With a curt nod, the Emperor looked out over the throng. “For all his fancy talk, Ortaias Sphrantzes knows no more of war than how to run from it and no more of rule than stealing it when the rightful holder’s away. Given five years, he’d have made old Strobilos look good to you—unless the damned Yezda took the city first, which is likely.”
Thorisin was no polished rhetorician; like Mavrikios, he had a straightforward style, adapted from the battlefield. To the sophisticated listeners of the capital, it was novel but effective.
“There’re not a lot of promises to make,” he went on. “We’re in a mess, and I’ll do my best to get us out the other side in one piece. I will say this—Phos willing, you won’t want to curse my face every time you see it on a goldpiece.”
That pledge earned real applause; Ortaias’ debased coinage had won him no love. Scaurus, though, still wondered how Thorisin planned to carry it out. If Videssos’ pen-pushers, with all their bureaucratic sleights of hand, could not keep up the quality of the Empire’s money, could a soldier like Gavras?
“One last thing,” the Emperor said. “I know the city followed Ortaias at first for lack of anything better, and then perforce, because his troops held it. Well and good; I’ll hear no slanders over who backed whom or who said what about me before yesterday morning, so rest easy there.” A low mutter of approval and relief ran through the crowd. Marcus had heard of the informers who had flourished in Rome during the civil war between the Marians and Sulla, and of the purges and counter-purges. He gave Gavras credit for magnanimous good sense and waited for the Emperor’s warning against future plots.
Thorisin, however, said only, “You’ll not get more talk from me now. I said that was the last thing and I meant it. If all you wanted was empty words, you might as well have kept Ortaias.”
Watching the crowd slowly disperse, a dissatisfied Gaius Philippus said, “He should have put the fear of their Phos in ’em.”
But the tribune was coming to understand the Videssians better than his lieutenant, and realized the armored ranks of soldiers on the High Temple’s steps were a stronger precaution against conspiracy than any words. An overt threat from the new Avtokrator would have roused contempt. Gavras was wise enough to see that. There was more subtlety to him than showed at first, Scaurus thought, and was rather glad of it.
“What should we do with him?” That was Komitta Rhangavve’s voice, merciless and a little shrill with anger. She answered her own question: “We should make him such an example that no one would dare rebel for the next fifty years. Put out his eyes with hot irons, lop off his ears and then his hands and feet, and burn what’s left in the plaza of the Ox.”
Thorisin Gavras, still in full imperial regalia, whistled in half-horrified respect for his mistress’ savagery. “Well, Ortaias, how does that program sound to you? You’d be the one most affected by it, after all.” His chuckle could not have been pleasant in his defeated rival’s ears.
Ortaias’ arms were bound behind him; one of Zigabenos’ troopers sat on either side of him on the couch in the patriarch’s library. He looked as if he would sooner be hiding under it. In Scaurus’ mind the young noble had never cut a prepossessing figure: he was tall, skinny, and awkward, with a patchy excuse for a beard. Clad only in a thin linen shift, his hair awry and his face filthy and frightened, at the moment he seemed to the tribune more a pitiful figure than a wicked one or one to inspire hatred.
There was a tremor in his high voice as he answered, “Had I won, I would not have treated you so.”
“No, probably not,” Gavras admitted. “You haven’t the stomach for it. A safe, quiet poison in the night would suit you better.”
A rumble of agreement ran around the heavy elm table that filled most of the floor space in the library—from Komitta, from Onomagoulos and Elissaios Bouraphos, from Drax and Utprand Dagober’s son, from Mertikes Zigabenos. Nor could Marcus deny that Thorisin likely spoke the truth. He could not help noticing, though, the patriarch’s silence and, perhaps more surprisingly, Alypia Gavra’s.
In a somber tunic and skirt of dark green, the paint scrubbed from her face, the princess seemed once more to be as Scaurus had known her in the past: cool, competent, almost forbidding. He was pleased to see her at this council, a sign that, contrary to her fears, Thorisin still had confidence in her. But she kept her eyes downcast and would not look at Ortaias Sphrantzes. The silver wine cup in her hand shook ever so slightly.
Balsamon leaned back in his chair until it teetered on its hind legs, reached over his shoulder to pluck a volume from a half-empty shelf. Scaurus knew his audience chamber, on the other hand, was so full of books it was nearly useless for its intended function. But then, the patriarch enjoyed confounding expectations, in small things as well as great.
Thus the tribune was unsurprised to see him put the slim leather-bound text in his lap without opening it. Balsamon said to Komitta, “You know, my dear, imitating the Yezda is not the way to best them.”
The reproof was mild, but she bristled. “What have they to do with this? An aristocrat deals with his foes so they can harm him no further.” Her voice rose. “And a true aristocrat pays no heed to such milksop counsels as yours, priest, though as your father was a fuller I would not expect you to know such things.”
“Komitta, will you—” Thorisin tried, too late, to cut off his hot-tempered mistress. Onomagoulos and Zigabenos stared at her in dismay; even Drax and Utprand, to whom Balsamon was no more than a heretic, were not used to hearing clerics reviled.
But the patriarch’s wit was a sharper weapon than outrage. “Aye, it’s true I grew up with the stench of piss, but then, at least, we got pure bleached cloth from it. Now—” He wrinkled up his nose and looked sidelong at Komitta.
She spluttered furiously, but Gavras overrode her: “Quiet, there. You had that coming.” She sat in stiff, rebellious silence. Not for the first time, Marcus admired the Emperor for being able to bring her to heel—sometimes, at any rate. Thorisin went on, “I wasn’t going to do as you said anyway. I tell you frankly I can’t brook it, not for this sniveling wretch.”
“Be so good as not to waste my time with such meetings henceforth, then, if you have no intention of listening to my advice.” Komitta rose, graceful with anger, and stalked out of the room, a procession of one.
Gavras swung round on Marcus. “Well, sirrah, what say you? I sometimes think I have to pull your thoughts like teeth. Shall I send him to the Kynegion and have done?” A small hunting-park near the High Temple, the Kynegion was also Videssos’ chief execution grounds.
In Rome capital punishment was an extraordinary sentence, but, thought Scaurus, it had been meted out to Catiline, who aimed at overthrowing the state. He answered slowly, “Yes, I think so, if it can be done without turning all the seal-stampers against you.”
“Bugger the seal-stampers,” Bouraphos ground out. “They’re good for nothing but telling you why you can’t have the gold for the refits you need.”
“Aye, they’re rabbity little men, the lot of ’em,” Baanes Onomagoulos said. “Shorten him and put fear in all their livers.”
But Thorisin, rubbing his chin as he considered, was watching the tribune in reluctant admiration. “You have a habit of pointing out unpleasant facts, don’t you? I’m too much a soldier to like taking the bureaucrats seriously, but there’s no denying they have power—too much, by Phos.”
“Who says there’s no denying it?” Onomagoulos growled. He jabbed a scornful thumb at Ortaias Sphrantzes. “Look at this uprooted weed here. This is what the pen-pushers have for a leader.”
“What about Vardanes?” That was Zigabenos, who had been in the city while Ortaias reigned and his uncle ruled.
Onomagoulos blinked, but said, “Well, what about him? Another coward, if ever there was one. Shove steel in a pen-pusher’s face, and he’s yours to do with as you will.”
“Which is, of course, why there have been bureaucrats or men backed by bureaucrats on the imperia
l throne for forty-five of the last fifty-one years,” Alypia Gavra said, her measured tones more effective than open mockery. “It’s why the bureaucrats and their mercenaries broke—how many? two dozen? three?—rebellions by provincial nobles in that time, and why they converted almost all the peasant militia in Videssos to tax-bound serfs during that stretch of time. Clear proof they’re walkovers, is it not?”
Onomagoulos flushed right up to the bald crown of his head. He opened his mouth, closed it without saying anything. Thorisin was taken by a sudden coughing fit. Ortaias Sphrantzes, with nothing at all to lose, burst into a sudden giggle to see his captors quarrel among themselves.
Still beaming at his niece, the Emperor asked her, “What do you want us to do with the scapegrace, then?”
For the first time since the meeting began, she turned her eyes toward the man whose Empress, at least in name, she had been. For all the emotion she betrayed, she might have been examining a carcass of beef. At last she said, “I don’t think he could be put to death without stirring up enmities better left unraised. For my part, I have no burning need to see him dead. He in his way was as much his uncle’s prisoner as was I, and no more in control of his fate or actions.”
From his wretched seat on the couch, Ortaias said softly, “Thank you, Alypia,” and, quite uncharacteristically, fell silent again. The princess gave no notice that she heard him.
Baanes Onomagoulos, still smarting from her sarcasm, saw a chance for revenge. He said, “Thorisin, of course she will speak for him. And why should she not? The two of them, after all, are man and wife, their concerns bound together by a shared couch.”
“Now you wait one minute—” Scaurus began hotly, but Alypia needed no one to defend her. Moving with the icy control she showed on most occasions, she rose from her seat and dashed her wine cup in Onomagoulos’ face. Coughing and cursing, he rubbed at his stinging eyes. The thick red wine dripped from his pointed beard onto his embroidered silk tunic, plastering it to his chest.
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 pr
ize,” 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.
Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 Page 62