Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (81 page)

His hand started to seek his sword hilt, but he thought better of that even before Elissaios Bouraphos grabbed his wrist. Through eyelids already swelling shut, he looked to Thorisin Gavras, but found nothing to satisfy him on the Emperor’s face. Muttering, “No one uses me thus,” he climbed from his chair and limped toward the door, his painful gait an unintentioned parody of Komitta Rhangavve’s lithe exit a few minutes before.

“You may be interested in knowing,” Balsamon’s voice pursued him, “that last night I declared annulled the marriage, if such it may be called, between Sphrantzes and Alypia Gavra—at the princess’ urgent request. You may also be interested in knowing that the priest who performed that marriage is at a monastery on the southern bank of the Astris River, a stone’s throw from the steppe—and I ordered that the day I learned of the wedding, not last night.”

But Onomagoulos only snarled, “Bah!” and slammed the heavy door behind him.

An ivory figurine wobbled and fell to the floor. Balsamon, more distressed than he had been at any time during the meeting, leaped to his feet with a cry of alarm and hurried over to it. He wheezed as he bent to retrieve it, peered anxiously at the palm-high statuette.

“No harm, Phos be praised,” he said, setting it carefully back on its stand. Marcus remembered his passion for ivories from Makuran, the kingdom that had been Videssos’ western neighbor and rival until the Yezda came down off the steppe and conquered it less than a lifetime ago. More to himself than anyone else, the patriarch complained, “Things haven’t been where they ought to be since Gennadios left.”

The dour priest had been as much Balsamon’s watchdog as companion, Scaurus knew, and there were times when the patriarch took unecclesiastical glee in baiting him. Now that he was gone, it seemed Balsamon missed him. “What became of him?” the tribune asked, idly curious.

“Eh? I told you,” Balsamon answered peevishly. “He’s spending his
time by the Astris, praying the Khamorth don’t decide to swim over and raid the henhouse.”

“Oh,” Marcus said. The patriarch had not named the priest who married Alypia to Ortaias, but he was not surprised Gennadios was the man. He had been the creature of Mavrikios’ predecessor Strobilos Sphrantzes and doubtless stayed loyal to the clan. It would have been commendable, Scaurus thought, in a better cause; he could not work up much regret at the priest’s exile.

“Are we quite through shilly-shallying about?” Thorisin asked with ill-concealed impatience.

“Shilly-shallying?” Balsamon exclaimed, mock-indignant. “Nonsense! We’ve trimmed this council by a fifth in a half hour’s time. May you do as well with the pen-pushers!”

“Hmp,” the Emperor said. He plucked a hair from his beard, crossed his eyes to examine it closely. It was white. He threw it away. Turning back to Alypia, he asked, “You say you don’t want his head?”

“No, not really,” she replied. “He’s a foolish puppy, not as brave as he should be, and a dreadful bore.” Indignation struggled for a moment with the fright on Ortaias Sphrantzes’ face. “But you’d soon run short of subjects, uncle, if you did to death everyone who fit those bills. Were Vardanes here, now—” Her voice did not rise, but a sort of grim eagerness made it frightening to hear.

“Aye.” Thorisin’s right hand curled into a fist. “Well,” he resumed, “suppose we let the losel live.” Ortaias leaned forward in sudden hope; his guards pushed him back onto the couch. The Emperor ignored him, growling, “Skotos can pull me down to hell before I just turn him loose. He’d be plotting again before the rope marks faded. He has to know—and the people have to know—what a complete and utter idiot he’s been, and he’ll pay the price for it.”

“Of course,” Alypia nodded; she was at least as good a practical politician as her uncle. “How does this sound …?”

Almost all the units which accompanied Thorisin Gavras on his coronation march had been dismissed to their barracks while the Emperor and his councilors debated Ortaias Sphrantzes’ fate. Only a couple of squads
of Videssian bodyguards waited for the Emperor outside the patriarchal residence, along with the dozen parasol bearers who were an Avtokrator’s inevitable public companions.

The streets were nearly empty of spectators, too. A few Videssians stood and gawped at the shrunken imperial party as it made its way back toward the palaces, but most of the city folk had already found other things to amuse them.

Thus Marcus saw the tall man pushing his way toward them at a good distance, but thought nothing much of him—just another Videssian with a bit of a seaman’s roll in his walk. In the great port the capital was, that hardly rated notice.

Even when the fellow waved to Thorisin Gavras, Scaurus all but ignored him. So many people had done so much cheering and greeting that the tribune was numb to it. But when the man shouted, “Hail to your Imperial Majesty!” ice walked up Scaurus’ spine. That raspy bass, better suited to cutting through wind and wave than to the city, could only belong to Taron Leimmokheir.

The tribune had met Ortaias’ drungarios of the fleet but twice, once on a pitch-dark beach and the other time when being chased by his galley. Neither occasion had been ideal for marking Leimmokheir’s features. Nor were those remarkable: perhaps forty-five, the admiral had a rawboned look to him, his face lined and tanned by the sun, his hair and beard too gray to show much of their own sun bleaching.

If Marcus, then, had an excuse for not recognizing Leimmokheir at sight, the same could not be said for Thorisin Gavras, who had dealt with the drungarios almost daily when his brother was Emperor. Yet Thorisin was more taken aback by Leimmokheir’s appearance than was the tribune. He stopped in his tracks, gaping as at a ghost.

His halt let the admiral elbow his way through the remaining guardsmen. Exclaiming, “Congratulations to you, Gavras! Well done!” Leimmokheir went to his knees and then to his belly in the middle of the street.

He was still down in the proskynesis when Thorisin finally found his voice. “Of all the colossal effrontery, this takes the prize,” he whispered. Then, with a sudden full-throated bellow of rage, “Guards! Seize me the treacherous rogue!”

“Here, what’s this? Take your hands off me!” Leimmokheir struck out against his assailants, but they were many to his one—and there could hardly be a worse position for self defense than the proskynesis. In seconds he was hauled upright, his arms pinned painfully behind him—almost exactly, Marcus thought irrelevantly, as Vardanes Sphrantzes had held Alypia.

The drungarios glared at Thorisin Gavras. “What’s all this in aid of?” he shouted, still trying to twist free. “Is this the thanks you give everyone who wouldn’t fall at your knees and worship? If it is, what’s that snake of a Namdalener doing beside you? He’d sell his mother for two coppers, if he thought she’d bring so much.”

The count Drax snarled and took a step forward, but Thorisin stopped him with a gesture. “You’re a fine one to talk of serpents, Leimmokheir, you and your treachery, you and your hired assassins after a pledge of safe-conduct.”

Taron Leimmokheir’s tufted eyebrows—almost a match for Balsamon’s—crawled halfway up his forehead like a pair of gray caterpillars. Amazingly, he threw back his head and laughed. “I don’t know what you drink these days, boy.” Gavras reddened dangerously, but Leimmokheir did not notice. “But pass me the bottle if there’s any left when you’re done. Whatever’s in it makes you see the strangest things.” He spoke as he might to any equal, ignoring the guardsmen clinging to him.

Scaurus remembered what he’d thought the first time he heard the drungarios’ voice—that there was no guile in him. That first impression returned now, as strong as before. His two years in the Empire, though, had taught him that deceit was everywhere, all too often artfully disguised as candor.

That was how the Emperor saw it. If anything, his anger was hotter at seeing himself betrayed by a man he had thought trustworthy. He said, “You can lie till you drop, Leimmokheir, but you’re a tomfool to try. There’s no testimony for you to argue away. I was there, you know, and saw your hired man-slayers with my own eyes—”

“That’s more than I did,” Leimmokheir shot back, but Gavras stormed on.

“Aye, and fleshed my blade in a couple as well.” The Emperor turned
to the guards. “Take this fine, upstanding gentleman to gaol. We’ll give him a nice, quiet place to think until I decide what to do with him. Go on, get him out of my sight.” Holding the drungarios as they were, the troopers could not salute, but they nodded and hauled him away.

Only then did Leimmokheir really seem to understand this was not some practical joke. “Gavras, you bloody nincompoop, I still don’t know what in Skotos’ frozen hell you think I did, but I didn’t do it, whatever it was. Phos have mercy on you for tormenting an innocent man. Watch that, you clumsy oafs!” he shouted to his captors as they dragged him through a puddle. His protests faded in the distance.

Matters pertaining to Ortaias Sphrantzes had been scheduled for two days later, but it was pelting down rain, and they had to be postponed. It rained again the next day, and the next. Watching the dirty gray clouds rolling out of the north, Scaurus realized the storm was but the first harbinger of the long fall rains. Where had the year gone? he asked himself; that question never had an answer.

At last the weather relented. The north wind still blew moist and cool, but the sun was bright; it flashed dazzlingly off still-wet walls and made every lingering drop of water into a rainbow. And if it had not had enough time to dry every seat in Videssos’ huge Amphitheater, the people whose bottoms were dampened did not complain. The spectacle they were anticipating made up for such minor inconveniences.

“Sure and there’s enough people,” Viridovix said, his eyes traveling from the legionaries’ central spine up and up the sides of the great limestone bowl. “The poor omadhauns in the last row won’t be after seeing what’s happening today till next week, so far away they are.”

“More Celtic nonsense,” Gaius Philippus said with a snort. “I’ll grant you, though, we won’t be much bigger than bugs to them.” His own practiced gaze slid over the crowd. “Worthless, most of ’em, like the fat ones back home”—He meant Rome, and Marcus winced to be reminded—“who come out on the feast days to watch the gladiators kill each other.”

The tribune agreed with that assessment; the buzz of conversation floating out of the stands had a cruel undercurrent, and on the faces in
the first few rows, the ones close enough to see clearly, the air of vulpine avidity was all too plain.

He caught a glimpse of Gorgidas in the contingent of foreign envoys some little distance down the spine. As an aspiring historian, the Greek had wanted a close-up view of this day’s festivities, and preferred the ambassadors’ company to disguising himself as a legionary. He was listening to some tale from Arigh Arghun’s son and scribbling quick notes on a three-leafed wax tablet. Two more hung at his belt.

Taso Vones, the ambassador from Khatrish, waved cheerily to the tribune, who grinned back. He liked the little Khatrisher, whose sharp, jolly wits belied his mousy appearance.

Horns filled the Amphitheater with bronzen music. The crowd’s noise rose expectantly. Preceded by his retinue of parasol bearers, Thorisin Gavras strode into the arena. The applause was loud as he mounted the dozen steps that led up to the spine, but it fell short of the deafening tumult Scaurus had heard before in the Amphitheater. The Emperor, for once, was not what the populace had turned out to see.

Each unit of troops Gavras passed presented arms as he went by; at Gaius Philippus’ barked command the Romans held their
pila
out at arm’s length ahead of them. Gavras nodded slightly. He and the senior centurion, both lifelong soldiers, understood each other very well.

Not so the bureaucrats Thorisin passed on his way to the throne. They looked nervous as they bowed to their new sovereign; Goudeles, for one, was pale against his robe of dark blue silk. But Gavras paid them no more attention than he did to the clutter of a millennium and a half of heroic art that he passed: statues bronze, statues marble—some painted, some not—statues chryselephantine, even an obelisk of gilded granite long ago taken as booty from Makuran.

The Emperor grew animated once more when he came to the foreign dignitaries. He paused for a moment to say something to Gawtruz of Thatagush, at which the squat, swarthy envoy nodded. Then Gavras included Taso Vones in the conversation, whatever it was. The Khatrisher laughed and gave a rueful tug at his beard, as unkempt as Gawtruz’.

Even without hearing the words, Marcus understood the byplay. He, too, thought the fuzzy beard looked foolish on Vones, who could have
passed for a Videssian without it. But his ruler still enforced a few Khamorth ways, in memory of his ancestors who had carved the state from Videssos’ eastern provinces centuries before, and so the little envoy was doomed to wear the shaggy whiskers he despised.

Thorisin seated himself on a high stool at the center of the Amphitheater’s spine; the chair was backless so all the spectators could see him. His parasol bearers grouped themselves around him. He raised his right hand in a gesture of command; the crowd grew quiet and leaned forward in their seats, craning their necks for a better view.

They all knew where to look. The gate that came open was the one through which, on most days, racehorses entered the Amphitheater. Today the procession was much shorter: Thorisin Gavras’ deep-chested herald, two Videssian guardsmen gorgeous in gilded cuirasses, and a groom leading a single donkey.

Ortaias Sphrantzes rode the beast, but it needed a guide nonetheless, for its saddle was reversed, and he sat facing its tail. Long familiar with their own idiom of humiliation, the watching Videssians burst into guffaws. An overripe fruit came sailing out of the stands, to squash at the donkey’s feet. Others followed, but the barrage was mercifully short; Videssos had been under siege too recently for there to be much food to waste.

The herald, nimbly sidestepping a hurtling melon, cried out, “Behold Ortaias Sphrantzes, who thought to rebel against the rightful Avtokrator of the Videssians, his Imperial Majesty Thorisin Gavras!” The crowd shouted back, “Thou conquerest, Gavras! Thou conquerest!”—as heartily, Marcus thought, as if they had forgotten that a week before they called Ortaias their lord.