Krispos the Emperor

'I see,' Krispos said. He did, too, in a strange sort of way. Katakolon was a lad who generally liked to be liked. With a youth's enthusiasm and stamina, he also led a love life more complicated than any bureaucratic document. Krispos knew a small measure of relief that he'd managed to remember the name of his son's current—or, by the sound of things, soon to be current but one—favorite. He sighed. 'How much of an allowance do you get every month?'

'Twenty goldpieces, Father.'

'That's right, twenty goldpieces. Do you have any idea how

old I was, son, before I had twenty goldpieces to my name, let alone twenty every month of the year? When I was your age,

'—lived on a farm that grew only nettles, and you ate worms three meals a day,' Katakolon finished for him. Krispos glared. His son said, 'You make that same speech every time ask you for money, Father.'

'Maybe I do,' Krispos said. Thinking about it, he was suddenly certain he did. That annoyed him; was he getting predictable as he got older? Being predictable could also be dangerous. But he added, 'You'd be better off if you hadn't heard it so many times you've committed it to memory.' 'Yes, Father,' Katakolon said dutifully. 'May I please have the advance?'

Sometimes Krispos gave in, sometimes he didn't. The cadaster he'd put down so he could talk with his son brought good news: the fisc had gained more revenue than expected from the province just south of the Paristrian Mountains, the province where he'd been born. Gruffly he said, 'Very well. I suppose you haven't managed to bankrupt us yet, boy. But not another copper ahead of time till after Midwinter's Day, do you understand me?'

'Yes, Father. Thank you, Father.' Little by little, Katakolon's merry expression turned apprehensive. 'Midwinter's Day is still a long way off, Father.' Like anyone who knew Krispos well, the Avtokrator's third son also knew he was not in the habit of making warnings just to hear himself talk. When he said something, he meant it.

'Try living within your means,' Krispos suggested. 'I didn't say I was cutting you off without a copper, only that I wouldn't give you any more money ahead of time till then. The good god willing, I won't have to do it afterward, either. But you notice I didn't demand that.'

'Yes, Father.' Katakolon's voice tolled like a mourning bell. Krispos fought to keep his face straight; he remembered how much he'd hated to be laughed at when he was a youth. 'Cheer up, son. By anyone's standards, twenty goldpieces a month is a lot of money for a young man to get his hands on. You'll be able to entertain your lady friends in fine style during that little while when you're not in bed with them.' Katakolon

looked so flabbergasted, Krispos had to smile. 'I recall how many rounds I could manage back in my own younger days, boy. I can't match that now, but believe me, I've not forgot ten.'

'Whatever you say, Father. I do thank you for the advance, though I'd be even more grateful if you'd not tied that string round its leg.' Katakolon dipped his head and went off to pur sue his own affairs—very likely, Krispos thought, in the most literal sense of the word.

As soon as his son was out of earshot, Krispos did laugh. Young men could not imagine what being older was like; they lacked the experience. Perhaps because of that, they didn't believe older men retained the slightest notion of what being young meant. But Krispos knew that wasn't so; his younger self dwelt within him yet, covered over with years but still emphatically there.

He wasn't always proud of the young man he had been; He'd done a lot of foolish things, as young men will. It wasn't because he'd been stupid; he'd just been callow. If he'd know then what he knew now ... He laughed again, this time at himself. Graybeards had been singing that song since the world began.

He went back to his desk and finished working through th tax register. He wrote I have read and approved—Krispos in scarlet ink at the bottom of the parchment. Then, without so much as looking at the report that lay beneath it, he got up from the desk, stretched, and walked out into the hallway. When he got near the entrance to the imperial residence, h almost bumped into Barsymes, who was coming out of th small audience chamber there. The vestiarios' eyes widen slightly. 'I'd expected you would still be hard at the morning's assemblage of documents, your Majesty.'

'To the ice with the morning's assemblage of documents, Barsymes,' Krispos declared. 'I'm going fishing.'

'Very well, your Majesty. I shall set the preparations in train directly.'

'Thank you, esteemed sir,' Krispos said. Even something a simple as a trip to the nearest pier was not free from ceremony for an Avtokrator of the Videssians. The requisite twelve para sol bearers had to be rounded up; the Haloga captain had to

he alerted so he could provide the even more requisite squadron of bodyguards.

Krispos endured the wait with the patience that years of waiting had taught him. He chose several flexible cane rods, each a little taller than he was, from a rack in a storage room, and a rather greater number of similar lengths of horsehair line. In the tackle box beside the rack of fishing poles were a good many barbed hooks of bronze. He preferred that metal to iron; though softer, it needed less care after being dunked in salt water.

Off in the kitchens, a servant would be catching him cockroaches for bait. He'd done it himself once, but only once; it scandalized people worse than any of Anthimos' ingenious perversions had ever managed to do.

'All is in readiness, your Majesty,' Barsymes announced after a delay shorter than Krispos had expected. He held out to the Emperor an elaborately chased brass box from Makuran. Krispos accepted it with a grave nod. Only tiny skittering noises revealed that inside the elegant artifact were frantic brown-black bugs about the size of the last joint of his thumb.

The palace compound boasted several piers at widely spaced points along the sea wall; Krispos sometimes wondered if they'd been built to give an overthrown Avtokrator the best chance for escape by sea. As he and his retinue paraded toward the one closest to the imperial residence, though, he stopped worrying about blows against the state or against his person. When he stepped down into the little rowboat tied there, he was as nearly free as an Emperor could be.

Oh, true, a couple of Halogai got into another rowboat and followed him as he rowed out into the lightly choppy waters of the Cattle-Crossing. Their strokes were strong and sure; scores of narrow inlets pierced the rocky soil of Halogaland, so its sons naturally took to the ocean.

- And true, a light war galley would also put to sea, in case conspirators mounted an attack on the Avtokrator too deadly for a pair of northern men to withstand. But the galley stayed a good quarter mile from Krispos' rowboat, and even the houndlike Halogai let him separate himself from them by close to a furlong. He could imagine he sat