Krispos the Emperor

'It just strikes me as foolish, that's all.' Olyvria said. 'How could telling whatever it is possibly hurt you?'

'Maybe it couldn't,' Phostis said, though he wondered how much hay Evripos might make out of knowing how uncertain his paternity was. Then he started to laugh.

'What's funny?' Olyvria's voice turned dangerous. 'You're not laughing at me, are you?'

Phostis drew the sun-circle over his heart. 'By the good god, I swear I'm not.' His obvious sincerity mollified Olyvria. Better still, he'd not taken a false oath. When he thought of Evripos making hay, whose perspective was he borrowing but that of Krispos the ex-peasant? Even if Krispos hadn't sired him, he'd certainly shaped the way he thought, at levels so deep Phostis rarely noticed them.

Olyvria remained mulish. 'How can I trust you if you keep secrets from me?'

'If you don't think you can trust me, you should have let me put you ashore at some deserted beach.' Now Phostis grew angry. 'And if you still don't trust me, I daresay my father will give you a safe conduct to leave camp and go back to Etchmiadzin or wherever else you'd like.'

'No, I don't want that.' Olyvria studied him curiously. 'You're not the same as you were last summer under the temple or even last fall after you—came to Etchmiadzin. Then you weren't sure of what you wanted or how to go about getting it. You're harder now—and don't make lewd jokes. You trust your own judgment more than you did before.'

'Do I?' Phostis thought about it. 'Perhaps I do. I'd better, don't you think? In the end, it's all I have.'

'I hadn't thought you could be so stubborn,' Olyvria said. 'Now that I know, I'll have to deal with you a little differently.' She laughed in small embarrassment. 'Maybe I shouldn't have said that. It sounds as if I'm giving away some special womanly secret.'

'No, I don't think so,' Phostis said; he was happy to steer the conversation away from what he and Krispos had talked about. 'Men also have to change the way they treat women as they come to know them better—or so I'm finding out, anyway.'

'You don't mean men, you mean you,' Olyvria said with a catlike pounce. Phostis spread his hands, conceding the point. He didn't mind yielding on small things if that let him keep hold of the big ones. He slowly nodded—Krispos would have handled this the same way.

Someone rode up to the nearby imperial pavilion in a tearing hurry. A moment later, Krispos started yelling for Sarkis. Not long after that, the Avtokrator and his general both yelled for messengers. And not long after that, the whole camp started stirring, though it had to be well into the third hour of the night.

'What do you suppose that's all about?' Olyvria asked.

Phostis had an idea of what it might be about, but before he could answer, someone called from outside the tent, 'Are you two decent in there?'

Olyvria looked offended. Phostis didn't—he recognized the voice. 'Aye, decent enough,' he called back. 'Come on in, Katakolon.'

His younger brother pushed aside the entry flap. 'If you are decent, you've probably been listening to all the fuss outside.' Katakolon's eyes gleamed with excitement.

'So we have,' Phostis said. 'What is it? Have scouts brought back word that they've run into the Thanasioi?'

'Oh, to the ice with you,' Katakolon said indignantly. 'I was hoping to bring a surprise, and here you've gone and figured it out.'

'Never mind that,' Phostis said. 'The fuss means we fight tomorrow?'

'Aye,' Katakolon answered. 'We fight tomorrow.'

XII

Katakolon pointed to the rising cloud of dust ahead. 'Soon now, Father,' he said.

'Aye, very soon,' Krispos agreed. Through the dust, the early morning sun sparkled off the iron heads of arrows and javelins, off chain mail shirts, off the polished edges of sword blades. The Thanasioi were hurrying through the pass, heading back toward Etchmiadzin after a raid that had spanned most of the length of the westlands.

Sarkis said, 'Now, your Majesty?'

Krispos tasted the moment. 'Aye, now,' he said.

Sarkis waved. Quietly, without the trumpet calls that usually would have ordered them into action, two regiments of cavalry rode up the pass from the imperial lines. Sarkis' grin filled his fat face. 'That should give them something new to think about. If Zaidas spoke truly, they don't know we're anywhere nearby, let alone in front of them.'

'I hope he spoke truly,' Krispos said. 'I think he did. By all the signs his magic could give, their Makuraner mage is altogether stifled.'

'The good god grant it be so,' Sarkis said. 'I have no love for Makuraners; every so often they take it into their heads that the princes of Vaspurakan should be forced to reverence their Prophets Four rather than Phos.'

'One day, maybe, Videssos can do something about that,' Krispos said. The Empire, he thought, ought to protect all those who followed the lord with the great and good mind. But

Vaspurakan had lain under the rule of the Kings of Kings of Makuran for a couple of hundred years.

'Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I'd sooner we were free altogether,' Sarkis said. 'Likely your hierarchs would make spiritual masters no more pleasant than the men from Mashiz. Your folk would be as harsh on us as heretics as the Makuraners are on us as infidels.'

'Seems to me you're both quarreling over the taste of a loaf you don't have,' Katakolon said.

Krispos laughed. 'You're probably right, son—no, you are right.' Thin in the distance, shouts said that the Thanasioi and the regiments Krispos had sent out to delay them were knocking heads.