Krispos the Emperor

by Harry Turtledove

  Phostis handed Olyvria up onto her mount, then swung into the saddle himself. The Halogai formed up around the imperial party for the return to the palaces. Olyvria rode at Phostis' left.

  To his right was Evripos. His older younger brother curled his lip and said, "You're back. Hurrah." Then he looked straight ahead and seemed to concentrate solely on his horsemanship.

  "Wait a minute," Phostis said harshly. "I'm sick of cracks like that from you. If you wanted me to be gone and stay gone, you had your chance to do something about it."

  "I told you then, I don't have that kind of butchery in me." Evripos answered.

  "Well then, quit talking to me as if you wish you did."

  That made Evripos look his way again, though still without anything that could be called friendliness. "Brother of mine, just because I won't shed blood of my blood, that doesn't mean I want to clasp you to my bosom, if I can steal the patriarch's phrase."

  "That's not enough," Phostis said.

  "It's all I care, to make it," Evripos answered.

  "It's not enough, I tell you," Phostis said, which succeeded in gaining Evripos' undivided attention. Phostis went on, "One of these days, if I live, I'm going to wear the red boots. Unless Olyvria and I have a son of our own, you'll be next in line for them. Even if we do, he'd be small for a long time. The day may come when you decide blood doesn't matter, or maybe you'll think you can just shave my head and pack me off to a monastery: you'd get the throne and salve your tender conscience at the same time."

  Evripos scowled. "I wouldn't do that. As you said, I had my chance."

  "You wouldn't do it now," Phostis returned. "What about ten years from now, or twenty, when you feel you can't stand being second in line for another heartbeat? Or what happens if I decide I can't trust you to stay in your proper place? I might strike first, little brother. Did you ever think of that?"

  Evripos was good at using his face to mask his thoughts. But Phostis had watched him all his life, and saw he'd succeeded in surprising him. The surprise faded quickly. Evripos studied Phostis as closely as he was studied in turn. Slowly, he said, "You've changed." It sounded like an accusation.

  "Have I, now?" Phostis tried to keep anything but the words themselves from his voice.

  "Aye, you have." It was accusation. "Before you got kidnapped, you didn't have the slightest notion what you were for, what you wanted. You knew what you were against—"

  "Anything that had to do with Father," Phostis interrupted.

  "Just so," Evripos agreed with a thin smile. "But being against is easy. Finding, knowing, what you truly do want is harder."

  "You know what you want," Olyvria put in.

  "Of course I do," Evripos said. The red boots hung unspoken in the air. "But it looks like I can't have that. And now that Phostis knows what he wants, too, and what it means to him, it makes him ever so much more dangerous to me than he was before."

  "So it does," Phostis said. "You can do one of two things about it, as far as I can see: you can try to take me out, which you say you don't want to do, or you can work with me. We spoke of that before I got kidnapped; maybe you remember. You scoffed at me then. Do you sing a different tune now? The second man in all the Empire can find or make a great part for himself."

  "But it's not the first part," Evripos said.

  "I know that's what you want," Phostis answered, saying it for his brother. "If you look one way, you see one person ahead of you. But if you look in the other direction, you see everyone else behind. Isn't that enough?"

  Enough to make Evripos thoughtful, at any rate. When he answered, "It's not what I want," the words lacked the hostility with which he'd spoken before.

  Krispos rode ahead of the younger members of the imperial family. As he clattered down the cobblestones in front of the government office building where Digenis had been confined, a man strolling along the sidewalk sang out, "Phos bless you, your Majesty!" Krispos sent him a wave and kept on riding.

  "That's what I want." Now Evripos' voice ached with envy. "Who's going to cheer a general or a minister? It's the Avtokrator who gets the glory, by the good god."

  "He gets the blame, too," Phostis pointed out. "If I could, I'd give you all the glory, Evripos; for all I care, it can go straight to the ice. But there's more to running the Empire than having people cheer you in the streets. I didn't take it seriously before I got snatched, but my eyes have been opened since then."

  He wondered if that would mean anything to his brother. It seemed to, for Evripos said, "So have mine. Don't forget, I was running Videssos the city while Father went on campaign. Even without the riots, I'll not deny that was a great bloody lot of work. All jots and tittles and parchments that didn't mean anything till you'd read them five times, and sometimes not then."

  Phostis nodded. He often wondered if he wanted to walk in Krispos' footsteps and pore over documents into the middle of the night. That, surely, was why the Empire of Videssos had developed so large and thorough a bureaucracy over the centuries: to keep the Avtokrator from having to shoulder such burdens.

  As if Krispos had spoken aloud, Phostis heard his opinion of that: Aye, and if you let the pen-pushers and seal-stampers run affairs without checking up on them, how do you know when they're bungling things or cheating you? The good god knows we need them, and he also knows they need someone looking over them. Anthimos almost brought the Empire to ruin because he wouldn't attend to his ruling.

  "I wouldn't be Anthimos," Phostis protested, just as if Krispos had spoken out loud. Olyvria, Evripos, and Katakolon all gave him curious looks. He felt his cheeks heat.

  Evripos said, "Well, I wouldn't, either. If I tried to live that life after Father died, I expect he'd climb out of the tomb and wring my neck with bony fingers." He dropped his voice and sent a nervous glance up ahead toward Krispos; Phostis guessed he was only half joking.

  "Me, I'm just as glad I'm not likely to wear the red boots," Katakolon said. "I like a good carouse now and then; it keeps you from going stale."

  "A good carouse now and then is one thing," Phostis said. "From all the tales, though, Anthimos never stopped, or even slowed down."

  "A short life but a merry one," Katakolon said, grinning.

  "You let Father hear that from you and your life may be short, but it won't be merry," Phostis answered. "He's not what you'd call fond of Anthimos' memory."

  Katakolon looked forward again; he did not want to rouse Krispos' wrath. Phostis suddenly grasped another reason why Krispos so despised the predecessor whose throne and wife he'd taken: no doubt he'd wondered all the years since Anthimos had left behind a cuckoo's egg for him to raise as his own.

  And yet, of the three young men, Phostis was probably most like Krispos in character, if perhaps more inclined to reflection and less to action. Evripos was devious in a different way, and his resentment that he hadn't been born first left him sour. And Katakolon—Katakolon had a blithe disregard for consequences that set him apart from both his brothers.

  Without warning, Evripos said, "You'll give me room to make something for myself, make something of myself, when the red boots go on your feet?"

  "I've said so all along," Phostis answered. "Would an oath make you happier?"

  "Nothing along those lines would truly make me happy," Evripos said. "But one of the things I've seen is that sometimes there's nothing to be done about the way things are ... or nothing that isn't worse, anyhow. Let it be as you say, brother of mine; I'll serve you, and do my best to recall that everyone else serves me as well as you."

  The two of them solemnly clasped hands. Olyvria exclaimed in delight; even Katakolon looked unwontedly sober. Evripos' palm was warm in Phostis'. By her expression, Olyvria thought all the troubles between them were over. Phostis wished he thought the same. As far as he could see, he and Evripos would be watching each other for the rest of their lives, no matter what promises they made each other. That, too, came with being part of the imperial family.

  Had Evri
pos said something like Good to have that settled once and for all, Phostis would have suspected him more, not less. As it was, his younger brother just flicked him a glance to see how seriously he took the gesture of reconciliation. For a moment, their eyes met. They both smiled, again for a moment only. They might not trust each other, but they understood each other.

  Along with the rest of the imperial party, they rode through the plaza of Palamas and into the palace quarter. After the raucous bustle of the rest of the city, quiet enfolded them there like a cloak. Phostis felt he was coming home. That had special meaning to him after what he'd gone through the past few months.

  He'd always used his bedchamber in the imperial residence as a refuge from Krispos. Now that Olyvria shared it with him, he sometimes thought he never wanted to come out again. It wasn't that they spent all their time making love, delightful though that was. But he'd also found in her somebody he liked talking with more than anyone else he'd ever known.

  He let himself tip over backward onto the bed like a falling tree. The thick goose down of the mattress absorbed his weight; it was like falling into a warm, dry snowbank. With him sprawled across the middle of the bed, Olyvria sat at its foot. She said, "All of this—" She waved to show she meant not just the room, not just the palace, but also the service and the procession through the streets of the city. "—still feels unreal to me."

  "You'll have the rest of your days to get used to it," Phostis answered. "A lot of it is foolish and boring to go through: even Father thinks so. But ceremony is the glue that holds Videssos together, so he does go through with it, and then grumbles when no one outside the palaces can hear him."

  "That's hypocrisy," Olyvria frowned: like Phostis. she still had some Thanasiot righteousness clinging to her.

  "I've told him as much," Phostis said. "He just shrugs and says things would go worse if he didn't give the people what they expected of him." Before he'd been kidnapped, he would have rolled his eyes at that. Now, after a small pause for thought, he admitted, "There may be something to it."

  "I don't know." Olyvria's frown deepened. "How can you live with yourself after doing things you don't believe in year after year after year?"

  "I didn't say Father doesn't believe in them. He does, for the sake of the Empire. I said he doesn't like them. It's not quite the same thing."

  "Close enough, for anyone who's not a theologian and used to splitting hairs." But Olyvria changed the subject, which might have meant she yielded the point. "I'm glad you made peace with your brother—or he with you, however you want to look at it."

  "So am I," Phostis said. Not wanting to deceive Olyvria about his judgment of that peace, he added. "Now we'll see how long it lasts."

  She took his meaning at once. "Oh," she said in a crestfallen voice. "I'd thought you put more faith in it than that."

  "Hope, yes. Faith?" He shrugged, then repeated, "We'll see how long it lasts. The good god willing, it'll hold forever. If it doesn't—"

  "If it doesn't, you'll do what you have to do," Olyvria said.

  "Aye, what I have to do," Phostis echoed. He'd come safe out of Etchmiadzin by that rule, but if you cared to, you could use it to justify anything. He sighed, then said, "You know what the real trouble with Thanasiot doctrine is?"

  "What?" Olyvria asked. "The ecumenical patriarch could come up with a hundred without thinking."

  "Oxeites does quite a lot without thinking," Phostis said. "He's not good at it."

  Olyvria giggled, deliciously scandalized. "But what's yours?" she asked.

  "The real trouble with Thanasiot doctrine," Phostis declared, as if pontificating before a synod, "is that it makes the world and life out to be simpler than they are. Burn and wreck and starve and you've somehow made the world a better place? But what about the people who don't want to be burned out and who like to eat till they're fat? What about the Makuraners, who would pick up the pieces if Videssos fell apart—and who tried to make it fall apart? The gleaming path takes none of them into account. It just goes on along the track it thinks right, regardless of any complications."

  "That's all true enough," Olyvria said.

  "In fact," Phostis went on, "following the gleaming path is almost like getting caught up in a new love affair, where you just notice everything that's good and kind about the person you love, but none of the flaws."

  Olyvria gave him an unfathomable look. His analogy pleased him so much that he wondered what was troubling her until she asked, in rather a small voice, "And what does that say about us?"

  "It says—uh—" Feeling his mouth hanging foolishly open, Phostis shut it. He kept it shut while he did some hard thinking. At last, much less sure of himself than he had been a moment before, he answered, "I think it says that we can't afford to take us for granted, or to think that, because we're happy now, we're always going to be happy unless we work to make that happen. The romances talk a lot about living happily ever after, but they don't say how it's done. We have to find that out for ourselves."

  "I wish you'd stop poking fun at the romances, seeing as we're living one," Olyvria said, but she smiled to take any sting from her words. "Other than that, though, you make good sense. You seem to have a way of doing that."

  "Thank you," he said seriously. Then he reached out and poked her in the ribs. She squawked and whipped her head around, curls flying. He drew her to him and drowned the squawk in a kiss. When at last he had to breathe, he asked her softly, "How are we doing now?"

  "Now, well." This time, she kissed him. "As for the rest, ask me in twenty years."

  He glanced up, just for a moment, to make sure the door was barred. "I will."

  Imperial crown heavy on his head. Krispos sat on the throne in the Grand Courtroom, awaiting the approach of the ambassador for Khatrish. In front of the throne stood Barsymes, Iakovitzes, and Zaidas. Krispos hoped the three of them would be enough to protect him from Tribo's pungent sarcasm.

  The fuzzy-bearded envoy advanced down the long central aisle of the courtroom between ranks of courtiers who scorned him as both barbarian and heretic. He managed to give the impression that their scorn amused him, which only irked them the more.

  He prostrated himself at the proper place before Krispos' throne. Krispos had debated whether to have the throne rise while Tribo's head rested on the gleaming marble floor. In the end, he'd decided against it.

  As before, when Tribo rose, he asked, "Has the gearing broken down, your Majesty, or are you just not bothering?"

  "I'm not bothering." Krispos swallowed a sigh. So much for the fond hope Avtokrators nursed of overawing envoys from less sophisticated lands. He inclined his head to Tribo. "I've waited in eager curiosity for your words since you requested this audience, honored ambassador."

  "You're wondering how I'll get on your nerves now, you mean." Mutters rose at Tribo's undiplomatic language. By his foxy grin, he reveled in them. But when he resumed, he spoke more formally: "I am bidden by the puissant khagan Nobad son of Gumush to extend Khatrish's congratulations to your Majesty for your victory over the Thanasiot heretics."

  "The puissant khagan is gracious," Krispos said.

  "The puissant khagan, for all his congratulations, is unhappy with your Majesty," Tribo said. "You've put out the fire in your own house, but sparks caught in the thatch of ours, and they're liable to burn down the roof. We still have plenty of trouble from the Thanasioi in Khatrish."

  "I'm sorry to hear that." Krispos reflected that he wasn't even lying. Just as Videssian Thanasioi had spread the heresy to Khatrish. so foreign followers of the gleaming path might one day bring it back to the Empire. Krispos resumed, "I don't know what the khagan would have me do now, though, beyond what I've already done here in my own realm."

  "He thinks it hardly just for you to export your problems and then forget about them when they trouble you no more," Tribo said.

  "What would he have me do?" Krispos repeated. "Shall I ship imperial troops to your ports to help your soldiers root out the he
retics? Shall I send in priests I reckon orthodox to uphold the pure and true doctrines?"

  Tribo made a sour face. "Shall Videssos swallow up Khatrish, you mean. Thank you, your Majesty, but no. If I said aye to that, my khagan would likely tie me between horses and whip them to a gallop, one going one way and one the other ... unless he paused to think up a truly interesting and creative end for me. Khatrish has been free of the imperial yoke for more than three hundred years. For reasons you may not understand. we'd sooner keep it that way."

  "As you will," Krispos said. "Your land and mine are at peace, and I'm happy with that. But if you don't want our warriors and you don't want our priests, honored ambassador, what do you expect us to do about the Thanasioi in Khatrish?"

  "You ought to pay us an indemnity for inflicting the heresy on us," Tribo said. "The gold would help us take care of the problem for ourselves."

  Krispos shook his head. "If we'd deliberately set the Thanasioi on you, that would be a just claim. But Videssos just fought a war to put them down here: we didn't want them around, either. I'm sorry they spread to Khatrish, but it was no fault of ours. Shall I bill the puissant khagan every time the Balancer heresy you love so well shows its head here in the Empire?"

  "Your Majesty, I know you imperials have a saying, 'When in Videssos the city, eat fish.' But till now I hadn't known you hid a shark's dorsal fin under those fancy robes."

  "From you, honored ambassador, that's high praise indeed," Krispos said, which only made Tribo look unhappier still. The Avtokrator went on, "Does your puissant khagan have any other business for you to set before me?"

  "No, your Majesty," Tribo answered. "I shall convey to him your stubborn refusal to act as justice would dictate, and warn you that I cannot answer for the consequences."

  From the Makuraner ambassador, that would have meant war. But Videssos badly outweighed Khatrish, and the two nations, despite bickering, had not fought for generations. So Krispos said, "Do tell his puissant self that I admire his gall, and that if I could afford to subsidize it, I would. As is, he'll just have to smuggle more and hope he makes it up that way."