"I know. I'll stop him if I can." Krispos mentally began framing orders for more customs inspectors and tighter vigilance along the Khatrisher border. All the same, he knew the easterners would get some untaxed amber through.
Tribo prostrated himself again, then rose and walked away from the throne backward until he'd withdrawn far enough to turn around without offending court etiquette. He was too accomplished a diplomat to do anything so rude as sticking his nose in the air as he marched off, but so accomplished a mime that he managed to create that impression without the reality.
The courtiers began streaming out after the ambassador left the Grand Courtroom. Their robes and capes of bright, glisten ing silk made them seem a moving field of springtime flowers.
Zaidas turned to Krispos and made small, silent clappiny motions. "Well done, your Majesty," he said. "It's not every day that the envoy from Khatrish, whoever he may be, leaves an audience in such dismay."
"Khatrishers are insolent louts with no respect for their betters," Barsymes said. 'They disrupt ceremonial merely for the sake of disruption." By his tone, the offense ranked somewhere between heresy and infanticide on his scale of enormities.
"I don't mind them that much," Krispos said. "They just have a hard time taking anything seriously." He'd lost his own war against ceremonial years before; if he needed a reminder, the weight of the crown on his head gave him one. Seeing other folk strike blows against the foe—the only foe, in the Empire or out of it that had overcome him—let him dream about renewing the struggle himself one day. He was, sadly, realist enough to know he did but dream.
Iakovitzes opened his table, plucked out a stylus, and wrote busily: "I don't like Khatrishers because they're too apt to cheat when they dicker with us. Of course, they say the same of Videssos."
"And they're probably as right as we are," Zaidas murmured.
Krispos suspected Iakovitzes didn't like Khatrishers because they took the same glee he did in flouting staid Videssian custom—and sometimes upstaged him while they were at it. That was something he wouldn't say out loud, for fear of finding out he was right and wounding Iakovitzes in the process.
The Grand Courtroom continued to empty. A couple of men came forward instead of leaving; they carried rolled and sealed parchments in their outstretched right hands. Haloga guardsmen kept them from getting too close. One of the northerners glanced back at Krispos. He nodded. The Haloga took the petitions and carried them over to him. They'd go into one of the piles on his desk. He wondered when he'd have the chance to read them. They'll reach the top one of these days, he thought.
The petitioners walked down the long aisle toward the doorway. Krispos rose, stretched, and descended the stairs from the throne. Iakovitzes wrote another note: "You know, it might not be so bad if the Thanasioi give the Khatrishers all the trouble they can handle and a bit more besides. Let Tribo say what he will; the day may come when the khagan really has to choose between going under and calling on Videssos for aid."
"That would be excellent," Barsymes said. "Krispos brought Kubrat back under Videssian rule; why not Khatrish, as well?"
Why not? Krispos thought. Videssos had never abandoned her claim to Kubrat or Khatrish or Thatagush, all lands overwhelmed by Khamorth nomads off the plains of Pardraya three hundred years before. To restore two of them to the Empire ... he might go down in the chronicles as Krispos the Conqueror.
That, however, assumed the Khatrishers were ripe to be conquered. "I don't see it," Krispos said, not altogether regretfully. "Khatrish somehow has a way of fumbling through troubles and coming out on the other side stronger than it has any business being. They're more easygoing about their religion than we are, too, so heresy has a harder time inciting them."
"They certainly didn't—don't—care for the Thanasioi," Zaidas said. Krispos guessed the idea of conquest appealed to him, too.
"We'll see what happens, that's all," the Avtokrator said. "If it turns to chaos, we may try going in. We'd have to be careful even so, though, to make sure the Khatrishers don't unite again—against us. Nothing like a foreign foe to make the problems you have with your neighbors look small."
"Remember also, your Majesty, the Thanasioi dissemble," Barsymes said. "Even if the Khatrishers seem to put down the heresy of the gleaming path for the time being, it may yet spring to life a generation from now."
"A generation from now?" Krispos snorted. "Odds are that'll be Phostis' worry, not mine." A year before, the idea of passing the Empire on to his eldest—if Phostis was his eldest—had filled him with dread. Now ... "I expect he'll take care of it," he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Turtledove has lived in Southern California all his life. He has a Ph.D. in history from UCLA and has taught at UCLA, California State. Fullerton, and California State University, Los Angeles. He has published in both history and speculative fiction. He is married to novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison. Rachel, and Rebecca.
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Krispos the Emperor k-3 Page 45
