Inside Etchmiadzin, they sounded as if they were going at each other with everything they had.
The Haloga pointed again. 'Ha! Look, young Majesty— smoke. With blazing brand they burn their burg.'
Sure enough, a thick column of smoke rose from inside the walls, orange-tinted gray against the black of the night sky. Phostis tried to figure out where in the town the fire had flared. His best guess was that it wasn't far from the Vaspurakaner cobbler's shop where he and Olyvria had first made love.
Another plume of smoke sprang up, and a few minutes later yet another. A tongue of yellow fire, perhaps from a burning roof, leapt into sight above the walls like a live thing, then sullenly fell back.
Before long, more and more flames sprang into view, and not all of them died down again. Fire was a terror in any city; it could so easily race ahead of anything men were able to do to hold it back. Fire in a city at war with itself was a horror to rank with the ice in Skotos' hell: how could you hope to fight it when your hand was turned against your neighbor, your friend—and his against you?
The answer was, you couldn't. The fires in Etchmiadzin burned on and on. The air of the imperial camp grew thick with the stink of smoke and, now and again, of burned flesh. Screams rent the air, some of terror, some of agony, but most of hate. In the burning streets, the battle among the Thanasioi went on.
After a while, Olyvria came out of the tent to stand beside Phostis. She slipped her hand into his without saying anything. Silently, they watched Etchmiadzin burn. Olyvria wiped at her eyes. The smoke made Phostis' sting, too. For the sake of his own peace of mind, he assumed that smoke was why she dabbed at hers.
He yawned and said, 'I'm going back inside the tent. Maybe the air will be fresher in there.'
Olyvria followed him in, still without speaking. Only when they were away from the guards did she say in a low voice, 'There is the dowry I bring to you and your father— Etchmiadzin.'
'You knew that,' he answered. 'You must have known it, or you'd not have answered the priest as you did.'
'I suppose I did know, in a way. But knowing in advance what a thing is and seeing what it looks like when it comes to pass are not the same. Tonight I'm finding out how different they can be.' She shook her head.
Had Krispos been in the tent, Phostis suspected he would have said that was one of the lessons of growing up. Phostis couldn't put a middle-aged rasp in his voice to make that sound convincing. He asked, 'If you'd known, would you have done differently?'
Olyvria stayed quiet so long, he wondered if she'd heard. At last she said, 'No, I suppose I would have left things as they were, but I'd have thought about them more beforehand.'
'That's fair,' Phostis agreed. He yawned again. 'Shall we try to get some more sleep? I don't think they're going to sally against us; they're too busy warring with each other.'
'I suppose so.' Olyvria lay down and closed her eyes. Phostis lay down beside her. To his surprise, he dropped off almost at once.
Olyvria must have fallen asleep, too, for she jerked up at the same time as he when a great cheer roared through the encampment. He needed a moment to realize what time it was— sunshine against the east side of the tent meant dawn had broken.
As he had the night before, he poked out his head and asked a Haloga what was going on. The northerner answered, 'Those in there, they have yielded themselves. The gates are thrown wide.'
'Then the war is over,' Phostis blurted. When he realized what he'd said, he repeated it: 'The war is over.' He wanted to say it again and again; he couldn't imagine four more wonderful words.
XIII
a line of men and women and children trudging wearily down a dirt track, carrying such belongings as they could, the cows and goats and donkeys with them as thin and worn as they were. The only difference Krispos could see between them and the uprooted Thanasioi was the direction of their journey: they were moving west, not east.
No, there was another: they'd not rebelled to give him a reason to remove them from their old homes. But the land from which war and policy had removed the Thanasioi could not stay empty. That was asking for trouble. And so peasants who lived in a relatively crowded—and safely loyal—stretch of territory between Develtos and Opsikion east of Videssos the city were taking the place of the Thanasioi whether they liked the idea or not.
Phostis rode up alongside Krispos and pointed to the villagers on the way to resettlement. 'Is that justice?' he asked.
'I just put the same question to myself,' Krispos answered. 'I don't think the answer is clear or easy. If you asked any one of them now, no doubt they'd curse me to the skies. But after two years, who can say? I've granted them tax exemptions for that long, and put them on half rates for three years more. I'm not moving them just to fill space—I want them to thrive.'
'It may work out well enough for them,' Phostis persisted, 'but is it justice?'
'Probably not,' Krispos answered, sighing. He fought back a smile; he'd managed to surprise Phostis. 'Probably not,' he repeated, 'but is it justice to empty a land so no crops to speak of are raised on it, so it becomes a haven for brigands and outlaws, so it tempts the Makuraners to try to gobble it up? Makuran hasn't much troubled us lately, but that's because Rubyab King of Kings sees me as strong. It hasn't always been so.'
'How do you aim to pay Rubyab back for sponsoring the Thanasioi?' Phostis asked.
Krispos took the change of subject to mean that Phostis thought he had a point. He answered, 'I don't know right now. A big war, like the one we fought with Makuran a century and a half ago, could leave both lands prostrate for years. I don't want that. But believe me, that s not a debt to forget. Maybe it'll be one I leave to you to repay.'
Phostis responded to that with a calculating look Krispos had seldom seen on him before he was kidnapped. 'Fomenting the Vaspurakaners against Mashiz is likely to be worth trying.'
