An Emperor for the Legion (34 page)

What was he talking about? the tribune wondered irritably.
His Videssian was fluent by now, but this jargon left him floundering.

Baanes Onomagoulos’ translation was rough but serviceable. “By which you’re saying that your precious dues-takers pissed themselves whenever they thought they saw a nomad, and turned tail before they could find out if they were right.” The noble gave a coarse laugh.

“That’s the way of it,” Drax the Namdalener agreed. He turned a calculating eye on Vourtzes. “From what I’ve seen of you pen-pushers, any excuse not to pay is a good one. By the Wager, you’d think the money came out of your purse, not the peasants’.”

“Well said,” Thorisin exclaimed, his usual distrust for the islanders quenched when Drax echoed a sentiment he heartily shared. The count nodded his thanks.

Vourtzes proffered a thick roll of parchment. “Here are the figures to support the position I have outlined—”

Numbers in a ledger, though, meant little to the soldiers he faced. Thorisin slapped the scroll aside, snarling, “To the crows with this gibberish! It’s gold I need, not excuses.”

Elissaios Bouraphos said, “These fornicating seal-stampers think paper will patch anything. That was why I put in with you, your Highness—I kept getting reports instead of repairs—and sick I got of them, too.”

“If you will examine the returns I have presented to you,” Vourtzes said with rather desperate determination, “you will reach the inescapable conclusion that—”

“—The bureaucrats are out to bugger honest men,” Onomagoulos finished for him. “Everyone knows that, and has since my grandfather’s day. All you ever wanted was to keep the power in your own slimy hands. And if a soldier reached the throne despite you, you starved him with tricks like this.”

“There is no trickery!” Vourtzes wailed, his distress wringing a simple declarative sentence from him.

Marcus had no love for the harried logothete, but he recognized sincerity when he heard it. “I think there may be something in what this fellow claims,” he said.

Thorisin and his marshals stared at the Roman as if disbelieving their ears. “Whose side are you on?” the Emperor demanded. Even Addaios Vourtzes’ look of gratitude was wary. He seemed to suspect some trap that would only lead to deeper trouble for him.

But Alypia Gavra watched the tribune alertly; her expression was masked as usual, but Scaurus could read no disapproval in it. And unlike the Videssian military men, he had had civilian as well as warlike experience, and knew how much easier it was to spend money than to collect it.

Ignoring Thorisin’s half-accusation, he persisted, “Gathering taxes could hardly have been easy this past year. For one thing, sir, your men and Ortaias’ both must have gone into some parts of the westlands, with neither side getting all it should. And Baanes has to be partly right—with the Yezda loose, parts of the Empire aren’t safe for tax collectors. But even where there are no Yezda at any given moment, the lands they’ve ravaged still yield no cash—you can’t get wool from a bald sheep.”

“A mercenary with comprehension of basic fiscal realities,” Vourtzes said to himself. “How extraordinary.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Thank you,” to the tribune.

The Emperor looked thoughtful, but Baanes Onomagoulos’ face grew stormy; Scaurus, watching the noble’s bare scalp go red, suddenly regretted his chance-chosen metaphor.

Alypia took another jab at Baanes. “Not all arrears are the tax collectors’ fault,” she said. “If big landowners paid what they owed, the treasury would be better off.”

“That is very definitely the case,” Vourtzes said. “Legitimately credentialed agents of the fisc have been assaulted, on occasion even killed, in the attempt to assess payments due on prominent estates, some of them properties of clans represented in this very chamber.” While he named no names, he, too, was looking at Onomagoulos.

The noble’s glare was hot enough to roast the bureaucrat, Marcus, and Alypia Gavra all together. The tribune, seeing Alypia’s eyebrows arch, nodded almost imperceptibly in recognition of a common danger.

As he had in Balsamon’s library, Elissaios Bouraphos tried to ease Onomagoulos’ wrath, putting a hand on his shoulder and talking to him in a low voice. But the admiral was himself a possessor of wide estates, and said to Thorisin, “You know why we held back payments to the pen-pushers—aye, you did the same on your lands before your brother threw Strobilos out. Why should we give them the rope to hang us by?”

“I won’t say you’re wrong there,” the Emperor admitted with a chuckle. “Since I’m not a pen-pusher, though, Elissaios,
surely you’ll pay in everything you owe without a whimper?”

“Surely,” Bouraphos said. Then he whimpered, so convincingly that everyone at the table burst into laughter. Even Addaios Vourtzes’ mouth twitched. Marcus revised his estimate of the admiral, which had not included a sense of humor.

Utprand Dagober’s son spoke up for the first time, and the somber warning in his voice snuffed out the mirth. “You can wrangle all you like over who pays w’at. W’at needs to be settled is who pays me.”

“Rest easy,” Thorisin said. “I don’t see your lads on the streets begging for pennies.”

“No,” Utprand said, “nor will you.” That was not warning, but unmistakable threat. The great count Drax looked pained at his countryman’s plain speaking, but Utprand ignored him. They did not care much for each other; Scaurus suspected the Namdaleni were not immune to the disease of faction.

Gavras, for his part, was one to appreciate frankness. “You’ll have your money, outlander,” he said. Seeing Addaios Vourtzes purse his lips to protest, he turned to the logothete. “Let me guess,” he said sourly. “You haven’t got it.”

“Essentially, that is correct. As I have attempted to indicate, the precise situation is outlined—”

The Emperor cut him off as brusquely as he had Ortaias Sphrantzes in the Amphitheater. “Can you bring in enough to keep everyone happy till spring?”

Faced with a problem whose answer was not to his precious accounts scroll, Vourtzes grew cautious. His lips moved silently as he reckoned to himself. “That is dependent upon a variety of factors not subject to my ministry’s control: the condition of roads, quality of harvest, ability of agents to penetrate areas subject to disturbances …” From the way the bureaucrat avoided it, Marcus began to think the word “Yezda” made him break out in hives.

“There’s something he’s leaving out,” Baanes Onomagoulos said, “and that’s the likelihood the damned seal-stampers are pocketing one goldpiece in three for their own schemes. Oh, yes, they show us this pile of turds.” He pointed contemptuously at Vourtzes’ assessment document, “But who can make heads or tails of it? That’s how they’ve kept their power, because no one who hasn’t grown up in their way of
cheating knows he’s swindled until it’s too late for him to do anything about it.”

Vourtzes sputtered denials, but Thorisin gave him a long, measuring stare. Even Alypia Gavra nodded, however reluctantly; she might despise Onomagoulos, but she did not make the mistake of thinking him a fool.

“What’s needed then,” Marcus said, “is someone to watch over these functionaries, to make sure they’re doing what they say they are.”

“Brilliant—you should join the Academy,” Elissaios Bouraphos said sardonically. “Who’s to do it, though? Who can, among the men to be trusted? We’re the lot of us soldiers. What do we know about the clerks’ tricks the pen-pushers use? I keep more records than most of us, I’d bet, having to keep track of ships’ stores and such, but I’d founder in a week in the chancery, to say nothing of being bored out of my wits.”

“You’re right,” the Emperor said. “None of us has the knowledge for the job, worse luck, for it’s one that needs doing.” His voice grew musing; his eyes, speculation in them, swung toward the tribune. “Or is that so indeed? When you came to Videssos from your other world, Scaurus, do I remember your saying you had held some sort of civil post as well as commanding your troops?”

“Yes, that’s so; I was one of the praetors at Mediolanum.” Marcus realized that meant nothing to Gavras, and explained, “I held one of the magistracies in my home town, responsible for hearing suits, publishing edicts, and collecting tribute to send on to Rome, our capital.”

“So you know something of this sharpers’ business, then?” Thorisin pressed.

“Something, yes.”

The Emperor looked from one of his officers to the next. Their smirks said more plainly than words that they were thinking along with him. Few things are more pleasant than seeing someone else handed a task one would hate to do oneself. Thorisin turned to Scaurus again. “I’d say you just talked your way into a job.” And to Vourtzes he added, “Ha, pen-pusher, what do you think of that? Try your number-juggling now and see what it gets you!”

“Whatever pleases your Imperial Majesty, of course,” the logothete murmured, but he did not sound pleased.

Scaurus said quickly, “It’s not something I’ll put full time into; I have to pay heed to my men.”

“Of course, of course,” the Emperor agreed; Marcus saw Drax, Utprand, and Onomagoulos nodding with him. Thorisin continued, “That lieutenant of yours is a sound man, though, and more than up to handling a lot of the day-to-day things. Give it as much time as you can. I’ll see if I can’t come up with some fancy title for the job and a raise in pay to go with it. You’ll earn the money, I think.”

“Fair enough,” the tribune said. Thorisin’s marshals made sympathetic noises; Marcus accepted their condolences and countered their bad jokes with his own.

In fact, he was not nearly so displeased as one of them would have been. A moderately ambitious man, he had long since realized there were definite limits to how high an out-lander infantry commander could rise in Videssos on the strength of his troops alone. And his plans at Rome had been ultimately political, not soldierly; the military tribunate was a step aspiring young men took, but not one to stand on forever.

So he had made his suggestion; if Thorisin Gavras did not act on it, nothing whatever was lost. But he had acted, and now the tribune would see what came of that. Anticipation flowered in him. Regardless of the contempt the soldier-nobles had for the palace bureaucracy, it maintained Videssos no less than they. Nor, as Alypia Gavra had pointed out, was it necessarily the weaker party.

He saw her watching him with an expression of ironic amusement and had the uneasy feeling that all his half-formed, murky plans were quite transparent to her.

“I am extremely sorry, sir,” Pandhelis the secretary was saying to someone outside the office Marcus had taken as his own, “but I have specific instructions that the
epoptes
is to be disturbed on no account whatever.” As promised, Thorisin had conferred an impressively vague title on the Roman, meaning approximately “inspector.”

“Och, a pox take you and your instructions both.” The door flew open. Viridovix stomped into the little room, Helvis just behind him. Seeing Scaurus, the Gaul clapped a dramatic hand to his forehead. “I’ve seen that face before, indeed and I have. Don’t be telling me, now, the name’ll come back to me
in a minute, I’m sure it will.” He wrinkled his brow in mock concentration.

Wringing his hands, Pandhelis said to the tribune, “I’m sorry, sir, they would not listen to me—”

“Never mind. I’m glad to see them.” Marcus threw down his pen with a sigh of relief; a new callus was forming on his right index finger. Shoving tax rolls and reckoning beads to one side of the untidy desk, he looked up at his visitors. “What needs doing?”

“Nothing needs doing. We’re here to collect you,” Helvis said firmly. “It’s Midwinter’s Day, in case you’ve forgotten—time for rejoicing, not chaining yourself up like some slave.”

“But—” Marcus started to protest. Then he rubbed his eyes, red-lined and scratchy from staring at an endless procession of numbers. Enough is enough, he thought, and stood up, stretching till his joints creaked. “All right, I’m your man.”

“I should hope so,” she said, a sudden smoky glow in her blue eyes. “I’ve started wondering if you remembered.”

“Ho-ho!” Viridovix said with a wink. His brawny arm propelled Scaurus out from around the desk, out of the cubicle, and into the corridor, giving the tribune no chance to change his mind. “Come along with you, Roman dear. There’s a party laid on to make even a stodgy spalpeen like you frolic.”

As always, the first breath of frigid outside air made the tribune cough. His own breath sighed out in a great steaming cloud. Whatever one could say against them, the bureaucrats kept their wing of Grand Courtroom offices heated almost summery-warm. It made the winter outside twice as hard to endure. He shivered in his cloak.

Ice glittered on bare-branched trees; the smooth-rolled lawns that were the palace gardeners’ emerald delight in summer now were patchy and brown. Somewhere high overhead a gull screeched. Most birds were long gone to the warm lands of the unknown south, but the gulls stayed. Scavengers and thieves, they were birds that fit the capital.

“And how’s that bairn of yours?” Viridovix asked as they walked hack toward the Roman barracks.

“Dosti? He couldn’t be better,” Marcus answered proudly. “He has four teeth now, two top and two bottom. He likes to use ’em, too—he bit my finger the other day.”

“Your finger?” Helvis said. “Don’t complain of fingers, my dear—high time the boy was weaned.”

“Oww,” Viridovix sympathized.

The big Gaul waved as soon as he was in sight of the barracks; Scaurus saw a Roman wave back from a window. “What sort of ambush are you leading me into?” he asked.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Viridovix said. The moment they walked into the barracks hall, he shouted, “Pay up the goldpiece you owe me, Soteric, for here’s himself in the flesh of him!”

The Namdalener flipped him the coin. “It’s not a bet I’m sorry to lose,” he said. “I thought he was too in love with his inks and parchments to recall how the common folk celebrate.”

“To the crows with you,” Marcus said to the man he counted his brother-in-law, aiming a lazy punch that Soteric dodged.

Viridovix was biting the goldpiece he’d won. “It’s not of the best, but then it’s not of the worst either,” he said philosophically and tucked it into his belt-pouch.