Videssos Besieged ttot-4

by Harry Turtledove

  «Couldn't be helped, son,» the elder Maniakes said heavily. «After he did what he undoubtedly did to you, I don't see that you had any choice. I've never held it against you—you know that.»

  His heavy features got a little heavier. He'd had three sons. One, his namesake, was a great success. But one was a proved traitor, and one long years missing and surely dead. A great weight of sorrow had to lurk there, though he spoke of it but seldom.

  Symvatios said, «Sometimes there isn't any help for the things that happen, and that's all there is to it. You do the best you can with what you've got and you go on.»

  One of the things that had happened, of course, was Lysia and Maniakes falling in love with each other. Symvatios tolerated Maniakes as son-in-law as well as nephew, as the elder Maniakes was resigned to having Lysia as daughter-in-law. The marriage had been one of the things—though jealousy of Rhegorios played a bigger role—pushing Parsmanios away from the rest of the family and toward Tzikas' plot. Neither Maniakes' father nor his uncle had ever blamed him for that, not out loud. He was grateful to them for so much.

  With a sigh, he said, «We always were a tight-knit clan. Now we're knitted tighter than ever.» That was his doing, his and Lysia's. But the world, as far as he was concerned, wasn't worth living in without her.

  Kameas came in. «Wine, your Majesty, your Highnesses?» he said.

  «Yes, wine,» Maniakes said. Wine would not take away the worry. Nothing would take away the worry. But, after three or four cups, it got blurry around the edges. That would do.

  The vestiarios glided away, looking as he always did as if he propelled his vast bulk without moving his feet up and down when he walked. He returned a few moments later with that same ponderous grace. «I have an extra cup here, if his Highness the Sevastos should join you,» he said.

  «You think of everything,» Maniakes said. Kameas nodded slightly, as if to say that was part of his job. Suddenly Maniakes wished this were his fourth cup of wine, not his first. He forced out a question: «Have you seen to Philetos?»

  «Oh, yes, your Majesty. One of the prominent sirs—» He used the palace term for a lower-ranking eunuch. «—is attending to him, down by the Red Room.» Kameas sketched Phos' sun-circle above his breast. «We all pray, of course, that the holy sir's presence shall prove unnecessary.»

  «Aye, we do, don't we?» Maniakes said harshly. That Philetos was a priest was not why, or not precisely why, he'd been summoned to the imperial residence when Lysia's pangs began. He was also a healer-priest, the finest in Videssos the city. If anything went wrong… If anything went wrong, he might be able to help, and then again he might not. He hadn't been able to help when Niphone died giving birth to Likarios.

  With a distinct effort of will, the Avtokrator forced his thoughts away from that track. He spat on the floor in rejection of Skotos, at the same time raising his cup toward Phos and his holy light. The elder Maniakes and Symvatios did as he did. Then Maniakes drank. The wine, golden in a silver cup, slid down his throat smooth as if it were sunlight itself.

  «Well,» Rhegorios said indignantly, walking into the little dining hall where his kinsfolk waited. «Shows the importance I have around here, when people start drinking without me.»

  Maniakes pointed to the extra cup Kameas had left behind. «We don't have a long start on you, cousin of mine—not like the one Abivard got on us when he moved against the city while we were sailing to Lyssaion. If you apply yourself, I expect you can catch up.»

  «Apply myself to wine?» Rhegorios raised an eyebrow. «Now there's a shocking notion.» He used the dipper to fill the cup.

  «I'm not shocked at it.» Symvatios said. Rhegorios winced, rhetorically betrayed by his own father. After a perfectly timed pause, Symvatios went on, «I daresay you get it from me.»

  The elder Maniakes said, «It's a gift that runs in the family, I expect. Father certainly had it.» Symvatios nodded at that. The elder Maniakes went on, «He had so much of it, sometimes he needed two or three tries before he could make it through a door.»

  «He was right when it mattered, though,» Symvatios said. «When he did his drinking, it was when he didn't have to do anything else.» He paused again. «Well, most of the time, anyhow.»

  «You're scandalizing your children, you know, the two of you,» Rhegorios told his father and uncle. «Maniakes and I don't remember Grandfather all that well, so if you tell us he was an old soak, we'll believe you.»

  «What else will you believe if we tell it to you?» Symvatios asked. «Will you believe we're as wise and clever as we say?»

  «Of course not,» Rhegorios replied at once. «We do know you.»

  Both Maniakai, father and son, laughed. So did Symvatios. Kameas brought in a tray full of little squid sauteed in olive oil, vinegar, and garlic. They went well with the wine. Before too long, the jar was empty. The vestiarios fetched in another of the same vintage. For a little while, Maniakes managed to enjoy the company of his kin enough to take his mind off what Lysia was going through in the Red Room.

  But time stretched. If Maniakes didn't intend to emulate his grandfather—or the account of his grandfather his father and uncle gave—he had to keep from drinking himself blind. And if he slowed his drinking so as to keep his wits about him, those wits kept returning to his wife.

  Lysia had begun her labor around midmorning. The sun was sinking toward late autumn's early setting when Zoile strode into the little dining hall and thrust a blanket-wrapped bundle at Maniakes. «Your Majesty, you have a daughter,» the midwife announced.

  Maniakes stared down at the baby, who was staring up at him. Their eyes met for a moment before those of the tiny girl wandered away. She was a dusky red color, and her head wasn't quite me right shape. Maniakes had learned all that was normal enough. He asked the question uppermost in his mind: «Is Lysia all right?»

  «She seems very well.» If Zoile disapproved of his having married his cousin, she didn't show it. Since Maniakes had the strong impressions she was as frank as a Haloga, he took that for a good omen. The midwife went on, «She has been through this business a time or two, you know.»

  «Three, now,» Maniakes corrected absently. «May I see her?» When it came to matters of the Red Room, even the Avtokrator of the Videssians asked the midwife's leave.

  Zoile nodded. «Go ahead. She'll be hungry, you know, and tired. I think Kameas has already gone to get her something.» She pointed toward the baby Maniakes was still holding. «What will you name her, your Majesty?»

  «Savellia,» Maniakes said; he and Lysia had chosen the name not far into her pregnancy.

  «That's pretty,» Zoile said, as quick and sharp in approval as in everything else. «It's the Videssian form of a Vaspurakaner name, isn't it?»

  «That's right.» The elder Maniakes spoke for his son, whose command of the language of his ancestors was sketchy. «The original is Zabel.»

  «Forgive me, your highness, but I like it better in Videssian disguise,» Zoile said—no, she wasn't one to hide her opinions about anything.

  Maniakes carried Savellia down the hall to the Red Room. The baby wiggled in the surprisingly strong, purposeless way newborns have. If he stepped too hard, it would startle his daughter, and she would try to throw her arms and legs wide, though the blanket in which she was wrapped kept her from managing it. Frustrated, she started to cry, a high, thin, piercing wail designed to make new parents do whatever they could to stop it.

  She was still crying when Maniakes walked into the Red Room with her. «Here, give her to me,» Lysia said indignantly, stretching out her arms but not rising from the bed on which she lay. She looked as exhausted as if she'd just fought in a great battle, as indeed she had. She didn't sound altogether rational, and probably wasn't. Maniakes had seen that before, and knew it would last only a couple of days.

  He handed her Savellia. She set the baby on her breast, steadying the little head with her hand. Savellia didn't know much about the way the world worked yet, but she knew what the breas
t was for. She sucked greedily.

  A serving woman wiped Lysia's face with a wet cloth. Lysia closed her eyes and sighed, enjoying that. Other maidservants cleaned up the birthing chamber. They'd already begun that before Maniakes got there. Even so, the place still had an odor to it that, like Lysia's worn features, put him in mind of the aftermath of a battle. It smelled of sweat and dung, with a faint iron undertone of blood he tasted as much as he smelled it.

  Being here, smelling those smells—especially the odor of blood– also made him remember Niphone, and how she had died here. To put his fears to rest, he asked, «How do you feel?»

  «Tired,» Lysia answered at once. «Sore. When I walk, I'm going to walk all bowlegged, as if I've been riding a horse for thirty years like a Khamorth nomad. And I'm hungry. I could eat a horse, too, if anyone would catch me one and serve it up with some onions and bread. And some wine. Zoile wouldn't let me have any wine while I was in labor.»

  «You'd have puked it up,» the midwife said from the doorway, «and you'd have liked giving it back a lot less than you liked drinking it down.»

  She stood aside then, for Kameas came gliding into the Red Room, carrying a tray whose delicious aromas helped cover the ones that had formerly lurked in the birthing chamber. «Tunny in leeks, your Majesty,» he said to Lysia, «and artichokes marinated in olive oil and garlic. And, of course, wine. Congratulations. Savellia—did I hear the name rightly?»

  «Yes, that's right,» Lysia said. The eunuch set the tray down beside her on the wide bed. She smiled at him. «Good. Now I won't have to eat the horse, after all.» He looked confused. Maniakes hid a smile. Lysia went on, «Oh, and you've gone and cut everything up into little bite-sized bits for me. Thank you so much.» She sounded on the edge of tears with gratitude. Maybe she was. For the next little while, her emotions would gust wildly.

  «I am glad your Majesty is pleased,» Kameas said. The Avtokrator wondered how he felt about being in the presence of new life when he could never engender it himself.

  «Here.» Maniakes sat down on the bed, carefully, so as not to jar Lysia. «Let me do that.» He picked up the spoon and started feeding his wife.

  «Well!» she said after he'd given her a few bites. «You're the one who's supposed to have beautiful slaves dropping grapes into your mouth whenever you deign to open it, not me.»

  «I'm afraid beautiful is rather past my reach,» Maniakes said, «and it's too late in the year for fresh grapes, but if Kameas will bring me some raisins, I'll see what I can do for you.»

  Kameas started to leave the Red Room, no doubt on a quest for raisins. «Wait!» Lysia called to him. «Never mind. I don't want any.» She laughed, which made her wince. «Aii!» she said. «I'm still very sore down there.» Her eyes traveled to Savellia, who had fallen asleep. «And why do you suppose that is?»

  Rhegorios, Symvatios, and the elder Maniakes made themselves visible in the hall outside the open door to the Red Room. Maniakes waved for them to come in. «Ha!» Rhegorios said when he saw his cousin feeding Lysia. «We've finally gone and run out of servants, have we?»

  «You be quiet,» Lysia told him. «He's being very sweet, which is more than you can say most of the time.» Maniakes knew Rhegorios would give him a hard time about that in due course, but he couldn't do anything about it now.

  «Are you all right?» Symvatios asked his daughter.

  «Right now? No,» Lysia answered. «Right now I feel trampled in every tender place I own, and every time I have a baby, I seem to discover a couple of tender places I never knew I did own before. But if everything goes the way it should, I will be all right in a few weeks. I don't feel any different from the way I did the first two times I went through this.»

  «Good. That's good,» Symvatios said.

  « 'Went through this,' eh?» the elder Maniakes rumbled. He nodded to his son. «Your own mother talked that way, right after she had you. It didn't keep her from having your brothers, mind you, but for a while there I wondered if it would.»

  Maniakes did his best to make his chuckle sound light and unforced. Even what was meant for family banter could take on a bitter edge, with one of his brothers in exile and the other likely dead. He went back to feeding Lysia. Rhegorios' teasing him about that would not bite so close to the bone.

  Lysia finished every morsel of tunny and every chunk of artichoke heart. She also drank down all the wine. Maniakes wondered if she would ask Kameas for raisins, after all. Instead, she yawned and pulled Savellia off her breast and said, «Will someone please put the baby in a cradle for a while? I'd like to try to sleep till she wakes up hungry again. It's been a busy day.»

  Both grandfathers, her husband, and her brother reached for Savellia. She gave the new baby to Symvatios, who smiled as he held his granddaughter, then laid her in the cradle so gently, she did not wake.

  «You could have a wet nurse deal with her,» Maniakes said.

  «I will, soon,» Lysia answered. «The healer-priests and physicians say mother's milk is better for the first week or so, though. Babies are funny. They're tough and fragile, both at the same time. So many of them don't live to grow up, no matter what we do. I want to give mine the best chance they can have.»

  «All right,» Maniakes said. She was right, too. But mothers were also tough and fragile, both at the same time. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. «Get what rest you can, then, and I hope she gives you some.»

  «She will,» Lysia said. «She's a good baby.» Maniakes wondered how she could tell. He wondered if she could tell. One way or the other, they'd find out soon enough.

  Savellia was a good baby. She slept for long stretches and wasn't fussy when she woke. That helped Lysia mend sooner than she might have. The new princess' brothers and half brother and half sister stared at her with curiosity ranging from grave to giggly. When they realized she was too little to do anything much, they lost interest. «She doesn't even have any hair to pull,» Likarios remarked, like a judge passing sentence.

  «She will,» Maniakes promised. «Pretty soon, she'll be able to pull yours, too.» His son by Niphone—his heir, as things stood– looked horrified that anyone could presume to inflict such an indignity on him. Maniakes said, «She's already done it to me,» which surprised Likarios all over again. «So did you, for that matter,» the Avtokrator added. When a baby got a handful of beard… His cheeks hurt, just thinking about it.

  Likarios went off. Maniakes watched him go. He plucked at his own beard. He'd wondered how Abivard would handle the problem of Denak's son by Sharbaraz. But Abivard was not the only one with family problems relating to the throne. Maniakes wondered what he'd do if Lysia ever suggested moving her sons ahead of Likarios in the succession. She never had, not yet. Maybe she never would. Succession by the eldest son born of the Avtokrator was a strong custom.

  But strong custom was not the same as law. What if he saw young Symvatios, or even little Tatoules, shaping better than Likarios? He sighed. The answer suggested itself: in that case, when he hoped above all else for simplicity, his life would get complicated once more, in new and incalculable ways.

  His mouth twisted. Parsmanios hadn't cared anything for the strong custom of rule by the eldest. That made a disaster for Parsmanios, and nearly one for the whole clan. It was liable to be as nothing, though, next to what could happen if his sons got to squabbling among themselves.

  Later that day, he wondered if his thinking of Parsmanios was what made Kameas come up to him and say, «Your Majesty, the lady Zenonis requests an audience with you, at your convenience.» The eunuch's voice held nothing whatsoever: not approval, not its reverse. Maybe Kameas hadn't made up his mind about Parsmanios' wife. Maybe he had and wasn't letting on, perhaps not even to himself.

  «I'll see her, of course,» Maniakes said.

  Formal as an ambassador, Zenonis prostrated herself before him. He let her do it, where for other members of the family he would have waved it aside as unnecessary. Maybe he hadn't made up his mind about Zenonis, either. Maybe she
was just tarred with Parsmanios' brush.

  «What can I do for you, sister-in-law of mine?» he asked when she'd risen.

  She was nervous. Seeing that was something of a relief. Had she been sure of herself, he would have been sure, too: sure he needed to watch his back. «May it please your Majesty,» she said, «I have a favor to beg of you.» She licked her lips, realized she'd done it, and visibly wished she hadn't.

  «You are of my family,» Maniakes answered. «If a favor is in my power to grant, you must know I will.»

  «I am of your family, yes.» Zenonis licked her lips again. «Considering the branch of it I'm in, how you must wish I weren't.»

  Speaking carefully, Maniakes answered, «I have never put my brother's crimes on your page of the account book, nor on your son's. That would be foolish. You did not know—you could not have known—what he was doing.»

  «You've been gracious, your Majesty; you've been kind and more than kind,» Zenonis said. «But every time you see me, every time you see little Maniakes, you think of Parsmanios. I see it in your face. How can I blame you? But the thing is there, whether you wish it or not.»

  Maniakes sighed. «Maybe it is. I wish it weren't, but maybe it is. Even if it is, it won't keep me from granting you whatever favor you ask.»

  «Your Majesty is also just.» Zenonis studied him. «You work hard at being just.» The way she said it, it was not altogether a compliment: mostly, but not altogether. She took a deep breath, then brought out her next words in a rush: «When spring comes and ships can cross the Videssian Sea without fearing storms, I want you to send my son and me to Prista.»

  «Are you sure?» Maniakes asked. Regret warred in him with something else he needed a moment to recognize: relief. That he felt it shamed him, but did not make it go away. Fighting against it, he said, «Think three times before you ask this of me, sister-in-law of mine. Prista is a bleak place, and—»