acclamations as a pious hope. Now he'd earned it in truth.
«Maybe I really have convinced them,» he said, as much to himself as to Rhegorios. He'd hoped victory would do that for him—hoped and hoped and hoped. Up till this past campaigning season, he hadn't won enough victories to put the theory to a proper test.
«You're a hero,» Rhegorios said with a grin. «Get used to it.» The grin got wider. «So am I. I like it.»
«There could be worse fates,» Maniakes admitted. «We almost found out about a good many of them, these past few months.»
«Didn't we, though?» Rhegorios said. «But it came right in the end. Why, the mime troupes may even leave you alone this Midwinter's Day.»
Maniakes considered that. He didn't need long. «I don't believe it for a minute,» he said. «The mime troupes don't ever leave anybody alone: that's what they're for. And if you're the Avtokrator, you have to sit on the spine of the Amphitheater and pretend it's funny. On Midwinter's Day, that's what the Avtokrator's for.» After a moment, he added in a wistful, almost hopeful voice, «Maybe they won't bite quite so hard this year, though.» He didn't even believe that, not down deep. Midwinter's Day was still a couple of months away. By then, renewed familiarity would surely have blunted the respect the city mob felt for him now.
Rhegorios said, «Enjoy this while it lasts, anyhow.» By the way he spoke, he didn't think it would last indefinitely, either.
In the crowd, a man held up a little baby in one hand, pointed to it with the other, and shouted, «Maniakes!'—he'd named the boy for the Avtokrator.
«Take him home and get him out of the rain, before he comes down with the croup,» Maniakes called. Several nearby women– including, by the look of things, the infant Maniakes' mother– expressed loud and emphatic agreement with that sentiment.
Agathios the patriarch, who was riding a mule just behind Maniakes and Rhegorios, said, «Today, everyone delights in honoring you, your Majesty.»
«Yes. Today,» Maniakes said. But being honored was better man being despised; he couldn't deny that. Having experienced both, he could compare them.
And he was still despised, here and there. From the margins of the crowd, a priest cried, «Skotos' ice still awaits you for your lewdness and the travesty you have made of the marriage vow.»
Maniakes looked back over his shoulder toward Agathios. «Do you know, most holy sir,» he said in thoughtful tones, «just how badly we need priests to preach against the Vaspurakaner heresy in the towns and villages of the westlands? A passionate fellow like that is really wasted in Videssos the city, wouldn't you say? He would do so much better in a place like, oh, Patrodoton, for instance.»
Agathios was not an astute politician, but he knew what Maniakes had in mind when making a suggestion like that. «I shall do my utmost to find out who that, ah, intrepid spirit is, your Majesty, and to translate him to a sphere where, as you rightly remark, his zeal might be put to good use.»
«Speaking of good use, you'll get that out of the westlands,» Rhegorios murmured to his cousin. «Now that we have them back, you've got a whole raft of new places to dump blue-robes who get on your nerves.»
«If you think that's a joke, cousin of mine, you're wrong,» Maniakes said. «If priests don't care to deal with sinful me in this sinful city, they can—and they will—go off somewhere quiet and out of the way and see how they like that.»
A certain bloodthirsty gleam—or maybe it was just the rain– came into Rhegorios' eyes. «You ought to send the really zealous ones up to Kubrat, to see if they can convert Etzilios and the rest of the nomads. If they do, well and good. If they don't, the lord with the great and good mind will have some new martyrs, and you'll be rid of some old nuisances.»
He'd intended only Maniakes to hear that. But he spoke a little too loudly, so that it also reached Agathios' ears. In tones of reproof, the ecumenical patriarch said, «Your Highness, mock not martyrdom. Think on the tale of the holy Kveldoulphios the Haloga, who laid down his life in the hope that his brave and glorious ending would inspire his people to the worship of the good god.»
«I crave your pardon, most holy sir,» Rhegorios said. Like any other Videssian, he was at bottom pious. Like any other Videssian high in the government, he also thought of the faith as an instrument of policy, holding both views at the same time without either confusion or separation.
Maniakes turned back and said to Agathios, «But the Halogai follow their own gods to this day, and the holy Kveldoulphios lived—what?—several hundred years ago, anyhow. Long before the civil wars that tore us to pieces.»
«Your Majesty is, of course, correct.» The patriarch let out a sigh so mournful, Maniakes wondered if he shed a tear or two along with it. In the rain, he could not tell. Agathios went on, «But he went gloriously to martyrdom of his own free will, rather than being hounded into it by the machinations of others.»
«Very well, most holy sir. I do take the point,» Maniakes said. Patriarchs were, in their way, government functionaries, too. Each one of them, though, had a point beyond which his obligations to Phos took precedence over his obligations to the Avtokrator. Maniakes realized the talk of deliberately creating martyrs had pushed Agathios close to that point.
«Thou conquerest, Maniakes!» «Maniakes, savior of the city!» «Maniakes, savior of the Empire!» Those shouts, and more like them, kept coming from the crowd. They didn't quite swallow up all the other shouts, the ones that had been hurled at Maniakes since the day he married his first cousin, but there were more of them and fewer of the others. If he hadn't won any great love, the Avtokrator had gained respect.
Pacing the floor, Maniakes said, «I hate this.» In the Red Room, Zoile the midwife was with Lysia, and custom binding as manacles kept him from being there. Having lost his first wife in childbed, he knew only too well the dangers Lysia faced.
His father set a hand on his shoulder. «Hard for us men at a time like this,» the elder Maniakes said. «Just don't let your wife ever hear you say so, or you won't hear the last of it. It's the difference between watching a battle and going through one yourself, I suppose.»
«That's probably about right,» Maniakes said. «How many people here were watching from the seawall when our fleet beat the Kubratoi? They could drink wine and point to this and that and say how exciting it all was, but they weren't in any danger.» He paused. «Of course, they would have been if we'd lost the sea fight instead of winning it.»
«Nobody's going to lose any fights, by the good god,» Symvatios said. «Lysia's going to give you another brat to howl around this place so a man can't get a decent night's sleep here.»
«Ha!» The elder Maniakes raised an eyebrow at his brother. «You're more likely to be looking for an indecent night's sleep, anyhow.»
Symvatios growled something in mock high dudgeon. Maniakes, his own worries forgotten for a moment, grinned at his father and uncle. They'd been bickering like that since they were boys, and enjoying it, too. Maniakes and Rhegorios bickered and bantered like that. Maniakes had done the same with Parsmanios… when they were boys. But between the two of them, the jealousy that had grown up was real.
As if picking the thought from his son's mind, the elder Maniakes said, «Your nephew, the little fellow who's named for the two of us, seems a likely lad.»
«I hope so, for his sake,» Maniakes said. «Zenonis and her boy have been here a good deal longer than I have, so you'll have seen more of them than I have. They don't seek me out, either.» The corners of his mouth turned down. «You're her father-in-law, but in her mind—and I suppose in the boy's mind, too—I'm the chap who sent her husband into exile across the sea.»
«Couldn't be helped, son,» the elder Maniakes said heavily. «After he did what he undoubtedly did to you, I don't see that you had any choice. I've never held it against you—you know that.»
His heavy features got a little heavier. He'd had three sons. One, his namesake, was a great success. But one was a proved traitor, and one long years missing and surely dead. A great weight of sorrow had to lurk there, though he spoke of it but seldom.
Symvatios said, «Sometimes there isn't any help for the things that happen, and that's all there is to it. You do the best you can with what you've got and you go on.»
One of the things that had happened, of course, was Lysia and Maniakes falling in love with each other. Symvatios tolerated Maniakes as son-in-law as well as nephew, as the elder Maniakes was resigned to having Lysia as daughter-in-law. The marriage had been one of the things—though jealousy of Rhegorios played a bigger role—
