The Thousand Cities ttot-3

by Harry Turtledove

  «Easy enough to win a fine name for yourself fighting savages,» Tzikas answered. «What you get from it, though, won't help you much when you come up against soldiers with discipline and generals who can see farther than the ends of their noses.»

  Abivard took his own nose between thumb and forefinger for a moment It was of generous size, though in no way outlandish for a man of Makuran. He hoped he could see past the end of it. «You do have a point,» he admitted. «Fighting the Khamorth is nothing like coming up against you Videssians, I must say. But I worry about Maniakes. He made fewer mistakes against me last year than he had before—and tried to accomplish less, which is almost another way of saying the same thing, considering how unsteady his soldiers were. I fear he may be turning into a good commander.»

  Tzikas' lip curled. «Him? Not likely.»

  The first question that came to Abivard's mind was, No? Then why did you fail when you tried overthrowing him this past winter? He didn't ask it; on the orders of his sovereign, he was treating Tzikas with every courtesy in the hope that Tzikas would prove a useful tool against Maniakes. Had many Videssian garrisons in the westlands been left, Tzikas might have persuaded their commanders to go over to Makuran, as he had. But the only Videssian troops here these days were raiding bands largely immune to the renegade general's blandishments.

  A traitor Tzikas might be; a fool he was not. He seemed to have a gift for plucking thoughts from the heads of those with whom he conversed. As if to answer the question Abivard had not asked, he said, «I would have toppled the pervert from the throne had his protective amulet not warded him just long enough to reach his wizard and gain a counterspell against my mage's cantrip.»

  «Aye, so you've said,» Abivard replied. To his way of thinking, an effective conspirator would have known about that amulet and found some way to circumvent it. Saying that to Tzikas, though, would surely have offended him. If only Tzikas took similar care when speaking to Abivard.

  Again the Videssian replied to what Abivard had not said: «I know you Makuraners think nothing of first cousins marrying, or uncles and nieces, or even brothers and sisters among the Seven Clans.» He pulled a face. «Those usages are not ours, and no one will convince me they are not perverse. When Maniakes bedded his uncle's daughter, that was incest, plain as day.»

  «So you've said,» Abivard repeated. «More than once, in fact, Has not your Mobedhan Mobedh, or whatever you call your chief Priest, given leave for that marriage?»

  «Our patriarch,» Tzikas answered, reminding him of the Videssian word. «Yes, he has.» Tzikas' lip curled again, more this time. «And no doubt he gained a fitting reward for the dispensation.» Abivard picked up the meaning of that Videssian term from context. Tzikas went on: «I stand with true righteousness no matter what the patriarch might say.»

  He looked very righteous himself. He was never less believable than when he donned that mantle of smug virtue, for it did not fit him well. He'd made his play, it hadn't worked, and now he seemed to want a special commendation for pure and noble motives. As far as Abivard was concerned, if one tried killing a man by magic, one's motives were unlikely to be pure or noble– odds were, one just wanted what he had.

  Tzikas said, «How I admire Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, for maintaining the imperial dignity of the true heir to the throne of Videssos, Hosios the son of Likinios Avtokrator.»

  «How generous of you to recognize Hosios' claim,» Abivard answered tonelessly. If he had to listen to much more of Tzikas' fulsome good cheer, he'd need a steaming down at the closest bathhouse. The real Hosios was long years dead, executed with his father when Genesios had butchered his way to the Videssian throne. As far as Abivard knew, three different Videssians had played Hosios at Sharbaraz' bidding. There might have been more. If one started to think one really was an Avtokrator rather than a puppet—

  «I would recognize any claim in preference to that of Maniakes,» Tzikas said seriously. But that was too much of a courtier's claim even for him to stomach. Shaking his head, he corrected himself: «No, were I to choose between Maniakes and Genesios, I would choose Maniakes.»

  Abivard knew that he ought to despise Genesios, too. The man had, after all, murdered not only Likinios, the benefactor of Makuran, but also all his family. But had it not been for Genesios, he would not be able to look over the Cattle Crossing and see Videssos the city. Under what passed for the murderer's reign. Videssos had dissolved in multicornered civil war, and more than one town in the westlands had welcomed the Makuraners in the hope that they would bring peace and order to replace the bloody chaos engulfing the Empire.

  When Tzikas saw that Abivard was not going to respond to his preferences for the Videssian throne, he changed the subject, at least to some degree: «Brother-in-law to the King of Kings, when may I begin constituting my promised regiment of horsemen in the service of Hosios Avtokrator?»

  «Soon,» Abivard answered, as he had the last time had asked that question, and the time before that, and the time before that.

  «I have heard there is no objection in Mashiz to the regiment,» Tzikas said delicately.

  «Soon, eminent sir, soon,» Abivard repeated. Tzikas was right; Sharbaraz King of Kings was happy to see a body of Videssian troops help give the current Hosios' claim to the throne legitimacy. The hesitation lay on Abivard's part. Tzikas was already a traitor once; what was to keep him from becoming a traitor twice?

  Roshnani had used a homelier analogy: «A man who cheats with a woman and then marries her will cheat on her afterward– not always, maybe, but most of the time.»

  «I trust I shall not have to appeal directly to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase,» Tzikas said exactly as a Makuraner noble might have—the Videssians knew how to squeeze, too.

  «Soon I said, and soon I meant,» Abivard replied, wishing that some hideous disease—another bout of treason, perhaps—would get Tzikas out of his hair. For the Videssian renegade to use the word trust when he was so manifestly unworthy of it grated. What grated even more was that Tzikas, who was so perceptive elsewhere, seemed blind to Abivard's reasons for disliking him.

  «I shall take you at your word,» Tzikas said, «for I know the nobles of Makuran are raised to ride, to fight, and to tell the truth.»

  That was what the Videssians said of Makuraners. The men of Makuran, for their part, were told that Videssians sucked in mendacity with their mothers' milk. Having dealt with men from both sides of the border, Abivard had come to the reluctant conclusion that those of either nation would lie when they thought that was to their benefit or sometimes merely for the sport of it, those who worshiped the God about as readily as those who followed Phos.

  «Everything I can do, I will,» Abivard said. Eventually, he added to himself. He did not enjoy being imperfectly honest with Tzikas, but he did not relish the prospect of the Videssian's commanding troops, either. To take the moral advantage away from Tzikas, he went on: «Have you had any luck in finding ship's carpenters or whatever the proper name for them is? If we are going to beat Maniakes, to beat Videssos once and for all, we'll have to get our men over the Cattle Crossing and assault Videssos the city. Without ships—»

  Tzikas sighed. «I am making every effort, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, but my difficulties in this regard, unlike yours concerning horsemen, are easy to describe.» Abivard raised an eyebrow at that jab. Unperturbed, Tzikas went on, «Videssos separates land and sea commands. Had a drungarios fallen into your clutches, he could have done better by you, for such matters fall within his area of responsibility. As a simple soldier, though, I fear I am ignorant of the art of shipbuilding.»

  «Eminent sir, I certainly did not expect you to do the carpentry on your own,» Abivard answered, working hard to keep his face straight. Tzikas' describing himself as a simple anything would have drawn a laugh from any Makuraner—and probably from most of the Videssians—who had ever had to deal with him. «Learning where to gath
er the men with the requisite trades is something else again.»

  «So it is, in the most literal sense of the word,» Tzikas said. «Most of the men who practice these trades have left the westlands in the face of your victorious advance, whether by their own will or at the urging of their city governors or provincial chiefs.»

  Such urging, Abivard knew, had probably been at a sword's point «The Videssians dug a hole and pulled it in after themselves,» he said angrily. «I can see them over there in Videssos the city, but I can't touch them no matter what I try. But they can still touch me—some of their seaborne raids have hurt.»

  «They have a capacity you lack,» Tzikas agreed. «I would help you remedy that lack were it in my power, but unfortunately it is not. You, on the other hand, have the ability to allow me to recruit a suitable number of horsemen who—» Without apparent effort, he turned the tables on Abivard.

  By the time Abivard managed to break away, he'd decided he would gladly let Tzikas recruit his long-desired cavalry regiment provided that the Videssian swore a frightful oath to take that regiment far, far away and never come nagging any man of Makuran again.

  Abivard missed Tanshar. He'd always gotten along well with the fortune-teller and wizard who'd lived for so long in the village below Vek Rud stronghold. But Tanshar now was five years dead. Abivard had been searching ever since for a mage who could give him results that matched Tanshar's and not make him feel like an idiot for asking an occasional question.

  Whether the wizards who traveled with the army suited him or not, it had a fair contingent. Battle magic rarely did an army any good. For one thing, the opposition's sorcerers were likely to block the efforts of one's own mages. For another, no magic was very effective in the heat of battle. When a man's passions were roused to fever pitch as he fought for his life, he scarcely sensed spells that might have laid him low had they taken him at his ease. The wizards, then, did more in the way of finding lost rings—and occasionally lost toddlers—for the camp women than they did in hurling sorcerous fireballs at Maniakes' men. They foretold whether pregnant women would bear boys or girls—not with perfect accuracy but better than they could have done by random guessing. They helped heal sick men and sick horses and with luck helped keep camp diseases from turning into epidemics. And, being men, they boasted about all the other things they might do if only they got the chance.

  Every so often Abivard summoned one of them to see if he could make good on his boasts. One hot, sticky high-summer day he had called to his residence the mage named Bozorg, a young, eager fellow who had not accompanied the army in all its campaigns in the Videssian westlands but was newly arrived from Mashiz.

  Bozorg bowed very low before Abivard, showing he recognized that his own rank was low compared with that of the general. Venizelos fetched in wine made tangy with the juice of oranges and lemons, a specialty of the coastal lowlands. Over the past couple of years Abivard had grown fond of it. Bozorg's lips puckered in an expression redolent of distaste.

  «Too sour for me,» he said, and then went on, «unlike my gracious and generous host, whose kindness is a sun by day and a full moon by night, illuminating by its brilliance all it touches. I am honored beyond my poor and humble worth by his invitation and shall serve him with all my heart, all my soul, and all my might, be my abilities ever so weak and feeble.»

  Abivard coughed. They didn't lay compliments on with a trowel in the frontier domain where he'd grown up. The Videssians weren't in the habit of quite such cloying fulsomeness, either; their praise tended to have a sardonic edge to it. But at the court of Mashiz flattery knew no bounds.

  Bozorg must have expected him to take it for granted, too, for he continued. «How may I serve the valiant and noble lord whose puissance causes Videssos to tremble, whose onset is like that of the lion, who strikes with the swiftness of the goshawk, at whose approach the pale easterners who know not the God slink away like jackals, who overthrows city walls like an earthquake in human form, who—»

  Abivard's patience ran thin. «If you'll give me a chance to get a word in edgewise, I'll tell you what I have in mind.» He was glad Roshnani wasn't listening to Bozorg; he would have been a long time living down earthquake in human form.

  «Your manner is harsh and abrupt,» Bozorg said sulkily. Abivard glared at him. He'd sent looks less hostile toward the Videssian generals whose armies he'd overthrown. Bozorg wilted. Shifting from foot to foot, he admitted, «I am of course here to serve you, lord.»

  «That's a relief,» Abivard said. «I thought you'd come to stop up my ears with treacle.» Bozorg assumed a deeply wounded expression. He hadn't practiced it enough; it looked plastered on rather than genuine. Abivard did him a favor: he ignored it. After pausing to marshal his thoughts, he went on, «What I need from you, if you can give it to me, is some sort of picture of what Maniakes has in mind to do to us this year or next year or whenever he decides he's strong enough to face us in open battle.»

  Now Bozorg really did look worried. «Lord, this is no easy task you set me. The Avtokrator of the Videssians will surely have his plans hedged around with the finest sorcery he can obtain from those small fragments of the Empire still under his control.»

  «If what I wanted were simple, I could give silver arkets or Videssian goldpieces to any local hedge wizard,» Abivard said, looking down his long nose at the mage from Mashiz. «You, sirrah, come recommended for both talent and skill. If I send you back to the capital because you have not the spirit to essay what I ask of you, you shall get no more such recommendations in the future.»

  «You misunderstand me, lord,» Bozorg said quickly. «It is not to be doubted I shall attempt this task. I did but warn you that the God does not guarantee success, not against the wizards Maniakes Avtokrator has under his command.»

  «Once we're bom, the only thing the God guarantees is that we'll die and be judged on how we have lived our lives,» Abivard answered. «Between those two moments of birth and death we strive to be good and true and righteous. Of course we can't succeed all the time; only the Prophets Four came close, and so the God revealed himself to them. But we must strive.»

  Bozorg bowed. «My lord is a Mobedhan Mobedh of piety,» he said. Then he gulped; had he laid his flattery on with a trowel again? Abivard contented himself with folding his arms across his chest and letting out an impatient sigh. Hastily the wizard said, «If my lord will excuse me for but a moment, I shall fetch in the magical materials I shall require in the conjuration.»

  He hurried out of Abivard's residence, returning a moment later with two dust-covered leather saddlebags. He set them down on a low table in front of Abivard, undid the rawhide laces that secured them, and took out a low, broad bowl with a glistening white glaze, several stoppered jars, and a squat jug of wine.

  After staring at the jug, he shook his head. «No,» he said. «That is wine of Makuran. If we are to learn what the Avtokrator of the Videssians has in his mind, Videssian wine is a better choice.»

  «I can see that,» Abivard said with a judicious nod. He raised his voice: «Venizelos!» When the steward came into the chamber, he told him, «Fetch me a jar of Videssian wine from the cellar.»

  Venizelos bowed and left, returning shortly with an earthenware jar taller and slimmer than the one Bozorg had brought from Mashiz. He set it on the table in front of the wizard, then disappeared as if made to vanish by one of Bozorg's cantrips.

  Abivard wondered if a Videssian mage might not serve better than a Makuraner one, too. He shook his head. He couldn't trust Panteles, not for this.

  Bozorg used a knife to cut through the pitch sealing the stopper in place. When the stopper was freed, he yanked it out and poured the white bowl nearly full of wine as red as blood. He also poured a small libation onto the floor for each of the Prophets Four.

  He opened one of the jars—there was no pitch on its stopper—and spilled out a glittering powder from it into the palm of his hand. «Finely ground silver,» he explained, «perhaps a quarter of an arket's w
orth. When polished, silver makes the finest mirrors: Unlike bronze or even gold, it adds no color of its own to the images it reflects. Thus, it also offers the best hope of an accurate and successful sorcerous view of what lies ahead.»

  So saying, he sprinkled the silver over the wine, chanting as he did so. It was not the ritual Tanshar had used in his scrying but seemed a shoot from a different branch of the same tree.

  The powdered silver did not sink but stayed on the surface of the wine; Abivard got the idea that the incantation Bozorg had made had something to do with that. The mage said, «Now we wait for everything to become perfectly still.» Abivard nodded; that, too, was akin to what the wizard from the village under Vek Rud stronghold had done.

  «Will you tell me what you see?» he asked. «When the bowl is ready, I mean.»

  Bozorg shook his head. «No. This is a different conjuration. You will look into the bowl yourself and see—whatever is there to be seen. I may see something in the depths of the wine, too, but it will not be what you see.»

  «Very well,» Abivard said. Waiting came with dealing with wizards. Bozorg studied the surface of the wine with a hunting hawk's intensity. At last, with a sudden sharp gesture, he beckoned Abivard forward.

  Holding his breath so he wouldn't spoil the reflective surface, Abivard peered down into the bowl. Though his eyes told him the floating specks of silver were not moving, he somehow sensed them spinning, spiraling faster and faster till they seemed to cover the wine with a mirror that gave back first his face and the beams of the ceiling and then—

  He saw fighting in mountain country, two armies of armored horsemen smashing against each other. One of the forces flew the red-lion banner of Makuran. Try as he would, he could not make out the standards under which the other side fought. He wondered if this was a glimpse of the future or of the past: he'd sent his mobile force into the southeastern hill country of the Videssian westlands, trying to quell raiders. His success had been less complete than he'd hoped.