The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “What happens if he goes on without you?” Krispos asked in some alarm. “Is he likely to kill himself and everyone for half a mile around?” If he was, then this would be one time for Petronas to clamp down hard on his nephew.

  But Trokoundos shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much danger of that. You see, as soon as he leaves his little laboratory today, all his books of spells will go blank. He’s not the first rich dilettante I’ve tried to teach. There is magic to reconstitute them, but it has to be performed by the owner of the books, and it’s not easy to work. I don’t think his Majesty’s quite up to it, and I doubt he’d have the patience to retranscribe the texts by hand.”

  “I didn’t think he’d do it the first time,” Krispos agreed. “So you’ve left him without magic? Won’t he just find himself another mage?”

  “Even if he does, he’ll still have to start over from the beginning. But no, he’s not altogether bereft—he’ll still be able to use whatever he has memorized. Phos willing, that’ll be enough to keep him happy.”

  Krispos considered, then slowly nodded. “I suspect it may. Most of what he wanted with it was to impress people at his feasts.”

  “I thought as much,” Trokoundos said scornfully. “He doesn’t have a bad head for it, or wouldn’t, but there’s no discipline to him. You can’t succeed at anything unless you’re willing to put in the hard work you need to learn your craft.” He glanced at Krispos. “You know what I’m talking about, I think.”

  “I’ve done some wrestling,” Krispos said.

  “Then you know, all right.” Trokoundos’ gaze sharpened. “I remember—you’re the one who beat that Kubrati, aren’t you? You weren’t vestiarios then. I might have connected the name with the story sooner if I hadn’t seen you in your fancy robes all the time.”

  “No, I wasn’t vestiarios, just a groom,” Krispos said. He smiled, both at Trokoundos and at the way his fortunes had changed. “I didn’t think I was just a groom then, if you know what I mean. I grew up on a farm, so anything else looked good by comparison.”

  “I’ve heard that said, yes.” The mage studied Krispos; as he had sometimes with Tanilis, he got the odd feeling he was transparent to the man. “I’d teach you sorcery if you wanted me to. You’d do what was needed, I think, and not complain. But that isn’t the craft you’re learning, is it?”

  “What do you mean?” Krispos asked. Trokoundos was already on his way out the door and did not answer. “Cursed wizards always want the last word,” Krispos muttered to himself.

  Anthimos was wild with fury when he discovered all his hard-won spells had disappeared. “I’ll have that bastard’s balls,” he shouted, “and his ears and nose, too!”

  Normally not a bloodthirsty soul, he went on about pincers and knives and red-hot needles until Krispos, worried that he might really mean it, tried to calm him by saying, “You’re probably just as well rid of the mage. I don’t think your uncle would like you studying anything as dangerous as sorcery.”

  “To the ice with my uncle, too!” Anthimos said. “He’s not the Avtokrator, and I bloody well am!” But when he sent a squad of Halogai to arrest Trokoundos, sending a priest with them in case he resisted with magic, they found his house empty. “Knave must have fled to the hinterland,” the Emperor declared with some satisfaction when they brought him the news. By then his usual good humor had returned. “I daresay that’s worse punishment than any I could inflict.”

  “Aye, good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Krispos, who had quietly sent word to Trokoundos to get out of the city for a while.

  To Krispos’ surprise and dismay, Anthimos did start recopying his tome of spells. He never quite quit transcribing, either, but before long the pace of his work slowed to a crawl. He turned one of his revels inside out with a spell that made cabbage intoxicating for a night and left wine mild as milk. “You see?” he triumphantly told Krispos the next morning. “I am a mage, even if that stinking Trokoundos tried to keep me from being one. Did you hear how they cheered me last night when the wizardry worked just as I said it would?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Krispos said. His stomach rumbled like distant thunder. He’d eaten too much cabbage the night before. Given a choice, he would far soon have got drunk on wine.

  Had he got drunk on wine, he might have chewed cabbage leaves to ease his morning-after pains. He wondered if a cup of wine would cure a cabbage hangover. Laughing, he decided to find out.

  MIDWINTER’S DAY CAME AND WENT. ONE WHOLE SECTION OF the Amphitheater was full of soldiers. As soon as the roads froze after the fall rains, Petronas had begun calling in levies from the eastern provinces for his war on Makuran. They made a raucous audience, drinking hard, then cheering and booing each skit as the fancy—or the wine—seized them.

  The hangover that bedeviled Krispos the morning after Midwinter’s Day had nothing to do with cabbage—and did not want to yield to it, either. The wines he drank now were smoother and sweeter than the ones he’d quaffed on holidays past, but that did not mean they were exempt from giving retribution.

  Nor did it mean he wanted to go back to the rougher vintages he’d formerly known. Ypatios was far from the only prominent man willing, and eager, to pay for influence with the Emperor. Some he could not help; some he did not want to help. He refused their gold. What he took in from the rest made him well-to-do, even by the standards of Videssos the city.

  He bought a horse. He took Mavros along when he went to the market not far from the Forum of the Ox. “Nice to know you have confidence in me,” Mavros said. “Let’s see what kind of horrible screw I can stick you with.”

  “I like that,” Krispos said. “Is that your way of showing thanks for getting named chief groom?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes. The job’s too much like work; I liked lying around on my arse as a spatharios a lot better. If I weren’t working with horses, I really would resent you.”

  “What would your mother say if she heard you talking so fondly of shirking?”

  “What she usually says, I expect—stop complaining and get to it.”

  The first dealer they tried was a plump little man named Ibas whose eyes were so round and moist and trustworthy that Krispos grew wary at once. The horse trader bowed low, but not before he had checked the cut and fabric of their robes. “If you are seeking a riding animal, my masters, I can show you a magnificent gelding not above seven years old,” he said.

  “Yes, show us,” Mavros said.

  On seeing the animal, Krispos was encouraged. Magnificent was too fine a word for it, but he’d expected as much; sellers of horseflesh sucked in hyperbole with their mother’s milk. But the horse’s limbs were sound, its dark roan coat well tended and shining.

  Mavros only grunted, “Let’s see the teeth.”

  Nodding, Ibas walked with him up to the animal’s head. “You see,” he said while Mavros made his examination, “the four middle teeth in each jaw are nicely oval, and the mark—or cavity, as some call it—in the center of each tooth is quite as deep and dark as it should be.”

  “I see a horse with a mouth full of spit,” Mavros complained. He looked thoughtfully at the small gap between the horse’s upper and lower incisors. “Perhaps we’ll be back another day, master Ibas. Thank you for showing him to us.” Politely but firmly, he steered Krispos toward another dealer.

  “What was wrong with him?” Krispos asked. “I rather fancied his looks.”

  “Seven, Ibas claimed? That horse is twelve if he’s a day. Good old master Ibas is what they call a prelate—he takes away his horse’s sins, usually with a file. He has a nice touch; with the animal’s mouth so wet, I couldn’t quite be sure of the rasp marks. But if you file down a horse’s front teeth to give them the proper shape for a young animal, they won’t quite meet, because you haven’t done anything to the teeth in the back of the horse’s mouth. And if Ibas has one like that, he’ll have half a dozen, so we don’t want to do business with him.”

  “I’m
glad you’re with me,” Krispos said. “I might have bought the beast, for I did like him.”

  “So would I, were he sold for what he was. But to try to knock five years off him—no. Don’t look so glum, my friend. There’s more horses to suit you than just that one. All we have to do is keep looking.”

  Look they did, all that day and part of the next. At length, with Mavros’ approval this time, Krispos bought a bay gelding of about the same age as Ibas had claimed for the roan. “By the teeth, this one really is seven or eight,” Mavros said. “Not a bad animal at all. He wouldn’t be the worst-looking horse in Petronas’ stable—a long way from the best, but not the worst either.”

  “The best-looking animal in that stable is Petronas’ show horse, and I wouldn’t race him against a donkey,” Krispos said.

  “Something to that, too.” Mavros patted the bay’s neck. “I hope he serves you well.”

  “So do I.” Even if the gelding spent most of the time in the stable, as it might very well, Krispos was pleased just to have it. Owning a horse was another sign of how far he’d come. No one in his village had owned a horse till they beat the Kubratoi; afterward, the animals had been owned in common. In the city, he’d cared for other people’s horses and borrowed them when he needed to ride.

  Now he had one of his own, and the hands in the imperial stables could see to its day-to-day care. That wasn’t the proper attitude for a noble, but he didn’t care. Nobles tended animals because they wanted to, not because they had to. Having had to, he didn’t want to, not anymore.

  “What will you call him?” Mavros asked.

  “I hadn’t thought.” Krispos did. After a little while, he smiled. “I have it! The perfect name.” Mavros waited expectantly. Krispos said, “I’ll call him Progress.”

  ANTHIMOS ESSAYED A SPELL TO KEEP SNOW OFF THE PATH THAT led to the hall where he held his feasts. He only succeeded in turning the snow on the path bright blue. The miscarried magic left him undismayed. “I’ve always wanted to revel till everything turned blue,” he said, “and here’s my chance.”

  “As you say, Your Majesty.” Krispos sent men with shovels to clear the tinted snow from the path so the Emperor and his guests could get to their revel. He wondered if Anthimos had learned a spell to heat the hall; fireplaces only reached so far. He doubted it—a magic so practical was not one likely to have appealed to the Emperor, or to have stuck in his memory if he’d ever learned it.

  The revel itself Krispos enjoyed, at least for a time. But a steady diet of such carouses had begun to pall for him. He looked round for Anthimos. The Emperor was enjoying the attentions of an astonishingly limber girl—one of the evening’s acrobats, Krispos saw when she assumed a new position. There were times, Krispos had found out, when Anthimos did not mind being interrupted in such pursuits, but he did not think asking permission to leave was important enough to bother him over. He just handed the bowl of chances to another servitor, found his coat, and departed.

  The moon shone through patchy clouds. In its pale light, the snow the Emperor had colored looked almost black, making a strange border to the path. When Krispos got back to the imperial residence, he found that the Haloga guards had another word for it. “Isn’t that the stupidest-looking thing you ever saw?” one of them said, pointing.

  Krispos looked back toward the feast-hall, at the long blackish ribbon against the proper white snow that had come drifting down from Phos’ sky. “Now that you mention it, yes.”

  The Halogai laughed. One of them, a veteran who’d served the Emperor for years, thumped him on the back. “You all right, Krispos,” he said in his northern accent. “We make jokes like that with Skombros, he tell Anthimos, maybe we all shipped back to Halogaland.” The rest of the guardsmen nodded.

  “Thank you, Vagn,” Krispos said; praise from the big blond warriors always pleased him. “You’ll go home one day, I suppose, but better it’s when you want to.”

  Vagn thumped him again, this time almost hard enough to pitch him down the steps into the snow. “Aye, you understand honor,” the Haloga boomed in delight. He swung up his axe in salute, then held the door wide, as he might have for Anthimos. “Go in, warm yourself.”

  Krispos was glad to take Vagn’s advice. The heating ducts under the floor gave some relief from the chill outside, but when he got to his room he lit a brazier all the same. He warmed his hands over it, stayed close by the welcome heat until his ears and nose began to thaw. Just as he started to take off his coat, the bell by his bed rang.

  This time he knew Anthimos had not followed him home. But by now he was used to late-night summonses from the Empress; every so often, she liked to talk with him. “Your Majesty,” he said as he came into the imperial bedchamber.

  Dara waved him to a chair by the side of the bed. She was sitting up, but on this cold night she’d drawn blankets and furs over her shoulders. Krispos left the door open. Sometimes maidservants or eunuchs up raiding the larder peered in at them. Once Anthimos had come in while he and Dara were talking about horses. That was a nervous moment for Krispos, but the Avtokrator, far from being angry, had flopped down on the other side of the bed and argued with them till dawn.

  Before Krispos sat down, he asked, “May I bring you anything, Majesty?”

  “No, I thank you, but not tonight. Is his Majesty on his way, too?”

  Remembering how Anthimos had been engaged when he left, Krispos answered, “I don’t think so.”

  Something in his voice must have told more than he’d intended. “Why? What was he doing?” Dara asked sharply. When he could not come up with a plausible lie on the spur of the moment, she said, “Never mind. I suspect I can figure it out for myself.” She turned her head away from him for a moment. “I find I’ve changed my mind. I might like some wine after all. Bring the jar, not just a cup.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Krispos hurried away.

  When he came back, Dara said, “You may get another cup for yourself, if you care to.”

  “No, thank you. I had enough at—” Reminding Dara of the revel did not seem a good idea. “I’ve had enough,” Krispos said, and let it go at that.

  “Have you? How lucky you are.” The Empress drank, wordlessly held out the cup to Krispos. He refilled it. She drank about half, then slammed the cup down so hard that wine splashed onto the night table. “What’s the use? Sober or drunk, I still know.”

  Krispos found a rag and walked up to the night table to wipe away the spilled wine. “Know what, Your Majesty?”

  “What do you think, Krispos?” Dara said bitterly. “Shall I spell it out in words a child can understand? All right, if you want me to: know that my husband—the Avtokrator, his Majesty, whatever you want to call him—is out enjoying himself with…no, let’s mince no words at all, shall we?…is out fornicating with some new harlot. Again. For, let me see, the third night this week, or is it the fourth? I do lose track sometimes. Or am I wrong, Krispos?” She looked up at him, her eyes brimming but her face tensed with the effort to hold back the tears. “Can you tell me I’m wrong?”

  Now Krispos could not meet her gaze, nor answer in words. Facing the wall, he shook his head.

  “So that is what I know,” Dara said. “I’ve known it for years. By the lord with the great and good mind, I’ve known it since a couple of days after they put the flower crowns of marriage on us in the High Temple. Most of the time, I manage not to think of it, but when I can’t help it—” She stopped for most of a minute. “When I can’t help it, it’s very bad. And I don’t know why.”

  “Your Majesty?” Krispos said.

  “Why?” Dara repeated. “Why does he do it? He doesn’t hate me. He’s even kind to me, when he’s here and when he remembers to be. So why, then, Krispos? Can you tell me?”

  Krispos turned back toward her. “Your Majesty, if you’ll forgive my speaking up so bold, I’ve wondered over that since the first morning I saw you.”

  She might not have heard him. “Can it be that he doesn’t wa
nt me? Could I repel him so?” Suddenly she swept the coverings from the bed. Beneath them, as usual, she wore nothing. “Would I—do I—repel you, Krispos?”

  “No, Your Majesty.” His throat was dry. He’d seen the Empress nude countless times. Now she was naked. He watched her nipples stiffen from the chill in the room—or for another reason. He spoke her name for the first time. “Oh, no, Dara,” he breathed.

  “Lies come easy, with words,” she said softly. “Shut the doors; then we’ll see.”

  He almost went through the doorway instead of merely to it. He knew she wanted him more for revenge on Anthimos than for himself. And if he was caught in her bed, he might stay on as vestiarios, but likely after he was made like the others who had held that office.

  But he wanted her. He’d been uneasily aware of that for months, however hard he tried to suppress it even from himself. Anthimos, he thought, would be occupied for some time yet. A eunuch or maidservant coming by would think the Empress here alone—he hoped. He closed the doors.

  Dara felt the danger, too. “Hurry!” She held out her arms to him.

  Slipping out of his robe was the work of a moment. He got down on the bed beside her. She clutched him as if she were drowning at sea and he a floating spar. “Hurry,” she said again, this time into his ear. He did his best to oblige.

  He thought of the sea once more as he separated from her some time later—the stormy sea. His lips were bruised; he began to feel the scratches she’d clawed in his back. And he’d wondered if she was without passion! “His Majesty,” he said sincerely, “is a fool.”

  “Why?” Dara asked.

  “Why do you think?” He stroked her midnight hair. She purred and snuggled against him. But, reluctantly, he left the bed. “I’d better dress.” He got into his robe as fast as he’d taken it off. Dara slid back under the covers. He opened the doors again, then loosed a great sigh of relief out into the empty hallway. “We got away with it.”