'To the ice with the abstract,' Krispos growled. 'What matters is that these maniacs are laying the countryside to waste and murdering anyone who doesn't happen to agree with them. Save your precious abstract for the schoolroom, son.'
'I simply started to say—' Phostis threw his hands in the air. 'Oh, what's the use? You wouldn't listen anyhow.' Muttering angrily under his breath, he marched down the corridor past Krispos.
The senior Avtokrator sighed as he watched his son's retreating back. Maybe it was better when they just mouthed platitudes at each other: then they didn't fight. But how Phostis could find anything good to say about heretics who were also bandits was beyond Krispos. Only when his heir had turned a corner and disappeared did Krispos remember that he'd interrupted the lad before he finished talking about the Thanasioi.
He sighed again. He'd have to apologize to Phostis the next time he saw him. All too likely, Phostis would take the apology the wrong way and that would start another fight. Well, if it did, it did. Krispos was willing to take the chance. By the time he thought of going down the corridor and apologizing on the spot, though, it was too late. Phostis had already left the imperial residence.
Krispos went about the business of governing with only about three-fourths of his attention for the next couple of days. Every time a messenger or a chamberlain came in, the Avtokrator forgot what he was doing in the hope the fellow would announce Zaidas' sorcery was ready. Every time he was disappointed, he went back to work in an evil temper. No miscreants were pardoned while Zaidas prepared his magic.
When at last—within the promised two days, though Krispos tried not to notice that—Zaidas was on the point of beginning, he came himself to let the Emperor know. Krispos set aside with relief the cadaster he was reading. 'Lead on, excellent sir!' he exclaimed.
One difficulty with being Avtokrator was that going anywhere automatically became complicated. Krispos could not simply walk with Zaidas over to the Sorcerers' Collegium. No, he had to be accompanied by a squad of Haloga bodyguards, which made sense, and by the dozen parasol bearers whose bright silk canopies proclaimed his office —which, to his way of thinking, didn't. Throughout his reign, he'd fought hard to do away with as much useless ceremonial as he could. He knew he was losing the fight; custom was a tougher foe than Harvas' blood-maddened barbarians had ever been.
At last, though, not too interminably much later, he stood inside Zaidas' chamber on the second story of the Sorcerers' Collegium. One big blond axeman went in there with him and the wizard; two more guarded the doorway. The rest waited outside the building with the parasol bearers.
Zaidas drew forth the parchment on which Taronites had written his accusations against the Thanasioi. He also produced another parchment, this one yellowed with age. Seeing Krispos' raised eyebrow, he explained, 'I took the liberty of visiting the archives, your Majesty, to secure a document indited personally by Harvas. My first spell will compare them against each other to determine whether a common malice informs both.'
'I see,' Krispos said, more or less truthfully. 'By all means carry on as if I were not here.'
'Oh, I shall, your Majesty, for my own safety's sake above any other reason,' Zaidas said. Krispos nodded. That he understood completely; he'd seized the crown after Anthimos, intent on destroying him by sorcery, botched an incantation and slew himself instead.
Zaidas intoned a low-voiced prayer to Phos, ending by sketching the sun-circle over his heart. Krispos imitated the gesture. The Haloga guard did not; like most of his fellows in Videssos the city, he still followed his own nation's fierce and gloomy gods.
The wizard took from a covered dish a couple of red-brown, shriveled objects. 'The dried heart and tongue of a porpoise,' he said. 'They shall confer invincible effect on my charm.' He cut strips off them with a knife, as if he were whittling soft wood, then tossed those strips into a squat bowl of bluish liquid. With each additional fragment, the blue deepened.
Stirring his mix left-handed with a silver rod, Zaidas chanted over the bowl and used his right hand to make passes above it. He frowned. 'I can feel the wickedness we face here,' he said, his voice tight and tense. 'Now to learn whether it comes from one parchment or both.'
He took the stirring rod and let a couple of drops of the mixture in the bowl fall on a corner of the letter from the archives, the one Harvas had written. The liquid flared bright red, just the color of fresh-spilled blood.
Zaidas drew back a pace. Though he was a layman, he drew the sun-circle again, even so. 'By the good god,' he murmured, now sounding shocked and shaken. 'I never imagined a response as intense as that. Green, even perhaps yellow, but—' He broke off, staring at Harvas' letter as if it were displaying its fangs.
'I take it you expect the petition from Taronites to do the same if Harvas has a hand in turning the Thanasioi loose on us,' Krispos said.
'I sincerely hope the solution does not turn crimson, your Majesty,' Zaidas said. 'That would in effect mean Harvas lurked just outside the temple wherein Taronites was writing. But the change of color will indicate the degree of relationship between Harvas and these new heretics.'
More cautiously than he had before, the wizard daubed some of the liquid onto Taronites' letter. Krispos leaned forward, waiting to see what color the stuff turned. He did not know whether it would go red, but he expected some change, and probably not a small one. By Zaidas' choice of words, so did he.
But the liquid stayed blue.
Both men stared at it; for that matter, so did the bodyguard. Krispos asked, 'How long must we wait for the change to take place?'
'Your Majesty, if it was going to occur, it would have done so by now,' Zaidas answered. Then he checked himself. 'I must always bear in mind that Harvas is a master of concealment and obfuscation. Being such, he might be able to evade this test, porpoise heart or no. But there is a cross check I do not think he can escape, try as he might.'
The wizard picked up the two parchments, touched the damp spots on them together. 'Being directly present in the one letter, Harvas' essence cannot fail to draw forth from the other any lingering trace of him.' He held the two parchments against each other long enough to let a man draw five or six breaths, then separated them.
The blue smear on Taronites' petition remained blue, not green, yellow, orange, red, or even pink. Zaidas looked astonished. Krispos was not only astonished but also profoundly suspicious. He said, 'Are you saying this means Harvas has nothing whatever to do with the Thanasioi? I find that hard to believe.'
'So do I, your Majesty,' Zaidas said. 'If you ask what I say, I say the connection between the two is all too
