Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (23 page)

The stuff sounded ghastly, Marcus thought. He also noticed that Arigh’s derisive comment about the drinks before him was not keeping him from downing quite a lot of them.

At the rate food was vanishing, it was no easy task to keep the tables loaded. Almost as if they were a bucket brigade battling a fire, the Namdalener women made never-ending trips from the kitchens with full platters and pitchers and back to them with empties. Marcus was surprised to see that Helvis was one of them. When he remarked on it, Soteric said with a shrug, “She told me she would sooner distract herself than sit alone and ache. What could I say to that?”

The servers were, most of them, much like the soldiers’ women Scaurus had known in Rome’s dominions. They thought nothing of trading bawdry with the men they were attending; pats and pinches brought as many laughs as squeaks of outrage. Through all that Helvis passed unaffronted; she wore her mourning like invisible armor. Her look of quiet
sorrow and her air of remoteness, even when bending over a man’s shoulder to fill his winecup, were enough to deter the most callous wencher.

More and more drink was fetched as time went by, and less and less food. Never sedate to begin with, the feast grew increasingly boisterous. Romans and Namdaleni learned each other’s curses, tried to sing each other’s songs, and clumsily essayed each other’s dances. A couple of fights broke out, but they were instantly quelled by the squabblers’ neighbors—good feelings ran too high tonight to give way to quarrels.

More than a few people wandered into the courtyard to see what the racket was about, and most of them liked what they found. Scaurus saw Taso Vones several tables away, a mug of wine in one hand and a partridge leg in the other. He waved to the ambassador of Khatrish, who made his way through the crowd and squeezed in beside him.

“You’re kind to want anything to do with me,” he said to the tribune, “especially if you recall that the last time I set eyes on you, I did nothing but flee.”

Marcus had drunk enough wine and ale to make him brush aside such trifles. “Think nothing of it,” he said grandly. “It was Avshar we were after, not you.” That, though, served to remind him of the pursuit and its grievous outcome. He subsided, feeling like a blockhead.

Vones cocked his head to the side and watched the Roman out of one eye, for all the world like some bright-eyed little sparrow. “How curious,” he said. “You of all people are the last I’d expect to find hobnobbing with the Namdaleni.”

“Why don’t you shut up, Taso?” Soteric said, but from his resigned tone he felt it would do no good. Evidently he knew the Khatrisher and, like so many, was used to giving him leeway. “I think you talk for the sake of hearing yourself.”

“What better reason?” Vones returned with a smile.

He would have said more, but Marcus, his curiosity fired by Vones’ comment, interrupted him. “What’s wrong with these folk?” he asked, waving to encompass the courtyard and everyone in it. “We get on well with them. Is something amiss in that?”

“Easy, easy.” The ambassador laid a warning hand on his arm, and he realized how loudly he’d spoken. “Why don’t we take an evening stroll? The night-blooming jasmine is particularly sweet this time of
year, don’t you think?” He turned to Soteric. “Don’t worry, my island friend. I shan’t pick his pocket—I can guess what you have planned for later.”

Soteric shrugged; he had gotten involved in a conversation with the Namdalener on his left, who was making a point about hunting dogs. “I don’t like the hook-nosed breed,” the man was saying. “It makes their mouths too small to hold the hare. And if they have gray eyes, too, so much the worse—they can’t see to grab the beast in the first place.”

“About that I’m not so sure,” Soteric said, swigging. The more he drank, the more his island drawl came to the fore; his last word had sounded like “shoo-ah.” He went on, “Gray-eyed hounds have keen noses, they say.”

With scant interest in hunting dogs, gray-eyed or otherwise, Marcus was willing to follow Taso Vones as he sauntered out toward the darkness beyond the courtyard. The emissary kept up a nonstop chatter about nightflowers and other matters of small consequence until they had cleared the press. When he was satisfied no one could overhear, his manner changed. Giving the Roman more of that one-eyed study, he said, “I have yet to decide if you are the cleverest man or the greatest fool I’ve met lately.”

“Do you always speak in riddles?” Marcus asked.

“Most of the time, actually; it’s good practice for a diplomat. But forget me for the moment and look at yourself. When you met Avshar with swords, I felt sure our acquaintance would be short. But you won, and it seemed you knew what you were all about after all. And now this!”

“Now what?” the tribune wondered, thoroughly bewildered.

“You and your men beat the Namdaleni in your exercise. Well and good. You must have made Nephon Khoumnos proud and likely brightened the Emperor’s day as well. The men of the Duchy are very good troops; Mavrikios will be glad to know he has loyal men who can stand against them at need.”

He shot an accusing finger at Scaurus. “Or are you loyal? Having beaten them, what do you do? Boast of it? Hardly. You crack a bottle with them as if you and they were the best of friends. Are you trying to make the Emperor nervous? Or do you think the Sevastos will like you better
now? After those herrings, I doubt it—yes, I saw you pause, and your stomach seems sound enough to me.”

“What has Sphrantzes to do with—” Scaurus began. His mouth snapped shut before the question was done, for he knew the answer. The Namdaleni were mercenaries, of course, but what that meant had not struck him until now. It was not the present Emperor or his backers who employed foreign troops. That had been the policy of the bureaucrats of the capital, who used their hired swords to keep Gavras and his ilk in check while they ran the Empire for their own benefit.… And at their head was Vardanes Sphrantzes.

He swore, first in Videssian for Taso Vones’ benefit, then in Latin to relieve his own feelings. “I see you understand me now,” Vones said.

“This is nothing more than settling up a bet,” Scaurus protested. Taso Vones lifted an eloquent eyebrow. No other comment was needed. The Roman knew how easy it was to judge a man by the company he kept. Caesar himself, in his younger days, had fallen into danger through his association with Marius’ defeated faction.

Besides, there was no denying he did like the Namdaleni. They had a workmanlike approach to life, one rather like the Romans’. They did not show the Videssians’ touchy pride and deviousness, nor yet the dour fatalism of the Halogai. The men of the Duchy did the best with what they had, an attitude that marched well with the tribune’s Stoic background. There are other reasons, too, he whispered deep inside himself.

He remarked, “It’s rather too late to worry about it now, wouldn’t you say?” Then he asked, “Why bother warning me? We hardly know each other.”

Vones laughed out loud; like the patriarch Balsamon’s, his laugh had real merriment in it. He said, “I’ve held my post in the city eight years now and I’m scarcely the oldest hand here—Gawtruz has been an ambassador for twice that long and more. I know everyone, and everyone knows me. We know the games we play, the tricks we try, the bargains we drive—and most of us, I think, are bloody bored. I know I am, sometimes.

“You, though, you and your Ronams”—He watched Marcus flinch,—“are a new pair of dice in the box, and loaded dice at that. It’s whether
you throw ones or sixes that remains to be seen.” He scratched his fuzzy-bearded chin. “Which reminds me, we probably should be wandering back. Soteric won’t talk about hook-nosed hounds forever, I promise you that.”

When the tribune pressed him to explain himself, he refused, saying, “You’ll see soon enough, I suspect.” He headed toward the courtyard, leaving Scaurus the choice of staying behind by himself or following. He followed.

Taso Vones grunted in satisfaction when they rounded the last corner. “A little early,” he said, “but not bad. Too early is better than too late, else we’d not find room at the games we favor—not for stakes we can afford, at any rate.” Gold and silver clinked as he dug in his pouch for coins.

As he stared at the scene before him, Marcus wondered about his earlier analysis of Namdalener character. Were they fond of gambling because they believed in Phos’ Wager, or had their theologians concocted the Wager because they were gamblers born? At the moment, he would have bet on the latter—and likely found an islander to cover his stake.

Most of the tables and benches had disappeared. In their places were circles chalked on the ground for dice-throwing, wheels of fortune, boards for tossing darts, others for hurling knives, a wide cleared space with a metal basin set in its center for throwing the dregs from winecups—as he expected, Scaurus saw Gorgidas there; the Greek was a dab hand at kottabos—and other games of skill or chance the tribune did not immediately recognize.

He rummaged in his own pouch to see what money he had. It was about as he had thought—some bronze pieces of irregular size and weight, some rather better silver, and half a dozen goldpieces, each about the size of his thumbnail. The older, more worn coins were fine gold, but the newer ones were made pale by an admixture of silver or blushed red with copper. With its revenues falling, the government, as governments will, had resorted to cheapening the currency. All its gold coinage, of whatever age, was nominally of equal value, but in the markets and shops the old pieces took a man further.

Videssian rules at dice, he had learned during the long winter at Imbros, were different from those at Rome. They used two dice here, not
three, and Venus—a triple six, the best throw in the game he knew—would only have brought a hoot of derision even with a third dice allowed. A pair of ones—“Phos’ little suns,” they called them—was the local goal. You kept the dice until you threw their opposite—“the demons,” a double six—in which case you lost. There were side bets on which you would roll first, how many throws you would keep the dice, and anything else an ingenious gambler could find to bet on.

The first time the dice came his way, Scaurus threw the suns three times before the demons turned up to send the little bone cubes on to the Namdalener at his left. That gave him a bigger stake to play with, one he promptly lost in his next turn with the bones—on his very first cast, twin sixes stared balefully up at him.

Shouts and applause came from the circle round the kottabos basin. Marcus looked up from his own play for a moment, to find it was just as he’d thought; with that deadly wristflick of his, Gorgidas was making the basin ring like a bell, flicking in the lees from farther and farther away. If he didn’t get too drunk to stand, he’d own half the Namdaleni before the night was through.

Scaurus’ own luck was mixed; he would win a little before dropping it again, get behind and make it up. His area of attention shrank to the chalked circle before him—the money in it, the dice spinning through, the men’s hands reaching in to pick up the cubes, gather in their winnings, or lay new bets.

Then, suddenly, the hand that took the dice was not masculine at all, but a smooth, slim-wristed lady’s hand with painted nails and an emerald ring on the forefinger. Startled, Marcus looked up to see Komitta Rhangavve, with Thorisin Gavras beside her. The Sevastokrator wore ordinary trousers and tunic and could have been in the game an hour ago, for all Scaurus had noticed.

Komitta slightly misinterpreted his surprise. Smiling prettily at him, she said, “I know it’s against custom, but I so love to play myself. Do you mind?” Her tone warned that he had better not.

That he really did not care made it easier. “Certainly not, my lady.” On the other hand, even if he had minded, he could scarcely say so, not to the Sevastokrator’s woman.

She won twice in quick succession, letting her stake ride each time.
When her third series of rolls ended by wiping her out, she angrily hurled the dice away and cursed with unladylike fluency. The gamblers snickered. Someone found a new pair of dice and from that moment she was an accepted member of the circle.

With his landed wealth, Thorisin could easily have run the other dicers from the game by betting more than they could afford to cover. Remembering his hundred goldpiece bet with Vardanes Sphrantzes, Marcus knew the Sevastokrator was not averse to playing for high stakes. But, matched against men of limited means, he was content to risk now a goldpiece, now two, or sometimes a handful of silver. He took his wins and losses as seriously as if he were playing for provinces—whatever he did, he liked to do well. He was a canny gambler, too; before long, a good-sized pile of gold and silver lay before him.

“Did you get that at swordpoint, or are they losing on purpose to curry favor with you?” someone asked the Sevastokrator, and Marcus was amazed to see Mavrikios Gavras standing over his brother. The Emperor was no more regally dressed than the Sevastokrator and attended only by a pair of Haloga bodyguards.

“You don’t know skill when you see it,” Thorisin retorted. “Hah!” He raked in another stake as the Namdalener across from him rolled the demons.

“Move over and let your elder show you how it’s done. I’ve been listening to accountants since this morning and I’ve had a gutful of, ‘I’m most sorry, your Imperial Majesty, but I cannot advise that at the present time.’ Bah! Sometimes I think court ceremonial is a slow poison the bureaucrats invented to bore usurpers to death so they can sneak back into power themselves.” He grinned at Marcus. “My daughter insists it’s otherwise, but I don’t believe her anymore.”

With a murmured, “Thank you, sweetheart,” he took a cup from a passing girl. The lass whirled in surprise as she realized whom she’d served. Mavrikios might not trust the Namdaleni where his Empire was concerned, Scaurus thought, but he certainly had no fears for his own person among them.

The Gavrai, naturally, were on opposite sides of every bet. As he’d been doing most of the evening, Thorisin won several times in a row after his brother sat down. “Go back to your pen-pushers and leave dicing
to people who understand it,” he said. “You’ll get a fart from a dead man before you collect a copper from me.”