The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “What fault?” Krispos said testily. “Holy sir, will you please get up and talk sense?”

  Pyrrhos rose. Though a graybeard, he was limber as a youth, a kinder reward of the asceticism that also thinned his face to almost skeletal leanness and left his eyes dark burning coals. “As I told Your Majesty, the fault is mine,” he said. “Through some error, whether accidental or otherwise I am investigating, the count of the monks in the monastery dedicated to the memory of the holy Skirios may have been inaccurate last night. It was surely one too low this morning. We do indeed have a runaway monk.”

  “And who might this runaway be?” Krispos inquired, though he was sickly certain he knew the answer without having to ask. No trivial disappearance would make the abbot hotfoot it to the imperial residence with the news.

  Pyrrhos saw his certainty and gave a grim nod. “Aye, Your Majesty, it is as you fear—Petronas has escaped.”

  Chapter II

  TRYING TO MEET BAD NEWS WITH EQUANIMITY, KRISPOS SAID, “I don’t think he’s going to be very pleased with me.”

  Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize what an understatement that was. Petronas had virtually ruled the Empire for a decade and more while his nephew Anthimos reveled; he had raised Krispos to the post of vestiarios. Finally Anthimos, worried lest his uncle supplant him on the throne, a worry abetted by Krispos and Dara, clapped him into the monastery…for good, Krispos had thought.

  Dara said bitterly, “While all the eyes of the city were on us yesterday, Petronas took the chance to get out.”

  Krispos knew she was just echoing Gnatios’ words, but what she said raised echoes in his own mind, echoes of suspicion. He’d wondered why Gnatios had suddenly become so obliging about the wedding. Now maybe he knew. “The patriarch did keep harping on that, didn’t he? He and Petronas are cousins, too, and if anyone could arrange to have a monk taken from his monastery without the abbot’s knowledge, who better than Gnatios?”

  “No one better, Your Majesty,” Pyrrhos said, following Krispos’ line of thought. His sharp-curved nose, fierce eyes, and shaven head made him resemble a bird of prey.

  “Tyrovitzes!” Krispos shouted. When the fat eunuch reappeared, Krispos told him, “Take a squad of Halogai and fetch Gnatios here at once, no matter what he’s doing.”

  “Your Majesty?” Tyrovitzes said. At Krispos’ answering glare, he gulped and said, “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Tyrovitzes had hardly left before Krispos shouted, “Longinos!” As soon as that eunuch responded, Krispos said, “Go to Captain Thvari. Take all the Halogai save enough to guard me here, take whatever other troops are in the city, and start a search. Maybe Petronas has gone to ground inside the walls.”

  “Petronas?” Longinos said, staring.

  “Yes; he’s escaped, curse him,” Krispos answered impatiently. The chamberlain started to go. Then Krispos had an afterthought. “If Thvari does use our own troops along with the northerners, have him make sure he puts more Halogai than Videssians in each party. I know his men are loyal.”

  “As you say, Your Majesty.” Longionos bowed deeply and departed.

  He was scarcely gone when Krispos yelled, “Barsymes!” The vestiarios might have been waiting right outside; he came in almost at once. “Go to the house of Trokoundos the wizard and bring him here, if you please.”

  “Certainly, Your Majesty. I suppose you’ll want him to interrogate Gnatios,” Barsymes said calmly. At Krispos’ expression of surprise, he went on, “You have not kept your voice down, you know, Your Majesty.”

  Krispos thought about that. “No, I suppose I haven’t. Go get me Trokoundos now, if you please. If Gnatios did have a hand in Petronas’ escape—” He pounded a clenched fist down on the tabletop. “If that’s so, we’ll have a new ecumenical patriarch before the day is out.”

  “Your pardon, Majesty, but perhaps not so quickly as that,” Pyrrhos said. “You may of course remove a prelate as you wish, but the naming of his successor lies in the hands of a synod of clerics, to whom you submit a list of three candidates for their formal selection.”

  “You understand that all that rigmarole would just delay your own choice,” Krispos said.

  Pyrrhos bowed. “Your Majesty is gracious. All the same, however, observances must be fulfilled to ensure the validity of any patriarchal enthronement.”

  “If Gnatios helped Petronas get away, he deserves worse than being deposed,” Dara said. “Some time with the torturers might be a fit answer for his treason.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Krispos said. With peasant patience, he settled down to see whether Gnatios or Trokoundos would be brought to the imperial residence first. When Pyrrhos began to look restive, he sent him back to his monastery. Sitting quietly, he kept on waiting.

  “How can you be so easy about this?” demanded Dara, who was pacing back and forth.

  “Nothing would change if I fussed,” he said. Dara snorted and kept pacing.

  Rather to Krispos’ surprise, Tyrovitzes’ party fetched back Gnatios before Barsymes arrived with Trokoundos. “Your Majesty, what is the meaning of this?” the patriarch said indignantly after the eunuch chamberlain escorted him into Krispos’ presence. “I find it humiliating to be seized in the street like some low footpad and fetched here with no more consideration for my feelings than such a criminal would receive.”

  “Where’s Petronas, Gnatios?” Krispos asked in a voice like iron.

  “Why, in the monastery sacred to the holy Skirios.” Gnatios’ eyebrows rose. “Or are you telling me he is not? If you are, I have no idea where he is.”

  The patriarch sounded surprised and curious, just as he would if he were innocent. But Krispos knew he had no small rhetorical talents; sounding innocent was child’s play for him. “While all the eyes of the city were on us yesterday, Gnatios, Petronas was spirited out of the monastery. To be blunt, I know you have scant love for me. Do you wonder that I have doubts about you?”

  “Your Majesty, I can see that you might.” Gnatios smiled his most engaging smile. “But after all, Your Majesty, you know where I was yesterday. I could hardly have helped Petronas escape at the same time as I was performing the wedding ceremony for you and your new Empress.” He smiled again, this time at Dara. She stared stonily back. His smile faded.

  “No, but you could have planned and arranged a rescue,” Krispos said. “Will you take oath on your fear of Skotos’ ice that you had no part of any sort in Petronas’ getting out of the monastery?”

  “Your Majesty, I will swear any oath you wish,” Gnatios answered at once.

  Just then, Krispos saw Barsymes standing in the hall with a short spare man who shaved his head like a priest but wore a red tunic and green trousers. He carried a bulging carpetbag.

  “Your Majesty,” Trokoundos said. The mage started a proskynesis, but Krispos waved for him not to bother. “How may I serve you, Your Majesty?” he asked, straightening. His voice was deep and rich, the voice to be expected of a man a head taller and twice as wide through the shoulders.

  “Most holy sir, I will require no oath of you at all,” Krispos said to Gnatios. “You might throw away your soul for the sake of advantage in this world, and that would be very sad. Instead, I will ask you the same questions you have already heard, but with this wizard standing by to make sure you speak the truth.”

  “I will need a little while to ready myself, Your Majesty,” Trokoundos said. “I have here some of the things I may use, if your vestiarios spoke accurately about your requirements.” He began taking mirrors, candles, and stoppered glass vials of various sizes and colors out of the carpetbag.

  Gnatios watched him prepare with indignation but no visible fear. “Your Majesty, I will even submit to this outrage, but I must inform you that I protest it,” he said. “Surely you cannot imagine that I would violate my oath.”

  “I can,” Dara said.

  Krispos took a different line. “I can imagine many things, most holy sir,” he tol
d the patriarch. “I can even imagine giving you over to the torturers to find out what I must know. A mage, I think, will hurt your body and your pride less, but I can go the other way if you’d rather.”

  “As you will, Your Majesty,” Gnatios said, so boldly that Krispos wondered if he was indeed innocent. The patriarch added, “My thanks for showing consideration for me, at least to the extent you have.”

  “Just stay right there, if you would, most holy sir,” Trokoundos said. Gnatios nodded regally as the mage set up a mirror on a jointed stand a few feet in front of him. Between mirror and patriarch, Trokoundos lit a candle. He opened a couple of his vials and shook powder from them onto the flame, which changed color and sent up a large cloud of surprisingly sweet-smelling smoke.

  Muttering to himself, Trokoundos set up another mirror a few feet behind Gnatios and slightly to one side: this one faced the one he’d set up before. He fussily adjusted the two squares of polished silver until Gnatios’ face, reflected from the first, was visible in the second. Then he lit another candle between the second mirror and Gnatios’ back. He sprinkled different powders over this flame, whose smoke proved as noxious as the other’s had been pleasant.

  Coughing a little, the mage said, “Go ahead, Your Majesty; ask what you will.”

  “Thank you.” Krispos turned to the patriarch. “Most holy sir, did you help Petronas escape from the monastery dedicated to the holy Skirios?”

  He watched Gnatios’ lips shape the word “No” but did not hear him speak it. At the same time, the patriarch’s second reflection, the one in the mirror behind him, loudly and clearly said, “Yes.”

  Gnatios jerked as if stung. Krispos asked, “How did you do it?”

  He thought the patriarch tried to say “I had nothing to do with it.” The reflection answered for him: “I sent in a monk who rather resembled him to take his place while he was at solitary prayer and to stay into the evening. Then, last night, I sent a priest who asked for the substituted monk by his proper name and brought him out of the monastery once more.”

  “What is the name of this monk?” Krispos demanded.

  This time Gnatios stood mute. His reflection answered for him nonetheless. “Harmosounos.”

  Krispos nodded to Trokoundos. “This is an excellent magic.” The wizard’s heavy-lidded eyes lit up.

  Gnatios shifted from foot to foot, awaiting the next question. “Where did Petronas plan to go?” Krispos asked him.

  “I do not know,” he answered, out of his own mouth.

  “A moment, Your Majesty,” Trokoundos said sharply. He fiddled with the mirrors again. “He sought to move enough to shift his image from the second mirror.”

  “Don’t play such games again, most holy sir. I promise you would regret it,” Krispos told Gnatios. “Now I will ask once more, where did Petronas plan to go?”

  “I do not know,” Gnatios repeated. This time, strangely, Krispos heard the words both straight from him and from the mirror at his back. He glanced toward Trokoundos.

  “He speaks the truth, Your Majesty,” the wizard said.

  “I was afraid that was what that meant,” Krispos said. “Let’s try something else, then. Answer me this, most holy sir: you being kinsman to Petronas, where would you go in his boots?”

  Gnatios plainly tried to lie again; his lips moved, but no sound came out of his mouth. Instead, his doubly reflected image replied, “Petronas’ greatest estates are in the westlands, between the towns of Garsavra and Resaina. There he would find the most support for any bid to take the crown.”

  “You expect him to do that, eh?” Krispos said.

  The answer to that question was so obvious, Krispos did not expect Gnatios to bother giving it aloud. And, indeed, the patriarch stayed silent. But under Trokoundos’ spell, his second image spoke for him. “Don’t you expect it, Your Majesty?”

  Krispos’ chuckle was dry. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact.” He turned to Trokoundos. “I’m in your debt once more, it seems.”

  Trokoundos waved that away. “I’m happy to do what I can for you, Your Majesty. Your warning saved me from Anthimos’ wrath a couple of years ago.”

  “And your wizardry let me live through the enchantment with which Petronas would have killed me otherwise,” Krispos said. “Don’t be shy when you name your fee for today.”

  “Your Majesty, people have accused me of many things, but never of being shy about my fees,” Trokoundos said.

  Whether anxious over his fate or simply resentful at being forgotten for the moment, Gnatios burst out, “What will you do with me, Your Majesty?”

  “A good question,” Krispos said musingly. “If helping to set up a rival Emperor isn’t treason, what is? Shall I put your head on the Milestone as a warning to others, Gnatios?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” the patriarch answered, coolly enough to win Krispos’ reluctant admiration.

  “I think you should, Krispos,” Dara said. Gnatios winced as she went on, “What does a traitor deserve but the axe? What would Petronas do to you, and to me, and to our child, if—Phos prevent it—he beat you?”

  Gnatios missed very little. Though he could not have known of Dara’s pregnancy before she mentioned it, he used it at once, saying, “Your Majesty, would you slay the man who performed your marriage ceremony and so made your heir legitimate?”

  “Why not,” Dara shot back, “when part of the reason you married us was to draw attention away from the holy Skirios’ monastery so you could loose Petronas against us?” The patriarch winced again.

  “I don’t think I’ll kill you now,” Krispos said. Gnatios looked delighted, Dara disappointed. Krispos went on, “I do cast you down from the patriarchal throne. In your place I intend to propose the name of the abbot Pyrrhos.”

  Gnatios winced a third time. “I’d almost rather you killed me, if afterward you named in my place someone not a fanatic.”

  “I can trust the clerics of his faction. If I thought I could trust one from yours, I’d take you up on that.”

  “I did say ‘almost,’ Your Majesty,” the patriarch reminded him quickly.

  “So you did. Here’s what I will do. Till the synod names Pyrrhos, I will send you to the monastery of the holy Skirios. There you will be under his hand as abbot. That should be enough to keep you out of mischief for the time being.” Krispos watched Gnatios open his mouth to speak. “Think twice if you are about to say again that you’d rather be dead, most holy sir—no, holy sir, for you are but a monk now. I just may oblige you.”

  Gnatios glared at him but said nothing.

  Krispos turned to Tyrovitzes. “You heard what I ordered?” The eunuch nodded. “Good. Take this monk to the monastery, then, and tell the abbot he is not to leave no matter what happens. Take the Halogai with you as you go, too, to make sure the man doesn’t get stolen on the way.”

  “As you say, Your Majesty.” Tyrovitzes nodded to Gnatios. “If you will come with me, holy sir?” Unlike Krispos, Tyrovitzes adjusted to changing honorifics without having to think twice. Still in his patriarch robe, Gnatios followed the chamberlain away.

  “I wish you’d slain him,” Dara said.

  “He may still have some use alive,” Krispos said. “Besides, I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere, not now. He and Pyrrhos have despised each other for years. Now that he’s in Pyrrhos’ clutches, he’ll be locked up tighter and watched better than if he was in prison—and fed worse, too, I’d wager.”

  He sighed. “All this would be much easier if I really believed the soldiers would turn up Petronas still inside the city. If they don’t—” Krispos stood thinking for a while, trying to work out what he would have to do to hunt down Petronas loose in the countryside.

  “I fear they won’t,” Dara said.

  “So do I,” Krispos told her. Petronas was both clever and nervy. The only flaw Krispos had ever noted in him was a streak of vanity; because he could do so much, he thought he could do anything. Some time in the monastery might even ha
ve cured him of that, Krispos reflected gloomily.

  “You should proclaim him outlaw,” Dara said. “A price on his head will make folk more likely to betray him to you.”

  “Aye, I’ll do that,” Krispos said. “I’ll also send a troop of cavalry out to the estates that used to be his. Though Anthimos took them over, I expect most of the men on them will still be people Petronas chose, and they may still be loyal to him.”

  “Be careful of the officer you choose to command that troop,” Dara warned. “You won’t want anyone who served under him.”

  “You’re right,” Krispos said. But Petronas had headed the imperial army while his nephew frittered away the days. That meant every Videssian officer had served under him, at least indirectly. The commanders in the city had sworn oaths of loyalty to Krispos. Those in the field were sending in written pledges; a couple arrived every day. How much would such pledges mean, when measured against years of allegiance to a longtime leader? Krispos was convinced oaths and pledges were only as reliable as the men who gave them. He wished he’d had time to learn more about his officers before facing a challenge like this.

  As is the way of such things, wishing failed to furnish him the time he needed. He sighed again. “I’ll pick as carefully as I can.”

  DAYS PASSED. THE SEARCH OF THE CITY FAILED TO YIELD ANY trace of Petronas. At Krispos’ order, scribes calloused their fingers writing scores of copies of a proclamation that branded Petronas outlaw, rebel, and renegade monk. They posted them in the plaza of Palamas, in the lesser square called the forum of the Ox, in the forecourts to the High Temple, and at each of the gates in Videssos the city’s walls. Before long, dozens of people claimed to have seen Petronas. So far as Krispos could tell, no one really had.

  Imperial couriers galloped east and west from the city with more copies of the proclamation. A cavalry troop also galloped west. Other couriers took ship to carry word of Petronas’ escape to coastal towns more quickly than horses could reach them.