'All right, I will.' Phostis thought for a little while; the question he had in mind needed to be framed carefully. At last he said, 'In the room in the tunnel under Digenis' temple, what you said there—'
'Aha!' Olyvria stuck out her tongue at him. 'I thought it would be something about that, just from the way you went all around it like a man feeling for a goldpiece in the middle of a nettle patch.'
Phostis felt his face heat. By the way Olyvria giggled, his embarrassment was also plain to the eye. Even so, he stubbornly plowed ahead; in some ways—though he would have hotly denied it—he was very much like Krispos. 'What you said under there, when you tried to lure me to you, about the pleasure of love being sweet, and no sin?'
'What about it?' Olyvria lost some—though not all—of her mischievous air as she saw how serious he was.
What he really wanted to ask was how she knew—or, even more to the point, what she would have done had he lain down on the bed beside her and taken her in his arms. But he did not think he was in a position where he could safely put either of those questions. So instead he said, 'If you hold to Thanasios' gleaming path as strongly as you say, how could you make such a claim? Doesn't it go straight against everything you profess to believe?'
'I could answer that any number of ways,' Olyvria said. 'I could tell you, for instance, that it was none of your business.'
'So you could, and I would beg your pardon,' he said. 'I said from the start that I didn't want to offend you.'
Olyvria went on as if he had not spoken: 'Or I could say I was doing as Digenis and my father bade me do, and trusted them to judge the rights and wrongs of it.' Her eyes twinkled again. He knew she was toying with him, but what could he do about it?
'Or,' she went on, maddeningly disingenuous, 'I could say Thanasios countenanced dissimulation when it serves spreading the truth, and that you have no idea what my true feelings on the subject are.'
'I know I don't. That's what I was trying to find out, your true feelings on the subject.' Phostis felt like an old, spavined plowhorse trying to trap a dragonfly without benefit of net. He tramped on, straight ahead, while Olyvria flitted, evaded, and occasionally flew so close to the end of his nose that his eyes crossed when he tried to see her clearly.
'Those are just some examples of what I might say,' she noted, ticking them off on her fingertips. 'If you'd like others, I might also say—'
As if the old plowhorse suddenly snorted and startled the beautiful, glittering insect, he broke in, 'What
'I'd say—' But then Olyvria shook her head and looked away from him. 'No, I wouldn't say anything at all, Phostis. Better if I don't.'
He wanted to shake truth from her, but she was not a salt cellar. 'Why?' he howled, months of frustration boiled into a single despairing word.
'Just—better if I don't.' Olyvria still held her head averted. In a small voice, she added, 'I think we ought to go back to the fortress now.'
Phostis didn't think that, nor anything like it, but walked with her all the same. In the inner ward stood Syagrios, talking with someone almost as disreputable-looking as he was. The ruffian left his—partner in crime?— ambled over, and attached himself to Phostis like a shadow returning from a brief holiday. In an unsettling sort of way, Phostis was almost glad to have him back. He'd certainly made a hash of his first little while in Etchmiadzin on his own.
Digenis' robe had fallen open, displaying ribs like ladder rungs. His thighs were thinner than his knees. Even his ears seemed to be wasting away. But his eyes still blazed defiance. 'To the ice with you, your false Majesty,' he growled when Krispos came into his cell. 'Your way would have sent me beyond the sun quicker, but I gain, I gain.'
To Krispos, the firebrand priest looked more as if he lost. Lean to begin with, now he looked like a peasant in a village after three years of blighted crops. But for those eerily compelling eyes, he might have been a skeleton that refused to turn back into a man.
'By the good god,' Krispos muttered when that thought struck him, 'now I understand the mime troupe.'
'Which one, your Majesty?' asked Zaidas, who still labored fruitlessly to extract truth from the dwindling Digenis.
'The one with the fellow in the suit of bones,' Krispos answered. 'He was supposed to be a Thanasiot starving himself to death, that's what he was. Now, were the mimes heretics, too, or just mocking their beliefs?' Something else occurred to Him. 'And isn't it a fine note when mimes know more about what's going on with the faith than my own ecumenical patriarch?'
Digenis' mocking laugh flayed his ears. 'Of Oxeites' ignorance no possible doubt can exist.'
'Oh, shut up,' Krispos said, though down deep he knew tractability was one of the qualities that had gained Oxeites the blue boots.
Krispos sat down on a three-legged stool to see if Zaidas would have any better luck today. His chief wizard swore his presence inhibited nothing. Zaidas at least had courage, to be willing to labor on in the presence of his Avtokrator. What he did not have, unfortunately, was success.
He was trying something new today, Krispos saw, or maybe something so old he hoped its time had come round again. At any rate, the implements he took from his carpetbag were unfamiliar. But before the Emperor saw them in action, a panting messenger from the palaces poked his head into Digenis' cell.
'What's happened?' Krispos asked suspiciously; his orders were that he be left undisturbed in his visits here save for only the most important news ... and the most important news was all too often bad.
'May it please your Majesty,' the messenger began, and then paused to pant some more. While he caught his breath, Krispos worried. That opening, lately, had given him good cause to worry. But the fellow surprised him, saying, 'May it please your Majesty, the eminent Iakovitzes has returned to Videssos the city from his embassy to Makuran and awaits your pleasure at the imperial residence.'
