he? And who knows Sharbaraz King of Kings better than Abivard?»
«Phos,» Rhegorios said again, this time most reverently. «He doesn't dare go home, does he?»
«I don't know whether I'd go that far,» Maniakes answered. «But he has to be thinking about it. We would be, if that were us over there. The Makuraners may play the game a little more politely than we do, but it's the same game. Sharbaraz will be looking for someone to blame.»
«He could blame Etzilios, your Majesty,» Kameas said. «The fault, as you pointed out, lay in the Kubrati fleet.»
«Yes, he could do that,» Maniakes agreed. «He probably even does do that, or will when the news reaches him, if it hasn't got there yet. But how much good will that do him? Even if he blames Etzilios, he can't punish him. He was lucky to get an embassy to Kubrat. He'd never get an army there.»
Rhegorios said, «Half the fun of blaming someone is punishing him for whatever he did wrong.»
Maniakes hadn't thought of it as fun. He'd worried about what was practical and what wasn't. But his freewheeling cousin had a point. When you were King of Kings of Makuran—or, for that matter, Avtokrator of the Videssians—you could, if you wanted, do exactly as you wanted. Punishing those who failed you was one of the perquisites—sometimes one of the enjoyable perquisites—of the position.
Musingly, Kameas said, «I wonder how we could best exploit whatever disaffection may exist between Sharbaraz and Abivard, or create such disaffection if none exists at present.»
Maniakes clapped the vestiarios on the back. «The Makuraners are always complaining about how devious and underhanded we Videssians are. Esteemed sir, if they heard that, it would prove their point. And do you know what else? You're exactly right. That's what we have to do.»
«Send a messenger—secret but not too secret—to Abivard,» Rhegorios said. «One of two things will happen. He may go along with us, which is what we have in mind. Or he may say no, in which case Sharbaraz will still get word he's been treating with Videssians. I don't think Sharbaraz would like that.»
«I don't, either,» Maniakes said. «I'll do it.»
The messenger sailed out of Videssos the city the next day. He went behind a shield of truce. Abivard was better about honoring such shields than most officers on either side. Maniakes had reason to expect the messenger, a certain Isokasios, would return intact, if not necessarily successful.
Return Isokasios did, by noon that day. He was tall and lean, with a close-trimmed gray beard fringing a face thin to gauntness. After prostrating himself, he said, «Your Majesty, I failed. Abivard would not see me, would not hear my words, would have nothing to do with me whatever. He did send one message to you: that, since the westlands are, in his words, rightfully Makuraner territory, any Videssian warriors caught there will be treated as spies henceforth. Fair warning, he called it.»
«Killed out of hand instead of slowly, you mean,» Maniakes said. «They work their war captives to death, a digit at a time.» He wondered if that had happened to his brother Tatoules, who had vanished in the Makuraner invasion of the westlands and not been seen since.
«I'm afraid you're right, your Majesty,» Isokasios said. «By Phos, I shall put a stop to that before it starts.» Maniakes shouted for a scribe, saying, «I'd write this myself, but I don't want whoever he has reading Videssian for him puzzling over my scrawl.» When the secretary arrived, the Avtokrator told him, «Take my words down exactly: 'Maniakes son of Maniakes to Abivard son of Godarz of Makuran: Greetings. Know that, should any Videssian soldier taken by your army within the bounds of the Videssian Empire at the time of the death of Likinios Avtokrator be slain as spies, any Makuraner soldiers captured by Videssos within those same bounds shall likewise be slain as brigands. My actions in this regard shall conform to those shown by you and your men.' « He made a slashing gesture to show he was finished. «Make a fair copy of that if the one you have there isn't, then bring it to me for my signature and seal.»
«Yes, your Majesty.» The scribe hurried away.
To Isokasios, Maniakes said, «When he comes back with that, you take it straight to Abivard. No secrecy this time. I want the Makuraners to know exactly what kind of trouble they're playing with and what we think about it.»
«Aye, your Majesty,» the messenger replied. Moments later, the scribe returned. Maniakes set down his name on the fair copy in the crimson ink reserved for the Avtokrator alone. He stamped his sunburst signet into hot wax, handed the message to Isokasios, and sent him off once more.
The messenger came back to Videssos the city at sunset with a written message from Abivard. When Maniakes broke the seal, he grunted in surprise. «It's in the Makuraner tongue. He doesn't usually do that.» He clicked his tongue between his teeth. «I wonder if this is something he couldn't trust to a Videssian-speaking scribe. If it is, it might be interesting.»
Since he did not read Makuraner himself, he summoned Philetos the healer-priest, who did. When the blue- robe arrived, Maniakes gave him the square of parchment. Philetos read through it once, his lips moving, then translated it: « 'Abivard son of Godarz, servant to Sharbaraz King of Kings of Makuran, good, pacific, beneficent —'»
«You can skip the titles,» Maniakes said dryly. «As you say, your Majesty. I resume: 'to Maniakes son of Maniakes: Greetings.' «
Before he could go on, Maniakes interrupted again: «He still won't admit I'm the legitimate Avtokrator, but at least he isn't calling me a usurper anymore.» Sharbaraz maintained a puppet who pretended to be Likinios' eldest son, Hosios. Having seen the true Hosios' head, Maniakes knew Genesios had liquidated him along with the rest of Likinios' clan. The Avtokrator added, «Come to think of it, the Makuraners don't have the false Hosios along with them. I wonder if he's still alive.»
«An interesting question, I am certain,» Philetos said, «but would you not like to hear that which you summoned me to read?» Having regained Maniakes' attention, he went on, « 'The policy you question was instituted at the command of Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase. I shall not put it into effect until after I have sent your response to the King of Kings for his judgment thereon.' «
Maniakes scowled in reluctant admiration. «I'd hoped for more,» he said at last. «All he's saying is, 'This isn't my fault, and maybe I'll be able to get it changed. Meanwhile, don't worry about it.'»
«I should have thought that was exactly what you wanted to hear, your Majesty,» Philetos said.
«No.» The Avtokrator shook his head. «This gives me nothing I can grab, nothing I can use to separate Abivard from Sharbaraz. He's obeying the King of Kings and referring the question back to him. That's not what I need. I'd rather have him tell me Sharbaraz is flat-out wrong. Then I could either use that to detach him from the King of Kings or else send it on to Sharbaraz and detach him from Abivard.»
«Ah. Now I understand more fully, your Majesty,» the healer-priest said. «But if the brute fact of Abivard's failure to capture Videssos the city will not cost him the favor of the King of Kings, why should anything smaller have that effect?»
«I'd hoped for this failure to cost him that favor,» Maniakes said, pronouncing the words with care; he wouldn't have liked to try it after a couple of cups of wine. «Since it doesn't seem to have done the job, I'm not too proud to try tossing pebbles onto the big boulder, in the hope that they'll tip the scale where it didn't. But Abivard didn't hand me any pebbles.»
«Compose yourself in patience.» Philetos sounded more like a priest than he usually did. «These things take time.»
«Yes, holy sir,» Maniakes said dutifully. On the one hand, he'd been patient throughout his entire reign—a necessity during much of it, when he was either desperately weak, beset on two fronts, or both. On the other hand, when he had seen chances to act, he'd often moved too soon, so perhaps he still needed instruction on the art of waiting.
«Will there be anything more, your Majesty?» Philetos asked.
«No. Thank you, holy sir,» Maniakes answered. The healer-priest departed, leaving Abivard's letter behind. Maniakes stared in frustration at the document he could not read unaided. He consoled himself by remembering Abivard had written it himself, in the Makuraner script, so as not to have to reveal its contents to anyone else. That was something. It was not enough.
Philetos proved a fairly frequent visitor at the imperial residence over the next few weeks. The Videssian raiders who prowled the westlands had not the numbers to take on Makuraner armies. They observed and used shipborne messages to report back to Maniakes. They were, in fact, a good deal like spies if not the veritable beasts, a point on which the Avtokrator chose not to dwell.
