An Emperor for the Legion (46 page)

Whatever Marcus’ answer was, he did not wait to hear it.

The tribune stood at stiff attention, below and to the right of the great imperial throne. For this ceremony he did not enjoy the place of honor; Balsamon the patriarch was a pace closer to the seated Emperor. Somehow Videssos’ chief prelate contrived to look rumpled in vestments of blue silk and cloth-of-gold. His pepper-and-salt beard poured down in a disorderly stream over the seed pearls adorning the breast of his chasuble.

At the Emperor’s left side stood Alypia Gavra, her costume as somber as protocol would permit. Scaurus had not seen her save at a distance since the feast two weeks before; twice he had requested an audience, and twice got no reply. He was almost afraid to meet her eye, but her nod as they assembled in the throne room had been reassuring.

With no official status, Komitta Rhangawe was relegated to the courtiers who filed in to flank the long central colonnade. In that sea of plump bland faces her lean, hard beauty was like a falcon’s feral grace among so many pigeons. At the sight of the Roman, her eyes darted about to see if Viridovix was present; Marcus was glad he was not.

An expectant hush filled the chamber. The Grand Gates, closed after the functionaries’ entrance, swung slowly open once more, to reveal a single man silhouetted against the brightness outside. His long, rolling strides seemed alien to that place of gliding eunuchs and soft-footed officials.

Taron Leimmokheir wore fresh robes, but they hung loosely about his prison-thinned frame. Nor had his release robbed him of the pallor given by long months hidden from sun and sky. His hair and beard, while clean, were still untrimmed.
Scaurus heard he had refused a barber; his words were, “Let Gavras see me as he had me.” The tribune wondered what else Leimmokheir might refuse. So far as he knew, no bargains had been struck.

The ex-admiral came up to the imperial throne, then paused, looking Thorisin full in the face. In Videssian court etiquette it was the height of rudeness; Marcus heard torches crackle in the silence enveloping the courtroom. Then, with deliberation and utmost dignity, Leimmokheir slowly prostrated himself before his soverign.

“Get up, get up,” Thorisin said impatiently; not the words of formula, but the court ministers had already despaired of changing that.

Leimmokheir rose. Looking as if every word tasted bad to him, the Emperor continued, “Know you are pardoned of the charge of conspiracy against our person, and that all properties and rights previously deemed forfeit are restored to you.” There was a sigh of outdrawn breath from the courtiers. Leimmokheir began a second proskynesis; Thorisin stopped him with a gesture.

“Now we come down to it,” he said, sounding more like a merchant in a hard bargain than Avtokrator of the Videssians. Leimmokheir leaned forward, too. “Does it please you to serve me as my drungarios of the fleet against Bouraphos and Onomagoulos?” Marcus noted that the first person plural of the pardon had disappeared.

“Why you and not them?” Prison had not cost Leimmokheir his forthrightness, Scaurus saw. Courtiers blanched, appalled at the plain speech.

The Emperor, though, looked pleased. His answer was equally direct. “Because I am not a man who hires murderers.”

“No, instead you throw people into jail.” The fat ceremonies master, who stood among the high dignitaries, seemed ready to faint. Thorisin sat stony-faced, his arms folded, waiting for a real reply. At last Leimmokheir dipped his head; his unkempt gray locks flopped over his face.

“Excellent!” Thorisin breathed, now with the air of a gambler after throwing the suns. He nodded to Balsamon. “The patriarch will keep your oath of allegiance.” He fairly purred; to a man of Taron Leimmokheir’s religious scruples, that oath would be binding as iron shackles.

Balsamon stepped forward, producing a small copy of the Videssian scriptures from a fold of his robe. But the drungarios waved him away; his seaman’s voice, used to overcoming storm winds, filled the throne room: “No, Gavras, I swear no oaths to you.”

For a moment, everyone froze; the Emperor’s eyes went hard and cold. “What then, Leimmokheir?” he asked, and danger rode his words. “Should your say-so be enough for me?”

He intended sarcasm, but the admiral took him at face value. “Yes, by Phos, or what’s your pardon worth? I’ll be your man, but not your hound. If you don’t trust me without a spiked collar of words round my neck, send me back to the jug, and be damned to you.” And he waited in turn, his pride proof against whatever the Emperor chose.

A slow flush climbed Thorisin’s cheeks. His bodyguards’ hands tightened on their spears. There had been Avtokrators—and not a few of them—who would have answered such defiance with blood. In his years Balsamon had seen more than one of that stripe. He said urgently, “Your Majesty, may I—”

“No.” Thorisin cut him off with a single harsh word. Marcus realized again the overwhelming power behind the Videssian imperial office in its formal setting. In chambers, Balsamon would have rolled his eyes and kept on arguing; now, bowing, he fell silent. Only Leimmokheir remained un-cowed, drawing strength from what he had already endured.

The Emperor still bore him no liking, but grudging respect slowly replaced the anger on his face. “All right, then.” He wasted no time with threats or warnings; it was clear they meant nothing to the reinstated admiral.

Leimmokheir, as abrupt as Gavras, bowed and turned to go. “Where are you away so fast?” Thorisin demanded, suspicious afresh.

“The docks, of course. Where else would you have your drungarios go?” Leimmokheir neither looked back nor broke stride. If he could have slammed the Grand Gates behind him, Scaurus thought, he would have done that, too. Between them, the stubborn admiral and equally strong-willed Emperor had managed to turn Videssian ceremonial on its ear. The assembled courtiers shook their heads as they trooped from the throne room, remembering better-run spectacles.

“Don’t you just wander off,” Thorisin said to the tribune as he started to follow them out. “I have a job in mind for you.”

“Sire?”

“And spare me that innocent blue-eyed gaze,” the Emperor growled. “For all the wenches it charms, it goes for nothing with me.” Marcus saw the corner of Alypia Gavra’s mouth twitch, but she did not look at him. Her uncle went on, “You were the one who wanted that gray-bearded puritan loose, so you can keep an eye on him. If he so much as breathes hard, I expect to hear about it. D’you understand me?”

“Aye.” The Roman had half expected that order.

“Just ‘aye’?” Gavras glared at him, balked of the chance to vent his anger further. “Go on, take yourself off, then.”

As Marcus walked back to the legionaries’ barracks, Alypia Gavra caught him up. “I have to ask your pardon,” she said. “It was wrong of me to pretend I never got your requests to see me.”

“The situation was unusual,” the tribune replied. He could not speak as freely as he would have liked. The path was busy; more than one head turned at the sight of a mercenary captain, even one of the prominence Scaurus had won, walking side by side with the Avtokrator of the Videssians’ niece.

“To say the least.” Alypia raised one eyebrow. She, too, used phrases with many meanings. Marcus wondered if she had deliberately chosen to meet him in public to keep things between them as impersonal as possible.

“I hope,” he said carefully, “you don’t feel I was, ah, taking undue advantage of the situation.”

She gave him a steady look. “There are many benefits an officer with an eye for the main chance might gain; something, I might add, I am as capable of seeing as any officer of that stripe.”

“That is the main reason I hesitated so long.”

“I never believed here—” Alypia laid her hand on her left breast “—you were such a man. It is, though, something one considers.” She cocked her head, still studying him. “ ‘The main reason’? What of your young son? What of the family you’ve made since you came to Videssos? At the banquet you seemed well content with your lady.”

Scaurus bit his lip. It was chastening to hear his own thoughts come back at him from the princess’ mouth. “And
you claimed to have trouble reading me!” he said, embarrassed out of indirection.

For the first time Alypia smiled. She made as if to put her hand on his arm, but stopped, remembering better man he where they were. She said quietly, “Were those thoughts not there to read, the, ah, situation—” Her mockery of the tribune’s earlier pause was gentle. “—Would never have arisen.”

The path divided. “We go different ways now, I think,” she said, and turned toward the flowering cherries that concealed the imperial residence.

“Aye, for a while,” Marcus answered, but only to himself.

“Look what Gavras gives me to work with!” Taron Leimmokheir shouted. “Why didn’t he tell me to go hang myself from a yardarm while I was about it?” He answered his own question, “He thought my weight’d break it, and he was right!” He looked disgustedly about the Neorhesian harbor.

The capital’s great northern anchorage was not a part of the city Scaurus knew well. The Romans had patrolled near the harbor of Kontoskalion, on Videssos’ south-facing coast, and had also embarked on campaign against the Yezda from there. But Kontoskalion was a toy port next to the Neorhesian harbor, named for the long-dead city prefect who had supervised its building.

There were ships aplenty at the docks jutting out into the Videssian Sea, a veritable forest of masts. But all too many of them belonged to fat, sluggish trading ships and tiny fishing craft like the one Marcus had sailed on when Thorisin’s forces sneaked over the Cattle-Crossing. These, by now, rode high in the water. Their cargoes long since unloaded, they were trapped in Videssos by Elissaios Bouraphos outside. As had been only proper—then—Bouraphos had taken the heart of the Empire’s war fleet when he sailed for Pityos and kept it when he joined Onomagoulos in rebellion.

Leimmokheir had precious little left: ten or so triremes, and perhaps a dozen smaller two-banked ships like the ones the tribune knew as Liburnians. He was outnumbered almost three to one, and Bouraphos also had the better captains and crews.

“What’s to do?” Marcus asked, worried the drungarios thought the task beyond him. After his outburst, Leimmokheir was staring out to sea, not at the choppy little waves dancing
inside the breakwater, but beyond, to the vast sweep of empty horizon.

The admiral did not seem to hear him for a moment; he slowly came back to himself. “Hmm? Phos’ light, I truly don’t know, left here with the lees to drink. Wait and watch for a bit, I expect, until I understand how things have gone since I was taken off the board. I’ve come back facing a new direction, and everything looks strange.”

In the Videssian board game, captured pieces could be used against their original owners and change sides several times in the course of a game. It was, Scaurus thought, a game very much in its makers’ image.

Seeing the Roman troubled by his answer, Leimmokheir slapped him on the shoulder. “Never lose hope,” he said seriously. “The Namdaleni are heretics who imperil their souls with their belief, but they have the right of that. No matter how bad the storm looks, it has to end sometime. Skotos lays despair before men as a snare.”

He was the living proof of his own philosophy, Scaurus thought; his imprisonment had dropped from him as if it had never been. But the tribune noted he had still not answered the question.

The last clear notes of the pandoura faded inside the Roman barracks. Applause, a storm of it, followed swiftly. Senpat Sviodo laid aside his stringed instrument, a smile of pleasure on his handsome, swarthy face. He lifted a mug of wine in salute to his audience.

“That was marvelous,” Helvis said. “You made me see the mountains of Vaspurakan plain as if they stood before me. Phos gave you a great gift. Were you not a soldier, your music would soon make you rich.”

“Curious you should say that,”, he answered sheepishly. “Back in my teens I thought about running off with a troupe of strummers who were playing at my father’s holding.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“He found out and stropped his belt on my backside. He had the right of it, Phos rest him. I was needed there; even then, the Yezda were thick as tax collectors round a man who’s dug up treasure. And had I gone, look what I would have missed.” He slid his arm round Nevrat beside him. The bright ribbons streaming from his three-peaked Vaspurakaner
cap tickled her neck; she brushed them away as she snuggled closer to her husband.

Marcus sipped from his own wine cup. He had nearly forgotten what good company the two young westerners made, not just for Senpat’s music but for the gusto and good cheer with which he—indeed, both of them—faced life. And they were so obviously pleased with each other as to make every couple around them happier simply by their presence.

“Where is your friend with the mustaches like melted bronze?” Nevrat asked the tribune. “He has a fine voice. I was hoping to hear him sing with Senpat tonight, even if Videssian songs are the only ones they both understand.”

“ ‘Little bird with a yellow bill—” ’ Gaius Philippus began, his baritone raucous. Nevrat winced and threw a walnut at him. Ever alert, he caught it out of the air, then cracked it with the pommel of his dagger.

The distraction did not make her forget her question. She quirked an eyebrow at Scaurus. He said lamely. “There was some business or other he said he had to attend to; I don’t know just what.” But I can make a fair guess, he thought.

Nevrat’s other eyebrow went up when she saw him hesitate. Unlike most Videssian women, she did not pluck them to make them finer, but they did nothing to mar her strong-featured beauty.

In this case, Marcus was immune to such blandishments. He wished he had no part of Viridovix’ secret and would not spread it further.

Nevrat turned to Helvis. “You’re a big girl, dear. You should do more than pick at your food.”

Said in a different tone, the words could have rankled, but Nevrat was obviously concerned. Helvis’ answering smile was a trifle wan. “There’d just be more for me to give back tomorrow morning.”

Nevrat looked blank for a moment, then hugged her. “Congratulations,” Senpat said, pumping Marcus’ hand. “What is it, the thought of going west that makes you randy? This’ll be twice now.”