Krispos the Emperor

face.'

'My good god?' Tzepeas said indignantly. 'He is the good god, the lord with the great and good mind. He—' The zealot's voice, which had risen again, suddenly broke off. Phostis heard a couple of very faint thumps, as if a man with no muscles left was trying to struggle against someone far stronger than he.

The thumps soon ceased. Artapan began a soft chant, partly in the Makuraner tongue—which Phostis did not understand— and partly in Videssian. Phostis knew he was missing some of what the mage said, but what he heard was quite enough: unless he'd gone completely mad, he could only conclude Artapan was using Tzepeas' death energy to further his own sorceries.

Phostis' stomach lurched harder than it ever had while sailing on the Videssian Sea. He sickly wondered how many starving Thanasioi hadn't finished the course they set out to travel, but were instead shoved from it by the Makuraner wizard for his own purposes. The one was bad enough; the other struck Phostis as altogether abominable. And who would ever know?

Artapan came out of the house. Phostis flattened himself against the wall. The wizard walked on by. He wasn't quite rubbing his hands with glee, but he gave that impression. Again, he had no time to look around for details as small as Phostis.

Phostis waited until he was sure Artapan was gone, then cautiously emerged from the alley. 'What do I do now?' he said out loud. His first thought was to run to Livanios with the story as fast as his legs would carry him. A version of the tale he'd tell formed in his mind: After I'd had your daughter, I found out your pet wizard was going around killing devout Thanasioi before they could die on their own. He shook his head. Like a lot of first thoughts, that one needed some work.

All right, suppose he managed not to mention Olyvria and also managed to convince Livanios he was telling the truth about Artapan. What then? How much good would that do him? If Livanios didn't know what the mage was up to, maybe quite a lot. But what if he did?

In that case, the only thing Phostis saw in his own future was a lot more trouble—something he'd not imagined possible when he woke up after Olyvria drugged him. And he could not tell whether Livanios knew or not.

It came down to the question he'd been asking himself ever since he learned Artapan's name: was Livanios the wizard's puppet, or the other way round? He didn't know the answer to that, either, or how to find out.

From Olyvria, he thought. But even she might well not know for certain. She'd know what her father thought, but that might not be what was so. Videssian history was littered with men who'd thought themselves in charge—until the worlds they'd made crashed down around them. Anthimos had been sure he held a firm grip on the Empire—until Krispos took it away from him.

And so, when Phostis got back to the fortress, he did not go looking for Livanios. Instead, he headed over to the corner where, as usual, several men gathered around a couple of players hunched over the game board.

The soldiers moved away from him, wrinkling their noses. One of them said. 'You may have been born a toff, friend, but you smell like you've been wading in shit.'

Phostis remembered the stinking alleyway where he'd stood. He should have done a better job of cleaning his shoes after he came out. Then he thought of what Artapan had done in the house by the alleyway. How was he supposed to clean that from his memory?

He looked at the soldier. 'Maybe I have,' he said.

IX

Wall, roofs, streets, new leaves—all glistened with rain under the bright sun. It made them seem to Krispos brighter and more vivid than they really were, as if the shower—or perhaps the season—had washed the whole world clean.

The clouds that had dropped the rain on Videssos the city were now just small, gray, fluffy lumps diminishing toward the east. The rest of the sky was the glorious blue the enamel makers kept trying—and failing—to match with glass paste.

With the wary eye of one who has had to watch the weather for the sake of his crops, Krispos looked not east at the receding rain clouds but west, whence new weather would come. He tasted the breeze between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. That it came straight off the sea gave it a salt tang he'd not had to worry about in his peasant days, but he'd learned to allow for that. He sucked in another breath, tasting that one, too.

When at last he spat it out, he'd made up his mind. 'Spring is really here,' he declared.

'Your Majesty has in the past been remarkably accurate with such predictions,' Barsymes said, as close as he ever came to alluding to Krispos' decidedly unimperial birth.

'It matters more this year than most,' Krispos said, 'for as soon as I can be sure—or at least can expect—the roads will stay dry, I have to move against the Thanasioi. The less chance they have of getting loose and raiding, the better off the west-lands and the whole Empire will be.'

'The city has stayed quiet since Midwinter's Day, for which Phos be praised.'

'Aye.' Whenever Krispos prayed, he made a point of reminding the good god how grateful he was for that. He still did not completely trust the calm that had prevailed through winter and now up to the borderland of spring: he kept wondering whether he was walking on a thin crust of ice over freezing water—the images from Skotos' hell seemed particularly fitting. If the crust ever broke, he might be dragged down to doom. But so far it had held.

'I believe your Majesty handled the matter of the priest Digenis with as much discretion as was practicable,' the vestiarios said.

'Just letting him go out like a guttering taper, you mean? All he wanted to do was raise a ruction. Smothering his end in silence is the best revenge on him; if Phos is kind, the chroniclers will forget his name as the people have—so far— forgotten to rally to the cause he preached.'

Barsymes looked at him out of the corners of his eyes that had seen so much. 'And when you fare forth on campaign, your Majesty, will you then leave Videssos the city ungarrisoned?'

'Oh, of course,' Krispos answered, and laughed to make sure his vestiarios knew he was not in earnest. 'Wouldn't that be lovely, beating the Thanasioi in the field and coming back to find my capital closed against me? It won't happen, not if I can find any way around it.'

'Whom shall you name to command the city garrison?' Barsymes asked.