they gave him every kind of signal under the sun. Fires sent columns of dense black smoke into the air by day. Fires crackled on the beach near the city by night. Kubratoi on horseback carried enormous banners of different colors back and forth. In among that welter of decoys the nomads might almost have hung out a sign—here we come, say, in letters fifty feet high—and had it pass with no special notice.
For the Videssians, in the frustrating absence of any sure knowledge of what the true signal would be, had to react to each and every one of them as if it was the real thing. Time after time, dromons would charge out into the Cattle Crossing, oars whipping the waves to foam, only to find no sign of the monoxyla they'd hoped to trap.
Inevitably, the false alarms began corroding the fleet's readiness. Maniakes had expected that to be a worse problem than it was. After a while, he realized why it wasn't so bad. He'd told Thrax he wanted the dromons ready to move at a moment's notice, no matter what. No matter what turned out to be more complicated and difficult than he'd expected. But he'd given Thrax an order, and the drungarios of the fleet was going to make sure that order got obeyed—period. Every once in a while, dogged mediocrity had its advantages.
Had Rhegorios suggested a sally now, Maniakes might have been more inclined to listen to him. The notion did not tempt him enough to order one on his own. He had more patience than his cousin—or so he kept telling himself, at any rate, though his record of moving too soon made it a dubious proposition.
The Kubratoi kept Videssos the city under blockade by land, and, away from it, their monoxyla picked off some of the merchantmen bringing supplies to the defenders. Grain did not grow scarce, but looked as if it would soon, which drove up the price in the markets.
Maniakes summoned a couple of the leading grain merchants. One of them, Boraides, was short and plump and smiled all the time. The other, Provhos, was tall and thin and doleful. Their looks and temperaments might have been different, but they thought alike.
Boraides said, «Not right to keep a man from turning an honest profit, heh heh.»
«We are in a risky business, your Majesty,» Provhos agreed. He cracked his knuckles with careful attention, one after another, his two thumbs last of all. The popping noises were startlingly loud in the small audience chamber of the imperial residence.
«I called you here to ask you to keep your prices down of your own free will,» Maniakes said, «and to ask you to ask your colleagues to do likewise.»
Boraides' eyes flicked left to Provhos, whose eyes were flicking right to him. Both men coughed at the same time. «Can't be done, your Majesty,» Provhos said.
«Wish it could, but it can't,» Boraides agreed. «Us grain sellers, we don't trust anybody. Why, I don't trust myself half the time, heh heh. I tell the other boys what you've just told me, they're liable to bump up prices on account of what you said, no better reason than that.»
«They would be well advised not to do anything so foolish, Maniakes said.
Boraides started another breezy story. Provhos held up a hand. His fingers were long and, except at the joints, thin. Maniakes wondered whether that was because he cracked his knuckles. The lean grain merchant asked, «Why is that, your Majesty?»
«Because if they try to make an unfair profit off the people during this time of trouble—which is something the two of you would never even think of doing, of course—I would decide I had no choice but to open the imperial granaries to bring prices down again.»
«You wouldn't do such a thing, your Majesty,» Boraides said. «Why, it'd cost the grain merchants' goodwill for years to come.»
Maniakes angrily exhaled through his nose. Some people's self-importance never failed to amaze him. He said, «Shall I have the soldiers take you out to the wall, distinguished sir? Do you want to go up there and see the Kubratoi and Makuraners with your own eyes? If that will convince you they're really there, I'll be happy to arrange it.»
«I know they're there, your Majesty, heh heh,» Boraides said. «It's only that—»
«If you know they're there, why don't you act like it?» Maniakes interrupted. «I don't want people going hungry while we're besieged, and I don't want people hating the men who sell them grain, either. Both those things are liable to make them fight worse than they would otherwise, and that's all I'm worried about. If the city falls, we're dead—for true, not metaphorically. Next to that, gentlemen, having the grain merchants angry at me is something I don't mind risking.»
«But—» Boraides was ready to go on arguing.
Provhos seemed to have a better grip on reality. «It's no good, Bor,» he said sadly. «He can do more things to us than we can do to him, and that's all there is to it.» He bowed to Maniakes. «We'll keep prices down as low as we can, your Majesty. If you open the imperial granaries, you can always knock them down lower. That's what being Avtokrator is all about.»
«That's right,» Maniakes said. «I'm glad one of you has the wit to realize it, anyhow.»
«Bah,» Boraides said. «If we put enough people on the streets—»
«A lot of them will end up dead,» Maniakes promised. «So will you. You may perhaps have noticed that we have an army's worth of soldiers in the city. If merchants protest now because they can't gouge, they will be sorry, as I said earlier. How long do you think they'll be able to go before soldiers start looting the shops of merchants who've been… troublesome, especially if they didn't think anyone would punish them afterward?»
Boraides still didn't seem ready to keep his mouth shut. Provhos hissed at him. They put their heads together. Maniakes let them mutter for as long as they liked. When they finished, he had trouble deciding which of them looked less happy. Provhos' long face had probably seemed mournful on the most joyous day of his life, and he wasn't joyous now. Boraides usually looked jolly even when he wasn't. He didn't look jolly at the moment.
«You're doing a terrible thing to us, your Majesty, keeping us from earning an honest return on our work,» he said. «You can make us do it—Provhos is right about that—but you can't make us like it.»
«I've never said you can't make your usual profit. I've said you can't gouge,» Maniakes answered. «Think back. Pay attention to my words. I don't like the idea of food riots. I have enough trouble and to spare outside the city. If I can stop trouble inside the city before it starts, you'd best believe I'm going to do that.»
Both grain merchants shook their heads. He'd overawed them. He hadn't convinced them. He was willing to settle for that. He was not the lord with the great and good mind, to reach inside a man's head and change the way he thought. If he could make his subjects act as he wished them to act, he'd be content.
He scowled. Up till now, he hadn't had much luck making the Makuraners and Kubratoi act as he wished them to act.
Provhos and Boraides took his frown as dismissal. He hadn't intended it that way, but it would do. As they rose, Kameas appeared in the doorway to escort them out of the imperial residence.
«How do you do that?» Maniakes asked when the vestiarios returned to see if he needed anything else.
«How do I do what, your Majesty?» Kameas asked in return.
«Know exactly when to show up,» the Avtokrator said. «I've never caught you snooping, and neither has anyone else, but you're always in the right place at the right time. How do you manage?»
«I have a good notion of how long any particular individual is likely to require your attention,» the eunuch said, which was not really an answer.
«If your sense of timing is as good as that, esteemed sir, maybe you belong on the battlefield, not in the palace quarter.»
Maniakes hadn't meant it seriously, but Kameas sounded serious as he replied, «A couple of chamberlains with my disability have served their sovereigns as soldiers, your Majesty. I am given to understand that they did not disgrace themselves, perhaps for the very reason you cited.»
«I didn't know that,» Maniakes said, bemused. Eunuch generals would have to gain respect from their men by different means from entire men, that was certain. It wouldn't be easy, either; he could see as much. «I must say I admire them.»
«Oh, so do we, your Majesty,» Kameas replied. «Their memory is yet green within the palaces.» Maniakes pictured old chamberlains telling young ones of the great deeds of their warlike predecessors, and then those young eunuchs growing old in turn and passing on the tales to those who came after them. Then Kameas rather spoiled his vision by adding, «And several historians and chroniclers also note their martial accomplishments.»
«Do they?» Maniakes' reading, aside from endless parchments from the bureaucrats and soldiers who
