with someone almost as disreputable-looking as he was. The ruffian left his—partner in crime?—ambled over, and attached himself to Phostis like a shadow returning from a brief holiday. In an unsettling sort of way, Phostis was almost glad to have him back. He'd certainly made a hash of his first little while in Etchmiadzin on his own.

Digenis' robe had fallen open, displaying ribs like ladder rungs. His thighs were thinner than his knees. Even his ears seemed to be wasting away. But his eyes still blazed defiance. "To the ice with you, your false Majesty," he growled when Krispos came into his cell. "Your way would have sent me beyond the sun quicker, but I gain, I gain."

To Krispos, the firebrand priest looked more as if he lost. Lean to begin with, now he looked like a peasant in a village after three years of blighted crops. But for those eerily compelling eyes, he might have been a skeleton that refused to turn back into a man.

"By the good god," Krispos muttered when that thought struck him, "now I understand the mime troupe."

"Which one, your Majesty?" asked Zaidas, who still labored fruitlessly to extract truth from the dwindling Digenis.

"The one with the fellow in the suit of bones," Krispos answered. "He was supposed to be a Thanasiot starving himself to death, that's what he was. Now, were the mimes heretics, too, or just mocking their beliefs?" Something else occurred to Him. "And isn't it a fine note when mimes know more about what's going on with the faith than my own ecumenical patriarch?"

Digenis' mocking laugh flayed his ears. "Of Oxeites' ignorance no possible doubt can exist."

"Oh, shut up," Krispos said, though down deep he knew tractability was one of the qualities that had gained Oxeites the blue boots. If only he'd been more tractable about letting me do what I wanted with this wretch here, the Avtokrator thought. But Oxeites, like any good bureaucrat, protected his own.

Krispos sat down on a three-legged stool to see if Zaidas would have any better luck today. His chief wizard swore his presence inhibited nothing. Zaidas at least had courage, to be willing to labor on in the presence of his Avtokrator. What he did not have, unfortunately, was success.

He was trying something new today, Krispos saw, or maybe something so old he hoped its time had come round again. At any rate, the implements he took from his carpetbag were unfamiliar. But before the Emperor saw them in action, a panting messenger from the palaces poked his head into Digenis' cell.

"What's happened?" Krispos asked suspiciously; his orders were that he be left undisturbed in his visits here save for only the most important news ... and the most important news was all too often bad.

"May it please your Majesty," the messenger began, and then paused to pant some more. While he caught his breath, Krispos worried. That opening, lately, had given him good cause to worry. But the fellow surprised him, saying, "May it please your Majesty, the eminent Iakovitzes has returned to Videssos the city from his embassy to Makuran and awaits your pleasure at the imperial residence."

"Well, by the good god, there's word that truly does please me," Krispos exclaimed. He turned to Zaidas. "Carry on here without me, and may Phos grant you good fortune. If you glean anything from this bag of bones, report it to me at once."

"Certainly, your Majesty," Zaidas said.

Digenis laughed again. "The catamite goes off to pleasure his defiler."

"That is a lie, one of so many you spew," Krispos said coldly. The Halogai fell in around him. As he went up the stairs that led to the doorway of the government office building, he found himself laughing. He'd have to tell that one to Iakovitzes. His longtime associate would laugh, too, not least because he'd wish the lie were true. Iakovitzes never made any secret of his fondness for stalwart youths, and had tried again and again to seduce Krispos when Krispos, newly arrived in Videssos the city, was in his service.

Barsymes greeted him when he returned to the imperial residence. "Good day, your Majesty. I've taken the liberty of installing the eminent Iakovitzes in the small dining chamber in the south hallway. He requested hot mulled wine, which was fetched to him."

"I'll have the same," Krispos said. "I can't think of a better way to fight the winter chill."

Iakovitzes rose from his chair as Krispos came into the room where he sat. He started to prostrate himself; Krispos waved for him not to bother. With a smug nod, Iakovitzes returned to his seat. He was a well-preserved seventy, plump, his hair and beard dyed dark to make him seem younger, with a complexion on the florid side and eyes that warned—truly—he had a temper.

"Good to see you, by Phos," Krispos exclaimed. "I've wished you were here a great many times the past few months."

On the table in front of Iakovitzes lay a scribe's three-paneled writing tablet. He opened it, used a stylus to scribble rapid words on the wax, then passed Krispos the tablet. "I've wished I were back a great many times myself. I'm bloody sick of mutton."

"Sup with me this evening, then," Krispos said. "What do they say? 'When in Videssos the city, eat fish.' I'll feast you till you grow fins."

Iakovitzes made a strange gobbling noise that served him for laughter. "Make it tentacles, if you'd be so kind," he wrote. "Squid, octopus ... lobster, come to think of it, has no tentacles, but then lobster is lobster, in itself a sufficient justification. By the good god, it makes me wish I could lick my lips."

"I wish you could, too, old friend, and taste in fullness as well," Krispos said. Iakovitzes had only the stump of his tongue; twenty years before, Harvas Black-Robe had torn it from his mouth when he was on an embassy to the evil sorcerer.

The wound—and the spell placed on it to defeat healing— had almost been the death of him. But he'd rallied, even thrived. Krispos knew a great part of his own persona would have been lost had he suffered Iakovitzes' mutilation. He wrote well enough, but never had been fluent with a pen in his hand. Iakovitzes, though, wielded pen or stylus with such vim that, reading his words, Krispos still sometimes heard the living voice that had been two decades silent.

Iakovitzes took back the tablet, wrote, and returned it to Krispos. "It's not so bad, your Majesty: not nearly so bad as sitting down to table with a bad cold in your head, for instance. Half your taste, or maybe more, I've found, is in your nose, not in your mouth. Besides, staying in Mashiz turned into a bore. The only folk who read Videssian seemed as old and wrinkled as I am. You have no notion how hard it is to seduce a pretty boy when he can't understand you."

"Gold speaks a lot of languages," Krispos observed.

"Sometimes you're too pragmatic for your own good,"

Iakovitzes wrote, rolling his eyes at his sovereign's obtuseness. "There's no challenge to merely buying it; the pursuit is part of the game. Why do you think I chased you so long and hard when I knew your appetite ran only to women?"

"So that's it, eh?" Krispos said. "At the time, I thought you were just being beastly."

Iakovitzes clapped a hand over his heart and pantomimed a death scene well enough to earn him a place on a professional mime troupe. Then, miraculously recovered, he bent over his tablet and wrote rapidly: "I think I shall make my way back to Mashiz after all. There, being a representative of the enemy, I am treated with the respect I deserve. My alleged friends prefer slander." He rolled his eyes.

Krispos laughed out loud. Iakovitzes' peculiar combination of touchiness and viperish wit never failed to amuse—except when it infuriated. Sometimes it managed both at once. The Avtokrator quickly sobered. He asked, "On your way back from Makuran, did you have any trouble with the Thanasioi?"

Iakovitzes shook his head, then amplified on the tablet. "I returned by the southern route, and saw no trace. They seem to be a perversion centered in the northwest, though I gather you've had your bouts with them here in the city, too."

"Bouts indeed," Krispos said heavily. "A good windstorm and they might have burned down half this place. Not only that, interrogation by sorcery doesn't have any luck with them, and they're so drunk in their beliefs that many take torture more as an honor than a torment."

"And they have your son," Iakovitzes wrote. He spread his hands to show sympathy for Krispos.

"They have him, aye," Krispos said, "certainly in -body and perhaps in spirit as well." Iakovitzes raised a questioning eyebrow; his gestures, though wordless, had grown so expressive in the years since he'd lost his tongue as to have almost the quality of speech. Krispos explained, "He was talking with a priest who turned out to be a Thanasiot. For all I know, he's taken the wretch's doctrines as his own."

"Not good," Iakovitzes wrote.

"No. And now this Digenis—the priest—is starving himself in my jail. He thinks he'll end up with Phos when he quits the world. My guess is that Skotos will punish him forevermore." The Emperor spat between his feet in despisal of the dark god.

Iakovitzes wrote, "If you ask me, asceticism is its own punishment, but I'd not heard of its being a capital offense till now." That observation made Krispos nod. It also filled all three leaves of the tablet. Iakovitzes reversed his stylus, smoothed out the wax with the blunt end, wrote again. "These days I can tell very easily when I'm talking too much—as soon as I have to start erasing, I know I've been running on. Would that those who still flap their gums enjoyed such a visible sign of prolixity."

"Ah, but if they did, they'd spend their increased silent time thinking up new ways to commit mischief," Krispos said.

"You're likely right," Iakovitzes answered. He studied Krispos for a few seconds, then reclaimed the tablet. "You're more cynical than you used to be. Is that all good? I do admit it's natural enough, for from the throne you've likely heard more drivel these last twenty years than any other man alive, but is it good?"

Krispos thought about that for some little while before he answered. In different forms, the question had arisen several times lately, as when he gave that first Thanasiot prisoner over to torture after Zaidas' magic failed to extract answers from him. He'd not have done that so readily when he was younger. Was he just another Emperor now, holding to power by whatever means came to hand?

"We're none of us what we were awhile ago," he said, but that was not an answer, and he knew it. By the way Iakovitzes raised an eyebrow, cocked his head, and waited for Krispos to go on, he knew it was no answer, too. Floundering, Krispos tried to give one: "The temples will never venerate me as holy, I daresay, but I hope the chroniclers will be able to report I governed Videssos well. I work hard at it, at any rate. If I'm harsh when I have to be, I also think I'm mild when I can be. My sons are turning into men, and not, I can say, the worst of men. Is it enough?" He heard pleading in his voice, a note he'd not found there in some years: the Avtokrator heard pleas; he did not make them.

Iakovitzes bent over the writing tablet. When the stylus was done racing back and forth, he passed the tablet to Krispos, who received it with some anxiety. He knew Iakovitzes well enough to be sure his old companion would be blunt with him. He had no trouble reading it, at any rate; constant poring over documents had kept his sight from lengthening with age as much as most men's.

"That you can ask the question after so long on the throne speaks well for you," Iakovitzes wrote. "Too many Avtokrators forget it exists within days of their anointing. As for the reply you gave, well, Videssos has had the occasional holy man on the throne, and most turned out bad, for the world is not a holy place. So long as you remember now and again what an innocent—and attractive—boy you once were, you'll not turn out too badly."

Krispos nodded slowly. "I'll take that."

"You'd better," Iakovitzes replied after more scribbling. "I flatter only when I hope to entice someone under the sheets with me, and after all our years of acquaintance I'm at last beginning to doubt I'll ever have much luck with you."

"You're incorrigible," Krispos said.

"Now that you mention it, yes," Iakovitzes wrote. He beamed, taking it for a compliment. Then he covered his mouth with a hand while he yawned; the empty cavern within was an unpleasant sight, and he made a point of not displaying it. He wrote some more. "By your leave, your Majesty, I'll take my own leave now, to rest at home after my travels. Do you still take supper just past sunset?"

"I have enough years on me now to have become a creature of habit," Krispos answered, nodding. "And with which of your handsome grooms do you intend to rest until supper-time?"

Iakovitzes assumed a comically innocent look, then bowed his way out of the little dining chamber. Krispos guessed his barb had struck home—or at least given Iakovitzes an idea. Krispos finished his mulled wine, then set the silver goblet down beside Iakovitzes'. The wine hadn't stayed warm, but the ginger and cinnamon stirred into it nipped his tongue pleasantly.

Barsymes came in with a tray on which to carry away the goblets. Krispos said, "Iakovitzes will join me for supper this evening. Please let the cooks know he'll like seafood in as many courses as possible—he says he's tired of Makuraner mutton."

"I shall convey the eminent sir's request," Barsymes agreed gravely. "His presence will allow the kitchen staff to display their full range of talents."

"Hrmp," Krispos said in mock indignation. "I can't help being raised on a poor farm." While he enjoyed fancy dishes well enough, he more often preferred the simple fare he'd grown up with. More than one cook had complained of having his wings clipped.

Dusk was settling over the city when Iakovitzes returned, resplendent and glittering in a robe shot through with silver thread. Barsymes escorted him and Krispos to the small dining room where they'd taken wine earlier in the day. A fresh jar awaited them, cooling in a silver bucket of snow. The vestiarios poured a cup for each man. Iakovitzes wrote, "Ah, it's pale. Perhaps someone listened to me."

"Perhaps someone did, eminent sir," Barsymes said. "And now, if you will excuse me—" He glided away, to return with a bowl. "A salad of lettuce and endives, dressed with vinegar flavored by rue, dates, pepper, honey, and crushed cumin—a garnish said to promote good health—and topped with anchovies and rings of squid."

Iakovitzes rose from his chair and gave Barsymes a formal military salute, then kissed him on each beardless cheek. The vestiarios retreated in order less good than was his wont. Krispos hid a smile and attacked the salad, which proved tasty. Iakovitzes cut his portion into very small bits. He had to wash each one down with wine and put his head back to swallow.

His smile was blissful. He wrote, "Ah, squid! Were you to offer one of these tentacled lovelies to Rubyab King of Kings, your Majesty, without doubt he would flee faster than from an invading Videssian army. The Makuraners, when it comes to food, live most insular—or perhaps I should say inlandsular— lives."

"The more fools they." Krispos ate slowly, so as not to get ahead of Iakovitzes. Barsymes cleared away the plates. Krispos said, "Tell me, eminent sir, did you ever find out what was making Rubyab's mustaches quiver with secret glee?'

"Do you know, I didn't, not to be sure of it," Iakovitzes answered. He looked thoughtful. "Terrible, isn't it, when a Makuraner outdoes me in deceit? I must be getting old. But I tell you this, your Majesty: one way or another, it concerns us."

"I was sure it would," Krispos said. "Nothing would make Rubyab happier than buggering Videssos." He caught Iakovitzes' eye. "In the metaphorical sense, of course."

Iakovitzes gobbled laughter. "Oh, of course, your Majesty," he wrote.

Barsymes returned with a fresh course. "Here we have leeks boiled in water and olive oil," he declared, "and then stewed in more oil and mullet broth. To accompany them, oysters in a sauce of oil. honey, wine, egg yolks, pepper, and lovage."

Iakovitzes tasted the oysters, then wrote in big letters, "I want to marry the cook."

"He is a man, eminent sir," Barsymes said.

"All the better," Iakovitzes wrote, which sent the vestiarios into rapid retreat. He presently returned with another new platter along with a fresh jar of wine. This dish held peppered mullet liver paste baked in a fish-shaped mold and then sprinkled with virgin olive oil, as well as squashes baked with mint, coriander, and cumin, and stuffed with pine nuts ground with honey and wine.

"I shan't eat for a week," Krispos declared happily.

"But your Majesty, the main courses approach," Barsymes said in anxious tones.

Krispos corrected himself: "Two weeks. Bring 'em on." The tip of his nose was getting numb. How much wine had he drunk, anyhow? The rich flavor of the fish livers nicely complemented the squashes' sweet stuffing.

Barsymes bore away the empty mold from which the liver paste had come and the bowl that had held the squashes. Under the table, Krispos felt something on his leg, just above the knee. It turned out to be Iakovitzes' hand. "By the good god," the Avtokrator exclaimed, "you never give up, do you?"

"I'm still breathing," Iakovitzes wrote. "If I haven't stopped the one, why should I stop the other?"

"Something to that," Krispos admitted. He hadn't had much luck with the other lately, and he'd surely be too gorged after this banquet was done to try to improve that tonight. Just then Barsymes came back again, this time with a tureen and two bowls. Thinking about what the tureen might hold took Krispos' mind off other matters, a sure sign of advancing years.

The vestiarios announced, "Here we have mullets stewed in wine, with leeks, broth, and vinegar, seasoned with oregano, coriander, and crushed pepper. For your added pleasure, the stew also includes scallops and baby prawns."

After the first taste, Iakovitzes wrote, "The only thing that could further add to my pleasure would be an infinitely distensible stomach, and you may tell the cooks as much."

"I shall, eminent sir," Barsymes promised. "They will take pleasure in knowing they have pleased you."

The next course was lobster meat and spawn chopped fine, mixed with eggs, pepper, and mullet broth, wrapped in grape leaves, and then fried. After that came cuttlefish boiled in wine, honey, celery, and caraway seeds, and stuffed with boiled calves' brains and crumbled hard-cooked eggs. Only the expectant look on Barsymes' face kept Krispos from falling asleep then and there. "One entree yet to come," the vestiarios said. "I assure you, it shall be worth the wait."

"My weight's already gone up considerably," Krispos said, patting his midsection. He could have used an infinitely distensible stomach himself about then.

But Barsymes, as usual, proved right. When he set down the last tray and its serving bowl, he said, "I am bidden by the cooks to describe this dish in detail. Any lapses in the description spring from my lapses of memory, not theirs of talent. I begin: to soaked pine nuts and sea urchins, they added in a casserole layers of mallows, beets, leeks, celery, cabbage, and other vegetables I now forget. Also included are stewed chickens, pigs' brains, blood sausage, chicken gizzards, fried tunny in bits, sea nettles, stewed oysters in pieces, and fresh cheeses. It is spiced with celery seed, lovage, pepper, and asafetida. Over the top was poured milk with beaten egg. It was then stiffened in a hot-water bath, garnished with fresh mussels, and peppered once more. I am only too certain I've left out something or another; I beg you not to report my failing to the cooks."

"Phos have mercy," Krispos exclaimed, eyeing the big casserole dish with something far beyond mere respect. "Should we eat of it or worship it?" After Barsymes served Iakovitzes and him, he had his answer. "Both!" he said with his mouth full.

The feast had stretched far into the night; every so often, Barsymes fed charcoal to a brazier that kept the dining chamber tolerably warm. Iakovitzes held up his tablet. "I hope you have a wheelbarrow in which to roll me home, for I'm certain I can't walk."

"Something shall be arranged, I am certain," the vestiarios said. "Dessert will be coming shortly. I trust you will do it justice?"

Iakovitzes and Krispos both groaned. The Avtokrator said, "We'll deal with it or burst trying. I'd say it's about even money which." He'd taken an army into battle many times with better odds than those.

But the sweet scent of the steam gently rising from the pan Barsymes brought in revived his interest. "Here we have grated apricots cooked in milk until tender, then covered in honey and lightly dusted with ground cinnamon." The vestiarios bowed to Iakovitzes. "Eminent sir, the cooks apologize for their failure to include seafood in this one dish."

"Tell them I forgive their lapse," Iakovitzes wrote. "I've not yet decided whether to sprout fins or tentacles from tonight's fete."

The apricots tasted as good as they smelled. Krispos nonetheless ate them very slowly, being full far past repletion. He was only halfway through his portion when Barsymes hurried into the dining chamber. The Emperor raised an eyebrow; such a lapse was unlike the eunuch.

Barsymes said, "Forgive me, your Majesty, but the mage Zaidas would have speech with you. It is, I gather, a matter of some urgency."

"Maybe he's here to tell me Digenis dropped dead at last," Krispos said hopefully. "Fetch him in, esteemed sir. If he'd come sooner, he could have helped the two of us commit gluttony here, not that we haven't managed well enough on our own."

When Zaidas came to the doorway, he started to prostrate himself. Krispos waved for him not to bother. Nodding his thanks, the wizard greeted Iakovitzes, whom he knew well. "Good to have you back with us, eminent sir. You've been away too long."

"It certainly seemed too bloody long," Iakovitzes wrote.

Barsymes carried in a chair for the mage. "Help yourself to apricots," Krispos said. "But first tell me what brings you here so late. It must be getting close to the sixth hour of the night. Has Digenis finally gone to the ice?"

To his surprise, Zaidas answered, "No, your Majesty, or not that I know of. It has rather to do with your son Phostis."

"You found a way to make Digenis talk?" Krispos demanded eagerly.

"Not that either, your Majesty," the mage said. "As you know, till now I've had no success even learning the possible source of the magic that conceals the young Majesty from my search. This has not been from want of effort or diligence, I assure you. Till now, I would have described the trouble as want of skill."

"Till now?" Krispos prompted.

"As you know, your Majesty, my wife Aulissa is a very determined lady." Zaidas gave a small, self-deprecating chuckle. "She has, in fact, determination to spare for herself and me both."

Iakovitzes reached for the stylus, but forbore. Krispos admired Aulissa's beauty and her strength of purpose while remaining content she was his mage's wife, not his own. The two of them had been happy together for many years, though. Now Krispos just said, "Go on, pray."

"Yes, your Majesty. In any case, Aulissa, seeing my discontent at failing to penetrate the shield the Thanasiot sorcerers have thrown up to disguise Phostis' whereabouts, suggested I test that screen at odd times and in odd ways, in the hope of ascertaining its nature while it might be weakest. Having no more likely profitable notions of my own, I fell in with her plan, and this evening I saw it crowned with success."

"There's good news indeed," Krispos said. "I'm in your debt, and in Aulissa's. Tell her when you go home that I'll show I'm grateful with more than words. But for now, by the good god, tell me what you know before I get up and tear it from you."

Iakovitzes let out his gobbling laugh. "It's an idle threat, sorcerous sir," he wrote. "Neither Krispos nor I could rise for anything right now, in any sense of the word."

Zaidas' smile was nervous. "You must understand, your Majesty, I've not broken the screen, merely peeked behind one lifted corner of it, if I may use ordinary words to describe sorcerous operations. But this I can tell you with some confidence: the magic behind the screen is of the school inspired by the Prophets Four."

"Is it?" Krispos said. Iakovitzes' eyebrows were eloquent of surprise. The Avtokrator added, "So the wind blows from that quarter, does it? It's not what I expected. I'll say that. Knowing how the screen was made, can you now pierce it?"

"That remains to be seen," Zaidas said, "but I can essay such piercing with more hope than previously was mine."

"Good for you!" Krispos lifted the latest wine jar from its bed of snow. It was distressingly light. "Barsymes!" he called. "I'd intended to make an end of things here, but I find we need more wine after all. Fetch us another, and a cup for Zaidas and one for yourself. Tonight the news is good."

"I shall attend to it directly, your Majesty," Barsymes said, and he did.

Occasional sleet rode the wind outside the little stone house with the thatched roof. Inside, a small fire burned on the hearth, but the chill remained. Phostis chafed his hands one against the other to keep feeling in them.

The priest who had presided over the Midwinter's Day liturgy at the main temple in Etchmiadzin bowed to the middle-age couple who sat side by side at the table where they'd no doubt eaten together for many years. On the table rested a small loaf of black bread and two cups of wine.

"We are met here today with Laonikos and Siderina to celebrate their last meal, their last partaking of the gross substance of the world and their commencement of a new journey on Phos' gleaming path," the priest proclaimed.

Along with Phostis, Olyvria, and Syagrios. the little house was crowded with friends and relatives; the couple's son and daughter and two of Laonikos' brothers were easy to pick out by looks. Everyone, including Laonikos and Siderina, seemed happy and proud of what was about to happen. Phostis looked happy himself, but he'd learned in the palaces how to assume an expression at will. In fact, he didn't know what to think. The man and woman at that table were obviously of sound mind and as obviously eager to begin with what they thought of as the last step of their earthly existence and their first steps toward heaven. How should I feel about that. Phostis wondered, when it's not a choice I'd ever make for myself?

"Let us pray." the priest said. Phostis bent his head, sketched the sun-circle over his heart. Everyone recited Phos' creed. As he had at Etchmiadzin's temple, Phostis found the creed more moving, more sincere, here than he ever had in the High Temple. These people meant their prayers.

They put fervor into a round of Thanasiot hymns, too. Phostis did not know those as well as the rest of the folk gathered here; he kept stumbling over the words and then coming in again a line and a half later. The hymns had different tunes—some borrowed from the orthodox liturgy—but the same message: that loving the good god was all-important, that the next world meant more than this one, and that every earthly pleasure was from Skotos and to be shunned.

The priest turned to Laonikos and Siderina and asked, "Are you now prepared to abandon the wickedness in this world, the dark god's vessel, and to seek the light in the realm beyond the sun?"

They looked at each other, then touched hands. It was a loving gesture, but in no way a sensual one: with it they affirmed that what they did, they did together. Without hesitation, they said, "We are." Phostis could not have told which of them spoke first.

"It's so beautiful," Olyvria whispered, and Phostis had to nod. Dropping her voice still further, so only he heard, she added. "And so frightening." He nodded again.

"Take up the knife," the priest said. "Divide the bread and eat it. Take the wine and drink. Never again shall the stuff of Skotos pass your lips. Soon the bodies that are themselves sinful shall be no more and pass away; soon your souls shall know the true joy of union with the lord with the great and good mind."

Laonikos was a sturdy man with a proud hooked nose and distinctive eyebrows, tufted and bushy. Siderina might have been pretty as a girl; her face was still sweet and strong. Soon, Phostis thought, they'll both look like Strabon. The idea horrified him. It didn't seem to bother Laonikos and Siderina at all.

Laonikos cut the little loaf in half and gave one piece to his wife. The other he kept himself. He ate it in three or four bites, then tilted back the wine cup until the last drop was gone. His smile lit up the house. "It's done," he said proudly. "Phos be praised."

"Phos be praised," everyone echoed. "May the gleaming path lead you to him!"

Siderina finished her final meal a few seconds after Laonikos. She dabbed at her lips with a linen napkin. Her eyes sparkled. "Now I shan't have to fret about what to cook for supper any more," she said. Her voice was gay and eager; she looked forward to the world to come. Her family laughed with her. Even Phostis found himself smiling, for her manifest happiness communicated itself to him no matter how much trouble he had sharing it.

The couple's son took the plate, knife, and wine cups. "The good god willing, these will inspire us to join you soon," he said.

"I hope they do," Laonikos said. He got up from the table and hugged the young man. In a moment, the whole family was embracing.

"We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind—" the priest began. Everyone joined him in prayer once more.

Phostis thought the blue-robe had intruded himself on the family's celebration. He thought his own presence an intrusion, too. Turning to Olyvria, he whispered, "We really ought to go."

"Yes, I suppose you're right," she murmured back.

"Phos bless you, friends, and may we see you along his gleaming path," Laonikos called to them as they made their way out the door. Phostis put up his hood and pulled his cloak tight around him to shield against the storm.

"Well," Olyvria said when they'd gone a few yards down the street, "what did you think of that?"

"Very much what you did," Phostis answered. "Terrifying and beautiful at the same time."

"Huh!" Syagrios said. "Where's the beauty in turning into a bag of bones?" It was the same thought Phostis had worried at before, if more pungently put.

Olyvria let out an indignant sniff. Before she could speak, Phostis said, "Seeing faith so fully realized is beautiful, even for someone like me. My own faith, I fear, is not so deep. I cling to life on earth, which is why seeing someone choose to leave it frightens me."

"We'll all leave it sooner or later, so why choose to hurry?" Syagrios said.

"For a proper Thanasiot," Olyvria said, emphasizing proper, "the world is corrupt from its creation, and to be shunned and abandoned as soon as possible."

Syagrios remained unmoved. "Somebody has to take care of all the bloody sods leavin' the world, or else they'll leave it faster'n they have in mind, thanks to his old man's soldiers." He jerked a thumb at Phostis. "So I'm not a sheep. I'm a sheepdog. You don't have sheepdogs, my lady, wolves get fat."

The argument was ugly but potent. Olyvria bit her lip and looked to Phostis. He felt he was called to save her from some dreadful fate, even though she and Syagrios were in truth on the same side. He flung the best rhetorical brickbat he could find: "Saving others from sin doesn't excuse sins of your own."

"Boy, you can talk about sin when you find out what it is," Syagrios said scornfully. "You're as milkfed now as when you came out from between your mother's legs. And how do you think you got in there to come out, eh, if there'd been no heavy breathing awhile before?"

Phostis had thought about that, as uneasily as most people when making similar contemplations. He started to shoot back that his parents had been honestly married when he was conceived, but he wasn't even sure of that. And rumor in the palace quarter said—whispered, when he was suspected of being in earshot—Krispos and Dara had been lovers while the previous Avtokrator—and Dara's previous husband—Anthimos still held the throne. Glaring at Syagrios wasn't the response Phostis would have liked to make, but seemed the best one available.

As wet will not stick to a duck's oiled feather, so glares slid off Syagrios. He threw back his head and laughed raucously at Phostis' discomfiture. Then he spun on his heel and swaggered away through the slush, as if to say Phostis wouldn't know what to do with a chance to sin if one fell into his lap.

"Cursed ruffian," Phostis growled—but softly, so Syagrios would not hear. "By the good god, he knows enough of sin to spend eternity in the ice; the gleaming path should be ashamed to call him its own."

"He's not a Thanasiot, not really, though he'll quarrel over the workings of the faith like any Videssian." Olyvria's voice was troubled, as if she did not care for the admission she was about to make. "He's much more a creature of my father's."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Phostis freighted the words with as much irony as they would bear. Only after they had passed his lips did he wish he'd held them in. Railing at Livanios would not help him with Olyvria

She sounded defensive as she answered, "Surely Krispos' also has men to do his bidding, no matter what it may be."

"Oh, he does," Phostis said. "But he doesn't wrap himself in piety while he's about it." In some surprise, he listened to himself defending his father. This wasn't the first time he'd had good things to say about Krispos since he'd ended up in Etchmiadzin. He hadn't had many when he was back in the imperial capital under Krispos' eye—and his thumb.

Olyvria said, "My father seeks to liberate Videssos so the gleaming path may become a reality for everyone. Do you deny it's a worthy goal?"

He seeks power, like any other ambitious man, Phostis thought. Before he could say it aloud, he started to laugh. Olyvria's eyes raked him. "I wasn't laughing at you," he assured her quickly. "It's just that we sound like a couple of little squabbling children: 'My father can do this.' 'Well, my father can do that.'"

"Oh." She smiled back, her good humor restored. "So we do. What would you rather talk about than what our fathers can do?"

The challenging way she threw the question at him reminded him of the first time he'd seen her, in the tunnel under Videssos the city. If he was to become a proper Thanasiot, as Olyvria had put it in her argument with Syagrios, he ought to have forgotten that, or at most remembered it as a test he'd passed. But he'd discovered before he ever heard of Thanasios that he did not have a temper approaching the monastic. He did not remember just the test; he remembered her.

And so he did not answer in words. Instead, he reached out and slipped an arm around her waist. If she'd pulled back, he was ready to apologize profusely. He was even ready to produce a convincing stammer. But she didn't pull back. Instead, she let him draw her to him.

In Videssos the city, they would have been nothing out of the ordinary: a young man and a young woman happy with each other and not paying much attention to anything else. Even in Etchmiadzin, a few people on the street smiled as they walked by. Others, though, glowered in pious indignation at such a public display of affection. Crabs, he thought.

After a few steps, though, Olyvria pulled away. He thought she'd seen the disapproving faces, too. But she said, "Strolling with you like this is very pleasant, but I can't feel happy about pleasure, if you know what I mean, just after we've come away from the celebration of the Last Meal."

"Oh. That." As it has a way of doing, the wider world intruded itself on Phostis' thoughts. He remembered the joy Laonikos and Siderina had shown when they swallowed the last wine and bread they would taste on earth. "It's still hard to imagine that impinging on me. Like Syagrios, if in lesser measure, I fear I'm a creature of this world."

"In lesser measure," Olyvria agreed. "Well, so am I, if the truth be told. Maybe when I'm older the world will repel me enough to make me want to leave it, but for now, even if everything Thanasios says about it is true, I can't force my flesh to turn altogether away from it."

"Nor I," Phostis said. The fleshly world intruded again, in a different way this time: He stepped up to Olyvria and kissed her. Her lips were for a moment still and startled under his; he was a little startled himself, because he hadn't planned to do it. But then her arms enfolded him as his did her. Her tongue touched his, just for a couple of heartbeats.

At that, they broke apart from each other, so fast Phostis couldn't tell which of them drew back first. "Why did you do that?" Olyvria asked in a voice that was all breath.

"Why? Because—" Phostis stopped. He didn't know why, not in the way he knew how mulberries tasted or where in Videssos the city the High Temple stood. He tried again: "Because—" Another stumble. Once more: "Because of all the folk in Etchmiadzin, you're the only one who's shown me any true kindness." That was indeed part of the truth. The rest Phostis did not care to examine quite so closely; it was as filled with carnality as the upper part of his mind was with the notion that carnality and sinfulness were one and the same.

Olyvria considered what he'd said. Slowly she nodded. "Kindness is a virtue that moves you forward on the gleaming path, a reaching out from one soul to another," she said. But her eyes slipped away from his as she spoke. He watched her lips. They seemed slightly softer, slightly fuller than they had before his touched them. He wondered if she, too, was having trouble reconciling what she believed with what she felt.

They walked on aimlessly for a while, not touching, both of them thoughtful. Then, over a low rooftop, Phostis saw the bulk of the fortress. "We'd better get back," he said. Olyvria nodded, as if relieved to have a definite goal for her feet.

As if he were a conjured demon, Syagrios popped out of a wineshop not far outside the fortress' walls. He might have started shirking his watchdog duties, but he didn't want Livanios finding out about that. The ruffian glanced mockingly at the two of them. "Well, have you settled all the doings of the lord with the great and good mind?"

"That's for Phos to do with us, not we with him," Phostis said.

Syagrios liked that; his laugh blew grapey fumes into Phostis' face. He pointed toward the gates. "Back to your cage now, and you can see how Phos settles you there."

Phostis kept walking toward the fortress. He'd learned that giving any sign Syagrios' jabs hurt guaranteed he'd keep getting them. As he went through the gates, he also noticed how much like home the fortress was becoming in his mind. Just because it's familiar doesn't mean they can make you belong here, he told himself.

But were they making him? He still hadn't settled that question in his own mind. If he followed Thanasios' gleaming path, oughtn't he be here of his own free will?

In the inner yard, Livanios was watching some of his recruits throw javelins. The light spears thumped into bales of hay propped against the far wall. Some missed and bounced back.

Ever alert, Livanios turned his head to see who the newcomers were. "Ah, the young Majesty," he said. Phostis didn't care for the way he used the title; it was devoid even of scornful courtesy. The heresiarch sounded as if he wondered whether Phostis, instead of proving useful, might be turning into a liability. That made Phostis nervous. If he wasn't useful to Livanios, how long would he last?

"Take him up to his chamber, Syagrios," Livanios said; he might have been speaking of a dog, or of a sack of flour.

As the door to his little cell closed behind him, Phostis realized that, if he didn't care to abandon his fleshly form as the Thanasioi advocated for their most pious folk, he might have to take some most un-Thanasiot actions. As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he remembered Olyvria's lips sweet against his. The Thanasioi would not have approved of that, not even a little.

He also remembered whose daughter Olyvria was. If he tried to escape, would she betray him? Or might she help? He stamped on the cold floor. He just did not know.