Krispos the Emperor

one?'

He pulled out the three bright gold coins from his pouch and held them in the palm of his hand so they sparkled into the fisherman's face. The fellow stared as if he could not believe his eyes. He set down one of his buckets of fish. 'Young man,' he said slowly, 'if you mock me, I shall thrash you, grizzled though I am. By the lord with the great and good mind I swear it.'

'I don't mock,' Phostis answered. 'Have you hammocks aboard there, and your lines and nets?'

'Only one hammock—I fish alone,' the fisherman answered, 'but there are blankets so the other of you can bed down on deck. And aye, the rest of the tackle is there. See for yourself before you buy—I would not have you say I cheated you, though you must know you are cheating yourself. There's fresh water from yesterday in the tuns, too. You can sail a good ways without coming in to land, if that's what you aim to do.'

'Never mind what I aim to do.' The less Phostis told the fisherman, the better. He walked along the dock and peered into the boat. The nets lay neatly coiled at the bow; lines with hooks on them were wrapped between pegs on one side of the tiny cabin behind the mast. A pair of long sweeps lay on the deck. He nodded to himself and gave the fisherman the goldpieces. 'You keep it shipshape.'

'And if I don't, who'll do it for me?' the man answered.

Phostis handed Olyvria down into the boat, then got in himself and put the sweeps in the oarlocks. 'Would you cast off the line?' he called to the fisherman.

The fellow was still staring at the gold coins. He started slightly before he obeyed. Grunting with effort, Phostis worked the sweeps. The fishing boat slowly backed away from the pier. Its former owned seemed glad to have seen the last of it. He picked up his buckets and walked into town without a backward glance.

When Phostis had put enough distance between himself and the dock, he let down the sail from its yard. It was, like most Videssian sails, a simple square rig, not much good for sailing against the wind but fine with it. The wind blew out of the west. Phostis wanted to sail east. As long as the wind held, he'd have no problems.

He turned to Olyvria. 'Do you know anything about fishing?'

'No, not much, not boats, either,' she answered. 'Do you?'

'Enough,' he said. 'I can manage the boat as long as the weather doesn't get too rough. And I can fish, too, even if the gear here isn't exactly what I'm used to. I learned from my father.' It was, he thought, the first time he'd ever simply acknowledged that Krispos had taught him something worth knowing.

'Good for him and good for you.' Olyvria watched the harbor of Pityos recede off to the starboard side of the stern. 'That means we won't starve right away?'

'I hope so,' Phostis said, 'though you never can tell with fish. If we have to put in to shore to feed ourselves, I still have some of Syagrios' money left.' He slapped the pouch that hung from his belt.

Olyvria nodded. 'That sounds fine to me. What do you plan to do? Sail along the coast until you find where the imperial fleet really is?'

'As a matter of fact, I'd intended to sail straight to Videssos the city. I can find out more about what's going on there than anywhere else, and then head straight out to the main body of the army. My father will be there, and I ought to join him. If I hadn't intended to do that, what point to leaving the Thanasioi?'

'None, I suppose.' Olyvria looked back at Pityos again. Already it seemed a toy town, the buildings shrunk to the size of those a woodcarver might shape for his children to play with. Quietly, without looking back to him, she asked, 'And what do you intend to do about me?'

'Why—' Phostis shut his mouth with a snap. The question was too pointed to answer before he considered it. After a moment, he went on, 'I hadn't thought so far ahead yet. The most that had occurred to me was that for the next few days we'd finally be able to make love without worry about someone catching us while we were at it.'

She smiled, but her eyes were still on Pityos. 'Yes, we'll be able to do that, if it's what you want. But what about afterwards? What happens when you go to the palaces in Videssos the city? What then, young Majesty?'

At Etchmiadzin, no one had called him that except in mockery or the false courtesy that was worse. Now Olyvria reminded him of everything to which he'd be returning: the eunuchs, the ceremonial, the rank. He also remembered, as he had not lately, that she'd kidnapped and humiliated him. She, plainly, had never forgotten. The question she'd asked him was pointed indeed.

Where she looked back across the water toward everything she was leaving, he looked out past the fishing boat's bow at what lay ahead. Slowly he said, 'You stole me out of the camp, true. But if it hadn't been for you just now, I wouldn't have got free of Pityos, either. As far as I can reckon us, that puts us at quits there—but still leaves everything else between us.'

'Which means?' Olyvria still sounded—apprehensive was the word, Phostis decided after a little thought. And no wonder. Until the fishing boat headed out onto the Videssian Sea, she'd been the dominant one, and set the terms of their dealings with each other. She'd kidnapped him, at Etchmiadzin she'd had the power of her father and the Thanasioi behind her ... but now she'd committed herself to sailing into what literally was, or would be, his dominion. If he wanted vengeance, it was his for the taking.

'If you like,' he said, 'I'll put in to shore at any deserted beach you like and let you off there. I swear by the lord with the great and good mind I'll do everything in my power to keep my father from ever coming after you. Or —'

'Or what?' She fairly snapped at him. Yes, she was nervous about how things had changed.

He took a deep breath. 'Or you can stay with me till we get to Videssos the city, and for as long as you care to after that. For the rest of our lives, I hope.'

She studied him, wondering, no doubt, if this was but one more trap to make eventual revenge sweeter. 'You mean it,' she said at last, and then, 'Of course I will,' and then, 'But what will your father say?'

'He'll probably have kittens,' Phostis said cheerfully. 'So what? I'm of a man's years, so he can't make me put you aside. And besides, people don't always remember these days—it's been a long time, after all—but my mother was Anthimos' Empress before she was my father's. Since I was born less than a year after my father took the throne, you can see his ways there weren't perfectly regular, either.'

Phostis listened to that sentence again in his mind. As a matter of fact, he'd been born quite a bit less than a