Krispos the Emperor (47 page)

Olyvria in broad, hot daylight. She was also sunburned; they'd shared misery and fish on the way back to the city.

The servitor put hands on hips. "Oh, your father won't mind, eh? And who, pray, is your father? Do you know yourself?"

Phostis had been wondering the same thing, but didn't let on. He said, "My father is Krispos son of Phostis, Avtokrator of the Videssians. I have, you will notice if you look closely, escaped from the Thanasioi."

Soranos started to give back another sharp answer, but paused and took a long look at Phostis. He was too swarthy to turn pale, but his jaw fell, his eyes widened, and his right hand, seemingly of its own accord, shaped the sun-circle above his heart. He prostrated himself, gabbling "Young Majesty, it is yourself—I mean, you are yourself! A thousand pardons, I pray, I beg! Phos be praised that he has granted you safe voyage home and blessed you with liberty once again."

Beside Phostis, Olyvria snickered. He shook his head reproachfully, then told the servitor, "Get up, get up. I forgive you. Now tell me at once what's going on, why I saw so much smoke in the sky as I was sailing down the Cattle-Crossing."

"The heretics have rioted again, young Majesty; they're trying to burn the city down around our heads," Soranos answered as he rose.

"I feared that's what it was. Take me to my father at once, then."

Soranos' face assumed the exaggerated mask of regret any sensible servant donned when saying no to a member of the imperial family. "Young Majesty, I cannot. He has left the city to campaign against the Thanasioi."

"Yes, of course he has," Phostis said, annoyed at himself. Had the imperial army not been on the move, he wouldn't have been sent to Pityos—or escaped. "Who is in command here in the city, then?"

"The young Majesty Evripos, your brother."

"Oh." Phostis bit down on that like a man finding a pebble in his lentil stew. From Krispos' point of view, the appointment made sense, especially with Phostis himself absent. But he could not imagine anyone who would be less delighted than Evripos at his sudden arrival. No help for it, though. "You'd best take me to him."

"Certainly, young Majesty. But would you and your, ah, companion—" Olyvria had her hair up under her hat and was in her baggy, mannish outfit, so Soranos could not be sure if she was woman or youth. "—not care first to refresh yourselves and change into, ah, more suitable garments?"

"No." Phostis made the single word as imperious—and imperial—as he could; not till it had passed his lips did he realize he'd taken his tone from Krispos.

Whatever its source, it worked wonders. Soranos said, "Of course, young Majesty. Follow me, if you would be so kind."

Phostis followed. No one came close to him, Olyvria, and Soranos as they walked through the palace compound. People who saw them at a distance no doubt thought Soranos was escorting a couple of day laborers to some job or other.

To Phostis, the palace compound was simply home. He took no special notice of the lawns and gardens and buildings among which he strode. To Olyvria, though, they all seemed new and marvelous. Watching her try to look every which way at once, seeing her awe at the Grand Courtroom, the cherry orchard that screened the imperial residence, and the Hall of the Nineteen Couches made him view them with fresh eyes, too.

Evripos was not conducting his fight against the rioters from the palaces. He'd set up a headquarters in the plaza of Palamas. People—some soldiers, some not—hurried in and out with news, orders, what-have-you. A big Haloga gave Phostis a first-rate dubious stare. "What you want here?" he asked in accented Videssian.

"I'd like to see my brother, Herwig," Phostis answered.

Herwig glowered at him, wondering who his brother might be—and who he was himself, to presume to address an imperial guardsman by name. Then the glower faded to wonderment. "Young Majesty!" the Haloga boomed, loud enough to cause heads to turn in the makeshift pavilion.

Among those heads was Evripos'. "Well, well," he said when he saw it truly was Phostis. "Look what the dog dragged to the doorstep."

"Hello, brother," Phostis said, more cautiously than he'd expected. In the bit more than half a year since he'd set eyes on his younger brother, Evripos had gone from youth to man. His features were sharper than they had been, his beard thicker and not so soft. He wore a man's expression, too, under a coat of

smoke and dirt: tired, harassed, but determined to do what he'd set out to do.

Now he gave Phostis a hostile stare. It wasn't the stare Phostis was used to. the one that came because he was older. It was because he might be an enemy. Evripos barked, "Did the cursed Thanasioi send you here to stir up more trouble?"

"If they had, would I have tied up the fishing boat I sailed here over at Father's quay?" Phostis said. "Would I have come looking for you instead of Digenis?"

"Digenis is dead, and we don't miss him a bit," Evripos said, voice still harsh. "And who knows what you'd do? One of the things I know about the bloody heretics is that they're bloody sneaky. For all I know, you could have that doxy there by you just to fool me into thinking you're not off the pleasures of the flesh."

Unlike Soranos, Evripos knew a girl when he saw one, no matter what she wore. Phostis said, "Brother, I present to you Olyvria the daughter of Livanios, who helped me escape from the Thanasioi and rejects them as much as I do, which is to say altogether."

That succeeded in startling Evripos. Then Olyvria startled Phostis: She prostrated herself before his brother, murmuring, "Your Majesty." She probably should have said
young Majesty,
but Evripos had been left in command of the city, so she wasn't really wrong—and she was dead right to err on the side of flattery.

Evripos grunted. Before he could say more than "Get up," a messenger bleeding from a cut over one eye came up and gasped something Phostis didn't follow. Evripos said, "It's not hard unless you make it so. Push one troop down from Middle Street east of where those maniacs are holed up and another west of 'em. Then crush 'em between our men."

The messenger dashed away. Off to one side in the pavilion, Phostis saw Noetos bent over a map. But Noetos was not running the show. Evripos was. Phostis had watched Krispos exercise command too often to mistake it.

He said, "What can I do to help?"

"To take things away from me, you mean?" Evripos asked suspiciously.

"No. Father gave it to you, and you seem to be doing well by it. I just got here, remember? I haven't the faintest idea what's going on. But if I can be of use, tell me how."

Evripos looked as if such cooperation were the last thing he wanted. Olyvria said, "If you like, we could speak to the mob and tell them why we care for the gleaming path no more."

"Not the least reason being that Makuran is behind the Thanasioi and supports them with a wizard and the good god only knows what all else," Phostis added.

"So you know about that, do you? We wondered, Father and I. We were afraid you knew and didn't care, afraid you'd thrown your lot in with the heretics. You hadn't seemed exactly eager when we went on campaign against them last year." Evripos' sarcasm stung like a whiplash.

"I wasn't eager then," Phostis admitted: No point denying it, for Evripos knew better. "It's different now. Fetch a mage for the two-mirror test if you don't believe me."

Evripos glowered at him. "The Thanasioi have tricks to beat the two-mirror test, as you'll recall from the delightful time Zaidas had trying to use it last year. And if Zaidas couldn't make it work, I doubt another mage would be able to, either. And so, brother of mine, I'll keep you and the heresiarch's daughter off the platform. I can't trust you, you see."

"Can't trust us how?" Phostis demanded.

"How d'you think? Suppose I let you go talk to the mob and instead of saying, 'The golden path is a midden full of dung,' you say, 'Hurrah for Thanasios! Now go out and burn the High Temple!'? That would spill the chamber pot into the stew, now wouldn't it?"

Noetos looked up from the map table and said, "Surely the young Majesty would commit no such outrage. He—"

Evripos cut him off with a sharp wave of the hand. "No." He sounded as imperial—and as much like his father—as Phostis had with the same word. "I will not take the chance. Have we not seen enough chaos in the city these past few days to fight shy of provoking more? I say again, no." He shifted his feet into a fighter's stance, as if defying Noetos to make him change his mind.

The general tamely yielded. "It shall be as you say, of course, young Majesty," he murmured, and went back to his map.

Phostis found himself furious enough to want to hit his brother over the head with the nearest hard object he could find. "You're a fool," he growled.

"And you're a blockhead," Evripos retorted. "I'm not the one who let Digenis seduce him."

"How's this, then?" Phostis said. "Suppose you summon Oxeites the patriarch here to the plaza of Palamas or anyplace else you think would be a good idea, and he can marry me to Olyvria as publicly as possible. That ought to convince people I'm not a Thanasiot—they'd sooner starve than wive ... Curse you, Evripos, I mean it. What's so bloody funny?"

"I'm sorry," Evripos said, the first concession Phostis had got from him. "I was just thinking it's too bad Father's gone on campaign. The two of you might don the crowns of marriage side by side. Do you remember the serving maid named Drina?"

"Of course. She's a pretty little thing, but—" Phostis gaped at his grinning brother. "Father's gone all soft in the head over her?"

"I doubt that," Evripos said judiciously. "When has Father ever gone soft in the head over anyone, us included? But she is pregnant by him. We'll have ourselves a little half brother or half sister before Midwinter's Day. Relax, Phostis—you don't need to go so white. Father truly doesn't plan on marrying her. Believe me, I'm as happy at that as you are."

"Yes. A new half brother or half sister, eh? Well, well." Phostis wondered if he was only half brother to Evripos and Katakolon as it was. He'd never know, not for certain. He said, "If you're done gossiping, I'm dead serious about what I said. If you think it will help end the riots, I'll wed in as open a ceremony as the chamberlains can dream up."

Beside him, Olyvria nodded vigorously. "That might be the best way to discredit the gleaming path: let those who think of following it see that their one-time leaders are abandoning it."

"The plan is sensible, young Majesty," Noetos said.

"Mmm—maybe it is." Evripos frowned in intense concentration. A messenger interrupted with a note. Evripos read it, snapped orders, and returned to study. At last he said, "No, I will not order it. One of the drawbacks of our rank, brother, is that we aren't always free to make the matches we would. I see nothing wrong with this one, but I'm slowly finding out—" His grin was rueful and disarming at the same time. "—I don't know everything there is to know. Too much rides here for me to say aye or nay."

"What then?" Phostis demanded.

"I'll send you along the courier route to Father. Tell him your tale. If he believes you, what can I possibly say? And if he thinks this marriage of yours a good idea, then married you shall be—and at a quickstep, if I know Father. Bargain?"

"Bargain," Phostis replied at once. A couple of orders from Evripos and he and Olyvria might have disappeared for good. If Krispos ever found out, Evripos could claim they were fanatical Thanasioi. Who would contradict him, especially after he became the primary heir? "It's ... decent of you."

"Meaning you expect me to throw you into some dungeon or other and then forget which one it was?" Evripos asked.

"Well—yes." Phostis felt his face heat at being so obvious; had he made that kind of mistake at Etchmiadzin, he never would have got out of the fortress.

"If you think the notion didn't cross my mind, you're daft." Phostis needed a moment to realize the strangled noise Evripos made was intended as laughter. His younger brother went on, "Father always taught us to fear the ice, and I guess I listened to him. If you'd gone over to the gleaming path, nothing would have made me happier than hunting you down and taking your place. Always believe that, Phostis. But stealing it after you've got loose of the Thanasioi?" He made a wry face. "It's tempting, but I can resist it."

Phostis thought of the chamber under Digenis' tunnel, and of the naked and lovely temptation Olyvria had represented. He'd passed her by—then. Now he lay in her arms whenever he could. Had he yielded to temptation? Would Evripos, with some future chance to seize the throne, spring after it rather than turning his back?

As for the first question, Phostis told himself, the situation had changed by the time he and Olyvria became lovers. She wasn't just so much flesh set out for him to enjoy; she'd become his closest friend—almost his only friend—in Etchmiadzin. Were circumstances different, he'd gladly have paid her formal court.

As for the second question ... the future would have to answer it. Phostis knew he'd be a fool to ignore the possibility of Evripos' trying to usurp him. In the future, though, he'd have the power, not his brother—as Evripos did today. And maybe today showed they had hope, at least, of working together.

Evripos said, "Come the day, brother, we may not make such a bad team. Even if you end up with the red boots on your feet, give me something to do with soldiers and I'll do well for Videssos with them."