'You will be, sometimes.' Krispos had spoken with such maddening certainty that he wanted to hit him. 'You try to do a couple of things: You try not to make the same mistake twice, and you take the chance to set one right later if it comes along.'
Put that way, it sounded so easy. But after a couple of days of case after complex case, Phostis concluded ease in anything—fishing, sword-swallowing, running an empire, anything—came only with having done the job for years and years. As most young men do, he suspected he was brighter than his father. He certainly had a better education: He was good at ciphering, he could quote secular poets and historians as well as Phos' holy scriptures, and he didn't talk as if he'd just stepped away from a plow.
But Krispos had one thing he lacked: experience. His father did what needed doing almost without thinking about it, then went on to the next thing and took care of that, too. Meanwhile Phostis himself floundered and bit his lip, wondering where proper action lay. By the time he made one choice, three more had grown up to stare him in the face.
He knew he'd disappointed his father when he asked to be excused from his share of imperial business. 'How will you learn what you need to know, save by this work?' Krispos had asked.
'But I can't do it properly,' he'd answered. To him, that explained everything—if something didn't come easy, why not work at something else instead?
Krispos had shaken his head. 'Wouldn't you sooner find that out now, while I'm here to show you what you need, then after I'm gone and you find the whole sack of barley on your back at once?'
The rustic metaphor hadn't helped persuade Phostis. He wished his family's nobility ran back farther than his father, wished he wasn't named for a poor farmer dead of cholera.
Vatatzes snapped him out of his gloomy reverie. 'What say we go find us some girls, eh, your Majesty?'
'Go on if you care to. You'll probably run into my brothers if you do.' Phostis laughed without much mirth, as much at himself as at Evripos and Katakolon. He couldn't even enjoy the perquisites of imperial life as they did. Ever since he'd discovered how many women would lie down with him merely on account of the title he bore, much of the enjoyment had gone out of the game.
Some nobles kept little enclosures where they hand-raised deer and boar until the animals grew tame as pets. Then they'd shoot them. Phostis had never seen the sport in that, or in bedding girls who either didn't dare say no or else turned sleeping with him into as cold-blooded a calculation as any Krispos made in the age-long struggle between Videssos and Makuran.
He'd tried explaining that to his brothers once, not long after Katakolon, then fourteen, seduced—or was seduced by—one of the women who did the palace laundry. Exalted by his own youthful prowess, he'd paid no heed whatever to Phostis. As for Evripos, he'd said only. 'Do you want to don the blue robe and live out your life as a monk? Suit yourself, big brother, but it's not the life for me.'
Had he wanted a monastic life, it would have been easy to arrange. But the sole reason he'd ever considered it was to get away from his father. He lacked both a monkish vocation and a monkish temperament. It wasn't that he sought to mortify his flesh, but rather that he—usually—found loveless or mercenary coupling more mortifying than none.
He often wondered how he would do when Krispos decided to marry him off. He was just glad that day had not yet arrived. When it did, he was sure his father would pick him a bride with more of an eye toward advantage for the imperial house than toward his happiness. Sometimes marriages of that sort worked as well as any others. Sometimes—
He turned to Vatatzes. 'My friend, you know not how fortunate you are. coming from a family of but middling rank. All too often, I feel my birth more as a cage or a curse than as something in which to rejoice.'
'Ah, your Majesty, you've drunk yourself sad, that's all it is.' Vatatzes turned to the panpiper and pandoura player who made soft music as a background against which to talk. He snapped his fingers and raised his voice. 'Here, you fellows, give us something lively now, to lift the young Majesty's spirits.'
The musicians put their heads together for a moment. The man with the panpipes set them down and picked up a kettle-shaped drum. Heads came up all through the Hall of the Nineteen Couches as his hands evoked thunder from the drumhead. The pandoura player struck a ringing, fiery chord. Phostis recognized the Vaspurakaner dance they played, but it failed to gladden him.
Before long, almost all the feasters snaked along in a dance line, clapping their hands and shouting in time to the tune. Phostis sat in his place even when Vatatzes tugged at the sleeve of his robe. Finally, with a shrug, Vatatzes gave up and joined the dance.
When he got to his feet, the dancers cheered. But he did not join their line. He walked through the open bronze doors of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, down the low, broad marble stairs. He looked up at the sky, gauging the time by how high the waning gibbous moon had risen. Somewhere in the fifth hour of the night, he judged—not far from midnight.
He lowered his eyes. The imperial residence was separated from the rest of the buildings of the palace compound and Ncreened off by a grove of cherry trees, to give the Avtokrator and his family at least the illusion of privacy. Through the trees, Phostis saw one window brightly lit by candles or lamps. He nodded to himself. Yes, Krispos was at work there. With peasant persistence, his father kept on fighting against the immensity of the Empire he ruled.
As Phostis watched, the window went dark. Even Krispos occasionally yielded to sleep, though Phostis was sure he would have evaded it if he could.
Somebody stuck his head out through one of the Hall's many big windows. 'Come on back, your Majesty.' he called, voice blurry with wine. 'It's just starting to get bouncy in here.'
'Go on without me,' Phostis said. He wished he'd never gathered the feasters together. The ease with which they enjoyed themselves only made his own unhappiness seem worse by comparison.
He absently swatted at a mosquito; there weren't as many out here, away from the lights. With the last lamps extin-guished in the imperial residence, it fell into invisibility behind the cherry grove. He started walking slowly in that direction; he didn't want to get there until he was sure his father had gone to bed.
Haloga guardsmen stood outside the doorway. The big blond northerners raised their axes in salute as they recognized Phostis. Had he been a miscreant, the axes would have gone up. too, but not as a gesture of respect.
