buildings in the palace complex. It made three sides of a square, closely enclosing a yard full of close-trimmed shrubberies.
'The Grand Courtroom,' the servant explained. 'His Imperial Highness the Sevastokrator lives here in the wing we're going toward so he can be right at hand if anything comes up that he needs to deal with.'
'I see,' Krispos said slowly. Anthimos' residence, on the other hand, was well away from the courtroom. Petronas, Krispos decided, missed very little. Then something else struck him. He stopped. 'Wait. Are you saying the Sevastokrator wants me to live here, too?'
'Them's the orders I have.' The servant gave an it's-not-my-problem shrug.
'This is finer than I expected,' Krispos said as Petronas' man led him to the Grand Courtroom. He stopped the fellow again. 'Where are the stables? If I'm going to be chief groom, don't you think I should know how to get to my work?'
'Maybe, and then maybe not.' The servant looked him up and down. 'Hope you don't mind my saying it, but you strike me as a trifle ... raw ... to be chief groom when some of the men in the stables have been there likely since before your father was born.'
'No doubt you're right, but that doesn't mean I can't put my hand to it. Or would Petronas want me to be a drone, any more than he would Mavros?'
Now the Sevastokrator's man stopped of his own accord. He looked at Krispos again, this time thoughtfully. 'Mmm, maybe not, not if you don't care to be.' He told Krispos how to get to the stables. 'But first let's get you settled in here.'
Krispos could not argue with that. The servant led him up a stairway. A couple of armed guards in mail shirts leaned against the first doorway they passed. 'This whole floor belongs to his Imperial Highness,' the servitor explained. 'You want the next one up.'
The story above the Sevastokrator's quarters was broken up into apartments. By the spacing of the doors, the one assigned to Krispos was among the smallest. All the same, it had both a living room and a bedroom. Though he did not say so, that enormously impressed Krispos. He'd never had more than one room to himself before.
The apartment also boasted both a large bureau and a closet. The storage space swallowed Krispos' knapsack-worth of belongings. He tossed his spear on the bed, locked the door behind , him, and went down the stairs. The bright sun outside made him blink. He looked this way and that, trying to get his bearings. That long, low brick building behind the stand of willows should have been the stables, if he'd understood Petronas' man.
He walked toward the building. Soon both sound and smell told him he was right. The willows, though, had helped conceal the size of the stables. They dwarfed Iakovitzes' and Tanilis' put together. Someone saw Krispos coming and dashed into the building. He nodded to himself. He might have known that would happen.
By the time his feet crunched on the straw-strewn stable floor, the grooms and farriers and boys were gathered and waiting for him. He scanned their faces and saw resentment, fear, curiosity.
'Believe me,' he said, 'my being here surprises me as much as it does you.'
That won him a couple of smiles, but most of the stable hands still stood quietly, arms folded across their chests, wanting to learn how he would go on. He thought for a moment. 'I didn't ask for this job. It got handed to me, so I'm going to do it the best way I can. A good many of you know more about horses than I do. I wouldn't think of saying you don't. You all know more about the Sevastokrator's horses than I do. I hope you'll help me.'
'What if we don't care to?' growled one of the men, a tough-looking fellow a few years older than Krispos.
'If you go on doing what you're supposed to do, I don't mind,' Krispos said. 'That helps me, too. But if you try to make things hard for me on purpose, I won't like it—and neither will you.' He pointed to a bruise under one eye. 'You must have heard why Petronas took me into his service. After Beshev, I think I can handle myself with just about anybody. But I didn't come here to fight. I will if I have to, but I don't want to. I'd sooner work.'
Now he waited to see how the stable hands would respond. They muttered among themselves. The tough- looking groom took a step toward him. He set himself. A smaller, gray-bearded man put a hand on the groom's arm. 'No, hold on, Onorios,' he said. 'He sounds fair enough. Let's find out if he means what he says.'
Onorios grunted. 'All right, Stotzas, since it's you who's asking.' He scowled at Krispos. 'But what do you want to bet that inside a month's time he doesn't bother setting foot in here? He'll collect the pay you deserve more and he'll stay in the Grand Courtroom soaking up wine with the rest of that lot there.'
'I'll take that bet, Onorios,' Krispos said sharply. 'At the end of a month—or two, or three, if you'd rather— loser buys the winner all he can drink. What do you say?'
'By the good god, you're on.' Onorios stuck out his hand. Krispos took it. They squeezed until they both winced. When they let go, each of them opened and closed his fist several times to work the blood back in.
Krispos said, 'Stotzas, will you show me around, please?' If the senior groom was willing not to despise him on sight, he would do his best to stay on Stotzas' good side.
Stotzas showed him the Sevastokrator's parade horse. 'Pretty, isn't he? Too bad he couldn't catch a tortoise with a ten-yard start.' Then his war horse. 'Stay away from his hooves—he's trained to lash out. Maybe you should start giving him apples, so he gets to know you.' Then the beasts Petronas took hunting, mares, a couple of retired stallions and geldings, up-and-coming colts—so many animals in all that Krispos knew he would not be able to remember every one.
By the time the tour was nearly done, Stotzas and Krispos were at the far end of the stables, well away from the
'I'll try. What more can I say right now? I only wish you could tell me about the people the same way you did about the horses.'
Stotzas' shoulders shook. After a moment, Krispos realized the groom was laughing. 'Ah, so you're not just a young fool with more muscles than he needs. I hoped you weren't. Aye, the people'll drive you madder than the beasts any day, but if you keep 'em happy and keep 'em tending to their jobs, things'll run smooth enough. If you have that trick, sonny, you'll do right well for yourself.'
