'If you please sir,' Krispos said hesitantly, 'may I join you at your talks?'
Iakovitzes paused with a prawn in mid-air. 'Why on earth would you want to do that?' His eyes narrowed. No Videssian noble trusted what he did not understand.
'To learn what I can,' Krispos answered. 'Please remember, sir, I'm but a couple of seasons away from my village. Most of your other grooms know much more than I do, just because they've lived in Videssos the city all their lives. I ought to take whatever chances I have to pick up useful things to know.'
'Hmm.' That watchful expression did not leave Iakovitzes' face. 'You're apt to be bored.'
'If I am, I'll leave.'
'Hmm,' Iakovitzes said again, and then, 'Well, why not? I'd thought you content with the horses, but if you think you're fit for more, no harm in your trying. Who can say? It may turn out to my advantage as well as yours.' Now Iakovitzes looked calculating, a look Krispos knew well. One of the noble's eyebrows quirked upward as he went on, 'I didn't bring you here with that in mind, however.'
'I know.' Krispos was beginning to learn to keep his own maneuvers hidden. Now his thoughts were that, if he made himself useful enough to Iakovitzes in other ways, the noble might give up on coaxing him into bed.
'We'll see how it goes,' Iakovitzes said. 'Sisinnios is setting up the meeting with the Khatrisher for around the third hour of the day tomorrow—halfway between sunrise and noon.' He smiled a smile Krispos had seen even more often than his calculating look. 'Reading by lamplight gives me a headache. I can think of a better way to spend the night...'
Krispos sighed. Iakovitzes hadn't given up yet.
Sisinnios said, 'Excellency, I present to you Lexo, who represents Gumush the khagan of Khatrish. Lexo, here is the most eminent Iakovitzes from Videssos the city, and his spatharios Krispos.'
The title the eparch gave Krispos was the vaguest one in the Videssian hierarchy; it literally meant 'sword bearer,' and by extension 'aide.' An Avtokrator's spatharios might be a very important man. A noble's spatharios was not. Krispos was grateful to hear it all the same. Sisinnios could have introduced him as a groom and let it go at that.
'And now, noble sirs, if you will excuse me, I have other business to which I must attend,' the eparch said. He left a little more quickly than was polite, but with every sign of relief.
Lexo the Khatrisher was dressed in what would have been a stylish linen tunic but for the leaping stags and panthers embroidered over every inch of it. 'I've heard of you, eminent sir,' he told Iakovitzes, bowing in his seat. His beard and mustaches were so full and bushy that Krispos could hardly see his lips move. Among Videssians, such unkempt whiskers were only for priests.
'You have the advantage of me, sir.' Iakovitzes would not let a foreigner outdo him in courtesy. 'I am willing to assume, however, that any emissary of your khagan is sure to be a most able man.'
'You are too gracious to someone you do not know,' Lexo purred. His gaze swung to Krispos. 'So, young fellow, you're Iakovitzes' spatharios, are you? Tell me, just where do you bear that sword of his?'
The Khatrisher's smile was bland. Even so, Krispos jerked as if stung. For a moment, all he could think of was wiping the floor with Lexo, who was more than twice his age and weighed more than he did though several inches shorter. But months of living with Iakovitzes had taught him the game was not always played with fists. Doing his best to pull his face straight, he answered, 'Against his foes, and the Avtokrator's.' He looked Lexo in the eye.
'Your sentiments do you credit, I'm sure,' Lexo murmured. He turned back to Iakovitzes. 'Well, eminent sir, how do you propose to settle what his excellency the good Sisinnios and I have been haggling over for months?'
'By looking at the facts instead of haggling.' Iakovitzes leaned forward, discarding formal ways like a cast-off cloak. He touched the folder the eparch had given him. 'The facts are here, you will agree. I have here copies of all documents pertaining to the border between Videssos and Khatrish for as long as your state has been such, rather than merely nomad bandits too ignorant to sign a treaty and too treacherous to honor one. The latter trait, I notice, you still display.'
Krispos waited for Lexo to explode, but the envoy's smile did not waver. 'I'd heard you were charming,' he said evenly.
Just as he was armored against insult, so was Iakovitzes against irony. 'I don't care what you've heard, sir. I've heard—these documents say, loud and clear—that the proper frontier between our lands is the Akkilaion River, not the Mnizou as you have claimed. How dare you contradict them?'
'Because the memories of my people are long,' Lexo said. Iakovitzes snorted. Lexo took no notice, but went on, 'Memories are like leaves, you know. They pile up in the forests of our minds, and we go scuffing through them.'
Iakovitzes snorted again, louder. 'Very pretty. I hadn't heard Gumush was sending out poets to speak for him these days. I'd have thought their disregard for the truth disqualified them.'
'You flatter me for my poor words,' Lexo said. 'Should you desire true poetry, I will give you the tribal lays of my folk.'
He began to declaim, partly in his lisping Videssian, more often in a speech that reminded Krispos of the one the Kubratoi used among themselves. He nodded, remembering that the ancestors of both Khatrishers and Kubratoi had come off the Pardrayan steppe long ago.
'I could go on for some while,' Lexo said after going on for some while, 'but I hope you get the gist: that the great raid of Balbad Badbal's son reached the Mnizou and drove all Videssians over it. Thus it is only just for Khatrish to claim the Mnizou as its southern boundary.'
'Gumush's grandfather didn't, nor his father either,' Iakovitzes replied, unmoved by his opponent's oratory. 'If you stack the treaties they signed against your tribal lays, the treaties weigh heavier.'
'How can any man presume to know where the balance between them lies, any more than a man can know the Balance between Phos and Skotos in the world?' Lexo said. 'They both have weight; that is what Sisinnios would not see nor admit.'
'Believe in the Balance and go to the ice, they teach us in Videssos,' Iakovitzes said, 'so I'll thank you not to drag your eastern heresy into a serious argument. Just as Phos
