Krispos the Emperor (31 page)

"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 un
familiar. 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."