«Yes,» Yeliif said, «of course, the lady Denak was furious when Abivard chose to rule as King of Kings rather than as regent for Peroz, her son by Sharbaraz. Before that, she was furious with him for overthrowing Sharbaraz just when she'd finally gained influence over the then-King of Kings by bearing a son. Before that, she was furious with Sharbaraz for not giving her the influence she reckoned her due as principal wife.» The eunuch sipped wine and nodded first to Maniakes and then to the secretary who was taking down his words for further study.
«And what of Sharbaraz?» Maniakes asked. «How did he take it when he learned Abivard was moving against him?»
«He bellowed like a bull.» Yeliif's lip curled in scorn. «And, like a bull, he raged this way and that, neither knowing nor caring how he might best meet the threat before him, so long as he could bellow and paw the ground.»
With a faint scrape-scrape, the secretary's stylus raced over the waxed surface of his three-leaved wooden tablet. Maniakes slowly nodded. He hoped Yeliif would take that for agreement and understanding. Both were there, but so was something else, something that grew with every conversation he had with the beautiful eunuch: wariness. The next complimentary word Yeliif said about anyone at the Makuraner court would be the first. What was in a way worse was that the eunuch didn't seem to notice he was casually savaging everyone he mentioned. His view was so jaundiced, Maniakes had trouble deciding how much reliance he could place in it.
Experimentally, the Avtokrator said, «And what of Romezan? He's a noble of the Seven Clans. How does he feel about serving a sovereign born a mere dihqan?»
«It's no great difficulty.» Yeliif's gesture was elegant, scornful, dismissive. «Give Romezan something to kill and he's happy. It could be Videssians, it could be wild asses, it could be those who followed Sharbaraz. So long as he welters in gore, he cares not what gore it is.» Scrape-scrape went the stylus.
«He fights well,» Maniakes observed.
«He should. He's had practice enough. He'd fight himself, I daresay, till the bruises got too painful even for him to bear.» Somehow, malice was all the more malicious when expressed in that sweet, sexless voice. If Romezan had practice fighting, Yeliif had the same in backbiting—but he'd never wounded himself. «And Abivard?» Maniakes said.
«I warned Sharbaraz of him long ago,» the beautiful eunuch said. «I told him Abivard had his eye on the throne. Did he heed me? No. Did anyone heed me? No. Should he have heeded me? Majesty, I leave that to you.»
«Suppose Sharbaraz had got rid of him,» Maniakes said– actually, he said Sarbaraz; here in the city, he didn't care if his accent was imperfect. «Who would have led Makuran's armies against us this past spring?»
Yeliif returned a perfect shrug. «Romezan. Why not? He might have done better, and could hardly have done worse—worse for Makuran, I mean, as he made quite a good thing for himself out of failure.» Such cynicism took the breath away, even for an Avtokrator of the Videssians. Coughing a little, Maniakes said, «I begin to see why Abivard doesn't want you coming back to Mashiz.»
«Oh, indeed,» Yeliif agreed. «I remind him of the time when the world did not turn at his bidding, when he was small and weak and impotent.»
For a eunuch to use that particular word, and to use it with such obvious deliberation, was breathtaking in its own way. Maniakes got the idea Yeliif had done it to throw him off balance. If so, he'd certainly succeeded. «Er—yes,» the Avtokrator said, and dismissed the exiled ambassador from Makuran.
«I thought you'd want to go on longer, your Majesty,» the secretary said after Yeliif had gone.
«So did I,» Maniakes said, «but I'd had about as much spite as I could stomach of an afternoon, thank you very much.»
«Ah.» The scribe nodded understanding. «You listen to him for a while and it does kind of make you want to go home and slit your own wrists, doesn't it?»
«Either your own or your neighbor's, depending on whom he's been telling tales about,» Maniakes answered. He glanced over to the scribe in some relief. «You thought so, too, did you? Good. I'm glad I'm not the only one.»
«Oh, no, your Majesty. Any milk of human kindness that one ever had, it curdled a long time ago.» The secretary sounded very sure. But then, in meditative tones, he added, «Of course, losing your stones, now, that's not the sort of thing to make you jolly and ready for a mug of wine after work with the rest of the lads, is it?»
«I shouldn't think so,» Maniakes said. «Still, I haven't known any of the eunuchs here to be quite so—» At a loss for words to describe Yeliif's manner, he gestured. The secretary nodded once more. Having heard the beautiful eunuch, he did not need to hear him described.
Maybe his beauty had something to do with the way he was, Maniakes thought. He would surely have been pursued at the court of Mashiz, very likely by men and women both, his loveliness being of a sort to draw and hold the eye of either sex. What had being the object of desire while unable to know desire himself done to his soul?
When the Avtokrator wondered about that aloud, the scribe nodded yet again. But then he said, «The other chance is, your Majesty, you don't mind my saying so, he might be a right bastard even if he had his balls and a beard down to here and a voice deeper than your father's. Some people just are, you know.»
«Yes, I had noticed that,» the Avtokrator said sadly. He dismissed the scribe: «Go have yourself a cup of wine, or maybe even two.» The man left with fresh spring in his step. Watching him go, Maniakes decided to have a cup of wine himself, or maybe even two.
When Kameas started to prostrate himself before Maniakes, the Avtokrator waved for him not to bother. To his surprise, the eunuch went through the full proskynesis anyhow. To his greater surprise, he saw a bruise on the side of Kameas' face when the vestiarios rose. «What happened?» Maniakes asked. «Did you walk into a door, esteemed sir?»
«Your Majesty,» Kameas began, and then shook his head, dissatisfied with himself. He took a deep breath and tried again: «Your Majesty, may I speak frankly?»
«Why, yes. Of course, esteemed sir,» Maniakes answered, thinking that might have been the most unusual request he'd ever had from a court eunuch. He wondered whether Kameas could speak frankly, however much he might wish to do so.
By all appearances, such unwonted effort wasn't easy for the vestiarios. But then, after touching his bruised cheek, Kameas seemed to steady on the purpose for which he had approached the Avtokrator. He drew in another deep breath and said, «No, your Majesty, I did not walk into a door. I received this… gift at the hands of another of your prominent servitors.»
At the hands of another eunuch, he meant, prominent being the next step below esteemed in their hierarchy of honorifics. Maniakes stared. Eunuchs' squabbles were commonly fought with slander, occasionally with poison, but… «Fisticuffs, esteemed sir? I'm astonished.»
«So was I, your Majesty. I must say, though,» Kameas added with a certain amount of pride, «I gave as good as I got.»
«I'm glad to hear it,» Maniakes said. «But by the good god, esteemed sir, what on earth set you and your colleagues to boxing one another's ears?» That sort of display of bad temper was a vice of normal men upon which eunuchs usually looked with amused contempt.
«Not what, your Majesty, who,» Kameas replied, his voice going surprisingly grim. «The reason I have come before you, the reason I am violating propriety and decorum, is to request that you—no, to beg that you—find some way of removing this serpent of a Yeliif from the palaces, before it comes to knives rather than fists. There. I have said it.» It couldn't have been easy for him, either; his breath came in little gasps, as if he'd forced his fat frame to run a long way.
«What on earth has he done, esteemed sir, to make you ask something like that only a couple of weeks after he got to the city?»
«Your Majesty, that Makuraner eunuch is a snake with a skin of honey, so that, his bite being at first sweet, one does not feel the venom till too late. He has, in the little space of time you named, set all who dealt with him in any way at odds with one another, playing with the imperial eunuchs as cat plays with mouse, making some hate the rest—» Kameas touched his cheek again. «—and every one of us suspect everyone else. Had Skotos risen from the eternal ice—» Kameas and Maniakes both spat. «—he could have worked no greater mischief among those who serve.»
