Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (80 page)

As the patriarch straightened, his eyes, lively beneath bushy, stillblack brows, flicked over Thorisin’s companions. That half-amused, half-ironic gaze settled on Scaurus for a moment. The tribune blinked—had Balsamon winked at him? He’d wondered that once before, inside the Temple last year. Surely not, and yet—

Again, as before, he was never sure. Balsamon’s glance was elsewhere before he could make up his mind. The patriarch fumbled, produced a small silver flask. “Not the least of Phos’ inventions, pockets,” he remarked. The top rank of soldiers might have heard him; the second one surely did not.

Then his reedy tenor expanded to fill the wide enclosure. A younger priest stood close by to relay what he said, but there was no need. “Bow your head,” Balsamon said to Gavras, and the Avtokrator of the Videssians obeyed.

The patriarch unstoppered the little flask, poured its contents over Thorisin’s head. The oil was golden in the morning sunlight; Scaurus caught myrrh’s sweet, musky fragrance and the more bitter but still pleasing scent of aloes. “As Phos’ light shines on us all,” Balsamon declared, “so may his blessings pour down on you with this anointing.”

“May it be so,” Thorisin responded soberly.

Still holding the crown in his left hand, Balsamon used his right to rub the oil over Thorisin’s head. As he did so, he spoke the Videssians’ most basic prayer, the assembled multitude echoing his words: “We bless thee, Phos, Lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.”

“Amen,” the crown finished. Marcus heard the Namdaleni add their own closing to the Videssian creed: “On this we stake our very souls.” Utprand spoke the addition firmly, but Drax, closer yet, was silent. Scaurus’ head turned in surprise—had the great count adopted the Empire’s usage? He saw Drax’s lips soundlessly shaping the Namdalener clause and wondered whether courtesy or expedience caused his discretion.

The “Amens,” fortunately, were loud enough to drown out most of the sound of heresy; it would have been a fine thing, Marcus thought, to have the coronation interrupted by a religious riot.

Balsamon took the crown, a low dome of gold inset with pearls, sapphires, and rubies, and placed it firmly on Thorisin Gavras’ lowered head. The throng below let out a soft sigh. It was done; a new Avtokrator ruled Videssos. The murmuring died away quickly, for the crowd was waiting for the patriarch to speak.

He paused a moment in thought before beginning, “Well, my friends, we have been disabused of a mistake and abused by it as well. A throne is only a few sticks, plated with gold and covered by velvet, but it’s said to enoble whatever fundament rests on it, by some magic subtler even than they work in the Academy. Having a throne of my own, I’ve always suspected that was nonsense, you know”—One bushy eyebrow raised
just enough to show his listeners they were not to take this last too seriously—“but sometimes the choice is not between bad and good but rather bad and worse.”

“Without an Avtokrator we would have perished, like a body without its head.” Marcus thought of Mavrikios’ end and shivered to himself. Coming from republican Rome, he had doubts about that statement as well, but Videssos, he reflected, had been an empire so long it was likely true for her.

Balsamon went on, “There is always hope when a new Emperor sits the throne, no matter how graceless he may seem, and a new sovereign’s advisers may serve him as a man’s brains do his face, that is, to give form to what would otherwise be blank.”

Someone shouted, “Phos knows Ortaias has no brains of his own!” and drew a laugh. Marcus joined it, but at the same time he recognized the fine line Balsamon was treading, trying to justify his actions to the crowd and, more important, to Thorisin Gavras.

The patriarch returned to his analogy. “But there was a canker eating at those brains, one whose nature I learned late, but not too late. And so I made what amends I could, as you see here.” He bowed low once more; Marcus heard him stage-whisper to Gavras, “Your turn now.”

With a curt nod, the Emperor looked out over the throng. “For all his fancy talk, Ortaias Sphrantzes knows no more of war than how to run from it and no more of rule than stealing it when the rightful holder’s away. Given five years, he’d have made old Strobilos look good to you—unless the damned Yezda took the city first, which is likely.”

Thorisin was no polished rhetorician; like Mavrikios, he had a straightforward style, adapted from the battlefield. To the sophisticated listeners of the capital, it was novel but effective.

“There’re not a lot of promises to make,” he went on. “We’re in a mess, and I’ll do my best to get us out the other side in one piece. I will say this—Phos willing, you won’t want to curse my face every time you see it on a goldpiece.”

That pledge earned real applause; Ortaias’ debased coinage had won him no love. Scaurus, though, still wondered how Thorisin planned to carry it out. If Videssos’ pen-pushers, with all their bureaucratic sleights
of hand, could not keep up the quality of the Empire’s money, could a soldier like Gavras?

“One last thing,” the Emperor said. “I know the city followed Ortaias at first for lack of anything better, and then perforce, because his troops held it. Well and good; I’ll hear no slanders over who backed whom or who said what about me before yesterday morning, so rest easy there.” A low mutter of approval and relief ran through the crowd. Marcus had heard of the informers who had flourished in Rome during the civil war between the Marians and Sulla, and of the purges and counter-purges. He gave Gavras credit for magnanimous good sense and waited for the Emperor’s warning against future plots.

Thorisin, however, said only, “You’ll not get more talk from me now. I said that was the last thing and I meant it. If all you wanted was empty words, you might as well have kept Ortaias.”

Watching the crowd slowly disperse, a dissatisfied Gaius Philippus said, “He should have put the fear of their Phos in ’em.”

But the tribune was coming to understand the Videssians better than his lieutenant, and realized the armored ranks of soldiers on the High Temple’s steps were a stronger precaution against conspiracy than any words. An overt threat from the new Avtokrator would have roused contempt. Gavras was wise enough to see that. There was more subtlety to him than showed at first, Scaurus thought, and was rather glad of it.

“What should we do with him?” That was Komitta Rhangavve’s voice, merciless and a little shrill with anger. She answered her own question: “We should make him such an example that no one would dare rebel for the next fifty years. Put out his eyes with hot irons, lop off his ears and then his hands and feet, and burn what’s left in the plaza of the Ox.”

Thorisin Gavras, still in full imperial regalia, whistled in half-horrified respect for his mistress’ savagery. “Well, Ortaias, how does that program sound to you? You’d be the one most affected by it, after all.” His chuckle could not have been pleasant in his defeated rival’s ears.

Ortaias’ arms were bound behind him; one of Zigabenos’ troopers sat on either side of him on the couch in the patriarch’s library. He looked
as if he would sooner be hiding under it. In Scaurus’ mind the young noble had never cut a prepossessing figure: he was tall, skinny, and awkward, with a patchy excuse for a beard. Clad only in a thin linen shift, his hair awry and his face filthy and frightened, at the moment he seemed to the tribune more a pitiful figure than a wicked one or one to inspire hatred.

There was a tremor in his high voice as he answered, “Had I won, I would not have treated you so.”

“No, probably not,” Gavras admitted. “You haven’t the stomach for it. A safe, quiet poison in the night would suit you better.”

A rumble of agreement ran around the heavy elm table that filled most of the floor space in the library—from Komitta, from Onomagoulos and Elissaios Bouraphos, from Drax and Utprand Dagober’s son, from Mertikes Zigabenos. Nor could Marcus deny that Thorisin likely spoke the truth. He could not help noticing, though, the patriarch’s silence and, perhaps more surprisingly, Alypia Gavra’s.

In a somber tunic and skirt of dark green, the paint scrubbed from her face, the princess seemed once more to be as Scaurus had known her in the past: cool, competent, almost forbidding. He was pleased to see her at this council, a sign that, contrary to her fears, Thorisin still had confidence in her. But she kept her eyes downcast and would not look at Ortaias Sphrantzes. The silver wine cup in her hand shook ever so slightly.

Balsamon leaned back in his chair until it teetered on its hind legs, reached over his shoulder to pluck a volume from a half-empty shelf. Scaurus knew his audience chamber, on the other hand, was so full of books it was nearly useless for its intended function. But then, the patriarch enjoyed confounding expectations, in small things as well as great.

Thus the tribune was unsurprised to see him put the slim leather-bound text in his lap without opening it. Balsamon said to Komitta, “You know, my dear, imitating the Yezda is not the way to best them.”

The reproof was mild, but she bristled. “What have they to do with this? An aristocrat deals with his foes so they can harm him no further.” Her voice rose. “And a true aristocrat pays no heed to such milksop counsels as yours, priest, though as your father was a fuller I would not expect you to know such things.”

“Komitta, will you—” Thorisin tried, too late, to cut off his hot-tempered mistress. Onomagoulos and Zigabenos stared at her in dismay; even Drax and Utprand, to whom Balsamon was no more than a heretic, were not used to hearing clerics reviled.

But the patriarch’s wit was a sharper weapon than outrage. “Aye, it’s true I grew up with the stench of piss, but then, at least, we got pure bleached cloth from it. Now—” He wrinkled up his nose and looked sidelong at Komitta.

She spluttered furiously, but Gavras overrode her: “Quiet, there. You had that coming.” She sat in stiff, rebellious silence. Not for the first time, Marcus admired the Emperor for being able to bring her to heel—sometimes, at any rate. Thorisin went on, “I wasn’t going to do as you said anyway. I tell you frankly I can’t brook it, not for this sniveling wretch.”

“Be so good as not to waste my time with such meetings henceforth, then, if you have no intention of listening to my advice.” Komitta rose, graceful with anger, and stalked out of the room, a procession of one.

Gavras swung round on Marcus. “Well, sirrah, what say you? I sometimes think I have to pull your thoughts like teeth. Shall I send him to the Kynegion and have done?” A small hunting-park near the High Temple, the Kynegion was also Videssos’ chief execution grounds.

In Rome capital punishment was an extraordinary sentence, but, thought Scaurus, it had been meted out to Catiline, who aimed at overthrowing the state. He answered slowly, “Yes, I think so, if it can be done without turning all the seal-stampers against you.”

“Bugger the seal-stampers,” Bouraphos ground out. “They’re good for nothing but telling you why you can’t have the gold for the refits you need.”

“Aye, they’re rabbity little men, the lot of ’em,” Baanes Onomagoulos said. “Shorten him and put fear in all their livers.”

But Thorisin, rubbing his chin as he considered, was watching the tribune in reluctant admiration. “You have a habit of pointing out unpleasant facts, don’t you? I’m too much a soldier to like taking the bureaucrats seriously, but there’s no denying they have power—too much, by Phos.”

“Who says there’s no denying it?” Onomagoulos growled. He jabbed
a scornful thumb at Ortaias Sphrantzes. “Look at this uprooted weed here. This is what the pen-pushers have for a leader.”

“What about Vardanes?” That was Zigabenos, who had been in the city while Ortaias reigned and his uncle ruled.

Onomagoulos blinked, but said, “Well, what about him? Another coward, if ever there was one. Shove steel in a pen-pusher’s face, and he’s yours to do with as you will.”

“Which is, of course, why there have been bureaucrats or men backed by bureaucrats on the imperial throne for forty-five of the last fifty-one years,” Alypia Gavra said, her measured tones more effective than open mockery. “It’s why the bureaucrats and their mercenaries broke—how many? two dozen? three?—rebellions by provincial nobles in that time, and why they converted almost all the peasant militia in Videssos to tax-bound serfs during that stretch of time. Clear proof they’re walkovers, is it not?”

Onomagoulos flushed right up to the bald crown of his head. He opened his mouth, closed it without saying anything. Thorisin was taken by a sudden coughing fit. Ortaias Sphrantzes, with nothing at all to lose, burst into a sudden giggle to see his captors quarrel among themselves.

Still beaming at his niece, the Emperor asked her, “What do you want us to do with the scapegrace, then?”

For the first time since the meeting began, she turned her eyes toward the man whose Empress, at least in name, she had been. For all the emotion she betrayed, she might have been examining a carcass of beef. At last she said, “I don’t think he could be put to death without stirring up enmities better left unraised. For my part, I have no burning need to see him dead. He in his way was as much his uncle’s prisoner as was I, and no more in control of his fate or actions.”

From his wretched seat on the couch, Ortaias said softly, “Thank you, Alypia,” and, quite uncharacteristically, fell silent again. The princess gave no notice that she heard him.

Baanes Onomagoulos, still smarting from her sarcasm, saw a chance for revenge. He said, “Thorisin, of course she will speak for him. And why should she not? The two of them, after all, are man and wife, their concerns bound together by a shared couch.”

“Now you wait one minute—” Scaurus began hotly, but Alypia
needed no one to defend her. Moving with the icy control she showed on most occasions, she rose from her seat and dashed her wine cup in Onomagoulos’ face. Coughing and cursing, he rubbed at his stinging eyes. The thick red wine dripped from his pointed beard onto his embroidered silk tunic, plastering it to his chest.