what I can to help you pay for your work, but it won't be much and it may not be soon.»
«We're taking care of it, your Majesty,» Phorkos said. «One way or another, we'll manage.»
«I wonder if you could go down to Amorion and talk with Domnos the priest for a while,» Maniakes murmured. Phorkos' blank look said he didn't know what the Avtokrator was talking about. That, Maniakes decided, was probably as well: if Phorkos did talk with Domnos, the priest was liable to persuade him he deserved an enormous subsidy.
That Phorkos and his fellow townsfolk were undertaking this labor on their own, that they'd presented Maniakes with what they were doing rather than asking permission of him to do it, said they'd got used to being out from under the stifling weight of Videssian bureaucracy, one of the first good things the Avtokrator had found to say about the Makuraner invasion. He didn't think he'd come up with many more.
From Aptos, the army continued northwest for another couple of days to the town of Vryetion. Vryetion, already having a wall, was what Aptos aspired to be. Having a wall, however, had not kept it from falling to the Makuraners. Maybe it had made seizing the place more difficult, and cost the boiler boys more wounded and dead. Maniakes hoped so.
He lodged in what had been the epoptes' residence, a house a medium-sized linen dealer in Videssos the city would have rejected as inadequate. The Makuraner garrison commander had made his home there during the occupation, and left several graffiti expressing his opinion of the place. So Maniakes guessed, at any rate, though he didn't read the Makuraner language. But the scribbled drawings accompanying a couple of the inscriptions were anything but complimentary.
Like it or not, though, that garrison commander had been forced to make the best of it. So did Maniakes, who spent a day hearing petitions from the locals, as he'd done in other towns through which he passed.
Those were, for the most part, straightforward. As had happened in other towns farther east, few collaborators were left; however many there had been, they'd fled with the Makuraner garrison. The officer who'd led that garrison seemed to have done a more conscientious job than many of his peers, and the folk of Vryetion tried to get the Avtokrator to overturn only a couple of his rulings.
'To the ice with me if I know whether I like that or not,» Maniakes said behind his hand to Rhegorios. «He didn't torment them, and most of them were as happy with him in charge as with one of their own.»
«He's gone now,» Rhegorios answered, to which Maniakes nodded.
A woman a few years younger than the Avtokrator came before him along with her son, who was a little older than the eldest of his own children. She and the boy both prostrated themselves, a bit more smoothly than any of the other locals had done.
«Rise,» Maniakes said. «Tell me your name, and how I may help you.»
«My name is Zenonis,» the woman said. She looked from Maniakes to Rhegorios and back again. She would have been attractive—she might even have been beautiful—had she not been so worn. «Forgive me, your Majesty, but why is my husband not with you?» «Your husband?» Maniakes frowned.
«Who is your husband?» Zenonis' eyebrows flew upward. He'd either astonished or insulted her, maybe both. Probably both, from her expression. «Who is my husband, your Majesty? My husband is Parsmanios—your brother. And this—» She pointed to the boy. «—this is your nephew Maniakes.»
Beside the Avtokrator, Rhegorios softly said, «Phos.» Maniakes felt like making the sun-sign himself. He didn't, schooling himself to stillness. Parsmanios had mentioned that he'd married in Vryetion, and mentioned his wife's name as well. But Parsmanios had not been anyplace where he could speak to Maniakes for four years and more, and the Avtokrator had spent all that time trying to forget the things his younger brother had told him. He'd succeeded better than he'd guessed.
«Why is Parsmanios not here with you?» Zenonis asked again. She probably had some Vaspurakaner blood in her—not surprising, this close to the princes' land—for she was almost as swarthy as Maniakes and Rhegorios. Beneath that swarthiness, she went pale. «Is my husband dead, your Majesty? If he is, do not hide it from me. Tell me the truth at once.» Her son, who looked quite a bit like Likarios, started to cry.
«By the good god, lady, I swear Parsmanios is not dead,» Maniakes said. He got reports from Prista, on the peninsula depending from the northern shore of the Videssian Sea, several times a year. When last he'd heard, at any rate, his brother had been well.
Zenonis' smile was as bright as her frown had been dark. «Phos be praised!» she said, sketching the sun- circle and then hugging little Maniakes. «I know how it must be: you have left him back in the famous city, in Videssos the city, to rule it for you while you take the westlands back from the wicked Makuraners.»
Rhegorios started to have a terrible coughing fit. Maniakes kicked him in the ankle. The woman before him was plainly no fool and would realize how badly she was mistaken. Maniakes wanted to give her that news as gently as he could; what her husband had done was not her fault. The Avtokrator would not lie to her, though: «No, he is not back in Videssos the city. My father—his father—has the authority there while I am in the westlands.»
Zenonis' frown returned, though it was not so dark as it had been a moment before. «I do not understand,» she said.
«I know you don't,» Maniakes told her. «The explanation will take a while: no help for that. Come here at sunset for supper with me and Lysia, my wife, and with Rhegorios here—my cousin, the Sevastos.»
«Both of you have something of the look of Parsmanios,» Zenonis said. «Or maybe he has your look, I don't know.» Her frown got deeper. «But if your cousin is Sevastos, what rank does Parsmanios hold?»
Exile, Maniakes thought. Aloud, he replied, «As I said, the explanation isn't quick or simple. Let me handle the matters here that are simple. At supper, I promise I'll tell you everything you need to know. Is that all right?»
«You are the Avtokrator. You have the right to command,» Zenonis said with considerable dignity. «As you say, so shall it be.» She led her son away. The next petitioner stepped forward.
Before dealing with the fellow, Maniakes sent Rhegorios a stricken glance. «I'd forgotten all about this,» he said. «It won't be easy.»
«You aren't the only one who forgot,» his cousin answered, which did not make him feel any better. Rhegorios went on, «You're right. It won't be easy.»
Lysia grimaced. She spoke severely to her belly: «Stop that.» The baby in there didn't stop wiggling; Maniakes could see movement where her swollen middle pressed against her gown. She grimaced again. «He's kicking my bladder. Excuse me. I need to use the pot again.»
«It won't be long now,» Maniakes remarked when she came back.
«No, not long,» Lysia agreed.
Silence fell. Maniakes broke it with a sigh, and then said, «I'd sooner have an aching tooth pulled than go through with this supper, but I don't see any way not to do it.»
«Neither do I,» Lysia answered. «We'll tell her the truth and see how things go from there, that's all. I don't know what else we can do.»
«Send her into exile to keep my brother company?» Maniakes suggested. But he shook his head and held his hands out in front of him before Lysia could say anything. «No, I don't mean it. What Parsmanios did wasn't her fault.»
«No, it wasn't.» Lysia sighed, too. «And we'll have to explain about ourselves again: better she should hear it from us than from anyone else. I get tired of explaining sometimes.»
«I know. So do I.» Maniakes spread his hands once more. «We fell in love with each other. I didn't expect it, but…» His voice trailed off.
«I didn't, either,» Lysia said. «I'm not saying it hasn't been worth the fight over the dispensation and the explanations and everything else. But I do get tired.»
Rhegorios knocked on the door of the chamber they were sharing and said, «Zenonis is here. She's nervous as a cat. I gave her a big cup of wine. I hope that will settle her down. If it doesn't, she'll jump up to the ceiling when the two of you come down to the dining hall.»
«We'd better get on with it.» Maniakes stood aside to let Lysia precede him through the door. Hand in hand, the two of them followed Rhegorios downstairs.
Zenonis did jump when Maniakes came into the dining hall, enough to make a little wine slop out of the cup she was holding. She'd left young Maniakes at home. She started to prostrate herself before the Avtokrator. He waved for her not to bother. «Your Majesty is gracious,» she said, her voice under tight control. She wanted to
