Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (89 page)

His bellow filled the Grand Courtroom. Courtiers froze in mid-step; a chamberlain almost dropped the fat red candle he was carrying. It went out. His curse, a eunuch’s contralto, echoed Gavras’. Minucius poked his head into the throne room to see what had happened.

“You were the one who told me it wasn’t in the man to lie,” Marcus said, persisting where a man born in the Empire might well quail.

“Aye, so I did, and came near paying my life for my stupidity,” Thorisin retorted. “Now you tell me to put the wasp back in my tunic for another sting. Let him stay mured up till he rots, and gabble out his prayers lest worse befall him.”

“Uncle, I think you’re wrong,” Alypia said. “What little decency came my way while the Sphrantzai reigned came from Leimmokheir. Away from his precious ships he’s a child, with no more skill at politics than Marcus’ foster son.”

The tribune blinked, first at her mentioning Malric and then at her calling him by his own praenomen. When used alone, it was normally a mark of close personal ties. He wondered whether she knew the Roman custom.

She was going on, “You know I’m telling you the truth, uncle. How many years, now, have you known Leimmokheir? More than a handful, surely. You know the man he is. Do you really think that man could play you false?”

The Emperor’s fist slammed down on the gold-sheathed arm of his throne. The ancient seat was not made for such treatment; it gave a painful creak of protest. Thorisin leaned forward to emphasize his words. “The man I knew would not break faith. But Leimmokheir did, and thus I knew him not at all. Who does worse evil, the man who shows his wickedness for the whole world to see or the one who stores it up to loose against those who trust him?”

“A good question for a priest,” Alypia said, “but not one with much meaning if Leimmokheir is innocent.”

“I was there, girl. I saw what was done, saw the new-minted goldpieces of the Sphrantzai in the murderers’ pouches. Let Leimmokheir explain them away—that might earn his freedom.” The Emperor laughed, but it was a sound of hurt. Marcus knew it was futile to argue further; feeling betrayed by a man he had thought honest, Gavras would not, could not, yield to argument.

“Thank you for hearing me, at least,” the tribune said. “I gave my word to put the case to you once more.”

“Then you misgave it.”

“No, I think not.”

“There are times, outlander, when you try my patience,” the Emperor said dangerously. Scaurus met his eye, hiding the twinge of fear he felt. Much of the position he had built for himself in Videssos was based on not letting the sheer weight of imperial authority coerce him. That, for a man of republican Rome, was easy. Facing an angry Thorisin Gavras was something else again.

Gavras made a dissatisfied sound deep in his throat. “Kabasilas!” he called, and the chamberlain was at his elbow as the last syllable of his name still echoed in the high-ceilinged throne room. Marcus expected some sonorous formula of dismissal, but that was not Thorisin’s way. He jerked his head toward his niece and the tribune and left Kabasilas to put such formality in the gesture as he might.

The steward did his best, but his bows and flourishes seemed all the
more artificial next to the Emperor’s unvarnished rudeness. The other court functionaries craned their necks at Scaurus and Alypia as he led them away, wondering how much favor they had lost. That would be as it was, Marcus thought. He laughed at himself—a piece of fatalism worthy of the Halogai.

When they came out to the Grand Gates once more, Alypia stopped to talk a few minutes longer with the Roman sentries there, then departed for the imperial residence. Scaurus went up to his offices to dictate a letter to Baanes Onomagoulos; Pandhelis’ script was far more legible than his own. That accomplished, he basked in a pleasant glow of self-satisfaction as he started back to the barracks.

It did not last long. Viridovix was coming toward him, a jar of wine in his hand and an anticipatory grin on his face. The Gaul threw him a cheery wave and ducked into a small doorway in the other wing of the Grand Courtroom.

Maybe I should have drowned him, Marcus thought angrily. Had Viridovix no idea what he was playing at? There was no more caution in him than guile in Taron Leimmokheir. What would he do next, ask Thorisin for the loan of a bedroom? The tribune warned himself not to suggest that—Viridovix might take him up on it.

With the Celt gone, Scaurus was surprised to see Arigh at the barracks. The Arshaum was talking to Gorgidas again while the Greek took notes. Gorgidas was asking, “Who sees to your sick, then?”

The question seemed to bore Arigh, who scratched beneath his tunic of sueded leather. At last he said indifferently, “The shamans drive out evil spirits, of course, and for smaller ills the old women know of herbs, I suppose. Ask me of war, where I can talk of what I know.” He slapped the curved sword that hung at his side.

Quintus Glabrio came in; he smiled and waved to Gorgidas without interrupting the physician’s jottings. Instead he said to Marcus, “I’m glad to see you here, sir. A couple of my men have a running quarrel I can’t seem to get to the bottom of. Maybe they’ll heed you.”

“I doubt that, if you can’t solve it,” the tribune said, but he went with Glabrio anyhow. The legionaries stood stiff-faced as he warned them not to let their dislike for each other affect their soldiering. They nodded at the correct times. Scaurus was not deceived; anything the able junior
centurion could not cure over the course of time would not yield to his brief intercession. The men were on formal notice now, so perhaps something was accomplished.

Arigh had gone when he returned. Gorgidas was working up his notes, rubbing out a word here, a phrase there with the blunt end of his stylus, then reversing it to put his changes on the wax. “Viridovix will think you’re trying to steal his friend away,” the tribune said.

“What do I care what that long-shanked Gaul thinks?” Gorgidas asked, but could not quite keep amusement from his voice. Sometimes Viridovix made his friends want to wring his neck, but they remained his friends in spite of it. Less pleased, the doctor went on, “At least I can learn what the plainsman has to teach me.”

There was no mistaking his bitterness. Marcus knew he was still seeing Nepos and other healer-priests, still trying to master their arts, and still falling short. No wonder he was putting more energy into his history these days. Medicine could not be satisfying to him right now.

Scaurus yawned, cozily warm under the thick wool blanket. Helvis’ steady breathing beside him said she had already dropped off; so did her arm flung carelessly across his chest. Malric was asleep on her other side, while Dosti’s breath came raspy from his crib. The baby was getting over a minor fever; Marcus drowsily hoped he would not catch it.

But an itchy something in the back of his mind kept him from following them into slumber. He rehashed the day’s events, trying to track it down. Was it his failure to gain Taron Leimmokheir’s release? Close, he thought, but not on the mark. He had not expected to win that one.

Why close, then? He heard Alypia Gavra’s voice once more as she talked with the legionaries outside the Grand Courtroom. Whatever else she knew about their ways, he realized, she was perfectly familiar with the proper use of Roman names.

He was a long time sleeping.

T
HE TRIBUNE SNEEZED
. G
AIUS
P
HILIPPUS LOOKED AT HIM IN DISGUST
. “Aren’t you through with that bloody thing yet?”

“It hangs on and on,” Marcus said dolefully, wiping his nose. His eyes were watery, too, and his head seemed three times its proper size. “What is it, two weeks now?”

“At least. That’s what you get for having your brat.” Revoltingly healthy himself, Gaius Philippus spooned up his breakfast porridge, took a great gulp of wine. “That’s good!” He patted his belly. Scaurus had scant appetite, which was as well, for his sense of taste had disappeared.

Viridovix strode into the barracks, splendid in his cape of crimson skins. He helped himself to peppery lamb sausage, porridge, and wine, then sank into a chair by the tribune and senior centurion. “The top o’ the day t’ye!” he said, lifting his mug in salute.

“And to you,” Marcus returned. He looked the Celt up and down. “Why such finery so early in the morning?”

“Early in the morning it may be for some, Scaurus dear, but I’m thinking of it as night’s end. And a rare fine night it was, too.” He winked at the two Romans.

“Mmph,” Marcus said, as noncommittal a noise as he could muster. Normally he enjoyed Viridovix in a bragging mood, but since the Gaul had taken up with Komitta Rhangavve the less he heard the better. Nor did Gaius Philippus’ incurious expression offer Viridovix any encouragement; the senior centurion, Marcus was sure, was jealous of the Celt, but would sooner have been racked than admit it.

Irrepressible as always, Viridovix needed scant prompting. After a long, noisy pull at his wine, he remarked, “Would your honor believe it, the wench had the brass to tell me to put all my other lassies to one side and have her only. Not ask, mind you, but tell! And me sharing her with
himself without so much as a peep. The cheek of it all!” He bit into the sausage, made a face at its spiciness, and drank again.

“Sharing who with whom?” Gaius Philippus asked, confused by pronouns.

“Never mind,” Marcus said quickly. The fewer people who knew of Viridovix’ trysting, the longer word of it would take to get back to Thorisin Gavras. Even Viridovix saw that, for he suddenly looked sly. But his report of what Komitta had said worried the tribune enough to make him ask, “What did you tell the lady?”

“What any Celtic noble and gentleman would, of course: to go futter the moon. No colleen bespeaks me so.”

“Oh, no.” Scaurus wanted to hold his aching head in his hands. With Komitta’s savage temper and great sense of her own rank, it was a wonder Viridovix was here to tell the tale. In fact—“What did she say to that?”

“Och, she carried on somewhat, sure and she did, but I horned it out of her.” Viridovix stretched complacently. The tribune looked at him in awe. If that was true, the Gaul was a mighty lanceman indeed.

Viridovix routed a piece of gristle out from between his teeth with a fingernail, then belched. “Still and all,” he said, “if ye maun play the tomcat of evenings, then the day’s the time for lying up. A bit o’ sleep’d be welcome now, so by your leaves—” He rose, finished his wine, and walked out, whistling cheerily.

“Enough of your ‘never minds,’ ” Gaius Philippus said as soon as the Celt was gone. “You don’t go fish-belly color over trifles. What’s toward?”

So Marcus, his hand forced, told him and had the remote pleasure of watching his jaw drop to his chest. “Almighty Jove,” the senior centurion said at last. “The lad doesn’t think small, does he now?”

He thought another minute, then added, “He’s welcome to her, too, for my silver. I’d sooner strop my tool on a sword blade than go near that one. All in all, it’s safer.” The tribune winced at the image, but slowly nodded; down deep inside he felt the same way.

As spring drew on, Scaurus spent less time at tax records. Most of the receipts had come in after the fall harvest, and he was through most of the backlog by the time the days began to grow longer once more. He
knew he had done an imperfect job of overseeing the Videssian bureaucracy. It was too large, too complex, and too well entrenched for any one man, let alone an outsider, to control it fully. But he did think he had done some good and kept more revenue flowing into the imperial treasury than it would have got without him.

He was only too aware of some of his failures. One afternoon Pikridios Goudeles had mortified him by coming into the offices with a massy golden ring set with an enormous emerald. The minister wore it with great ostentation and flashed it at the tribune so openly that Marcus was sure its price came from diverted funds. Indeed, Goudeles hardly bothered to deny it, only smiling a superior smile. Yet try as Scaurus would, he could find no errors in the books.

Goudeles let him stew for several days, then, still with that condescending air, showed the Roman the sly bit of jugglery he’d used. “For,” he said, “having used it myself, I see no point in letting just anyone slide it past you. That would reflect on my own skill.”

More or less sincerely, Marcus thanked him and said nothing further about the ring; he had fairly lost this contest of wit with the bureaucrat, just as he had won the one before. They remained not-quite-friends, each with a healthy regard for the other’s competence. As Scaurus came less often to his desk in the Grand Courtroom wing, he sometimes missed the seal-stamper’s dry, delicate wit, his exquisite sense of where to place a dart.

Before long, only one major item was outstanding on the tribune’s list: the tax roll for Kybistra. Onomagoulos ignored his first request for it; he sent out another, more strongly worded. “That echo will be a long time returning, I think,” Goudeles told him.

“Eh? Why?” Marcus asked irritably.

The bureaucrat’s eyebrow could not have lifted by the thickness of a hair, but he contrived to make the Roman feel like a small, stupid child. “Ah, well,” Goudeles murmured, “it was a disorderly time for everyone.”

Scaurus thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, annoyed with himself for missing what was obvious, once pointed out. Onomagoulos had taken refuge at Kybistra after Maragha; the tribune wondered what part of his accounts would not bear close inspection. Thorisin, he thought, would be interested in that question, too.