'Come in, young majesty, come in!' exclaimed the slim little man sitting in a high-backed chair at the far end of the chamber. So this was Livanios, then. He sounded as cordial as if he and Phostis were old friends, not captor and captive. The smile on his face was warm and inviting—was, in fact, Olyvria's smile set in a face framed by a neat, graying beard and marred from a couple of sword cuts. It made Phostis want to trust him—and made him want to distrust himself on account of that.
The chamber itself had been set up to imitate, as closely as was possible in the keep of a fortress in the middle of the back of beyond, the Grand Courtroom in the palace compound back at Videssos the city. To someone who had never seen the real Grand Courtroom, it might have been impressive. Phostis, who'd grown up there, found it ludicrous. Where was the marble double colonnade that led the eye to the distant throne? Where were the elegant and richly clad courtiers who took their place along the way to the Emperor? The handful of rudely staring soldiers made a poor substitute. Nor were the ragged priest and the nondescript fellow in a striped caftan adequate replacements for the ecumenical patriarch and the lofty Sevastos who stood before the Avtokrator's high seat.
Phostis knew a weird mental shift as he reminded himself he'd come to despise the pomp and ostentation that surrounded his father. He also wondered why the leader of the radically egalitarian Thanasioi wanted to mimic that pomp.
He had, however, bigger worries. Livanios brought them into sudden sharp focus, saying, 'So how much will your father give to have you back. I don't mean gold; we of the gleaming path despise gold. But surely he will yield land and influence to restore you to his side.'
'Will he? I wonder.' Phostis' bitterness was not altogether feigned. 'We've always quarreled, my father and I. For all I know, he's glad to have me gone. Why not? He has two other sons, both of them more to his liking.'
'You undervalue yourself in his eyes,' Livanios said. 'He's turned the countryside around the imperial army upside down searching for you.'
'He searches sorcerously as well, and with the same determination,' the man in the caftan said. His Videssian held a vanishing trace of accent.
Phostis shrugged. Maybe what he heard was true, maybe not. Either way, it mattered little. He said, 'Besides, what makes you think I want to go back to my father? By all I've heard of you Thanasioi, I'd sooner live out my days with you than smother myself in things back at the palace.'
He didn't know whether he was telling the truth, telling part of the truth, or flat-out lying. The doctrines of the Thanasioi drew him powerfully. Of so much he was sure. But would men who observed all those fine-sounding principles stoop to something so sordid as kidnapping? Maybe they would, if their faith let them pretend to be orthodox to preserve themselves. If so, they were the best actors he'd ever run across. They even fooled him.
Livanios said, 'I've heard somewhat of this from my daughter and the holy Digenis both. The possibilities are ... interesting. You'd truly rather live out your days in the want that is our lot than in the luxury you've always known?'
'I fear more for my soul than for my body,' Phostis said. 'My body is but a garment that will wear out all too soon. When it's tossed on the midden, what difference if it once was stained with fancy dyes? My soul, though—my soul goes on forever.' He sketched Phos' sun-sign above his breast.
Livanios, the priest, Olyvria, even Syagrios also traced quick circles. The man in the caftan did not. Phostis wondered about that. An imperfectly pious Thanasiot struck him as a contradiction in terms. Or perhaps not—that label fit him pretty well. Was he claiming more belief than he really felt to get Livanios to treat him mildly? He had trouble reading his own heart.
'What shall we do with you?' Livanios said musingly. By his tone, Phostis would have bet the heretics' leader was wondering about the same questions that had gone through his own mind. Livanios went on, 'Are you one of us, or do we treat you merely as a piece in the board game, to be placed in the square of greatest advantage to us at the proper time?'
Phostis nodded at the analogy; whatever else could be said about him, Livanios knew how to compare ideas. Pieces taken off the board in the Videssian game of stylized combat were not gone for good, but could be returned to action on the side of the player who had captured them. That made the board game harder to master, but also made it a better model for the involuted intricacies of Videssian politics and civil strife.
'Father, may I speak?' Olyvria said.
Livanios laughed. 'When have I ever been able to tell you no? Aye, say what's in your mind.'
'There is a middle way in this, then,' she said. 'No one of spirit, whether he followed the gleaming path or not, could be happy with us after we stole him away and brought him here against his will. But once here, how could one of good will not see how we truly live our lives in conformity to Phos' holy law?'
'Many might fail to see that,' Livanios said dryly. 'Among them I can name Krispos, his soldiers, and the priests he has in his retinue. But I see you're not yet finished. Say on, by all means.'
'What I was going to suggest was not clapping Phostis straightaway into a cell. If and when we do return him to the board, we don't want him turning back against us the instant he finds the chance.'
'Can't just let him run loose, neither,' Syagrios put in. 'He tried to get away once, likely thought about it a lot more'n that. You're just askin' to have him run back home to his papa if he gets on a horse without nobody around him.'
Phostis kicked himself for a fool for trying to make a break at the farm house. The skinny fellow had kicked him, too, a lot harder.
Olyvria said, 'I wasn't going to suggest we let him run loose. You're right, Syagrios; that's dangerous. But if we take him around Etchmiadzin and to other places where the gleaming path is strong, we can show him the life he was on the edge of embracing for himself before we lay hold of him. Once he sees it, as I said, once he accepts it, he may become fully one of us regardless of how he got here.'
'That might have some hope of working,' Livanios said, and Phostis' heart leaped. The heresiarch, however, was very Videssian in his ability to spot betrayal before it sprouted: 'It might also give him an excuse for hypocrisy and let him pick his own time and place to flee us.'
'Aye, that's so, by the good god,' Syagrios growled.
Steepling his fingers, Livanios turned to Phostis. 'How say you, young Majesty?' In his mouth the title was, if not mocking, at least imperfectly respectful. 'This affects you, after all.'
