Krispos the Emperor

for sloppy formations.

Phostis cheered when everyone else did. Standing there silent and glum would have got him noticed, and not in a way he wanted. He was trying to cultivate invisibility, the way a farmer cultivated radishes. He wished Livanios would forget he existed.

The heresiarch was in full spate: 'The leeches who live in Videssos the city think they can suck our life's blood forever. We'll show them they're wrong, by the good god, and if the gleaming path leads through the smoking ruins of the palaces built from poor men's blood, why then, it does.'

More cheers. Phostis didn't feel quite such a hypocrite in joining these: the ostentatious wealth the capital held was what had made him flirt with the doctrines of the Thanasioi in the first place. But Livanios' speech was a harangue and nothing more. If any Avtokrator of recent generations was sensitive to the peasant's plight, it was Krispos. Phostis was sick of hearing how his father had been taxed off his land, but he knew the experience made Krispos want not to visit it on anyone else.

'We'll hang up the fat ecclesiastics by their thumbs, too,' Livanios shouted. 'Whatever gold the Emperors don't get, the clerics do. Has Phos the need for fancy houses?'

'No!' the men roared back, and Phostis with them. In spite of everything, he still had some sympathy for what Thanasios had preached. He wondered if Livanios could truly say the same. And he wondered still more just how much hold Artapan had on the rebel leader. He was no closer to knowing that for certain than he had been on the day when he and Olyvria first became lovers.

Whenever she crossed his mind, his blood ran hotter. Digenis would have scolded him, or more likely given up on him as an incorrigible sinner and sensualist. He didn't care. He wanted her more with every passing day—and he knew she also wanted him.

They'd managed to join twice more since that first time: once late at night up in his little cell while the guard snored down the hall and once in a quiet corridor carved into the stone beneath the keep. Both couplings were almost as hurried and frantic as the first had been; neither was what Phostis had in mind when he thought of making love. But they inflamed him and Olyvria for more.

Was what he felt the love of which the romancers sang? He knew little firsthand of love; around the palaces, seduction and hedonism were more often on display. His own father and mother seemed to have got on well, but he'd still been a boy when Dara died. Zaidas and Aulissa were called a love match, but the wizard—aside from being Krispos' crony, which of itself made him suspect—had to be close to forty: could an old man really be in love?

Phostis couldn't tell if he was in love himself. All he knew was that he missed Olyvria desperately, that when they were apart every moment dragged as if it were an hour, that every stolen hour together somehow flashed by like a moment

Lost in his own thoughts, he missed Livanios' last few sentences. They brought loud cheers from the assembled soldiers. Phostis cheered, too, as he had all through the heresiarch's speech.

Then one of the fighters who knew who he was turned round and slapped him on the back. 'So you're going to fight with us for the gleaming path, are you, friend?' the fellow boomed. His grin had almost as many gaps as Syagrios'.

'I'm going to what?' Phostis said foolishly. It wasn't that he didn't believe his ears: more that he didn't want to.

'Sure—like Livanios said just now.' The soldier wrinkled his brow, trying to recall his chief's exact words. 'Take up the blade against maternalism—something like that, anyways.'

'Materialism,' Phostis corrected before he wondered why he bothered.

'Yeah, that's it,' the soldier said happily. 'Thank you, friend. By the good god, I'm right glad the Emperor's son's taken up with righteousness.'

Moving as if in a daze, Phostis made his way toward the citadel. Fighters who recognized him kept coming up and congratulating him on taking up arms for the Thanasiot cause. By the time he got inside, he was sore and bruised, while his wits had taken a worse pummeling than his back.

Livanios was using his name to raise the spirits of the Thanasiot warriors: so much was clear. But life in the palace, while it left Phostis ignorant of love, made him look beneath the surface of machinations with as little effort as he used to breathe.

Not only would his name spur on the followers of the gleaming path, it would also dismay those who clove to his father. And if he fought alongside the Thanasioi, he might never be reconciled with Krispos.

Further, Livanios might arrange a hero's death for him. That would embarrass the Avtokrator as much as having him alive and fighting, and would hurt Krispos a good deal more. And it would serve Livanios' ends very well indeed.

Syagrios found Phostis. Phostis might have guessed the ruffian would come looking for him. From the nasty grin on Syagrios' face, he'd known about Livanios' scheme before the heresiarch announced it to his men. In fact, Phostis thought with the taut nerves of a man who genuinely has been persecuted, Syagrios might well have come up with it himself.

'So you're going to be a man before your mother, are you, stripling?' he said, making cut-and-thrust motions right in front of Phostis' face. 'Go out there and make the gleaming path proud of you, boy.'

'I'll do what I can.' Phostis was aware of the ambiguity, but let it lay. He did not want to hear Syagrios speak of his mother. He wanted to smash the ruffian for presuming to speak of her. Only a well-founded apprehension that Syagrios would smash him instead kept him from trying it

That was yet another thing the romances didn't talk about. Their heroes always beat the villains just because they were heroes. No writer of romances, Phostis was certain, had ever met Syagrios. For that matter, both sides here thought they were heroes and their foes villains. I swear by the good god I'll never read another romance again as long as I live, Phostis thought.

Syagrios said, 'I don't know what you know about weapons, but whatever it is, you better practice it. Whoever you fight ain't gonna care that you're the Avtokrator's brat.'

'I suppose not,' Phostis said in a hollow voice that set Syagrios laughing anew. He'd actually had some training; his father had thought he'd find it useful. He didn't mention it. The more hopeless a dub everyone took him for, the less attention people would pay him.