Rhegorios started to answer, stopped, stared at the Avtokrator, then tried again: "You almost caught me there, do you know that? For one thing, the God is only a figment of the Makuraners' imaginations. And for another, I don't think we've been quite sinful enough for Skotos to rise up and smite us that particular way. If the sun turned north again after last Midwinter's Day, we're good for a while longer, or I miss my guess."
Maniakes sketched the sun-circle over his heart. "May you prove right." He studied the map some more. "If we can't hold them at the Arandos, we certainly can't hold them anywhere between there and Across. Can we hold them with the new works we've built outside Across?"
He wasn't asking Rhegorios the question; he was asking himself. His cousin assumed the burden of answering it, though: "Doesn't seem likely, does it?"
"No," Maniakes said, and the word tasted like death in his mouth. "Why did we waste our time and substance rebuilding, then?" But it wasn't we. He had given the orders. He slammed his fist against the map. Pain shot up his arm. "I made the same mistake I've been making ever since I put on the red boots: I thought we were stronger than we are."
"It's done now," Rhegorios said, an epitaph for any number of unfortunate occurrences. "Are you going to send an army into the westlands to try to defend what we've rebuilt?"
"You're trying to find out if I'll make the same mistake one more time even now, aren't you?" Maniakes asked.
Rhegorios grinned at him, utterly unabashed. "Now that you mention it, yes."
"You're as bad as my father," Maniakes said. "He's had all those years land on him to make him so warped and devious; what's your excuse?… But I haven't answered your question, have I? No, I'm not going to send an army over to Across. If Abivard wants it so badly, he can have it."
Rhegorios nodded, gave the map a thoughtful tap, and left the chamber where it hung. Maniakes stared at the inked lines on the parchment: provinces and roads where his word did not run. All at once, he strode to the door, shouting for wine. He got very drunk.
The Renewal bounced in the chop of the Cattle Crossing. Makuraners stood on the western shore, jeering at the dromon and calling in bad Videssian for it to come beach itself on the golden, inviting sand. "We hello you, oh yes," one of them shouted. "You never forget you meet us, not never so long as you live." His teeth flashed white in the midst of his black beard.
Maniakes turned to Thrax. "Hurl a couple of darts at them," he said. "We'll see if they jeer out of the other side of their mouths."
"Aye, your Majesty," the drungarios of the fleet replied. He turned to his sailors. One of them set an iron-headed dart, its shaft as long as an arm and thicker than a stout man's middle finger, in the trough of the catapult.
Others turned windlasses to draw back the engine's casting arms, which creaked and groaned under the strain. Thrax called orders to the oarsmen, who turned the Renewal so it bore on the knot of Makuraners. "Loose!" the drungarios shouted as a wave lifted the bow slightly.
The catapult snapped and bucked like a wild ass. The dart hurtled across the water. A scream went up from the shore-it had skewered someone. Yelling with glee, the catapult crew loaded another missile into the engine and began readying it to shoot again.
Maniakes had expected the Makuraners to disperse. Instead, all of them with bows shot back at the Renewal. Their arrows raised little splashes as they plinked into the water well short of their target. The sailors laughed at the foe.
"Loose!" Thrax cried again. Another dart leapt forth. This time the sailors-and Maniakes with them-cursed and groaned, for it hit no one. But the Makuraners scattered like frightened birds even so. That changed Maniakes' curses into cries of delight. Soldier against soldier, the boiler boys were still more than the Videssians could face with any hope of victory. But, when they came up against the imperial fleet, the Makuraners found foes they could not withstand.
"We rule the westlands!" Maniakes shouted, making the sailors stare at him before he added, "Or as much of them as isn't more than two bowshots from shore."
The sailors laughed, which was what he had had in mind. Thrax, earnest and serious as usual, said, "If it please your Majesty, I'll order the dromons in close to shore so they can shoot at clumps of the enemy who have come down too close to the sea."
"Yes, do that," Maniakes said. "It will remind them we don't tamely yield our land to Abivard and the King of Kings. It may even do the Makuraners a little real harm, too, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world."
Maniakes hoped darts flying at them from beyond bow range would convince the Makuraners to stay away from the seaside, which might have let him land raiders with impunity. Instead, Abivard's men set up catapults of their own, close by the edge of the sea. Some of them threw stones big and heavy enough to sink a dromon if they hit it square. But they didn't-they couldn't-and in a few days the engines vanished from the beaches. The Makuraner engineers weren't used to turning their machines to aim at a target more mobile than a wall, and especially weren't used to shifting them to hit a target that was not only moving but doing its best not to get hit.
And the Videssian sailors, who compensated for wave action whenever they used their dart-throwers and who practiced hitting land targets, had a fine time shooting at catapults that had to stay in one place and take it. They damaged several and killed a fair number of the engineers who served them before Abivard figured out he was involved in a losing game and pulled back his machines.
A few days later, the first snow fell. Maniakes hoped Abivard's men would freeze inside Across, yet at the same time could not wish for too savage a winter. If the Cattle Crossing iced up, Abivard might have his revenge for the little wounds the catapult crews on the dromons had inflicted on his force. Maniakes wished his father hadn't told him the story of that dreadful winter.
He went back to drilling his soldiers on the practice field out by the southern end of the city wall. As they had the winter before, the Makuraners sometimes came out to see what they could see. Sometimes, now, a dromon would chase them away from the beach of Across. Maniakes took considerable satisfaction whenever he saw that happen.
No less an authority than Tzikas said, "Your Majesty, they look more like fighting men than they did a year ago-and you have more of them now, too." He tempered that by adding, "Whether you have enough men, whether they'll be good enough: those are different questions."
"So they are." Maniakes shaded his eyes with his hand and peered west over the Cattle Crossing. He saw no Makuraners today; a dromon slid smoothly through the channel, not pausing to harass any of Abivard's men. But Maniakes knew they were there, whether he could see them or not. Not all the smoke that rose above Across came from cookfires. The Makuraners were busy wrecking the suburb all over again.
"Come the spring, I expect you will put them to the test." By the way Tzikas sounded, that was more a judgment against Maniakes' character than an expression of hope for victory.
"Spring feels a million years, a million miles away." Maniakes kicked at the yellow-brown dead grass under his boots. Frustration gnawed at him like an ulcer that would not heal. "I want to go against them now, to drive them off Videssian soil with a great swift blow."
"You tried that once, your Majesty. The results were imperfectly salubrious, from our point of view." Tzikas might have been a litterateur criticizing a bad piece of poetry rather than a general commenting on a campaign.
Maniakes regarded him with reluctant respect. That he criticized his sovereign at all bespoke a certain courage and integrity-or perhaps such a perfect confidence in his own rightness as to blind him to any offense he might give.
Either way, he also seemed blind to how much Maniakes hated acknowledging himself unable to strike back at Abivard's army. He was glad to get back inside the walls of Videssos the city. In there, try as he would, he could not see the Cattle Crossing, let alone the land on the western shore. He could try to pretend all of it still yielded up taxes to the fisc, still recognized him as its ruler.
Before he had gone far into the city, he discovered-not for the first time-he was no good at fooling himself. When he got to the palace quarter, he could distinguish once more the smoke, rising from Across, from that coming off the myriad fires within Videssos the city. Even had his pretense survived so long, that would have killed it.
Oblivious to his worries, Rhegorios said, "To the ice with Tzikas; he's the sort who'd order up a lemon for his sweet." That was true, but did little to lift Maniakes' spirits. When he didn't answer, Rhegorios let out an indignant sniff. At the imperial residence, he went off in a huff.
"Wine, your Majesty?" Kameas asked. The only reply he got was a shake of the head. He was trained not to show annoyance, and very emphatically didn't show it. Maniakes wondered if the night's supper would suffer on account of that. No, he decided. Kameas also had great pride in service.
"Nice to know someone has pride in something," Maniakes muttered. Everything he had spent so much time and effort and gold rebuilding in the spring and summer had fallen to pieces in a few weeks as fall approached. Maybe things would get better when spring came once more… or maybe the good weather would just lead to yet another round of catastrophes.
He went into the chamber where he was in the habit of trying to match the dribbles of revenue that came into the fisc with the unending flood of gold that poured out of it. He had had a new, slender trickle of gold coming in from those parts of the westlands closest to Videssos the city, but he couldn't rob-or even borrow from-the temples nearly so much this year: they didn't have much, either. That meant he had to pay out less or cheapen the currency again, which amounted to the same thing.
If he stopped paying everyone but the soldiers… he wouldn't have any bureaucrats to collect next year's taxes. If he put more copper in the goldpieces, people would start hoarding good money, traders would stop doing business… and he wouldn't have much in the way of taxes to collect next year.
Someone rapped on the door. "Go away," he growled without looking up, assuming it was Kameas coming to try to make him feel better.
But the voice that said "Very well" didn't belong to Kameas: it was Lysia's. Maniakes' head came up with a jerk. There weren't many people in the city he didn't want to irk, but she was one of them.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were someone else. Please come in." She had already started to turn away. For a moment, he thought she would ignore the invitation; stubbornness ran all through his family. He said, "If you don't come in here this instant, cousin of mine, I'll call you up before the Avtokrator on a charge of lese majesty through wanton and willful disobedience."
He hoped that would amuse her instead of making her angry, and it did. "Not that!" she cried. "Anything but that! I abase myself before your Majesty."
She really did start a proskynesis. "Never mind that, by the good god," Maniakes exclaimed. They both started to laugh, then looked warily at each other. Since Niphone died, they had been cautious when they were together, and they hadn't been together much. Maniakes sighed, scowled, and shook his head.
"I think back on how things were at Kastavala, and do you know what, cousin of mine? They don't look so bad. I didn't have to look over my shoulder whenever I wanted to talk to you, and I didn't have to worry about peering over the water and seeing the Makuraners wrecking everything in sight." He sighed again. "It might even be better back there now, come to think of it."
"Don't let your father hear you say that," Lysia warned. "He'd box your ears for you, whether you wear the red boots or no. I can't say I'd blame him, either. How could you fight the Makuraners in the westlands if you were back on Kalavria?"
"How can I fight them now?" he asked. "I was watching their smoke rise up from Across while I was out with the troops at the practice field. There they sit, right at the very heart of the Empire, and I dare not do anything more against them than the little pinprick raids we tried this summer."
"They aren't at the heart of the Empire," Lysia said. "We are, here at Videssos the city. As long as we hold the heart, we can bring the rest back to life one day, no matter how bad things are in the westlands."
"So everyone says. So I've thought," Maniakes answered. "I really do wonder if it's true, though." Suddenly the notion of sailing back to Kalavria, leaving behind the hateful reminders of how weak the Empire of Videssos had grown, seemed sweeter than honey to him. Back at the old fortress above Kastavala, he could think of the Empire as it had always been, not in its present mutilated state, and could rule it without worrying so much about the day-to-day emergencies that made life here in the capital feel so difficult.
But, before he could make clear to Lysia his vision of the benefits abandoning Videssos the city might bring, she said, "Of course it's true. There's never been a fortress, never been a port, like this one in the history of the world. And if you give up on Videssos the city, why shouldn't the people here give up on you?"
He paused thoughtfully. She had a point. She had a couple of points, in fact. If the fickle city mob raised up a new Avtokrator, that man, whoever he was, would gain a tincture of legitimacy because he held Videssos the city. He would also gain its walls, its dromons… and even Genesios the unspeakable had reigned half a dozen years with those advantages.
And so, keeping his longing for Kalavria to himself, he said, "Maybe you're right. I told you once you had the wit to be Sevastos. I know you got angry at me then-"
"And if you tell me again, I'll get angry at you now," Lysia said. By the way her nostrils flared, she was angry. "The city mob wouldn't let me do that any more than they'd let you sail away. And," she added grudgingly, "my brother has shaped well in the job."
Maniakes got up from the table piled high with receipts and registers and requests for gold he did not have. Any excuse for escaping from those requests was a good one, as far as he was concerned. He walked over to Lysia and set his hands on her shoulders. "I am sorry, cousin of mine," he said. "It just seems as if everything has gone to the ice since we came to Videssos the city. I should never have named my flagship the Renewal. Every time I board it, that strikes me as a cruel joke-maybe on myself, maybe on the Empire."
"It'll come right in the end," she said, hugging him. In the sea fights before he took Videssos the city, he had watched floundering men find floating planks and cling to them as if they were life itself. That was how he clung to Lysia now. She still had faith in him, no matter how much trouble he had holding onto faith in himself.
He was also acutely aware of holding a woman in his arms. After a little while, she could hardly have failed to notice his body responding to hers. He never was sure whether she first raised her head or he lowered his. When their lips met, it was with as much desperation as passion-but the passion was there.
At last they drew back, just a little. "Are you sure?" Lysia said softly.
He didn't need to ask what she meant. His laugh rang harsh. "I'm not sure of anything any more," he said. "But-" He went to the door of the chamber and closed it. Before he let the bar fall, he said, "You can still go out if you like. We've talked about this before, after all. If we go on from here, it will complicate both our lives more than either of us can guess now, and I have no idea whether it will come right in the end, whether it will turn out to be worth it."
"Neither do I," Lysia said, still in a low voice. She didn't leave. She urged no course on him. He stood a moment, irresolute. Then, very carefully, he set the bar in its bracket. He took a step toward her. She met him halfway.
It was chilly and awkward and they had no comfortable place in the room-and none of that mattered. Their two robes and their drawers on the mosaic floor did well enough. Maniakes expected to find her a maiden, and he did. Past that, everything was a surprise.
He had thought to be slow and gentle, as he had been with Niphone their first night together, bare hours after Agathios set the imperial crown on his head. Lysia did grimace and stiffen for a moment when he entered her to the hilt, but she startled him by taking pleas
ure afterward. She had no practiced skill at what they did, but enthusiasm made up for a great deal.
She exclaimed in surprise and delight a moment before he could hold back no longer. Even as he spent, he thought of pulling free of her and spurting his seed onto her belly, as he had that once with Niphone. But he discovered that thinking of a thing and being able to do it were not one and the same: even as the idea skittered over the topmost part of his mind, his body drove ever deeper into hers and, for a little while, all thought went away.
It returned too quickly, as thought has a way of doing at such times. "Now what?" he murmured, his face scant inches from hers. He wasn't really talking to her, or to anyone.
She answered with a woman's practicality. "Now let me breathe, please."
"I'm sorry," Maniakes said, and got off her. She had a sunburst print between her breasts from the amulet Bagdasares had given him.
Sliding away from him, she started to dress. When she got a look at her drawers, she clucked to herself. "There won't be any hiding this from the serving women." Her mouth twisted in wry amusement. "Not that I'd bet anything above a worn copper that the servants don't already know."
Maniakes glanced toward the barred door that had given them privacy-or its illusion. "I wouldn't be surprised if you're right." He put on his clothes a little faster than he would have without her words. After running his fingers through his hair, he said "Now what?" again.
"Easiest, maybe, would be to pretend this never happened," Lysia answered. She paused, then shook her head. "No, not easiest. Most convenient, I should say."
"To the ice with convenience," Maniakes burst out. "Besides, you just said the servants will know, and you're right. And what the servants know today is gossip in the plaza of Palamas day after tomorrow."
"That's true." Lysia cocked her head to one side and studied him. "What then, my cousin your Majesty?"
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