Krispos Rising

Krispos thoughtfully ate one of Evtykhes' lemon tarts. Tanilis hadn't told him anything he didn't already know; her practiced sensuality was worlds apart from Mavros' enthusiastic infatuation. Nevertheless, Krispos wished his lover had not made it so plain he was not her beloved.

But no matter what she did, she came to him that night. If she found what they did together distasteful, she hid it marvelously well. Afterward, Krispos leaned up on one elbow. 'Why me?' he asked. Tanilis made a questioning noise. 'Why me?' Krispos repeated. 'Who you are and what you are, you could pick any man within a hundred miles of Opsikion, and he'd come running. So why did you pick me?'

'Because of your looks, your youth, your vigor. Because, having seen you, I could not help picking you.'

The words were all Krispos could have hoped to hear. But he also heard the faintest questioning tone in Tanilis' voice, as if she were offering him an explanation to see whether he'd accept it. Though he wanted to, he found he could not. He said, 'You could find a dozen who outdo me on any of those at a glance—a hundred or a thousand with a little looking. I gather you haven't, which means you haven't answered me, either.'

Now she sat up in bed. Krispos thought it was the first time she took him seriously for his own sake rather than as a cog in what she'd foreseen. After a short pause, she said slowly, 'Because you don't take the easy way, but look to see what may lie behind it. That is rare at any age, doubly so at yours.'

This time he felt she'd touched truth, but not given him the whole of it. 'Why else?' he persisted.

He wondered if his drive to know would anger her, but soon saw it did not. If anything, it raised him in her estimation; when she replied, her voice had the no-nonsense tone of someone conducting serious business. 'I'll not deny that the power implied by this—' She reached out to touch the goldpiece on its chain, '—has its own attraction. In and around Opsikion, I have done everything, become everything I could hope to do and become. To set up my own son in Videssos the city, to have a connection to one who may be ... what he may be: that could tempt me almost to anything. But only almost. Reckon me hard if you like, and calculating, and cunning, but you reckon me a whore at your peril.' She did not sound businesslike then; she sounded dangerous.

Krispos nodded soberly. As with Iakovitzes, his chief shield against her was stubborn refusal to acknowledge that she could daunt him. 'And so?' he asked.

The light from the single lamp in the bedchamber shifted shadows on her face to underscore her every change of expression. With that aid, Krispos saw he'd gained another point. 'And so,' she said, 'I have no interest in men who seek to bed not me but my estates; nor in those who would reckon me only a prize possession, as if I were a hound; nor again in those who care just for my body and would not mind if Skotos dwelt behind my eyes. Do you see yourself in any of those groups?'

'No,' Krispos said. 'But in a way don't you fall into the first one, I mean with respect to me?' Tanilis stared at him. 'You dare—' He admired her for the speed with which she checked herself. After a few seconds, she even laughed. 'You have me, Krispos; by my own words I stand convicted. But here I am on the other end of the bargain; and I must say it looks different from how it seemed before.'

To you, maybe, Krispos thought.

Tanilis went on,'A final reason I chose you, Krispos, at least after the first time, is that you learn quickly. One of the things you still need to know, though, is that sometimes you can ask too many questions.'

She reached up and drew his face down to hers. But even as he responded to her teaching, he remained sure there was no such thing as asking too many questions. Finding the right way and time to ask them might be something else again, he admitted to himself. And this, he thought before all thought left him, was probably not it.

He woke the next morning to rain drumming on the roof. He knew that sound, though he was more used to the softer plashing of raindrops against thatch than the racket they made on tile. He hoped Tanilis' peasants were done with their harvest, then laughed at himself: they were done now, whether they wanted to be or not.

Tanilis, as was her way, had slipped off during the night. Sometimes he woke when she slid out of bed; more often, as last night, he did not. He wondered, not for the first time, if her servants knew they were lovers. If so, the cooks and stewards and serving maids gave no sign of it. He had learned from Iakovitzes' establishment, though, that being discreet was part of being a well-trained servant. And Tanilis tolerated no servant who was not.

He also wondered if Mavros knew. That, he doubted. Mavros was a good many things and would likely grow to become a good many more, but Krispos had trouble seeing him as discreet.

Her hair as perfectly in place as if he had never run his hands through it, Tanilis sat waiting for him in the small dining room. 'You'll have a wet ride back to Opsikion, I fear,' she said, waving him to the chair opposite her.

He shrugged. 'I've been wet before.'

'A good plate of boiled bacon should help keep you warm on the journey, if not dry.'

'My lady is generous in all things,' Krispos said. Tanilis' eyes lit as he dug in.

The road north had already begun to turn to glue. Krispos did not try to push his horse. If Iakovitzes could not figure out why he was late coming back to town, too bad for Iakovitzes.

Krispos wrung out his cloak in Bolkanes' front hall, then squelched up the stairs in wet boots to see how his master was doing. What he found in Iakovitzes' room startled him: the noble was on his feet, trying to stump around with two sticks. The only sign of Graptos was a lingering trace of perfume in the air.

'Hello, look what I can do!' Iakovitzes said, for once too pleased with himself to be snide.

'I've looked,' Krispos said shortly. 'Now will you please get back in bed where you belong? If you were a horse, excellent sir—' He'd learned the art of turning title to reproach, '—they'd have cut your throat for a broken leg and let it go at that. If you go and break it again from falling because you're on it too soon, do you think you deserve any better? Ordanes told you to stay flat at least another fortnight.'

'Oh, bugger Ordanes,' Iakovitzes said.

'Go ahead, but make him get on top.'

The noble snorted. 'No thank you.'