'Ah, well. Midwinter's Day is always a nervous time for us.' Thokyodes stopped, staring at the Avtokrator. 'Set, did you say? This wasn't just one of the bonfires' blowing embers that caught?'
'I wish it had been,' Krispos said. 'But no, no such luck. The Thanasioi are raising riot, and when they riot, they seem to like to burn, too. The less anyone has, the better they're pleased.'
Thokyodes made a horrible face. 'They're fornicating crazy, begging your pardon, your Majesty. Those bastards ever see anybody who's burned to death? They ever smelled a burned corpse? They ever try rebuilding what's been burned down?'
'I don't think they care about any of that. All they want is to get out of the material world as fast as they can.'
'Send 'em on to me, then,' Thokyodes growled. He carried a hatchet at his belt, to break down a wall so he could use his siphon or break through a door if he needed to effect a rescue. Now he grabbed the oak handle as if he had something else in mind for the tool. 'Aye, I'll send 'em on to the ice real soon, I will, by the good god. Start their own fires, will they?' Like any fireman, he had a fierce, roaring hatred for arsonists of any sort, religious or secular.
A messenger came up to Krispos. Blood ran down his face from a scalp wound. When Krispos exclaimed over it, the man shook off his concern. 'I'll live, your Majesty. The rock glanced off, and my father always told me I had a hard head. Glad the old man was right. But I'm here to tell you it's getting worse than just riots in the poor part of town south of Middle Street. It's regular war—they're fighting with everything they have. Not just rocks like what got me, but bows and shortswords and I don't know what all else.'
'Do you know where the barracks are in the palace compound, and can you get there without falling over?' Krispos asked. When he got nods to both questions, he went on, 'Rout out Noetos' regiment of regulars. If the Thanasioi want to pretend they're soldiers, let's see how well they do facing soldiers instead of the city watch.'
'Aye, your Majesty,' the messenger said. 'You ought to send some priests out, too, for the heretics have one at their head, leather-lunged blue-robe name of—I think—Digenis.'
Krispos frowned; while he knew he'd heard the name before, he needed a little while to place it. When he did, he snarled something that made the messenger's eyes widen. 'That's the blue-robe Phostis fell in love with before he got kidnapped,' he ground out. 'If he's a Thanasiot—'
He stopped. If Digenis was a Thanasiot, did that mean Phostis had joined the heresy, too? Thinking so appalled Krispos, but he also realized that just about everything he did appalled Phostis, if for no other reason than because he did it. And if his eldest had become a Thanasiot, had he really been kidnapped at all? Or had he run off to join the rebels of his own free will?
One way or another, Krispos had to have answers. He said, 'Pass the word—a hundred goldpieces for this Digenis alive, and may the lord with the great and good mind have mercy on anyone who slays him, for I'll have none.'
'I'll make your wishes—your commands—known, your Majesty.' The messenger took off at a dead run.
Krispos had no time to brood on the fellow's news; two men dashed into the plaza of Palamas from different directions, each screaming 'Fire!' at the top of his lungs. 'Thokyodes!' Krispos yelled. The veteran asked both panicky men a few sharp questions, decided whose plight was more urgent, and went off with that fellow. The other man stamped his feet and looked about ready to burst. Krispos hoped he wouldn't lose all that he owned by the time the fire company got back.
A bitterly cold wind began to blow out of the northwest, the direction from which the winter storms came. Krispos would have welcomed one of those storms, but bright stars glittered in a blue-black sky. No storm tonight; maybe, he thought, tasting the wind, no storm tomorrow, either. Of course not. He needed one.
Some of the palace servitors scurried about the plaza of Palamas, setting up awnings to protect him from whatever weather might come. Since he'd decided to make his headquarters here, the servants would see that he had such comforts as they could provide. Barsymes eyed him, daring him to make something of it. He kept quiet.
Along with the servitors, people of every sort swarmed through the plaza—soldiers, messengers, firemen, and revelers determined to celebrate Midwinter's Day as they pleased no matter what was going on around them. The skinny fellow in the dark tunic didn't look the least out of place as he worked his way up to Krispos. When he got to within a couple of paces of the Avtokrator, he pulled out a dagger and screamed, 'Phos bless the gleaming path!'
He stabbed overhand, which was less than wise. Krispos threw up a hand and caught the fellow's wrist before the knife struck home. The would-be assassin twisted and tried to break free, screaming all the while about the gleaming path. But Krispos had learned to wrestle from an army veteran about the time his beard began to sprout, and he had gained his first fame in Videssos the city by outgrappling a Kubrati champion. Shouting and twisting were not nearly enough to break away from him.
He bore the knifeman to the cobbles, squeezing hard on the tendons inside his wrist. Involuntarily, the Thanasiot's hand opened. When the knife fell out, the fellow tried to roll and grab for it. Krispos brought up a knee, hard, between his legs. It was unsporting but extremely effective. The fellow stopped screaming about the gleaming path and started screaming in good earnest.
A Haloga's axe came down with a meaty
'I'd like to have asked him some questions,' he said mildly.
'Honh!' the bodyguard answered, a northern exclamation full of contempt. 'He attacked you, your Majesty; he did not deserve to live, even for a moment.'
'All right, Trygve,' Krispos said. If he criticized the northerner too harshly, Trygve was liable to decide the knifeman had managed to come so close to the Emperor because of his own failing, and slay himself to make up for it. The Halogai were wonderful guards, but they had to be handled very differently from Videssians. Krispos had spent twenty years groping toward an understanding of their gloomy pride; given another twenty, he thought he might come close.
Thokyodes and his fire company returned to the plaza of Palamas. The fellow whose earlier plea they'd rejected fell on them like a starving bear. Without so much as a chance to draw breath, they hurried away in his wake. Krispos wondered if they'd find anything left to save.
