Videssos Cycle, Volume 1

by Harry Turtledove

  “Not in the least,” she answered promptly. “No more than you convince anyone when you play the buffoon.”

  Balsamon’s eyes were still amused in a way, but no longer merry. “You have some of your brother’s terrible honesty in you,” he said, and Scaurus did not think it was altogether a compliment.

  Courses came and went: lobster tails in drawn butter and capers; rich pastries baked to resemble peahens’ eggs; raisins, figs, and sweet dates; mild and sharp cheeses; peppery ground lamb wrapped in grape leaves; roast goose—sniffing the familiar cheese and cinnamon sauce, Marcus declined—cabbage soup; stewed pigeons with sausage and onions … with, of course, appropriate wines for each. Scaurus’ arm seemed far away. He felt the tip of his nose grow numb, a sure sign he was getting drunk.

  Nor was he the only one. The great count Drax, who wore Videssian-style robes, unlike Soteric and Utprand, was singing one of the fifty-two scurrilous verses of the imperial army’s marching song, loudly accompanied by Zeprin the Red and Mertikes Zigabenos. And Viridovix had just broken up the left side of the imperial table with a story about—Marcus dug a finger in his ear, trying not to believe he was hearing the Celt’s effrontery—a man with four wives.

  Thorisin roared out laughter with the rest, stopping only to wipe his eyes. “I thank your honor,” Viridovix said. Komitta Rhangavve was not laughing. Her long, slim fingers, nails painted the color of blood, looked uncommonly like claws.

  Dessert was fetched in, a light one after the great feast: crushed ice from the imperial cold cellars, flavored with sweet syrups. A favorite winter treat, it was hard to come by in the warmer seasons.

  The Emperor rose, a signal for everyone else to do the same. Servants began clearing away the mountains of dirty dishes and bowls. But even if the food was gone, wine and talk still flowed freely—perhaps, indeed, more so than before dinner.

  Balsamon took Thorisin Gavras to one side and began speaking urgently. Marcus could not hear what the patriarch was saying, but Thorisin’s growled answer was loud enough to turn heads. “Not you, too? No, I’ve said a hundred times—now it’s a hundred and one!” Rather muzzily, the tribune wished he could disappear. It did not look as though Taron Leimmokheir would see the outside of his dungeon any time soon.

  As the guests decided no further trouble was coming on the heels of Gavras’ outburst, the level of conversation picked up again. Soteric came over to tell Helvis some news of Namdalen he’d got from one of Drax’ aides. “What? Bedard Woodtooth, become count of Nustad on the mainland? I don’t believe it,” she said. “Excuse me, darling, I have to hear this with my own ears.” And she was gone with her brother, exclaiming excitedly in the island dialect.

  Left to his own devices, the tribune took another drink. After enough rounds, he decided, Videssian wine tasted fine. The interior of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, though, wanted to spin whenever he moved his head.

  “Piss-pot!” That was Komitta Rhangavve’s wildcat screech, aimed at Viridovix. “The son of a pimp in your joke would be no good to any of his wives after he had his ballocks cut off him!” She threw what was left in her goblet in the Celt’s face and smashed the cut crystal on the floor. Then she spun and stamped out of the hall, every step echoing in the startled silence.

  “What was that in aid of?” the Emperor asked, staring at her retreating back. He had been talking with Drax and Zigabenos and, like Scaurus, missed the beginning of the scene.

  Red wine was dripping from Viridovix’s mustaches, but he had lost none of his aplomb. “Och, the lady decided she’d be after taking offense at the little yarn I told at table,” he said easily. A servitor brought him a damp towel; he ran it over his face. “I wish she had done it sooner. As is, I’m left wearing no better than the dregs.”

  Thorisin snorted, reassured by the Celt’s glib reply and by what he knew of Komitta’s fiery temper—which was plenty. “All right, then, let’s hope this is more to your taste.” He beckoned a waiter to his side and gave the man his own goblet to take to Viridovix. People murmured at the favor shown the Gaul; the room relaxed once more.

  Gaius Philippus caught Marcus’ eye from across the hall and hiked his shoulders up and down in an exaggerated sigh of relief. The tribune nodded—for a moment, he’d been frightened nearly sober.

  He wondered just how much he had drunk; too much, from the pounding ache that was beginning behind his eyes. Helvis was still deep in conversation with a couple of Namdalener officers. The dining hall suddenly seemed intolerably noisy, crowded, and hot. Marcus weaved toward the doors. Maybe the fresh air outside would clear his head.

  The ceremonies master bowed as he made his way into the night. He nodded back, then regretted it—any motion was enough to give his headache new fuel. He sucked in the cool nighttime air gratefully; it felt sweeter than any wine.

  He went down the stairs with a drunken man’s caution. The music and the buzz of talk receded behind him, nor was he sorry to hear them fade. Even the tree frogs piping in the nearby citrus groves grated on his ears. He sighed, already wincing from tomorrow’s hangover.

  He peered up at the stars, hoping their calm changelessness might bring him some relief. The night was clear and moonless, but the heavens still were not at their best. Videssos’ lights and the smoke rising from countless hearths and fireplaces veiled the dimmer stars away.

  He wandered aimlessly for a couple of minutes, his hobnailed caligae clicking on the flagstone path and then silent as they bit into grass. An abrupt intake of breath made him realize he was not alone. “Who the—?” he said, groping for his sword hilt. Visions of assassins flashed through his head—a landing party from Bouraphos’ ships out there, perhaps, stealing up on the Hall of the Nineteen Couches.

  “I’m not a band of hired killers,” Alypia Gavra said, and Scaurus heard the sardonic edge that colored so much of her speech.

  His hand jerked away from the scabbard as if it had become red-hot. “Your pardon, my lady,” he stammered. “You surprised me—I came out for a breath of air.”

  “As did I, some little while ago, and found I preferred the quiet to the brabble back there. You may share it with me, if you like.”

  Still feeling foolish, the tribune approached her. He could hear the noise from the dining hall, but at a distance it was bearable. The light that streamed through the Hall’s wide windows was pale, too, the princess beside him little more than a silhouette. He took parade rest unconsciously, a relaxed stance from which to savor the night.

  After they stood a while in silence, Alypia turned to him, her face musing. “You are a strange man, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus,” she said finally, her Videssian accent making the sonorous sounds of his full name somehow musical. “I am never quite sure what you are thinking.”

  “No?” Scaurus said, surprised again. “It’s always seemed to me you could read me like a signboard.”

  “If it sets your mind at ease, not so. You fall into no neat category; you’re no arrogant noble from the provinces, all horsesweat and iron, nor yet one of the so-clever seal-stampers who would sooner die than call something by its right name. And you hardly make an ordinary mercenary captain—there’s not enough wrecker in you. So, outlander, what are you?” She studied him, as if trying to pull the secret from his eyes.

  The question, he knew, demanded an honest answer; he wished his wits were clearer, to give her one. “A survivor,” he said at last.

  “Ah,” she said very low, more an exhalation than a word. “No wonder we seem to understand each other, then.”

  “Do we?” he wondered, but his arms folded round her as her face tilted up.

  She felt slim, almost boyish, under his hands, the more so because he was used to Helvis’ opulent curves. But her mouth and tongue were sweet against his—for a couple of heartbeats, until she gave a smothered gasp and wrenched herself away.

  Alarmed, Marcus tried to flog his brain toward an apology, but her sad, weary gesture stopped him before he could begin. “The fault is no
t yours. Blame—times now gone,” she said, casting about for a circumlocution. “No matter what I wish to feel, there are memories I cannot set aside so easily.”

  The tribune felt his hands bunch into fists. Not the least of Avshar’s crimes, he thought once more, was the easy death he gave Vardanes Sphrantzes.

  He reached out to touch her cheek. It was wet against his hand. She started to flinch again, but sensed the gesture was as much one of understanding as a caress. Her wounded strength, the mix of vulnerability and composure in her, drew him powerfully; it was all he could do to stand steady. Yet however much he wanted to take her in his arms, he was sure he would frighten her away forever if he did.

  She said, “When I was a painted harlot you showed me a way to bear what I had been, but because of what I was then, I can have no gift for you now. Life is a tangled skein, is it not?” Her laugh was small and shaky.

  “That you are here and healing is gift enough,” Scaurus replied. He did not say he thought he might be too drunk to do a woman justice in any case.

  But that was one thought Alypia missed. Her drawn features softened; she leaned forward to kiss him gently. “You’d best go back,” she said. “After all, you are the guest of honor.”

  “I suppose so.” The tribune had nearly forgotten the banquet.

  Alypia stayed beside him no more than a second before drawing back. “Go on,” she said again.

  Reluctantly, Marcus started back toward the Hall of the Nineteen Couches. When he turned round for a last look at Alypia, she was already gone. A trace of motion among the trees might—or might not—have been her, slipping toward the imperial residence. The tribune trudged on, his head whirling with wine and thought.

  He knew most mercenaries, if offered a chance at an imperial connection, would cut any ties that stood in the way. Drax would, instantly, he thought; the man who was too adaptable by half. What was the nickname that Athenian had earned during the Peloponnesian War? “The stage boot,” that was it, because he fit on either foot.

  But Scaurus could not find it in himself to imitate the great count. For all the attraction and fondness he felt for Alypia Gavra, he was not ready to cast Helvis aside. They both sometimes strained at the bond between them, but despite quarrels and differences it would not break, nor, most of the time, did he want it to. Then, too, there was Dosti.…

  “We missed you, my lord,” the ceremonies master said with another low bow as Marcus stumbled back into the hall. The Roman hardly heard. For a man who called himself a survivor, he thought, he had an uncommon gift for complicating his life.

  XIII

  “PHOS BLAST THAT INSOLENT TREACHER BOURAPHOS INTO A THOUSAND pieces and roast every one of them over a dung fire!” Thorisin Gavras burst out. The Emperor stood on Videssos’ sea wall, watching one of his galleys sink. Two more fled back to the city, closely pursued by the rebel drungarios’ ships. Heads bobbed in the water of the Cattle-Crossing as sailors from the stricken vessel snatched at spars or swam toward Videssos and safety. Not all would reach it; tiny in the distance, black fins angled toward them.

  Gavras ran an irritable hand through his hair, ruffled by the sea breeze. “And why have I no admirals with the sense not to piss into the wind?” he grated. “A two-year-old in the bathhouse sails his toy boat with more finesse than those bullheads showed!”

  Along with the other officers by the Emperor, Scaurus did his best to keep his face straight. He understood Thorisin’s frustration. Onomagoulos, on the western shore of the Cattle-Crossing, led an army far weaker than the one Gavras had mustered against it. What did it matter, though, when the Emperor could not come to grips with his foe?

  “Now if you had some ships from t’Duchy—” Utprand Dagober’s son began, but Thorisin’s glare stopped even the blunt-spoken Namdalener in mid-sentence. Drax looked at his countryman as if at a dullard. Everyone knew the Emperor suspected the islanders, his eye seemed to say and to ask what the point was of antagonizing him without need.

  Cross as a baited bear, Gavras swung round on Marcus. “I suppose you’ll be after me next, telling me to turn Leimmokheir loose.”

  “Why, no, your Majesty, not at all,” the tribune said innocently. “If you were going to listen to me, you would have done that long since.”

  He scratched at his arm. It itched fiercely. Still, it was healing well enough that Gorgidas had pulled the pins from it the day before. The feel of the metal sliding through his flesh, though not painful, had been unpleasant enough to make him shudder at the memory.

  “Bah!” Thorisin turned his gaze out to the Cattle-Crossing again. Only scattered timbers showed where his warship had sunk; Bouraphos’ vessels were already resuming their patrol. As if continuing an argument, the Emperor said, “What would it gain me to let him go? He’d surely turn against me now, after being shut up all these months.”

  Unexpectedly, Mertikes Zigabenos spoke up for Leimmokheir. The guards officer had come to admire the older sailor, who showed repeatedly while the Sphrantzai held Videssos how a good man could keep his honor under a wicked regime. Zigabenos said, “If he grants you an oath of loyalty, he will keep it. No matter what you say, sir, Taron Leimmokheir would not forswear himself. He fears the ice too much for that.”

  “And besides,” Marcus said, thrusting home with a pleasure for which he felt no guilt at all, “what’s the difference if he does betray you? You’d still be outadmiraled and hardly worse off, whereas—” He fell silent, leaving Thorisin to work the contrary chain of logic for himself.

  The Emperor, still in his foul mood, only grunted. But his hand tugged thoughtfully at his beard, and he did not fly into a rage at the very notion of releasing Leimmokheir. His will was granite, thought the tribune, but even granite crumbles in the end.

  “So you think he’ll let him go?” Helvis said that evening after Scaurus recounted the day’s events. “One for you, then.”

  “I suppose so, unless he does turn his coat once he’s free. That would drop the chamber pot into the stew for fair.”

  “I don’t think it will happen. Leimmokheir is honest,” Helvis said seriously. Marcus respected her opinion; she had been in Videssos years longer than he and knew a good deal about its leaders. Moreover, what she said confirmed everyone else’s view of the jailed admiral—except the Emperor’s.

  But when he tried to draw her out further, she did not seem interested in matters political, which was unlike her. “Is anything wrong?” he asked at last. He wondered if she had somehow guessed the attraction growing between himself and Alypia Gavra and dreaded the scene that would cause.

  Instead, she put down the skirt whose hem she had been mending and smiled at the tribune. He thought he should know that look; there was a mischievous something in her eyes he had seen before. He placed it just as she spoke, “I’m sorry, darling, my wits were somewhere else. I was trying to reckon when the baby will be due. As near as I can make it, it should be a little before the festival of sun-turning.”

  Marcus was silent so long her sparkle disappeared. “Aren’t you pleased?” she asked sharply.

  “Of course I am,” he answered, and was telling the truth. Too many upper-class Romans were childless by choice, beloved only by inheritance seekers. “You took me by surprise, is all.”

  He walked over and kissed her, then poked her in the ribs. She yelped. “You like taking me by surprise that way,” he accused. “You did when you were expecting Dosti, too.”

  As if the mention of his name was some kind of charm, the baby woke up and started to cry. Helvis made a wry face. She got up and un-swaddled him. “Are you wet or do you just want to be cuddled?” she demanded. It proved to be the latter; in a few minutes Dosti was asleep again.

  “That doesn’t happen as often as it used to,” Marcus said. He sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to get used to waking up five times a night again. Why don’t you arrange to have a three-year-old and save us the fuss?” That earned him a return poke.

  He hugged her, careful
both of her pregnancy and his own tender arm. She helped him draw the blouse off over her head. Yet even when they lay together naked on the sleeping-mat, the tribune saw Alypia Gavra’s face in his mind, remembered the feel of her lips. Only then did he understand why he had paused before showing gladness at Helvis’ news.

  He realized something else, too, and chuckled under his breath. “What is it, dear?” she asked, touching his cheek.

  “Nothing really. Just a foolish notion.” She made an inquisitive noise, but he did not explain further. There was no way, he thought, to tell her that now he understood why she slipped every so often and called him by her former lover’s name.

  “Let’s have a look at that,” Gorgidas ordered the next morning. Marcus mimed a salute and extended his arm to the doctor. It was anything but pretty; the edges of the gash were still raised and red, and it was filled with crusty brown scab. But the Greek grunted in satisfaction at what he saw and again when he sniffed the wound. “There’s no corruption in there,” he told the tribune. “Your flesh knits well.”

  “That lotion of yours does good work, for all its bite.” Gorgidas had dosed the cut with a murky brown fluid he called barbarum: a compound of powdered verdigris, litharge, alum, pitch, and resin mixed in equal parts of vinegar and oil. The Roman had winced every time it was applied, but it kept a wound from going bad.

  Gorgidas merely grunted again, unmoved by the praise. Nothing had moved him much, not since Quintus Glabrio fell. Now he changed the subject, asking, “Do you know when the Emperor intends to send his embassy to the Arshaum?”

  “No time soon, not with Bouraphos’ ships out there to sink anything that sticks its nose out of the city’s harbors. Why?”

  The Greek studied him bleakly. Marcus saw how haggard he had become, his slimness now gaunt, his hair ragged where he had chopped a lock away in mourning for Glabrio. “Why?” Gorgidas echoed. “Nothing simpler; I intend to go with it.” He set his jaw, meeting Scaurus’ stare without flinching.