Krispos Rising

'If his Majesty doesn't care whether Skombros steals, why do you keep shoving accounts in his face?' Krispos asked.

'To make him care, by Phos, before the fox he insists on thinking a lapdog sinks its teeth into him.' The Sevastokrator heaved a sigh. 'Making Anthimos care about anything save his own amusement is like pushing water uphill with a rake.'

Petronas' loathing for his rival, Krispos thought, blinded him to any way of dealing with Skombros but the one that had already shown it did not work. 'What would happen if Skombros didn't amuse him, or amused him in the wrong sort of way?' Krispos asked.

'What are you talking about?' Petronas demanded crossly.

For a moment, Krispos had no idea himself. One of the lessons he should have learned from Tanilis was keeping his mouth shut when he had nothing to say. He bent his head in humiliation. Humiliation ... he remembered how he'd felt when he was just a youth, when a couple of village wits lampooned his wrestling in a Midwinter's Day skit. 'How would Anthimos like the whole city laughing at his vestiarios? It's only a couple of weeks to Midwinter's Day, after all.'

'What does that have to do with—' Petronas suddenly caught up with Krispos. 'By the good god, so it is. So you want to make him look ridiculous, do you? Why not? He is.' The Sevastokrator's eyes lit up. As soon as he saw his objective, he planned how to reach it with a soldier's directness. 'Anthimos has charge of the Amphitheater skits. They entertain him, so he Pays attention to them. All the same, I expect I can slide a new one into the list without his noticing. Have to give it an innocuous title so that even if he does spot it, he won't think anything of it. Have to find mimes who aren't already engaged. And costumes—curse it, can we get costumes made in time?'

'We have to figure out what the mimes are going to do, too,' Krispos pointed out.

'Aye, that's true, though Phos knows there's plenty to say about the eunuch.'

'Let me get Mavros,' Krispos said. 'He has an ear for scandal.'

'Does he?' Petronas all but purred. 'Yes, go fetch him—at once.'

'Now this,' Mavros said, 'is what I call an Amphitheater.'

He craned his neck to peer around and up. 'Only trouble is, I feel like I'm at the bottom of a soup bowl full of people,' Krispos answered. Fifty thousand, seventy, ninety—he was not sure how many people the enormous oval held. However many it was, they were all here today. No one wanted to miss the Midwinter's Day festivity.

'I'd sooner be at the bottom than the top,' Mavros said. 'Who has better seats than we do?' They were in the very first row, right by what was a racecourse most of the time but would serve as an open-air stage today.

'There's always the people on the spine.' Krispos pointed to the raised area in the center of the track.

Mavros snorted. 'You're never satisfied, are you?' The spine was reserved for the Avtokrator, the Sevastokrator, the patriarch, and the chief ministers of the Empire. Krispos saw Skombros there, not far from Anthimos; the vestiarios was conspicuous for his bulk and his beardless cheeks. The only men on the spine who were not high lords or prelates were the axe-toting Halogai of the imperial guard. Mavros nodded toward them. 'See? They don't even get to sit down. Me, I'd rather be comfortable here.'

'I suppose I would, too,' Krispos said. 'Even so—'

'Hush! They're starting.'

Anthimos rose from his throne and strode over to a podium set in the very center of the spine. He silently stood there, waiting. Quiet spread through the Amphitheater as more and more people saw him. When all was still, he spoke:

'People of Videssos, today the sun turns in the sky again.' A trick of acoustics carried his voice clearly to the uppermost rows of the Amphitheater, from which he seemed hardly more than a bright-colored speck in his imperial robes. He went on, 'Once more Skotos has failed to drag us down into his eternal darkness. Let us thank Phos the Lord of the great and good mind for delivering us for another year, and let us celebrate that deliverance the whole day long. Let joy pour forth unconfined!'

The Amphitheater erupted in cheers. Anthimos staggered as he walked back to his high seat. Krispos wondered if the acoustical trick worked in reverse, if all the noise in the huge building focused where the Emperor had stood. That would be enough to stagger anyone. On the other hand, maybe Anthimos had just started drinking at dawn.

'Here we go,' Mavros breathed. The first troupe of mimes, a group of men dressed as monks, emerged from the gate that normally let horses onto the track. From the way one of themmade a point of holding his nose, the horses were still much in evidence.

The 'monks' proceeded to do a number of most unmonastic things. The audience howled. On Midwinter's Day, nothing was sacred. Krispos peered across the track to the spine to see how Gnatios enjoyed watching his clerics lampooned. The patriarch was paying the skit no attention at all; he was leaning over to one side of his chair so he could talk with his cousin Petronas. He and the Sevastokrator smiled at some private joke.

When the first mime troupe left, another took its place. This one tried to exaggerate the excesses at one of Anthimos' revels. The people who filled the stands alternately gasped and whooped. Unlike his uncle and Gnatios, the Emperor watched attentively and howled laughter. Krispos chuckled, too, not least because much of what the mimes thought wild enough to put in their act was milder than things he'd really seen at Anthimos' feasts.

The next troupe came out in striped caftans and felt hats that looked like upside-down buckets. The make- believe Makuraners capered about. The people in the stands jeered and hissed. In his high seat on the spine, Petronas looked pleased with himself.

'Make the men from the west look like idiots and weaklings and everyone will be more willing to go to war with them,' Mavros said. He guffawed as one of the mimes pretended to relieve himself into his hat.

'I suppose so,' Krispos said. 'But there are a fair number of people from Makuran here in the city, rug-dealers and ivory merchants and such. They're just ... people. Half the folk in the Amphitheater must have dealt with them at one time or another. They know Makuraners aren't like this.'

'I daresay they do, when they stop to think about it. How many people do you know who always take the time to stop and think, though?'