Krispos the Emperor

The fellow in the caftan came out of Strabon's house a couple of minutes later. He did not look happy, and was muttering under his breath. Not all the muttering sounded like Videssian; Phostis wondered if he was from nearby Vaspurakan. Of what was in the imperial language, Phostis caught only one phrase: 'Old bastard's not ripe yet.' The wizard stalked away.

'Not ripe yet?' Phostis said after he'd rounded a corner. 'Not ripe for what?'

'I don't know,' Syagrios said. 'Me, I don't mess with mages or their business and I don't want them messin' with me.'

That was a sensible attitude for anyone, and especially, Phostis thought, for somebody like Syagrios, who was likely to be 'messed with' by mages when said mages were on the track of objects mysteriously vanished. Phostis smiled at his automatic contempt for the bruiser who'd become his keeper. Syagrios saw the smile and gave him a hard, suspicious stare. He did his best to look innocent, which was rendered more difficult because he was guilty.

Syagrios changed the subject. 'How's about we go find some food? Standin' on my pins all mornin', me, I could hack steaks off a donkey and eat 'em raw.'

'Get out of here, you beast! Out of my sight!' Olyvria snarled, her voice breaking with fury. 'Out! Away! How dare you—how could you be so dense, so blockheaded—as to talk about food after we've just seen the pious Strabon dedicating himself to escaping the world and advancing along the gleaming path? Get out!'

'No,' Syagrios said. 'Your father told me to keep an eye on this one—' He pointed at Phostis. '—and that there's just what I aim to do.'

Up till then, that stolid remark had been proof against anything Olyvria would throw at it. Indeed, Olyvria had not tried to contest it. Now, though, she said, 'Where will he go? Do you think he'll kidnap me?'

'I don't know and I don't care,' Syagrios answered. 'I just know what I got told to do.'

'Well, I tell you to go away. I can't abide the sight or sound of you after what you just said,' Olyvria said. When he shook his head, she added, 'If you don't, I'll tell my father what you said just now. Do you want to undergo the penance you'd receive for mocking the holy faith?'

'I didn't,' Syagrios said, but he seemed suddenly doubtful. Whether he had or he hadn't, Livanios was apt to believe Olyvria rather than him. It was most unfair. All at once, Phostis understood why he himself had not had many friends as a boy. If he ran to tell his father about a quarrel, his father was the Avtokrator. If the Avtokrator—or Livanios now—ruled against you, to whom could you appeal?

Bitterness gusted through Phostis. The Avtokrator, in those lost boyhood days, was only too likely to rule against him, not for. His father had never truly warmed to him; from time to time he wondered what he'd done wrong, to make Krispos find fault with everything about him. He doubted he'd ever find out.

Olyvria said to Syagrios, 'Go on, I tell you. I'll be responsible for seeing Phostis doesn't run out of Etchmiadzin. And I tell you this, too: if you say me nay once more, you'll be sorry for it.'

'All right, then, my lady.' The ruffian turned what should have been a title of respect into one of reproach. 'On you the blame, and almost I hope you end up wearing it.' Syagrios strode off with the straight, proud back of a man who's had the last word.

Watching him go, Phostis felt a burden lift from his spirit, as if the sun had come out to brighten a gloomy day. He also had to stifle a burst of laughter. In spite of having just come out of starving Strabon's house, he was hungry.

Since unlike Strabon he was not about to waste away and die of hunger, he kept that to himself. He didn't want Olyvria rounding on him as she had on Syagrios. If anything was more likely to bring back the watchdog, he couldn't imagine what it might be.

Olyvria was looking at him with a quizzical expression. He realized she was left as much at a loss by Syagrios' departure as was he. 'What shall we do now?' she asked, perhaps hoping he could think of something.

Unfortunately, he couldn't. 'I don't know,' he answered. 'I really haven't seen enough of Etchmiadzin to know what you can do around here.' Not much before the Thanasioi took over the town, and less now, he guessed.

'Let's just amble about, then, and see where our feet take us,' she said.

'That's all right with me.' Short of a trip to the torturer, anything Olyvria suggested would have been all right with Phostis. He looked for grass to sprout in the streets, flowers to burst into bloom, and birds to start singing in winter, all because she'd managed to outbluff Syagrios.

Their feet led them to a street of dyers. That the men there followed the gleaming path didn't keep their shops from smelling of stale piss, just like the establishments of perfectly orthodox dyers back in Videssos the city. In the same way, Thanasiot carpenters had hands crisscrossed with scars and Thanasiot bakers faces permanently reddened from peering into hot ovens.

'It all seems so—ordinary,' Phostis said after a while. Dull was the other word that came to mind, but he suppressed it. 'For most folk, it's as if being a Thanasiot doesn't change much in their lives.'

That bothered him. To his way of thinking, heresy and orthodoxy—whichever was which in this dispute—should have been easy to tell apart at a glance. But, on further reflection, he wondered why. Unless they chose Strabon's path out of the world, the Thanasioi had to make their way in it, and only so many ways of doing that were possible. The dyeshops probably stank of urine in Mashiz, too; carpenters would sometimes gouge themselves with chisels; and bakers would need to make sure their loaves didn't burn.

Olyvria said, 'The difference is the gleaming path, it's standing aside from the world as well as one can, not thinking riches the only end in life, seeking to satisfy the spirit rather than the baser impulses of the body.'

'I suppose so,' Phostis said. They walked a little farther while he ruminated on that. Then he said, 'May I ask you something? For all the ribbons on my cage, I know I'm pretty much a prisoner here, so I don't mean to make you angry, but there is something I'd like to learn, if giving the answer doesn't offend you.'

Olyvria turned toward him. Her eyes were wide with curiosity, her mouth slightly open. She looked very young, and very lovely. 'Ask,' she said at once. 'You're here to learn about the gleaming path, after all. How will you learn if you don't ask?'