Krispos the Emperor

yell at. Then he remembered, and laughed at himself. He also remembered he'd sent Phostis out on precisely that mission. His laugh turned sour. How was he supposed to beat the Thanasioi if he found himself turning senile before he ever met them in battle?

Sarkis reminded Phostis of a plump bird of prey. The Vaspurakaner cavalry commander was one of Krispos' longtime cronies, and close to Krispos in years—which, to Phostis' way of thinking, made him about ready for the boneyard. A great hooked beak of a nose protruded from his doughy face like a big rock sticking out of a mud flat. He was munching candied apricots when Phostis came into his quarters, too, which did not improve the young man's opinion of him.

As he already had a score of times that afternoon and evening, Phostis repeated the message with which Krispos had charged him; he'd give Krispos no chance to accuse him of shirking a task once accepted. Sarkis paused in his methodical chewing only long enough to shove the bowl of apricots toward him. He shook his head, not quite in disgust but not quite politely, either.

Sarkis' heavy-lidded eyes—piggy little eyes. Phostis thought distastefully—glinted in mirth. 'Your first campaign, isn't it, young Majesty?' he said.

'Yes,' Phostis said shortly. Half the officers he'd seen had asked the same question. Most of them seemed to want to score points off his inexperience.

But Sarkis just smiled, showing orange bits of apricot be- j tween his heavy teeth. 'I wasn't much older than you are now when I first served under your father. He was still learning how to command then; he'd never done it before, you know. And he had to start at the top and make soldiers who'd been leading armies for years obey him. It couldn't have been easy, but he managed. If he hadn't, you wouldn't be here listening to me flapping my gums.'

'No, I suppose not,' Phostis said. He knew Krispos had started with nothing and made his way upward largely on his own; his father went on about it often enough. But from his father, it had just seemed like boasting. Sarkis made it feel as if Krispos had accomplished something remarkable, and that he deserved credit for it. Phostis, however, was not inclined to give Krispos credit for anything.

The Vaspurakaner general went on, 'Aye, he's a fine man, your father. Take after him and you'll do well.' He swigged from a goblet of wine at his elbow, then breathed potent fumes into Phostis' face. The throaty accent of his native land grew thicker. 'Phos made a mistake when he didn't let Krispos be born a prince.'

The folk of Vaspurakan followed Phos, but heretically; they believed the good god had created them first among mankind, and thus they styled themselves princes and princesses. The anathemas Videssian prelates flung their way were one reason most of them were well enough content to see their mountainous land controlled by Markuran, which judged all forms of Phos worship equally false and did not single out Vaspurakaners for persecution. Even so, many folk from Vaspurakan sought their fortune in Videssos as merchants, musicians, and warriors.

Phostis said, 'Sarkis, has my father ever asked you to conform to Videssian usages when you worship?'

'What's that?' Sarkis dug a finger into his ear. 'Conform, you say? No, never once. If the world won't conform to us princes, why should we conform ourselves to it?'

'For the same reason he seeks to bring the Thanasioi to orthodoxy?' By the doubt in his voice, Phostis knew he was asking the question as much of himself as of Sarkis.

But Sarkis answered it: 'He doesn't persecute princes because we give no trouble outside of our faith. You ask me, the Thanasioi are using religion as an excuse for brigandage. That's evil on the face of it.'

Not if the material world is itself the evil, Phostis thought. He kept that to himself. Instead, he said. 'I know some Vaspurakaners do take on orthodoxy to help further their careers. You call them Tzatoi in your language, don't you?' 'So we do,' Sarkis said. 'And do you know what that means?' He waited for Phostis to shake his head, then grinned

and boomed, 'It means 'traitors,' that's what. We of Vaspurakan are a stubborn breed, and our memories long.'

'Videssians are much the same,' Phostis said. 'When my father set out to reconquer Kubrat, didn't he take his maps from the imperial archives where they'd lain unused for three hundred years?' He blinked when he noticed he'd used Krispos as an example.

If Sarkis also noticed, he didn't remark on it. He said, 'Young Majesty, he did just that; I saw those maps with my own eyes when we were planning the campaign, and faded, rat-chewed things they were—though useful nonetheless. But three hundred years—young Majesty, three hundred years are but a fleabite on the arse of time. It's likely been three hundred eons since Phos shaped Vaspur the Firstborn from the fabric of his will.'

He grinned impudently at Phostis, as if daring him to cry heresy. Phostis kept his mouth shut; Krispos had baited him too often to make it so easy to get a rise out of him. He did say, 'Three hundred years seems a long enough time to me.'

'Ah, that's because you're young,' Sarkis exclaimed. 'When I was your age, the years seemed to stretch like chewy candy, and I thought each one would never end. Now I haven't so much sand left in my glass, and I resent every grain that runs out.'

'Yes,' Phostis said, though he'd pretty much stopped listening when Sarkis started going on about his being young. He wondered why old men did that so much; it wasn't as if he could help being the age he was. But if he had a goldpiece for every time he'd heard that's because you're young, he was sure he could remit a year's worth of taxes to every peasant in the Empire.

Sarkis said, 'Well, I've kept you here long enough, young Majesty. When you get bored with chatter, just press on. That's the advantage of rank, you know: you don't have to put up with people you find tedious.'

Only my father, Phostis thought: a single exception that covered a lot of ground. But that was not the sort of thought he could share with Sarkis, or indeed with anyone save possibly Digenis. He was somehow sure the priest would understand, though to him any concern not directly related to Phos and the world to come was of secondary importance.

Having been given an excuse to depart, he took advantage of it.

Even with an army newly arrived and crowding its streets, Nakoleia seemed a tiny town to anyone used to Videssos the city. Tiny, backwater, provincial ... the scornful adjectives came readily to Phostis' mind. Whether or not they were true, they would stick.

Nakoleia was sensibly laid out in a grid. He made his way back to Krispos through deepening dusk and