Krispos the Emperor k-3

by Harry Turtledove

  "It may work out well enough for them," Phostis persisted, "but is it justice?"

  "Probably not," Krispos answered, sighing. He fought back a smile; he'd managed to surprise Phostis. "Probably not," he repeated, "but is it justice to empty a land so no crops to speak of are raised on it, so it becomes a haven for brigands and outlaws, so it tempts the Makuraners to try to gobble it up? Makuran hasn't much troubled us lately, but that's because Rubyab King of Kings sees me as strong. It hasn't always been so."

  "How do you aim to pay Rubyab back for sponsoring the Thanasioi?" Phostis asked.

  Krispos took the change of subject to mean that Phostis thought he had a point. He answered, "I don't know right now. A big war, like the one we fought with Makuran a century and a half ago, could leave both lands prostrate for years. I don't want that. But believe me, that s not a debt to forget. Maybe it'll be one I leave to you to repay."

  Phostis responded to that with a calculating look Krispos had seldom seen on him before he was kidnapped. "Fomenting the Vaspurakaners against Mashiz is likely to be worth trying."

  "Aye, maybe, if the Makuraners commit some outrage in the princes' lands, or they're troubled with foes farther west," Krispos said. "But that's not as sure a bet as it looks, because the Makuraners are always on the watch for it. The beauty of Rubyab's ploy was that it used our own people against us: Videssos has known so much religious strife over the years that for a long time I didn't see the Makuraner hand in the Thanasiot glove."

  "The beauty of it?" Phostis shook his head. "I don't see how you can use that word for something that caused so much trouble and death."

  "It's like an unexpected clever move at the board game," Krispos said. "The board here, though, stretches all the way across the world, and you can change the rules you play by."

  "And the pieces you take off the board are real people," Phostis said, "and you can't bring them back again and play them somewhere else."

  "Can't I?" Krispos said. "What do you think this resettlement is, if not capturing a piece and playing it on a better square?"

  He watched Phostis chew on that. The young man said, "I suppose I should have learned to stop arguing with you. No matter how well I start out. most of the time you end up turning things your way. Experience." By the way that sounded in his mouth, it might as well have been a filthy word. It was something he lacked, at any rate, which of itself made its possession suspect.

  Krispos pulled a silk handkerchief from a pocket of his surcoat and dabbed at his dripping forehead. He'd left some of the imperial army back in and around Etchmiadzin, both to watch the border with Makuraner-held Vaspurakan and to help uprooted arrivals settle in. More troops were strung out along the line of travel between west and east. With what remained, he was drawing near Videssos the city.

  That meant, of course, that he and his men were passing through the coastal lowlands. In late summer, there were other places he'd sooner have been; at the moment, he would have welcomed some of Skotos' ice, so long as he did not have to meet its master. It was so hot and sticky that sweat wouldn't dry; it just clung to you and rolled greasily along your skin.

  "By the good god, I wish I didn't have to wear the imperial regalia," he said. "In this country, I'd sooner be dressed like them." He pointed to the peasants working in the fields to either side of the road. Some of them were in thin linen tunics that came down about half the distance from buttocks to knee. Others didn't even bother with that, but were content to wrap a loincloth around their middles.

  Phostis shook his head. "If I dressed like that, it would mean I lived here all year around. I don't think I could stand that."

  "You'd best be glad someone can," Krispos said. "The soil here is wonderful, and they get plenty of rain. The crops they bring in are bigger than anywhere else in the Empire. If it weren't for the lowlands, Videssos the city wouldn't have enough to eat."

  "The peasants aren't fleeing from us the way they did when we set out," Katakolon said, stopping his horse by his father and brother.

  "A good thing, too," Krispos answered. "One reason we have an army is to protect them. If they think soldiers are something they need to be protected from, we aren't doing the job as we should." He knew as well as anyone else that soldiers plundered peasants when they got the chance. The trick was not giving them the chance and making the peasants know they wouldn't get it. He wouldn't have to worry about that much longer on this campaign—almost home now. He said that aloud.

  Katakolon leered at him. "You needn't be in such a swiv-et to get back to Drina, Father. Remember, she'll be out to here by now." He held a hand a couple of feet in front of his belly.

  "She's not giving birth to a foal, by the good god," Krispos said. "If she were out to there, I might think you meant an elephant." He glared at his youngest, but couldn't help snorting as he went on, "And I'll thank you not to twit me any more about her having my by-blow. Only fool luck I'm not paying for six or seven of yours; Phos knows it's not your lack of effort."

  "He's just giving you twit for twat, Father," Phostis said helpfully.

  Beset from both sides, Krispos threw his hands in the air. "The two of you will be the death of me. If Evripos were here, I'd be altogether surrounded. I expect I shall be when we get back to the palaces. That's the first decent argument I've heard for making this march take longer."

  "I thought it was an indecent argument," Katakolon said, not willing to be outdone by Phostis.

  "Enough, enough!" Krispos groaned. "Have mercy on your poor decrepit father. I've got softening of the brain from too many years of staring at tax receipts and edicts; you can't expect me to throw puns about the way you do."

  Just then, the scouts up ahead started raising a racket. One of them rode back to the van of the main body. Saluting Krispos, he said, "Your Majesty, the sharp-eyed among us have spied the sun glinting off the temple domes of Videssos the city."

  Krispos peered ahead. He wasn't particularly sharp-sighted any longer; things in the distance got blurry for him. But whether he could see them or not, knowing the temples and their domes were so close made him feel the journey was coming to its end.

  "Almost home," he said again. He looked from Phostis to Katakolon, daring them to make more wisecracks. They both kept quiet. He nodded, pleased with himself: the young bulls still respected the old bull's horns.

  The folk of Videssos the city packed the colonnaded sidewalks of Middle Street, cheering as the triumphal procession made its way toward the plaza of Palamas. Phostis rode near the head of the procession, Olyvria at his side. He wore a gilded mail shirt and helmet to let the people know who he was—and to make sure no diehard Thanasiot assassinated him for the greater glory of the gleaming path.

  As he rode, he waved, which brought fresh applause from the crowd. He turned to Olyvria and said quietly, "I wonder how many of these same people were screaming for Thanasios and trying to burn down the city not long ago."

  "A fair number, I'd say," she answered.

  He nodded. "I think you're right." Rooting Thanasioi out from Videssos the city wasn't nearly so straightforward as uprooting and transplanting villages. Unless you caught someone setting fires or wrecking, how could you know what was in his heart? You couldn't; that was the long and short of it. Thanasios' followers surely lingered here. If they stayed quiet, they might go unnoticed for generations—those who cared to raise new generations, at any rate.

  Middle Street showed few scars from the rioting. Countless fires burned in the city every day, for cooking and heating and at smithies and other workplaces. Whitewashed buildings were usually gray with soot in a few months' time. The soot that came from the rioters' blazes looked no different from any other after the fact.

  The procession passed through the Forum of the Ox, about a third of the way from the Silver Gate in the great land wall to the plaza of Palamas. The stalls in the Forum of the Ox sold cheap goods to people who could afford no better. Most of the folk who packed the square wore either ragged tuni
cs or gaudy finery whose "gold" threads were apt to turn green in a matter of days. Phostis would have bet that plenty of them had bawled for the gleaming path.

  Now, though, they cried out Krispos' name as loudly as anyone else—and that despite some former market stalls that were now only charred ruins. "Maybe they'll come back to orthodoxy now that they've really seen what their heresy leads to," Phostis said. He spoke more softly still: "That's more or less what I did, after all."

  "Maybe," Olyvria said, her voice so neutral he couldn't tell whether she agreed with him or not.

  We'll know twenty years from now, he thought. Looking about as far ahead as he'd already lived felt strange, almost unnatural, to him, but he was beginning to do it. He didn't know whether that was because he'd started taking seriously the idea of ruling or simply because he was getting older.

  Off to the north of Middle Street, between the Forum of the Ox and the plaza of Palamas, stood the huge mass of the High Temple. It was undamaged, not from any lack of malevolence on the part of the Thanasioi but because soldiers and ecclesiastics armed with stout staves had ringed it day and night until rioting subsided.

  Phostis still felt uncomfortable as he rode past the High Temple: He looked on it as an enormous sponge that had soaked up endless gold that might have been better spent elsewhere. But he had returned to the faith that found deepest expression beneath that marvelous dome. He shook his head. Not all puzzles had neat solutions. This one, too, would have to wait for more years to do their work in defining his views.

  The red granite facing of the government office building caught his eye and told him the plaza of Palamas was drawing near. Somewhere under there, in the jail levels below ground, Digenis the priest had starved himself to death.

  "Digenis might have been right to be angry about how the rich have too much, but I don't think making everyone poor is the right answer," Phostis said to Olyvria. "Still, I can't hate him, not when I met you through him."

  She smiled at that, but answered, "Aren't you putting your own affairs above those of the Empire there?"

  He needed a moment to realize she was teasing. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said. "Or at least one affair. Katakolon's the fellow who keeps four of them in the air at the same time." She made a face at him, which let him think he'd come out best in that little skirmish.

  Up ahead, a great roar announced that Krispos had entered the packed plaza of Palamas. With the Avtokrator marched servitors armed not with weapons but with sacks of gold and silver. Many an Emperor had kept the city mob happy with largess, and Krispos had shown over and over that he was able to profit from others' examples. Letting people squabble over money flung among them might keep them from more serious uprisings like the one Videssos the city had just seen.

  Sky-blue ribbons—and Haloga guardsmen—kept the crowds from swamping the route the procession took to the western edge of the plaza. Krispos had ascended to a wooden platform whose pieces were stored in a palace outbuilding against time of need. Phostis wondered how many times Krispos had mounted that platform to speak to the people of the city. Quite a few, he thought.

  He dismounted, then reached out to help Olyvria do the same. Grooms took their horses. Hand in hand, the two of them went up onto the platform themselves.

  "It's a sea of people out there," Phostis exclaimed, looking out at the restless mass. Their noise rose and fell in almost regular waves, like the surf.

  For the first time, Phostis had a chance to see that part of the procession which had been behind him. A parade was not a parade without soldiers. A company of Halogai marched around Krispos, Phostis, and Olyvria, for protection and show both. Behind them came several regiments of Videssians. some mounted, others afoot. They tramped along looking neither right nor left, as if the people of the city were not worth their notice. Not only were they part of the spectacle, they also served as a reminder that Krispos had powerful forces ready at hand should rioting break out again.

  The Halogai formed up in front of the platform. The rest of the troops headed past the plaza of Palamas and into the palace quarter. Some had barracks there; others would be dismissed back to the countryside after the celebration was over.

  Between one regiment and the next walked dejected Thanasiot prisoners. Some of them still showed the marks of wounds; none wore anything more than ragged drawers; all had their hands tied behind their backs. The crowd jeered them and pelted them with eggs and rotten fruit and the occasional stone.

  Olyvria said, "A lot of Avtokrators would have capped this parade with a massacre."

  "I know," Phostis said. "But Father has seen real massacres—ask him about Harvas Black-Robe some time. Having seen the beast, he doesn't want to give birth to it."

  The prisoners took the same route out of the plaza as had the soldiers. Their fate would not be much different: they'd be sent off to live on the land with the rest of the uprooted Thanasioi, with luck in peace. Unlike the soldiers, though, they would get no choice about where they went.

  Another contingent of Halogai entered the plaza of Palamas. The noise from the crowd grew quieter and took on a rougher edge. Behind the front of axe-bearing northerners rode Evripos. By the reaction, not everyone in Videssos the city was happy with the way he had put down the riots.

  He rode as if blithely unaware of that, waving to the people as Krispos and Phostis had before him. The guardsmen who had surrounded him took their places with their countrymen while he climbed up to stand by Phostis and Olyvria.

  Without turning his head toward Phostis, he said, "They're not pleased that I didn't give them all a kiss and send them to bed with a mug of milk and a spiced bun. Well, I wasn't any too pleased that they did their best to bring the city down around my ears."

  "I can understand that," Phostis answered, also looking straight ahead.

  Evripos' lip curled. "And you, brother, you come through this everyone's hero. You've married the beautiful girl, like someone out of a romance. Hardly seems fair, somehow." He did not try to hide his bitterness.

  "To the ice with the romances," Phostis said, but that wasn't what was bothering Evripos, and he knew it.

  The low-voiced argument stopped then, because someone else ascended to the platform: Iakovitzes, gorgeous in robes just short in imperial splendor. He would not make a speech, of course, not without a tongue, but he had served in so many different roles during Krispos' reign that excluding him would have seemed unnatural.

  He smiled at Olyvria, politely enough but without real interest. As he walked past Phostis and Evripos toward Krispos, he managed to pat each of them on the behind. Olyvria's eyes went wide. The two brothers looked at Iakovitzes, looked at each other, and started to laugh. "He's been doing that for as long as we've been alive," Phostis said.

  "For a lot longer than that," Evripos said. "Father always tells of how Iakovitzes tried to seduce him when he was a boy, and then later when he was a groom in Iakovitzes' service, and even after he donned the red boots."

  "He knows we care nothing for men," Phostis said. "If we ever made as if we wanted to go along, the shock might kill him. He's anything but young, even if he dyes his hairs and powders over his wrinkles to try to hide his years."

  "I don't think you're right, Phostis," Evripos said. "If he thought we wanted to go along, he'd have our robes up and our drawers down before we could say 'I was only joking.' "

  Phostis considered. "You may have something there." On a matter like that, he was willing to concede a point to his brother.

  Olyvria stared at both of them, then at Iakovitzes. "That's— terrible," she exclaimed. "Why does your father keep him around?"

  She made the mistake of speaking as if Iakovitzes couldn't hear her. He strolled back toward her, smiling now in a way that said he meant mischief. Alarmed, Phostis tried to head him off. Iakovitzes opened the tablet he always carried, wrote rapidly on the wax, and showed it to Phostis. "Does she read?"

  "Yes, of course she does," Phostis said, whereupon Iakovitzes pus
hed past him toward Olyvria, scribbling as he walked.

  He handed her the tablet. She took it with some apprehension, read aloud: "His Majesty keeps me around, as you say. for two reasons: first, because I am slyer than any three men you can name, including your father before and after he lost his head; and second, because he knows I would never try to seduce any wives of the imperial family."

  Iakovitzes' smile got wider, and therefore more unnerving. He took back the tablet and started away. "Wait," Olyvria said sharply. Iakovitzes turned back, stylus poised like a sting. Phostis started to step between them again. But Olyvria said, "I wanted to apologize. I was cruel without thinking."

  Iakovitzes chewed on that. He scribbled again, then proffered the tablet to her with a bow. Phostis looked over her shoulder. Iakovitzes had written, "So was I, to speak of your father so. In my book, the honors—or rather, dishonors—are even."

  To Phostis' relief, Olyvria said, "Let it be so." Generations of sharp wits had picked quarrels with Iakovitzes, generally to end up in disarray. Phostis was glad Olyvria did not propose to make the attempt.

  Iakovitzes nodded and walked back to Krispos' side. The Avtokrator held up a hand, waited for quiet. It came slowly, but did at length arrive. Into it Krispos said, "Let us have peace: peace in Videssos the city, peace in the Empire of Videssos. Civil war is nothing the Empire needs. The lord with the great and good mind knows I undertook it unwillingly. Only when those who followed what they called the gleaming path rose in rebellion, first in the westlands and then here in Videssos the city, did I take up arms against them."

  "Does that mean you father would have let the Thanasioi alone if they'd been quiet, peaceful heretics?" Olyvria asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe," Phostis said. "He's never persecuted the Vaspurakaners, that's certain." Phostis puzzled over that: Krispos always said religious unity was vital to holding the Empire together, but he didn't necessarily practice what he preached. Was that hypocrisy, or just pragmatism? Phostis couldn't answer, not without more thought.