Abivard nodded, though Tzikas was rewriting things in his memory. For years the garrison Tzikas commanded at Amorion, at the west end of the valley, had held off Abivard's force: Abivard had developed a healthy respect for the Videssian general's skill. But at last Amorion had fallen—before Maniakes' army, pushing west up the line of the Arandos, could reinforce it Abivard's men had beaten Maniakes after that, but it had not been the Avtokrator's fault that Amorion had at last been taken.
What Abivard said was, «If he's as hasty and headstrong as you say, eminent sir, how did he smash the Kubratoi as he did?»
«Easy enough to win a fine name for yourself fighting savages,» Tzikas answered. «What you get from it, though, won't help you much when you come up against soldiers with discipline and generals who can see farther than the ends of their noses.»
Abivard took his own nose between thumb and forefinger for a moment It was of generous size, though in no way outlandish for a man of Makuran. He hoped he could see past the end of it. «You do have a point,» he admitted. «Fighting the Khamorth is nothing like coming up against you Videssians, I must say. But I worry about Maniakes. He made fewer mistakes against me last year than he had before—and tried to accomplish less, which is almost another way of saying the same thing, considering how unsteady his soldiers were. I fear he may be turning into a good commander.»
Tzikas' lip curled. «Him? Not likely.»
The first question that came to Abivard's mind was, No? Then why did you fail when you tried overthrowing him this past winter? He didn't ask it; on the orders of his sovereign, he was treating Tzikas with every courtesy in the hope that Tzikas would prove a useful tool against Maniakes. Had many Videssian garrisons in the westlands been left, Tzikas might have persuaded their commanders to go over to Makuran, as he had. But the only Videssian troops here these days were raiding bands largely immune to the renegade general's blandishments.
A traitor Tzikas might be; a fool he was not. He seemed to have a gift for plucking thoughts from the heads of those with whom he conversed. As if to answer the question Abivard had not asked, he said, «I would have toppled the pervert from the throne had his protective amulet not warded him just long enough to reach his wizard and gain a counterspell against my mage's cantrip.»
«Aye, so you've said,» Abivard replied. To his way of thinking, an effective conspirator would have known about that amulet and found some way to circumvent it. Saying that to Tzikas, though, would surely have offended him. If only Tzikas took similar care when speaking to Abivard.
Again the Videssian replied to what Abivard had not said: «I know you Makuraners think nothing of first cousins marrying, or uncles and nieces, or even brothers and sisters among the Seven Clans.» He pulled a face. «Those usages are not ours, and no one will convince me they are not perverse. When Maniakes bedded his uncle's daughter, that was incest, plain as day.»
«So you've said,» Abivard repeated. «More than once, in fact, Has not your Mobedhan Mobedh, or whatever you call your chief Priest, given leave for that marriage?»
«Our patriarch,» Tzikas answered, reminding him of the Videssian word. «Yes, he has.» Tzikas' lip curled again, more this time. «And no doubt he gained a fitting reward for the dispensation.» Abivard picked up the meaning of that Videssian term from context. Tzikas went on: «I stand with true righteousness no matter what the patriarch might say.»
He looked very righteous himself. He was never less believable than when he donned that mantle of smug virtue, for it did not fit him well. He'd made his play, it hadn't worked, and now he seemed to want a special commendation for pure and noble motives. As far as Abivard was concerned, if one tried killing a man by magic, one's motives were unlikely to be pure or noble– odds were, one just wanted what he had.
Tzikas said, «How I admire Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, for maintaining the imperial dignity of the true heir to the throne of Videssos, Hosios the son of Likinios Avtokrator.»
«How generous of you to recognize Hosios' claim,» Abivard answered tonelessly. If he had to listen to much more of Tzikas' fulsome good cheer, he'd need a steaming down at the closest bathhouse. The real Hosios was long years dead, executed with his father when Genesios had butchered his way to the Videssian throne. As far as Abivard knew, three different Videssians had played Hosios at Sharbaraz' bidding. There might have been more. If one started to think one really was an Avtokrator rather than a puppet—
«I would recognize any claim in preference to that of Maniakes,» Tzikas said seriously. But that was too much of a courtier's claim even for him to stomach. Shaking his head, he corrected himself: «No, were I to choose between Maniakes and Genesios, I would choose Maniakes.»
Abivard knew that he ought to despise Genesios, too. The man had, after all, murdered not only Likinios, the benefactor of Makuran, but also all his family. But had it not been for Genesios, he would not be able to look over the Cattle Crossing and see Videssos the city. Under what passed for the murderer's reign. Videssos had dissolved in multicornered civil war, and more than one town in the westlands had welcomed the Makuraners in the hope that they would bring peace and order to replace the bloody chaos engulfing the Empire.
When Tzikas saw that Abivard was not going to respond to his preferences for the Videssian throne, he changed the subject, at least to some degree: «Brother-in-law to the King of Kings, when may I begin constituting my promised regiment of horsemen in the service of Hosios Avtokrator?»
«Soon,» Abivard answered, as he had the last time had asked that question, and the time before that, and the time before that.
«I have heard there is no objection in Mashiz to the regiment,» Tzikas said delicately.
«Soon, eminent sir, soon,» Abivard repeated. Tzikas was right; Sharbaraz King of Kings was happy to see a body of Videssian troops help give the current Hosios' claim to the throne legitimacy. The hesitation lay on Abivard's part. Tzikas was already a traitor once; what was to keep him from becoming a traitor twice?
Roshnani had used a homelier analogy: «A man who cheats with a woman and then marries her will cheat on her afterward– not always, maybe, but most of the time.»
«I trust I shall not have to appeal directly to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase,» Tzikas said exactly as a Makuraner noble might have—the Videssians knew how to squeeze, too.
«Soon I said, and soon I meant,» Abivard replied, wishing that some hideous disease—another bout of treason, perhaps—would get Tzikas out of his hair. For the Videssian renegade to use the word trust when he was so manifestly unworthy of it grated. What grated even more was that Tzikas, who was so perceptive elsewhere, seemed blind to Abivard's reasons for disliking him.
«I shall take you at your word,» Tzikas said, «for I know the nobles of Makuran are raised to ride, to fight, and to tell the truth.»
That was what the Videssians said of Makuraners. The men of Makuran, for their part, were told that Videssians sucked in mendacity with their mothers' milk. Having dealt with men from both sides of the border, Abivard had come to the reluctant conclusion that those of either nation would lie when they thought that was to their benefit or sometimes merely for the sport of it, those who worshiped the God about as readily as those who followed Phos.
«Everything I can do, I will,» Abivard said. Eventually, he added to himself. He did not enjoy being imperfectly honest with Tzikas, but he did not relish the prospect of the Videssian's commanding troops, either. To take the moral advantage away from Tzikas, he went on: «Have you had any luck in finding ship's carpenters or whatever the proper name for them is? If we are going to beat Maniakes, to beat Videssos once and for all, we'll have to get our men over the Cattle Crossing and assault Videssos the city. Without ships—»
Tzikas sighed. «I am making every effort, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, but my difficulties in this regard, unlike yours concerning horsemen, are easy to describe.» Abivard raised an eyebrow at that jab. Unperturbed, Tzikas went on, «Videssos separates land and sea commands. Had a drungarios fallen into your clutches, he could have done better by you, for such matters fall within his area of responsibility. As a simple soldier, though, I fear I am ignorant of the art of shipbuilding.»
«Eminent sir, I certainly did not expect you to do the carpentry on your own,» Abivard answered, working hard to keep his face straight. Tzikas' describing himself as a simple anything would have drawn a laugh from any Makuraner—and probably from most of the Videssians—who had ever had to deal with him. «Learning where to gather the men with the requisite trades is something else again.»
«So it is, in the most literal sense of the word,» Tzikas said. «Most of the men who practice these trades have left the westlands in the face of your victorious advance, whether by their own will or at the urging of their city
