A pair of lazy-looking sentries, both Videssians, lounged by the entranceway of the private chambers. They had doffed their helmets so they could soak up the sun; the Videssians deemed a tanned, weathered look a mark of masculine, though not of feminine, beauty.
Scaurus’ guide must have been well-known to the guards, who did not offer even a token challenge as he led the tribune inside. It was not his job, though, to conduct Scaurus all the way to the Emperor. Just inside the threshold he was met by a fat chamberlain in a maroon linen robe with a pattern of golden cranes. The chamberlain looked inquiringly at the Roman.
“He’s the one, all right,” the messenger said. “Took long enough to find, didn’t he?” Without waiting for an answer, he was off on his next mission.
“Come with me, if you please,” the chamberlain said to Scaurus. His voice was more contralto than tenor, and his cheeks were beardless. Like many of the Videssian court functionaries, he was a eunuch. Marcus presumed this was for the same reason eunuchs were common in the oriental monarchies of his own world; being ineligible for the throne because of their castration, they were thought to be more trustworthy in close contact with the person of the ruler.
Like all such rules, the tribune knew, that one had its dreadful exceptions.
The long corridor down which the chamberlain led him was lit by translucent panes of alabaster set into the ceiling. The milky light dimmed and grew bright as clouds chased across the sun. It was, Marcus thought, a bit like seeing underwater.
And there was much to see. As was only natural, many of the finest gauds of a thousand years and more of empire were displayed for the pleasure of the Emperors themselves. The passageway was crowded with marble and bronze statuary, pottery breathtakingly graceful and painted with elegant precision, busts and portraits of men Scaurus guessed to be bygone Emperors, religious images lavish with gold leaf and polished gems, a rearing stallion as big as Marcus’ hand that had to have been carved from a single emerald, and other marvels he did not really see because he had too much pride to swivel his head this way and that like a goatherd on holiday in the city. Even the floor was a bright mosaic of hunting and farming scenes.
In that company, the rusted, dented helmet on a pedestal of its own seemed jarringly out of place. “Why is this here?” he asked.
“That is the helmet of King Rishtaspa of Makuran—we would say ‘Yezd’ now—taken from his corpse by the Emperor Laskaris when he sacked Mashiz seven hundred and—let me think a moment—thirty-nine years ago. A most valiant warrior, Laskaris. The portrait above the helmet is his.”
The painting showed a stern-faced, iron-bearded man in late middle life. He wore gilded scale-mail, the imperial diadem, and the scarlet boots that marked the Emperors of Videssos, but for all that he looked more like a senior centurion than a ruler. His left hand was on the hilt of his sword; in his right was a lance. The spear carried a pennant of sky-blue, with Phos’ sun-symbol large on its field.
The chamberlain continued, “Laskaris forcibly converted all the heathen of Makuran to the true faith but, as Videssos proved unable to establish lasting rule over their land, they have relapsed into error.”
Marcus thought that over and liked none of his thoughts. War for the sake of religion was a notion that had not crossed his mind before. If the people of Makuran were as resolute about their faith as Videssians were for the worship of Phos, such a struggle would be uncommonly grim.
The eunuch was ushering him into a small, surprisingly spare chamber. It held a couch, a desk, a couple of chairs but, save for an image of Phos, was bare of the artwork crowding the hallway. The papers on the desk had been shoved to one side to make room for a plain earthen jug of wine and a plate of cakes.
Seated on the couch were the Emperor, his daughter Alypia, and a big-bellied man of about sixty whom Marcus had seen but not met the night before.
“If you will give me your sword, sir—” the chamberlain began, but Mavrikios interrupted him.
“Oh, run along, Mizizios. He’s not out for my head, not yet, anyway—he doesn’t know me well enough. And you needn’t stand there waiting for him to prostrate himself. It’s against his religion, or some such silly thing. Go on, out with you.”
Looking faintly scandalized, Mizizios disappeared.
Once he was gone, the Emperor waved a bemused Scaurus in. “I’m in private now, so I can ignore ceremony if I please—and I do please,” Gavras said. This was Thorisin’s brother after all; though Thorisin’s fiery impetuosity was banked in him, it did not fail to burn.
“You might tell him who I am,” the aging stranger suggested. He had an engagingly homely face; his beard was snow streaked with coal and reached nearly to his paunch. He looked like a scholar or a healer, but from his robes only one office could be his; he wore gem-strewn cloth-of-gold, with a large circle of blue silk on his left breast.
“So I might,” the Emperor agreed, taking no offense at his aggrieved tone. Here, plainly, were two men who had known and liked each other for years. “Outlander, this tub of lard is called Balsamon. When I took the throne I found him Patriarch of Videssos and I was fool enough to leave him on his seat.”
“Father!” Alypia said, but there was no heat in her complaint.
As he bowed, Marcus studied the patriarch’s features, looking for the fanaticism he had seen in Apsimar. He did not find it. Wisdom and mirth dominated Balsamon’s face; despite his years, the prelate’s brown eyes were still keen and among the shrewdest the tribune could recall.
“Bless you, my heathen friend,” he said. In his clear tenor the words were a friendly greeting with no trace of condescension. “And do sit down. I’m harmless, I assure you.”
Quite out of his depth, Marcus sank into a chair. “To business, then,” Gavras said, visibly reassuming part of his imperial dignity. He pointed an accusing finger at the Roman. “You are to know you are reprimanded for assaulting the ambassador of the Khagan of Yezd and offering him gross insult. You are fined a week’s pay. My daughter and the patriarch Balsamon are witnesses to this sentence.”
The tribune nodded, expressionless; this was what he had expected. The Emperor’s finger dropped and a grin spread across his face. “Having said that, I’ll say something else—good for you! My brother came storming in here to wake me out of a sound sleep and show me every thrust and parry. Wulghash sent Avshar here as a calculated insult, and I’m not sorry to see his joke turn and bite him.”
He grew sober once more. “Yezd is a disease, not a nation, and I intend to wipe it from the face of the earth. Videssos and what was once Makuran have always fought—they to gain access to the Videssian Sea or the Sailors’ Sea, we to take their rich river valleys, and both sides to control the passes, the mines, and the fine fighting men of Vaspurakan between us. Over the centuries, I’d say, honors were evenly divided.”
Scaurus chewed on a cake as he listened. It was excellent, full of nuts and raisins and dusted over with cinammon, and went very well with the spiced wine in the jug. The tribune tried to forget the stale slop he’d drunk before, in the Videssian slums.
“Forty years ago, though,” the Emperor went on, “The Yezda from the steppe of Shaumkhiil sacked Mashiz, seized all of Makuran, and rammed their way through Vaspurakan into the Empire. They kill for the sport of it, steal what they can carry, and wreck what they can’t. And because they are nomads, they gleefully lay waste all the farmland they come across. Our peasants, from whom the Empire gets most of its taxes, are murdered or driven into destitution, and our western cities starve because no peasants are left to feed them.”
“Worse yet, the Yezda follow Skotos,” Balsamon said. When Marcus made no reply, the patriarch cocked a bushy gray eyebrow at him in sardonic amusement. “You think, perhaps, this is something I would be likely to say of anyone who does not share my creed? You must have seen enough of our priests to know most of them do not take kindly to unbelievers.”
Marcus shrugged, unwilling to commit himself. He had an une
asy feeling the patriarch was playing a game with him and an even more uncomfortable certainty that Balsamon was much the smarter.
The patriarch laughed at his noncommital response. He had a good laugh, inviting everyone within earshot to share the joke. “Mavrikios, it is a courtier, not a solider!”
His eyes still twinkling, he gave his attention back to the Roman. “I am not a typical priest, I fear. Time was when the Makurani gave reverence to their Four Prophets, whose names I forget. I think their faith was wrong, I think it was foolish, but I do not think it damned them or made them impossible to treat with. The Yezda, though, worship their gods with disemboweled victims writhing on their altars and summon demons to glut themselves on the remains. They are a wicked folk and must be suppressed.” If anything convinced Marcus of the truth in Balsamon’s words, it was the real regret his voice bore … that, and the memory of Avshar’s chill voice, incanting as they fought.
“And suppress them I shall,” Mavrikios Gavras took up the discussion. In his vehemence he pounded right fist into left palm. “The first two years I held the throne, I fought them to a standstill on our borders. Last year, for one reason and another”—He did not elaborate and looked so grim that Marcus dared not ask for details.—“I could not campaign against them. We suffered for it, in raids and stings and torments. This year, Phos willing, I will be able to hire enough mercenaries to crush Yezd once and for all. I read your arrival here as a good omen for that, my proud friend from another world.”
He paused, awaiting the Roman’s reply. Scaurus recalled his first impression of this man, that giving him the truth served best. “I think,” he said carefully, “you would do better to restore the peasant militias you once had than to spend your coin on foreign troops.”
The Emperor stared, jaw dropping. Sneaking a glance at Balsamon, Marcus had the satisfaction of knowing he’d managed to startle the patriarch as well. The princess Alypia, on the other hand, who so far had held herself aloof from the conversation, looked at the tribune in appraisal and, he thought, growing approval.
The patriarch recovered before his sovereign. “Be glad this one is on your side, Gavras. He sees things clearly.”
Mavrikios was still shaking his head in wonder. He spoke not to Scaurus, but to Balsamon. “What is he? Two days in the city? Three? There are men who have been in the palaces longer than he’s been alive who cannot see that far. Tell me, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus”—It pleased but did not surprise the tribune that Gavras knew his full name—“how did you learn so much about our woes so quickly?”
Marcus explained how he had met Phostis Apokavkos. He did not mention the peasant-soldier’s name or what he had done about him.
By the time the Roman was done, the Emperor was angry. “May Phos fry all pen-pushers! Until I took the throne, the damned bureaucrats ruled the Empire for all but two years of the last fifty, in spite of everything the nobles in the provinces could do against them. They had the money to hire mercenaries and they held the capital, and that proved enough for the puppet-Emperors they raised to keep their seats. And to ruin their rivals in the power struggle, they turned our militiamen into serfs and taxed them to death so they couldn’t fight for their patrons. A plague on every one of them, from Vardanes Sphrantzes on down!”
“It’s not as simple as that, Father, and you know it very well,” Alypia said. “A hundred years ago the peasantry was really free, not bound to our nobles. When magnates began buying up peasant land and making the farmers their dependents, it cost the central government dear. Would any Emperor, no matter how simple, want private armies raised against him, or want to see the taxes rightfully his siphoned into the hands of men who dream of the throne themselves?”
Mavrikios looked at her with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. “My daughter reads history,” he said to Marcus, as if in apology.
The Roman did not think any was necessary. Alypia had spoken well and to the point. There was plainly a keen wit behind her eyes, though she kept it on a short rein of words. The tribune was also grateful for any facts he could get. The Videssos he and his men entered was a maze of interlocking factions more twisted than any Rome had known.
The princess had turned to face her father; Scaurus admired her clean profile. It was softer than Mavrikios’ both because of her sex and the influence of her mother’s looks, but she was still a distinguished young woman. A cat can look at a king, Marcus thought, but what of a king’s daughter? Well, he told himself, no one’s yet been killed for thinking, and a good thing too, or the world would be a lonely place.
“Say what you want,” the Emperor told Alypia, “about how things were a hundred years ago. Ten years ago, when Strobilos Sphrantzes had his fat fundament on the throne—”
“You’d say ‘arse’ to anyone but me,” Alypia said. “I’ve heard the word before.”
“Probably from my own mouth, I fear.” Gavras sighed. “I do try to watch my tongue, but I’ve spent too many years in the field.”
Marcus ignored the byplay. A Sphrantzes ruling Videssos just before Mavrikios forcibly took power? Then what in the name of Jove—or even Phos—was Vardanes Sphrantzes doing as the present Emperor’s chief minister?
“Where was I?” Gavras was saying. “Oh yes, that cretin Strobilos. He was a bigger booby than his precious nephew. Fifty thousand peasants on the border of Vaspurakan he converted from soldiers to serfs in one swoop, and overtaxed serfs at that. Is it any wonder half of them went over to the Yezda, foul as they are, on their next raid? There’s such a thing, Alypia, as taking too long a view.”
Damn it, thought Scaurus, there was no graceful way to ask the question that was consuming him with curiosity. He squirmed in his seat, so busy with unsuccessful tries at framing it that he did not notice Balsamon watching him.
The patriarch came to his rescue. “Your Majesty, before he bursts, will you tell the poor lad why there’s still a Sphrantzes in your service?”
“Ah, Scaurus, then there is something you don’t know? I’d started to wonder. Balsamon, you tell it—you were in things up to your fuzzy eyebrows.”
Balsamon assumed a comic look of injured innocence. “I? All I did was point out to a few people that Strobilos had, perhaps, not been the ideal ruler for a land in a time of trouble.”
“What that means, Roman, is that our priestly crony here broke a hole in the ranks of the bureaucrats you could throw him through, which is saying something. Half the pen-pushers backed me instead of the old Sphrantzes; their price was making the younger one Sevastos. Worth it, I suppose, but he wants the red boots for himself.”
“He also wants me,” Alypia said. “It is not mutual.”
“I know, dear, I know. I could solve so many problems if it were, but I’m not sure I’d give you to him even so. His wife died too conveniently last year. Poor Evphrosyne! And as soon as was decent—or before, thinking back on it—there was Vardanes, full of praises for the notion of ‘cementing our two great houses.’ I do not trust that man.”
Marcus decided he too would like to cement Vardanes Sphrantzes—by choice, into the wall of a fortress.
Something else occurred to him. Mavrikios, it seemed, was a man who liked to speak the truth as well as hear it, so the tribune felt he could inquire, “May I ask, my lord, what became of Strobilos Sphrantzes?”
“You mean, did I chop him into chitterlings as he deserved? No, that was part of the bargain Balsamon forged. He lived out his worthless life in a monastery north of Imbros and died a couple of years ago. Also, to his credit, Vardanes swore he would not serve me if I killed his uncle, and I needed him, worse luck for me.
“Here, enough of this—I neglect my hostly duties. Have another cake.” And the Emperor of Videssos, like any good host, extended the platter to the Roman.
“With pleasure,” Scaurus said, taking one. “They’re delicious.”
“Thank you,” said Alypia. When Marcus blinked, she went on, a bit defensively: “I was not raised in the palaces, you know, wi
th a servant to squirm at every crook of my finger. I learned womens’ skills well enough, and after all”—She smiled at her father—“no one can read history all the time.”
“Your Highness, I said they were very good cakes before I knew who made them,” Marcus pointed out. “You’ve only given me another reason to like them.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he wished he had not said them. Where his daughter was concerned, Mavrikios could not help but be suspicious of everyone.
Though Alypia dropped her eyes, if the remark annoyed the Emperor he showed no sign of it. “A courtier indeed, Balsamon,” he chuckled. As he bowed his way from the imperial audience, Marcus concluded that any soldier of Videssos who had no turn for diplomacy would hardly last long enough to face her foes.
V
MIZIZIOS THE EUNUCH LED THE ROMAN BACK TO THE ENTRANCEWAY of the imperial quarters, then vanished back into the building on some business of his own. The messenger who had led the tribune hither was nowhere to be seen. The Videssians, apparently, took less care over exits than entrances.
Their sentries were also less careful than Marcus found tolerable. When he emerged into the golden sunshine of late afternoon, he found both guards sprawled out asleep in front of the doorway. Their sword belts were undone, their spears lay beside the helmets they had already shed when Scaurus first saw them.
Their sloth infuriated the tribune. With an Emperor worth protecting—and that for the first time in years—these back-country louts could do no better than doze the day away. It was more than the Roman could stand. “On your feet!” he roared. At the same time he kicked their discarded helms, making a fine clatter.
The sentries jerked and scrambled upright, fumbling for the weapons they had set aside. Marcus laughed scornfully. He cursed the startled warders with every bit of Videssian foulness he had learned. He wished Gaius Philippus were at his side; the centurion had a gift for invective. “If you were under my command, you’d be lashed with more than my tongue, I promise you that,” he finished.
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