the Makuraner field army. No one had ever come closer to meeting both of those seemingly incompatible goals.
He was missing one thing, though. Abivard wasn't sure it had a name. Steadfastness was as close as he could come, that or integrity. Neither word felt quite right. Without the quality, though, Tzikas' manifold talents brought him less than they might have otherwise.
Yeliif said the same thing a different way a few days later. «He is a Videssian,» the beautiful eunuch intoned, as if to say that alone irremediably spoiled Tzikas.
Abivard eyed Yeliif with speculation of a sort different from that which he usually gave the eunuch. In the matter of Tzikas, for once, they shared an interest. «I'd be happier if we never had to speak of him again,» Abivard said, an oblique message but not so oblique that the beautiful eunuch couldn't follow up on it if he so desired.
Yeliif also looked thoughtful. If the notion of being on the same side as Abivard pleased him, he didn't let his face know about it. After a little while he said, «Didn't you tell me Tzikas has wavered back and forth between the God and the false faith of Phos?»
«I did. He has,» Abivard answered. «In the next world he will surely fall into the Void and be forgotten. I wish he would be forgotten here and now, too.»
«I wonder,» Yeliif said in musing tones, «yes, I wonder what the Mobedhan Mobedh would say on hearing that Tzikas has wavered between the true faith and the false.»
«That is an… intriguing question,» Abivard answered after a moment's pause to weigh just how intriguing it was. «Sharbaraz has forbidden the two of us to quarrel, but if the chief servant of the God comes to him with a complaint that Tzikas is an apostate, he may have to listen.»
«So he may,» Yeliif agreed. «On the other hand, he may not. Dhegmussa is his servant in all things. But a man who will not notice his servants is less than perfectly wise.»
Not a word passed Abivard's lips. For all he knew, the beautiful eunuch was playing a game different from the one that showed on the surface of his words. He might be hoping to get Abivard to call the King of Kings a fool and then report what Abivard had said to Sharbaraz. Abivard did think the King of Kings a fool, but he himself was not so foolish as to say so where any potential foe could hear him.
But Yeliif's idea was far from the worst he'd ever heard. Maybe Dhegmussa wouldn't be able to do anything; the Mobedhan Mobedh was far more the creature of the King of Kings than the Videssians' ecumenical patriarch was the Avtokrator's creature. Apostasy, though, was nothing to take lightly. And making Tzikas sweat was nearly as good as making him suffer.
«I'll talk with Dhegmussa,» Abivard said. Something glinted in Yeliif's black, black eyes. Was it approval? Abivard hadn't seen it there often enough to be sure he recognized it.
The shrine in which Dhegmussa, chief servant of the God, performed his duties was the most splendid of its kind in all Makuran. That said, it was nowhere near so fine as several of the temples to Phos Abivard had seen in Videssian provincial towns and not worth mentioning in the same breath as the High Temple in Videssos the city. The Makuraners said, The God lives in your heart, not on the wall.
Dhegmussa lived in a small home next to the shrine, a home like that which a moderately successful shoemaker might have inhabited: whitewashed mud bricks forming an unimpressive facade but a fair amount of comfort inside.
«You honor me, marshal of Makuran,» the Mobedhan Mobedh said, leading Abivard along a dim, gloomy hall at the end of which light from the courtyard shone. When they got there, Dhegmussa waved a regretful hand. «You must imagine how it looks in spring and summer, all green and full of sweet-smelling, bright-colored flowers. This brown, dreary mess is not what it should be.»
«Of course not,» Abivard said soothingly. Dhegmussa guided him across the court to a room heated by a couple of charcoal braziers. A servant brought wine and sweet cakes. Abivard studied the Mobedhan Mobedh as they refreshed themselves. Dhegmussa was about sixty, with a closely trimmed gray beard and a loud voice that suggested he was a trifle deaf.
He waited till Abivard had eaten and drunk, then left off the polite small talk and asked, «How may I serve you, marshal of Makuran?'
«We have a problem, holy one, with a man who, while claiming to worship the God, abandoned in time of danger the faith he had professed, only to return to it when that seemed safer than the worship for which he had given it up,» Abivard answered.
«This sounds dolorous indeed,» Dhegmussa said. «A man who blows whichever way the winds of expediency take him is not one to hold a position of trust nor one who has any great hope of escaping the Void once his life on earth is done.»
«I have feared as much myself, holy one,» Abivard said, calling up a sadness he did not truly feel.
They went back and forth a while longer. The servant brought more cakes, more wine. At last the Mobedhan Mobedh put the question he had studiously avoided up till then: «Who is this man for whose spiritual well-being you so justly fear?»
«I speak of Tzikas, the Videssian renegade,» Abivard said, a reply that could not have surprised Dhegmussa in the least by then. «Can any man who dons and doffs religions as if they were caftans possibly be a reliable servant to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase?»
«It seems difficult,» Dhegmussa said, and then said no more for a time.
When he remained silent, Abivard pressed the matter: «Can a man who chooses whether to swear by the God or by false Phos by who is listening to him at any given moment be believed when he swears by either one?»
«It seems difficult,» Dhegmussa said again.
That was as far as he would go on his own. Abivard prodded him to go further: «Would you want such a man close to the King of Kings? He might corrupt him with his own heedlessness, or, on the other hand, failing to corrupt the King of Kings, he might be moved to violence against him.»
«Fraortish eldest of all, prevent it,» the Mobedhan Mobedh said, his fingers twisting in a sign to avert the evil omen. Abivard imitated the gesture. But then, to his disappointment, Dhegmussa went on: «But surely the King of Kings is aware of the risks entailed in having this Videssian close by him.»
«There are risks, holy one, and then there are risks,» Abivard said. «You do know, of course, that Tzikas once tried to murder the Videssian Avtokrator by magic.» One of the advantages of telling the truth was the casual ease with which he could bring out such horrors.
Dhegmussa suffered a coughing fit. When he could finally speak again, he said, «I had heard such a thing, yes, but discounted it as a scurrilous rumor put about by his enemies.» He looked sidelong at Abivard, who was certainly no friend to Tzikas.
«It certainly is scurrilous,» Abivard agreed cheerfully, «but rumor it is not I was the one who received him in Across after he fled in a rowboat over the strait called the Cattle Crossing after his conjuration couldn't kill Maniakes. If he'd stayed in Videssos the city another hour, Maniakes' men would have had him.» And that would have made life simpler for both the Avtokrator and me, Abivard thought. Ever since he'd rescued Sharbaraz from Nalgis Crag stronghold, though, it had become more and more obvious that his life, whatever else it might hold, would not contain much simplicity.
«You swear this to me?» Dhegmussa asked
«By the God and the Prophets Four,» Abivard declared, raising first the thumb and then the fingers of his left hand.
Still Dhegmussa hesitated. Abivard wanted to kick him to see if direct stimulation would make his wits work faster. The only reason he could conceive for Sharbaraz' having named this man Mobedhan Mobedh was the assurance of having an amiable nonentity in the position. So long as everything went well, having a nonentity in an important place held advantages, chief among them that he was not likely to be dangerous to the King of Kings. But sometimes a man who would not or could not act was more dangerous than one who could and would.
Trying to avoid action, Dhegmussa repeated, «Surely Sharbaraz is familiar with the problems the Videssian represents.»
«The problems, yes,» Abivard said. «My concern is that he has not fully thought through the religious import of all these things. That's why I came to you, holy one.» Do I have to color the picture as well as draw it?
Maybe he didn't. Dhegmussa said, «I shall suggest to the King of Kings the possible consequences of
