Krispos the Emperor

As he stamped out of the imperial residence, a pair of Halogai from the squadron at the entrance attached themselves to him. He didn't want them, but knew the futility of ordering them back to their post—they would just answer, in their slow, serious northern voices, that he was their post.

Instead, he tried to shake them off. They were, after all, encumbered with mail shirts, helms, and two-handed axes. For a little while, he thought he might succeed; sweat poured down their faces as they sped up to match his own quick walk, and their fair skins grew pink with exertion. But they were warriors, in fine fettle, and refused to wilt in heat worse than any for which their northern home had prepared them. They clung to him like limpets.

He slowed down as he reached the borders of the palace compound and started across the crowded plaza of Palamas. He thought of losing himself among the swarms of people there, but, before he could transform thought to deed, the Halogai moved up on either side of him and made a break impossible.

He was even glad of their presence as he traversed the square. Their broad, mailed shoulders and forbidding expressions helped clear a path through the hucksters, soldiers,

housewives, scribes, whores, artists, priests, and folk of every other sort who used the plaza as a place wherein to sell, to buy, to gossip, to cheat, to proclaim, or simply to gawp.

Once Phostis got to the far side of the plaza of Palamas, he headed east along Middle Street without even thinking about it. He walked past the red granite pile of the government office building before he consciously realized what he'd done: a few more blocks, a left turn, and his feet would have taken him to the High Temple even though the rest of him didn't want to go there.

He glared down at his red boots, as if wondering if his brothers had somehow suborned them. With slow deliberation, he turned right rather than left at the next corner. He made a lew more turns at random, leaving behind the familiar main street of Videssos the city for whatever its interior might bring him.

The Halogai muttered back and forth in their own language. Phostis could guess what they were saying: something to the effect that two guards might not be enough to keep him out of trouble in this part of town. He pushed ahead anyhow, reasoning that although bad things could happen, odds were they wouldn't.

Away from Middle Street and a few other thoroughfares, Videssos the city's streets—lanes might have been a better word, or even alleys—forgot whatever they might have known about the idea of a straight line. The narrow little ways were made to seem narrower still because the upper stories of buildings extended out over the cobblestones toward each other. The city had laws regulating how close together they could come, but if any inspector had been through this section lately, he'd been bribed to look up with a blind eye toward the scrawny strip of blue that showed between balconies.

People on the streets gave Phostis curious looks as he walked along: it was not a district in which nobles in fine robes commonly appeared. No one bothered him, though; evidently two big Haloga guards were enough. A barmaid-pretty girl of about his own age stopped and smiled at him. She drew up one hand to toy with her hair and incidentally show off her breasts to the best advantage. When he didn't pause, she gave him the two-fingered street gesture that implied he was effeminate.

The shops in this part of town kept their doors closed. When a customer opened one, Phostis saw its timbers were thick enough to grace a citadel. But for their doors, probably just as thick, houses presented blank fronts of stucco or brick to the street. Though that was normal in Videssos the city, most dwellings being built around courtyards, here it seemed as if they were making a point of concealing whatever they had.

Phostis was on the point of trying to make his way back to Middle Street and his own part of town when he came upon men in ragged cloaks and worker's tunics and women in cheap, faded dresses filing into a building that at first looked no more prepossessing than any other hereabouts. But on its roof was a wooden tower topped with a globe whose gilding had seen better days: this, too, was a temple to Phos, though as different from the High Temple as could be imagined.

He smiled and made for the entrance. He'd wanted to pray when he left the palaces, but hadn't been able to stomach listening to Oxeites celebrate the liturgy again. Maybe the good god had guided his footsteps hither.

The ordinary people going in to pray didn't seem to think Phos had anything to do with it. The stares they gave Phostis weren't curious; they were downright hostile. A man wearing the bloodstained leather apron of a butcher said, 'Here, friend, don't you think you'd be more content praying somewheres else?'

'Somewhere fancy, like you are?' a woman added. She didn't sound admiring; to her the word was one of reproach.

Some of the shabby band of worshipers carried knives on their belts. In a rundown part of the city like this, snatching up paving stones to hurl would be the work of a moment The Halogai realized that before Phostis did, and moved to put themselves between him and what could become a mob.

'Wait,' he said. Neither northerner even turned to look at him. Keeping their eyes on the crowd in front of the little temple, they wordlessly shook their heads. He was barely tall enough to peer at the people over their armored shoulders. Pitching his voice to carry to the Videssians, he declared, 'I've had my fill of worshiping Phos at fancy temples. How can we hope the good god will hear us if we talk about helping the poor in a building richer than even the Avtokrator enjoys?'

No one had noticed his red boots. Behind the Halogai, they would be all but invisible. Like the people in the streets, the congregants must have taken him for merely a noble out slumming. His words made the city folk pause and murmur among themselves.

After a small pause, the butcher said, 'You really mean that, friend?'

'I do,' Phostis answered loudly. 'By the lord with the great and good mind, I swear it.'

Either his words or his tone must have carried conviction, lor the band of worshipers stopped scowling and began to beam. The butcher, who seemed to be their spokesman, said, Friend, if you do mean that, you can hear what our priest, the good god bless him, has to say. We don't even ask that you keep quiet about it afterward, for it's sound doctrine. Am I right, my friends?'

Everyone around him nodded. Phostis wondered whether this congregation employed friend as a general term or if it was just the man's way of speaking. He rather hoped the former was true. The usage might be unusual among Phos' followers, but he liked its spirit.

Still grumbling, the Halogai grudgingly let him go into the temple, though one preceded him and the other followed close behind. A few icons with images of Phos hung on the roughly plastered walls; otherwise, the place was bare of ornament. The altar behind which the priest stood was of carven pine. His blue robe, of the plainest wool, lacked even a cloth-of-gold circle above his heart to symbolize Phos' sun.