The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “A Haloga woman?” Two or three stable hands said it together, sudden keen interest in their voices. The big blond northerners often came to Videssos to trade or to hire on as mercenaries, but they left their wives and daughters behind.

  Krispos tried to imagine what a Halogaina would look like. “Tell me more,” he said. Again, his was not the only voice.

  “Eyes the color of a summer sky, I heard, and the palest pink tips, and her hair gilded above and below,” Mavros said. It would be, wouldn’t it? Krispos thought; that hadn’t occurred to him. The stable hands murmured, each painting his own picture in his mind. Mavros went on, “You could hardly blame Anthimos for trying her on then and there.”

  The murmurs got louder. “I wouldn’t blame him for keeping her for a week or a month or a year or—” Onorios was all but panting. He must have liked the picture his mind painted.

  But Krispos and Mavros said “No” at the same time. They glanced at each other. Krispos dipped his head to Mavros, who, he knew, was better with words. “His Majesty,” Mavros explained, “only sleeps with a pleasure girl once. Anything more, he reckons, would constitute infidelity to the Empress.”

  That got the yowls and whoops Krispos had known it would. “Give me fidelity like that, any day,” Onorios said. “Give it to me twice a day,” someone else said. “Three times!” another groom added.

  “The lot of you remind me of the rich old man who married a young wife and promised to kill her with passion,” Krispos said. “He had her once, then fell asleep and snored all night long. When he finally woke up, she looked over at him and said, ‘Good morning, killer.’”

  The stable hands hissed at him. Grinning, he added, “Besides, if we spent all our time in bed, we’d never get anything done, and Phos knows there’s plenty to do here.” The men hissed again, but started drifting off toward their tasks.

  “Not getting anything done doesn’t seem to worry his Majesty,” Onorios said.

  “Ah, but he has people to do things for him. Unless you hired a servant while I wasn’t looking, you don’t,” Krispos said.

  “Afraid not, worse luck.” Onorios sadly clicked his tongue and went back to work.

  “LOOK AT THIS—THIS BLOODSUCKING!” PETRONAS SLAMMED A fist down on the pile of parchments in front of him. They were upside down to Krispos, but that did not matter because the Sevastokrator was in full cry. “Thirty-six hundred goldpieces—fifty pounds of gold!—that cursed leech of a Skombros has siphoned off for his worthless slug of a nephew Askyltos. And another twenty pounds for the worthless slug’s stinking father Evmolpos. When I show these accounts to my nephew—”

  “What do you think will happen?” Krispos asked eagerly. “Will he give Skombros the sack?”

  But Petronas’ rage collapsed into moroseness. “No, he’ll just laugh, curse it. He already knows Skombros is a thief. He doesn’t care. What he won’t see is that the Skotos-loving wretch is setting up his own relations as great men. Dynasties have died that way.”

  “If his Majesty doesn’t care whether Skombros steals, why do you keep shoving accounts in his face?” Krispos asked.

  “To make him care, by Phos, before the fox he insists on thinking a lapdog sinks its teeth into him.” The Sevastokrator heaved a sigh. “Making Anthimos care about anything save his own amusement is like pushing water uphill with a rake.”

  Petronas’ loathing for his rival, Krispos thought, blinded him to any way of dealing with Skombros but the one that had already shown it did not work. “What would happen if Skombros didn’t amuse him, or amused him in the wrong sort of way?” Krispos asked.

  “What are you talking about?” Petronas demanded crossly.

  For a moment, Krispos had no idea himself. One of the lessons he should have learned from Tanilis was keeping his mouth shut when he had nothing to say. He bent his head in humiliation. Humiliation…he remembered how he’d felt when he was just a youth, when a couple of village wits lampooned his wrestling in a Midwinter’s Day skit. “How would Anthimos like the whole city laughing at his vestiarios? It’s only a couple of weeks to Midwinter’s Day, after all.”

  “What does that have to do with—” Petronas suddenly caught up with Krispos. “By the good god, so it is. So you want to make him look ridiculous, do you? Why not? He is.” The Sevastokrator’s eyes lit up. As soon as he saw his objective, he planned how to reach it with a soldier’s directness. “Anthimos has charge of the Amphitheater skits. They entertain him, so he pays attention to them. All the same, I expect I can slide a new one into the list without his noticing. Have to give it an innocuous title so that even if he does spot it, he won’t think anything of it. Have to find mimes who aren’t already engaged. And costumes—curse it, can we get costumes made in time?”

  “We have to figure out what the mimes are going to do, too,” Krispos pointed out.

  “Aye, that’s true, though Phos knows there’s plenty to say about the eunuch.”

  “Let me get Mavros,” Krispos said. “He has an ear for scandal.”

  “Does he?” Petronas all but purred. “Yes, go fetch him—at once.”

  “NOW THIS,” MAVROS SAID, “IS WHAT I CALL AN AMPHITHEATER.” He craned his neck to peer around and up.

  “Only trouble is, I feel like I’m at the bottom of a soup bowl full of people,” Krispos answered. Fifty thousand, seventy, ninety—he was not sure how many people the enormous oval held. However many it was, they were all here today. No one wanted to miss the Midwinter’s Day festivity.

  “I’d sooner be at the bottom than the top,” Mavros said. “Who has better seats than we do?” They were in the very first row, right by what was a racecourse most of the time but would serve as an open-air stage today.

  “There’s always the people on the spine.” Krispos pointed to the raised area in the center of the track.

  Mavros snorted. “You’re never satisfied, are you?” The spine was reserved for the Avtokrator, the Sevastokrator, the patriarch, and the chief ministers of the Empire. Krispos saw Skombros there, not far from Anthimos; the vestiarios was conspicuous for his bulk and his beardless cheeks. The only men on the spine who were not high lords or prelates were the axe-toting Halogai of the imperial guard. Mavros nodded toward them. “See? They don’t even get to sit down. Me, I’d rather be comfortable here.”

  “I suppose I would, too,” Krispos said. “Even so—”

  “Hush! They’re starting.”

  Anthimos rose from his throne and strode over to a podium set in the very center of the spine. He silently stood there, waiting. Quiet spread through the Amphitheater as more and more people saw him. When all was still, he spoke:

  “People of Videssos, today the sun turns in the sky again.” A trick of acoustics carried his voice clearly to the uppermost rows of the Amphitheater, from which he seemed hardly more than a bright-colored speck in his imperial robes. He went on, “Once more Skotos has failed to drag us down into his eternal darkness. Let us thank Phos the Lord of the great and good mind for delivering us for another year, and let us celebrate that deliverance the whole day long. Let joy pour forth unconfined!”

  The Amphitheater erupted in cheers. Anthimos staggered as he walked back to his high seat. Krispos wondered if the acoustical trick worked in reverse, if all the noise in the huge building focused where the Emperor had stood. That would be enough to stagger anyone. On the other hand, maybe Anthimos had just started drinking at dawn.

  “Here we go,” Mavros breathed. The first troupe of mimes, a group of men dressed as monks, emerged from the gate that normally let horses onto the track. From the way one of them made a point of holding his nose, the horses were still much in evidence.

  The “monks” proceeded to do a number of most unmonastic things. The audience howled. On Midwinter’s Day, nothing was sacred. Krispos peered across the track to the spine to see how Gnatios enjoyed watching his clerics lampooned. The patriarch was paying the skit no attention at all; he was leaning over to one side of his chair so he
could talk with his cousin Petronas. He and the Sevastokrator smiled at some private joke.

  When the first mime troupe left, another took its place. This one tried to exaggerate the excesses at one of Anthimos’ revels. The people who filled the stands alternately gasped and whooped. Unlike his uncle and Gnatios, the Emperor watched attentively and howled laughter. Krispos chuckled, too, not least because much of what the mimes thought wild enough to put in their act was milder than things he’d really seen at Anthimos’ feasts.

  The next troupe came out in striped caftans and felt hats that looked like upside-down buckets. The make-believe Makuraners capered about. The people in the stands jeered and hissed. In his high seat on the spine, Petronas looked pleased with himself.

  “Make the men from the west look like idiots and weaklings and everyone will be more willing to go to war with them,” Mavros said. He guffawed as one of the mimes pretended to relieve himself into his hat.

  “I suppose so,” Krispos said. “But there are a fair number of people from Makuran here in the city, rug-dealers and ivory merchants and such. They’re just…people. Half the folk in the Amphitheater must have dealt with them at one time or another. They know Makuraners aren’t like this.”

  “I daresay they do, when they stop to think about it. How many people do you know who always take the time to stop and think, though?”

  “Not many,” Krispos admitted, a little sadly.

  The pseudo-Makuraners fled in mock terror as the next troupe, whose members were dressed as Videssian soldiers, came out. That won a last laugh and a cheer at the same time. The “soldiers” quickly proved no more heroic than the Makuraners they replaced, which to Krispos’ way of thinking weakened the message Petronas was trying to put across.

  Act followed act, all competent, some very funny indeed. The city folk leaned back in their seats to enjoy the spectacle. Krispos enjoyed it, too, even while he wished the troupes were a little less polished. Back in his village, a big part of the fun had lain in taking part in the skits and poking fun at the ones that went wrong. Here no one save professionals took part and nothing went wrong.

  When he grumbled about that, Mavros said, “For hundreds of years, Emperors have been putting on spectacles and entertaining people in the capital, to keep them from thinking up ways to get into mischief for themselves. Save for riots, I don’t think they know how to make their own entertainment anymore.” He leaned forward. “See these dancers? They come on just before that troupe the Sevastokrator hired.”

  The dancers came on, went off. Krispos paid scant attention to them. He found he was pounding his fist on his thigh as he waited for the next company. He made himself stop.

  The mimes came onto the track a few at a time. Some were dressed as ordinary townsfolk, others, once more, as imperial troops. The townsfolk acted out chatting among themselves. The troops marched back and forth. Out came a tall fellow wearing the imperial raiment. The soldiers sprang to attention; the civilians flopped down in comically overdone prostrations.

  A dozen parasol-bearers, the proper imperial number, followed the mime playing the Avtokrator. But it soon became obvious they were not attached to him, but rather to the figure who emerged after him. That man was in a fancy robe, too, but one padded out so that he looked even wider than he was tall. A low murmur of laughter ran through the Amphitheater as the audience recognized who he was supposed to be.

  “How much did we have to pay that mime to get him to shave his beard?” Krispos asked. “He looks a lot more like Skombros without it.”

  “He held out for two goldpieces,” Mavros answered. “I finally ended up paying him. You’re right; it’s worth it.”

  “Aye, it is. You might also want to think about paying him for a holiday away from the city till his beard grows back again, at least if he wants to live to work next Midwinter’s Day,” Krispos said. After a moment’s surprise, Mavros nodded.

  Up on the spine, Petronas sat at ease, watching the mimes but still not seeming to pay any great attention to them. Krispos admired his coolness; no one would have guessed by looking at him that he’d had anything to do with this skit. Anthimos leaned forward to see better, curiosity on his face—whatever he’d been told about this troupe’s performance, it was something different from this. And Skombros—Skombros’ fleshy features were so still and hard, they might have been carved from granite.

  The mock-Anthimos on the track walked around receiving the plaudits of his subjects. The parasol-bearers stayed with the pseudo-Skombros, who was also accompanied by a couple of disgusting hangers-on, one with gray hair, the other with black.

  The actors playing citizens lined up to pay their taxes to the Emperor. He collected a sack of coins from each one, headed over to pay the soldiers. At last the mime-Skombros bestirred himself. He intercepted Anthimos, patted him on the back, put an arm around him, and distracted him enough to whisk the sacks away. The Avtokrator’s befuddlement on discovering he had no money to give his troops won loud guffaws from the stands.

  Meanwhile, the mime playing the vestiarios shared the sacks with his two slimy colleagues. They fondled the money with lascivious abandonment.

  Almost as an afterthought, the pseudo-Skombros went back to the Emperor. After another round of the hail-fellow-well-met routine he had used before, he charmed the crown off Anthimos’ head. The actor playing the Emperor did not seem to notice it was gone. Skombros took the crown over to his black-haired henchman, tried it on him. It was much too big; it hid half the fellow’s face. With a shrug, as if to say “not yet,” the vestiarios restored it to Anthimos.

  The Amphitheater grew still during that last bit of business. Then, far up in the stands, someone shouted, “To the ice with Skombros!” That one thin cry unleashed a torrent of abuse against the eunuch.

  Krispos and Mavros looked at each other and grinned. Over on the spine, Petronas kept up his pose of indifference. The real Skombros sat very still, refusing to notice any of the gibes hurled at him. He had nerve, Krispos thought grudgingly. Then Krispos’ eyes slid to the man for whom the skit had been put on, the Avtokrator of the Videssians.

  Anthimos rubbed his chin and stared thoughtfully from the departing troupe of mimes to Skombros and back again. “I hope he got it,” Mavros said.

  “He got it,” Krispos said. “He may be foolish, but he’s a long way from stupid. I just hope he takes notice of—hey!”

  An apple flung by someone farther back in the crowd had caught Krispos in the shoulder. A cabbage whizzed by his head. Another apple, thrown by someone with a mighty arm, splashed not far from Skombros’ seat. “Dig up the vestiarios’ bones!” a woman screeched—the Videssian call to riot. In a moment, the whole Amphitheater was screaming it.

  Petronas stood and spoke to the commander of the Haloga guards. Pale winter sun glittered on the northerners’ axeblades as they swung them up over their shoulders. The Halogai yelled together, a deep, wordless shout that cut through the cries from the stands like one of their axes cleaving flesh.

  “Now for the interesting question,” Mavros said. “Will that hold them, or will we have ourselves an uprising right now?”

  Krispos gulped. When he put his plan to Petronas, he hadn’t thought of that. Getting rid of Skombros was one thing; pulling Videssos the city down with the eunuch was something else again. Given the capital’s volatile populace, the chance was real.

  The Halogai shouted again, the threat in their voices plain as the snarl of a wolf. Another troop of northerners, axes at the ready, tramped out onto the track from under the Amphitheater.

  “There are enough people here to swamp them,” Krispos said nervously.

  “I know.” Mavros seemed to be enjoying himself. “But are there enough people here willing to get maimed doing it?”

  There weren’t. Insults continued to rain down on Skombros, but the missiles more tangible than insults stopped. Finally someone yelled, “Get the soldiers off the track! We want the mimes!” Soon everyone took up the cry: �
��We want the mimes! We want the mimes!”

  This time Anthimos spoke to the Haloga commander. The warrior bowed. At his command, the northerners lowered their weapons. The newly emerged band of imperial guards marched back through the gate from which they had come. A moment later, a fresh troupe of mimes replaced them. Cheers filled the Amphitheater.

  “Fickle buggers,” Mavros said with a contemptuous jerk of his head. “Half an hour from now, half of them won’t remember what they were screaming about.”

  “Maybe not,” Krispos said, “but Skombros will, and so will Anthimos.”

  “That is the point, isn’t it?” Mavros leaned back in his chair. “Let’s see what antics this new bunch has in ’em, shall we?”

  THE THRONE IN THE GRAND COURTROOM BELONGED TO ANTHIMOS. Sitting in a raised chair in his own suite, dressed in his full Sevastokrator’s regalia, Petronas looked quite imperial enough, Krispos thought from his place at his master’s left.

  He looked around. “This room is different somehow,” he said.

  “I’ve screened off that part of it.” Petronas pointed. Sure enough, a wooden screen like the one that gave privacy to the imperial niche at the High Temple was in place.

  The openings in the woodwork were so small that Krispos could not see what, if anything, lay behind it. He asked, “Why did you put the screen up?”

  “Let’s just say you’re not the only one who ever comes up with bright ideas,” the Sevastokrator said. Krispos shrugged. If Petronas didn’t feel like explaining, he could hardly force him to.

  Eroulos came in and bowed to Petronas. “His Majesty and the vestiarios are here, Highness.”

  “Show them in, by all means,” the Sevastokrator said.

  Petronas’ efficient steward had already supplied Anthimos and Skombros with goblets. The Emperor lowered his to grin at Krispos as he and Petronas rose in greeting. Skombros’ face was somber. Had he been less practiced at schooling his features, Krispos judged, he would have looked nervously from one of his foes to the other. As it was, his eyes flicked back and forth between them.