Krispos the Emperor

From out of the palace complex, their armor clashing about them, marched the troops who had served as Krispos' rear guard in the ill-fated western campaign. They looked angry, first at being confined to barracks on Midwinter's Day and then at getting called out not to celebrate but to fight. As they grimly tramped through the plaza of Palamas, Krispos reflected that he wouldn't have cared to get in their way this evening.

A few minutes later, the noise floating into the square from the rest of the city suddenly redoubled. It did not sound like happy noise. Happy was the grunt that came from Trygve's throat. 'Your soldiers, they go breaking heads.' To him, the prospect seemed blissful.

Krispos watched the stars wheel slowly across the sky. He caught himself yawning. Though he was far more likely than most Videssians to stay up well into the night—who, after all, could better afford candles than the Avtokrator?—he still went to bed early by choice. Well, tonight he had no choice.

A trooper came back to report on the fighting south of Middle Street. He didn't seem to notice his iron pot of a helmet had been knocked sideways on his head. Saluting, he confirmed the headgear's mute testimony: 'Your Majesty, them whoresons is putting up a regular battle, they is. They's been ready for it awhile, too, or I miss my guess.'

'Don't tell me they're beating the regiment,' Krispos exclaimed. You'd better not tell me that, he thought, or some of my officers won't be officers by this hour of the night tomorrow.

But the trooper shook his head. 'Oh, nothing like that. They has spunk, aye, and more stay to 'em than I'd have looked for from a mob, but they ain't got armor and they ain't got many shields. We can hurt them a lot more than they can hurt us.'

'Tell Noetos to do what he has to do to put them down,' Krispos said. 'Remind him also to make every effort to seize the priest Digenis, who I've heard is leading the rioters.'

'Aye, there's a blue-robe flouncing about, shouting all sorts of daft nonsense. I figures we'd just knock him over the head.' Krispos winced; somehow rumor seemed to spread every word but the one he wanted spread. 'But if you want him took alive, we'll try and manage that.'

'There's a reward,' Krispos said, which made the messenger hurry back toward the brawl.

Waiting was hard. Krispos would much rather have been with a fire company or the regiment of soldiers. They were actually doing something. But if he did it with them, he'd lose track of how all his forces in the city were doing, save only the one he was with. Sometimes standing back to look at the whole mosaic was better than walking right up to it and peering closely at one tile. Better, maybe, but not easier.

Without his noticing, the servitors had fetched cots from the imperial residence—or perhaps from a barracks— and set them under the awning they'd erected. Evripos dozed on one, Katakolon on another. The girl who'd come to the Amphitheater with him was gone. Krispos knew his son would sooner have been in her bed than the one he occupied, but he felt a certain amount of amused relief that Katakolon hadn't dared leave. The boy knew better than that, by the good god.

Glancing over at Evripos, Krispos was surprised at how badly he wanted to wake him and put him to work. The lad—no, Evripos had shown himself the fair beginnings of a man—could have given him another pair of eyes, another pair of hands. But Krispos let him sleep.

Even though the fires in the plaza of Palamas were long since extinguished, Krispos smelled smoke from time to time, wafted from blazes elsewhere in the city. The wind, fortunately, had died down. With luck, it would not spread flames and embers in one of those running fires that left whole quarters bare behind them; rebuilding after one like that took years.

Krispos sat down on his cot. Just for a few minutes, he told himself. He dimly remembered leaning over sideways, but didn't know he'd fallen asleep until someone yelled, 'Your Majesty! Wake up, your Majesty!'

'Wuzzat? I am awake,' Krispos said indignantly. But the gluey taste in his mouth and the glue that kept trying to stick his eyelids together gave him the lie. 'Well, I'm awake now,' he amended. 'What's toward?'

'We've nailed Digenis, your Majesty,' the messenger told him. 'Had a couple of lads hurt in the doing, but he's in our hands.'

'There's welcome news at last, by the lord with the great and good mind,' Krispos breathed. With it, he really did come all the way awake. He must have been out for two hours or so; the buildings to the southeast were silhouetted against the first gray glow of morning twilight. When he got to his feet, twinges in the small of his back and one shoulder announced how awkwardly he'd rested. That wouldn't have happened in his younger days, but it happened now.

'We're bringing the bastard—begging your pardon for speaking so of a priest, your Majesty, but he's a right bastard if ever there was one—anyhow, we're bringing him back here to the plaza,' the messenger said. 'Where will you want him after that?'

'In the freezingest icepit of Skotos' hell,' Krispos said, which jerked a startled laugh from the soldier who'd carried him the news. The Avtokrator thought fast. 'He shouldn't come here, anyway—too much chance of his getting loose. Head up Middle Street—he'll be coming that way, yes?—and tell the men to haul him to the government office building there and secure him in one of the underground gaol cells. I'll be there directly myself.'

Pausing only long enough to return the messenger's salute, Krispos shook Katakolon awake and ordered him to fetch Zaidas to the government office building. 'What? Why?' asked Katakolon, who'd slept through the messenger's arrival. His eyes went wide when his father explained.

Haloga officers booted their men back to consciousness to guard Krispos on the way down Middle Street. With his usual quiet efficiency, Barsymes—who probably had not slept at all—started spreading word of where the Avtokrator would be so any sudden urgent word could quickly reach him.

The government office building was a granite pile of no particular loveliness. It housed bureaucrats of station insufficiently exalted to labor in the palaces, records of antiquity great enough that they were not constantly consulted, and, below-ground, prisoners who rated more than a fine but less than the headsman. It looked like a fortress; in seditions past, it had served as one.

Today's riot, though, did not lap around it. Some of the Halogai deployed at the doorway in case trouble should approach. Others accompanied Krispos into the entry hall, which was quiet and, but for their torches, dark. Krispos took the stairway down.