What color was the enchanted cord? Gold? Blue? Orange? Purple? Red? It flickered back and forth among them faster than Maniakes' eyes could follow. After a moment, he didn't care. The heat from the amulet began to fade against the skin of his chest, and his head no longer felt as if the walls of his skull were going to squeeze together, crushing everything between them.
"Better," Maniakes whispered. Still in her nightdress, Lysia appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide and frightened. Kameas was right behind her. Maybe Bagdasares' magic hadn't been so slow after all, if they were just now getting here. It certainly had seemed slow.
With his head no longer feeling as if it were about to cave in on itself, he was able to pay more attention to the shifting colors of the twine. They changed ever more slowly. Red… gold… blue… and all at once, the twine was just twine again. "What does that mean?" Lysia asked, before Maniakes could.
"It means the assault against his Majesty is over," Bagdasares answered. "He may leave the circle now, if he so desires." Maniakes had wondered how long he would have to stay in there. Even so, he hesitated before stepping out beyond the confines of the cord. If by any chance Bagdasares was wrongManiakes didn't let himself think about that. He stepped over the cord. If he had felt in the least peculiar, he would have jumped back into the circle. Nothing untoward happened. He glanced over at Kameas. "I'm glad I hadn't put on that leek-green robe, esteemed sir," he said. "I would have bled all over it, and that's very fine wool."
"To the ice with the wool," Kameas said, unwontedly emphatic. "I am glad your Majesty is safe."
"Safe?" Maniakes said. "An Avtokrator isn't safe from the day he dons the red boots to the one when he gets shoved into a niche under the temple dedicated to the holy Phravitas. Nobody's trying to kill me right now, though. A few minutes ago-" He shivered as he realized what a narrow escape he had had.
Lysia seemed to have understood that all along. Turning to Bagdasares, she said, "Can you find out who did this, sorcerous sir? No. Let me ask it another way: can you find out who was behind the attempt? If the mage escapes, that's one thing. But if whoever paid him to try to slay the Avtokrator stays free, he will surely try again."
Bagdasares' frown brought his heavy eyebrows together. "Finding out who did the deed or planned it will not be easy, not in the abstract. I think I could determine, on a yes-or-no basis, whether any particular individual was involved in the attack."
"That should do the job," Maniakes said. "I can think of most of the people who might want to be rid of me, I expect. What would you need from them for your sorcery? Whatever it is, I'll arrange it, I promise you that."
"I shouldn't require much, your Majesty," Bagdasares answered. "Something that belongs to one of the individuals you suspect would suffice. A sample of his writing, for instance, would be excellent."
"I'll have trouble taking care of that for Abivard, I fear-maybe I promised too readily." Maniakes paused. "Or maybe not. Would a fragment of the wax he used to seal a letter he dictated do the job?"
"It should, your Majesty. A man's seal is almost as much uniquely his own as his script." Bagdasares ran a hand through his tousled hair. "And whom else shall I examine?"
Lysia and Kameas both flicked a glance toward the serving maid who shared the wizard's bed. Maniakes didn't need that hint. He had thought of her, too. But, while he did aim to thwart gossip or warnings, he didn't want to hurt her feelings. He said, "Let's not think of that while we're all so disheveled." Kameas wasn't disheveled, but then Kameas, as best Maniakes could tell, was never disheveled. He finished, "After breakfast is time enough."
After breakfast, the four of them gathered in a small reception chamber and considered who was liable to want Maniakes off the throne. Kourikos' name quickly came up. So did that of Phevronia, his wife. "She is liable to resent your marriage to me even more than her husband does," Lysia said quietly.
"I might not have thought of that for myself," Maniakes said. "Thank you."
"I have good reasons-many good reasons-to want you on the throne for a very long time," Lysia answered.
"Speaking of reasons, Agathios has-or thinks he has-reasons to want you deposed, your Majesty," Bagdasares said.
"So he does," Maniakes agreed. "Well, the most holy ecumenical patriarch is prolix with his pen. We'll have no trouble getting a writing sample from him."
"The eminent Tzikas," Kameas said.
"We'll check him," Maniakes said, nodding. "I'd be surprised if he proves to have anything to do with this, though. He may want the throne, but I think he'd like to see it drop into his lap."
"He is not aboveboard in what he does," Kameas insisted. "Such men earn close scrutiny, and deserve it." Eunuchs had a reputation for deviousness. Maybe they got suspicious when they sensed it in others.
"The drungarios," Bagdasares said. "Thrax."
Maniakes had all he could do to keep from bursting out laughing. If ever there was a man who wasn't devious, Thrax was the one. But he nodded again even so. Straightforward men got ambitious, too.
"The eminent Triphylles will have kin who may resent his passing in a foreign land," Kameas said. Maniakes hardly knew Triphylles' kin, but that was a possibility.
"Genesios' widow, too," he observed thoughtfully. "She may be mured up in a convent, but nothing is ever sealed as tight as you wish it was. Messages can go in, messages can come out."
After that, a silence fell. "Have we no more candidates?" Bagdasares asked.
"If not, let us be about the business of obtaining samples of these persons' writings or other articles closely associated with them."
"One more person comes to mind," Maniakes said, and then paused. He glanced over to Lysia. "Your brother would name the name if we failed to, and he would be right. Come to that, so would my father, I think."
"Parsmanios, do you mean?" she asked, naming Maniakes' brother to keep him from having to do it.
He sighed. "Aye. After we quarreled, I saw him-not so long ago-deep in conversation with someone who I think was Kourikos, though I would not take oath to that on Phos' holy scriptures. Bagdasares, we'll need to be extra careful in getting a sample from him, and you'll need to be discreet in and after your test of that sample. If he learns I suspected him, he may become willing to conspire against me even if he wasn't before."
"Your Majesty, a mage who gossips is soon a mage without clients," Bagdasares answered. "As you command, though, I shall exercise particular care here. That same care should be applied, as you say, in obtaining writings from him."
"We should have in the archives orders he wrote for the vanguard as we advanced toward Amorion," Maniakes said. "We can get some of those without his being any the wiser, I should think."
"That would be excellent, your Majesty," Bagdasares said with a nod. "As soon as you convey to me the necessary documents, I shall begin examining them to see if their owners were involved in this wicked effort against you."
"I'm sure I have here at the residence parchments written by Kourikos and Agathios," Maniakes said. "You can start on those right away. I also have the letters from Abivard here, so you'll be able to do whatever you aim to do with the bits of wax from his seal."
Kameas said, "It might be instructive to go out and ask the guards whether anyone came wandering by a little while ago, inquiring after your Majesty's well-being. You or I would not be so foolish, but few people find themselves at a disadvantage by underestimating the stupidity even of seemingly clever people."
No one who had held the imperial throne for a while would have presumed to disagree with that. Hoping the case would unravel like the sleeve of a cheap robe when the first thread pulled lose, Maniakes walked out to the entrance.
No one, though, had come round to see if he was still intact. He sighed. Since the day he had donned the red boots, nothing had been easy. He didn't suppose he ought to expect anything different now.
When he turned back to deliver the negative news, he found his father coming up the hall toward him. "A
re you all right, son?" the elder Maniakes asked.
"The servants are telling all sorts of ghastly tales."
"I shouldn't be surprised, but yes, I'm fine." Maniakes explained what had happened.
His father's face darkened with anger. Sketching Phos' sun-sign above his left breast, he growled. "To the ice with whoever would try such a thing. Worse than hiring an assassin, if you ask me: a mage doesn't have to get close to try to slay you. Who's on your list?"
Maniakes named names. His father nodded at each one in turn. Then the Avtokrator named Parsmanios. The elder Maniakes' eyes closed in pain for a moment. At last, with a sign, he nodded again. "Aye, you'll have to look into that, won't you? He was away from us for a long time, and he hasn't been happy with his circumstances since he came to Videssos the city. But by the good god, how I hope you're wrong."
"So do I," Maniakes answered. "As you say, there's not been a lot of love lost between us, but he is my brother."
"If you don't remember that, you're a long step closer to the ice right there," the elder Maniakes said. "Bagdasares is finding out what you need to know, is he? How soon will he have any idea of what's toward?"
"Where we have specimens, he's already started work," Maniakes answered. "For some of the people who might have done it, we'll either have to pull samples out of the archives or else get them to give us new ones. We should have something from Parsmanios in the files."
The elder Maniakes sighed once more. "You have to do it, but this is a filthy business. I wonder if we wouldn't have been better off staying on Kalavria in spite of all the tears and speeches the nobles gave."
"I've thought the same thing," the Avtokrator said. Now he sighed in turn.
"Going back wouldn't be easy, not what with everything that's happened since. But heading for a place where no one's plotting against you has its temptations."
"If we did go back, someone might start plotting against you," his father said. He named no names, but Rotrude sprang into the Avtokrator's mind. She hadn't married since he had left, she would be jealous of Lysia, and she would want to advance Atalarikhos' fortunes. The Haloga style in such matters was liable to include good old straightforward murder. Maniakes felt like jumping into the sea. Only the fish would bother him there.
Kameas stood in the doorway, waiting to be noticed. "Yes, esteemed sir?" Maniakes asked.
"The excellent Bagdasares has tested writings from the most holy Agathios and the fragments of Abivard's seal, your Majesty," the vestiarios replied. "He reports that neither man was involved in the attack on you. He is about to evaluate writings from the eminent Kourikos, and wonders if you might be interested in observing the process, as you expressed the belief that he may well be one of the guilty parties."
"Yes, I'll come," Maniakes said, glad not to have to gauge the odds of Rotrude's turning against him. "What about you, Father?"
"Thank you; I'll stay here," the elder Maniakes said. "What wizards do can be useful. How they do it never much interested me, because I have no hope of doing it myself."
The Avtokrator knew he would never make a wizard, either, but found what they did intriguing even so. When he walked into the chamber where Bagdasares was working, the mage showed him a piece of parchment with crabbed notations complaining about a lack of funds. "This is indeed written in the hand of the eminent Kourikos?" Bagdasares asked. Maniakes nodded.
Whistling softly between his teeth, Bagdasares set the parchment on a table. He poured wine from one jar and vinegar from another together into a cup.
"They symbolize what is and what shall be," he said, "and this chunk of hematite-" He held it up. "-is by the law of similarity attuned to the piece of the same mineral in the amulet that protected you and allowed you to reach me. Now-"
He dipped a glass rod into the cup that held the mixed wine and vinegar, then dabbed several drops of the mixture onto the parchment. The letters and numbers there smeared as they got wet. Chanting, Bagdasares touched the wet places with the lump of hematite. "If the eminent Kourikos was involved with the magic, your Majesty, we should see those areas begin to glow as my sorcery exposes the connection."
Maniakes waited. Nothing happened. After a couple of minutes, he asked, "Has it done everything it's going to do?"
"Er-yes, your Majesty," Bagdasares answered. "It would appear that the eminent Kourikos was in fact not one of those who so wickedly plotted against you." Pointing out to an Avtokrator that he was wrong could be a risky business. Maniakes, however, greeted the wizard's words with a shrug, and Bagdasares relaxed. Maniakes was just as well pleased not to have the logothete of the treasury under suspicion, for his innocence made Parsmanios' more likely. Maniakes wished he could have been positive it was Kourikos he had seen with his brother, but he couldn't, and no help for it.
Doing his best to make life difficult, Bagdasares said, "We do, of course, still have to test the script of the logothete's wife."
"I'm sure you'll attend to that in due course," Maniakes said. He supposed Kourikos could have been a go-between for Phevronia and Parsmanios without directly doing business with the mage who had tried to kill him, but it didn't strike him as probable. He rubbed his chin. "I don't think I have a handwriting specimen from the eminent Tzikas here. I'll send him a note and get one back in return."
As if on cue, Kameas stuck his head into Bagdasares' makeshift thaumaturgical laboratory and said, "Your Majesty, a clerk has fetched writings hither from the government offices." The vestiarios had discretion and to spare; he never mentioned Parsmanios' name.
"Let him come in, eminent sir," Maniakes said. The clerk, a weedy little man in a robe of wool homespun, prostrated himself and then gave the Avtokrator a sheet of parchment tied into a cylinder with a ribbon. When Maniakes slid off the ribbon, he saw it was indeed one of Parsmanios' orders of the day for the vanguard of an army now long defeated.
The clerk disappeared, presumably to return to the hordes of pigeonholes where such documents slept against the unlikely chance that they, like this one, might eventually need to be revived. Maniakes forgot about him the moment he was gone. His attention swung back to Bagdasares, who was preparing the document for the same treatment he had given the one written by Kourikos.
The mage sprinkled the marching order with his mix of wine and vinegar. He began his chant once more and touched the piece of hematite to the parchment. Immediately it was suffused in a soft nimbus of blue-violet light. "The test has found an affirmative, your Majesty," Bagdasares said. Like Kameas, he did not speak Parsmanios' name.
A crushing weight of sorrow descended on Maniakes. "Are you certain, sorcerous sir?" he asked. "No doubt or possible misinterpretation?"
"No, your Majesty," Bagdasares said sadly but without hesitation. "I regret being the agent who-"
"It's not your fault," Maniakes said. "It's my brother's fault." He walked down the hall to the room where he had left his father. He looked in.
"Parsmanios," he said. The elder Maniakes grimaced but nodded. The Avtokrator walked out to the guards who stood on the steps. He divided them in two and told one group, "Go find Parsmanios. He'll probably be in one of the wings of the Grand Courtroom at this time of day. Whatever he's doing, fetch him here at once."
The guards asked no questions, but hurried off to do his bidding. When he went back into the imperial residence, he found his father standing near the entrance. "What will you do with him? To him, I should say?" the elder Maniakes asked.
"Hear him out," Maniakes answered wearily. "Then have him tonsured and send him into exile in the monastery at Prista, up on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea. It's either that or take his head."
"I know." The elder Maniakes clapped the younger on the back. "It's a good choice." He scowled. "No. It's the best choice you could make. I never dreamed I'd have to thank you for sparing your brother's life, but I do."
Maniakes did not feel magnanimous. He felt empty, betrayed. A messenger arrived with Tzikas' reply to his note. He didn't even
look at it, but sent the fellow straight on to Bagdasares. Then he went out and stared east through the cherry trees toward the Grand Courtroom.
Before long, the guards headed back to the residence, Parsmanios in their midst. He was complaining volubly: "This is an outrage, I tell you! When the Avtokrator hears of how you high-handedly jerked me out of that meeting with the eminent Themistios, logothete of petitions, and how he stared as you did so, his Majesty will-"
"Commend his men for carrying out his orders," Maniakes interrupted. He spoke to the guards: "Make sure he has no weapons." Despite Parsmanios' protests, the soldiers removed his belt knife and, after some searching, a slim holdout dagger he wore in his left boot. That done, they escorted him to the chamber to which his father had returned.
"Why, son?" the elder Maniakes asked, beating the Avtokrator to the question.
"Why what?" Parsmanios began. Then he looked from his father to his brother and saw that wouldn't get him anywhere. From assumed innocence sprang fury.
"Why do you think, the ice take you? You shut me away from everything you did, you gave Rhegorios the spot that should have been mine-"
"I didn't know you were alive when Rhegorios got the Sevastos' spot," Maniakes said. "How many times must I tell you?"
Parsmanios went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And as if that wasn't enough, you started swiving his sister. Why didn't you just take him to bed? Incest with one wouldn't be any worse than incest with the other."
"Son, you would be wiser to have a care in what you say," the elder Maniakes said. "You would have been wiser to have a care in what you did, too."
"Better you should tell that to him," Parsmanios said, pointing to his brother. "But no, you don't care what he does. You never cared what he did. He was your eldest, so it had to be right."
"My backside says you're a liar," Maniakes said, "not that you haven't shown that already."
"Say whatever you want," Parsmanios said. "It doesn't matter now. I failed, and you'll take my head, and that will be the end of it."
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