“So it is.” Krispos kept his voice noncommittal. The imminent return of good weather meant too many different things now for him to be sure how he felt about it.
Tanilis sat up in bed and ran a hand through her hair. The gesture, artfully artless, made her bare breasts rise for Krispos’ admiration. At the same time, though, she said, “When the rain finally stops, I will be going back to my villa. I don’t think you would be wise to visit me there.”
Krispos had known she would tell him that, sooner or later. He’d thought he was ready. Actually hearing the words, though, was like taking a blow in the belly—no matter how braced he was, they still hurt. “So it’s over,” he said dully.
“This part of it,” Tanilis agreed.
Again, he’d thought he could accept that, thought he could depart with Iakovitzes for Videssos the city without a backward glance. Had his master not broken his leg, that might well have been true. But wintering in Opsikion, passing so much more time with Tanilis, made it harder than he’d expected. All his carefully cultivated sangfroid deserted him. He clutched her to him. “I don’t want to leave you!” He groaned.
She yielded to his embrace, but her voice stayed detached, logical. “What then? Would you turn aside from what I and others have seen for you, would you abandon this”—she touched the goldpiece Omurtag had given him—“to stay in Opsikion? And if you would, would I look on you with anything but scorn because of it?”
“But I love you!” Krispos said.
Down deep, he’d always been sure telling her that would be a mistake. His instinct proved sound. She answered, “If you stayed here because of that, I surely could never love you. I am already fully myself, while you are still discovering what you can be. Nor in the long run would you be happy in Opsikion, for what would you be here? My plaything, maybe, granted a small respect reflected from the larger one I have earned, but laughed at behind people’s hands. Is that the most you want for yourself, Krispos?”
“Your plaything?” That made him angry enough not to listen to the rest of what she said. He ran a rough hand along the supple curves of her body, ending at the edge of the neatly trimmed hair that covered her secret place. “Is that all this has meant? Is that all I’ve been to you?”
“You know better, or you should,” Tanilis said calmly. “How could I deny you’ve pleased me? I would not want to deny it. But it is not enough. You deserve to be more than a bedwarmer, however fine a bedwarmer you are. And if you stayed with me, you would not find it easy to be anything else. Not only do I have far more experience and vastly greater wealth than you, I do not care to yield to anyone the power I’ve earned by my own efforts over the years. So what would that leave you?”
“I don’t care,” Krispos said. Though he sounded full of fierce conviction, even he knew that was not true.
So, obviously, did Tanilis. “Do you not? Very well, then, let us suppose you stay here and that you and I are wed, perhaps on the next feast day of the holy Abdaas. Come the morning after, what do you propose to say to your new stepson, Mavros?”
“My—” Krispos gulped. He had no trouble imagining Mavros his brother. But his stepson? He could not even make himself say the word. He started to laugh, instead, and poked Tanilis in the ribs. She was not usually ticklish, but he caught her by surprise. She yipped and wiggled away.
“Mavros my—” He tried again, but only ended up laughing harder. “Oh, a pestilence, Tanilis, you’ve made your point.”
“Good. There’s always hope for anyone who can see plain sense, even if I did have to bludgeon you to open your eyes.” She turned her head.
“What is it?” Krispos asked.
“I was just listening. I don’t think the rain will let up for a while yet.” Now her hand wandered, came to rest. She smiled a catlike smile. “By the feel of things, neither will you. Shall we make the most of the time we have left?”
He did not answer, not with words, but he did not disagree.
“LET ME GIVE YOU A HAND, EXCELLENT SIR,” KRISPOS SAID AS A pair of stable boys led out his master’s horse, his own, and their pack animals.
“Nonsense,” Iakovitzes told him. “If I can’t mount for myself, I surely won’t be able to ride back to the city. And if I can’t do that, I’m faced with two equally unpalatable alternatives: take up residence here, or throw myself off a promontory into the sea. On the whole, I believe I’d prefer throwing myself into the sea. That way I’d never have to find out what’s become of my house while I’ve been gone.” The noble gave a shudder of exquisite dread.
“When you wrote you’d been hurt, the Sevastokrator pledged to look after your affairs.”
“So he did,” Iakovitzes said with a skeptical grunt. “The only affairs Petronas cares anything about, though, are his own.” He scowled at the boy who held his horse. “Back away, there. If I can’t manage, high time I found out.”
The stable boy retreated. Iakovitzes set his left foot in the stirrup, swung up and onto the horse’s back. He winced as the newly healed leg took all his weight for a moment, but then he was mounted and grinning in triumph. He’d boarded the horse before, every day for the past week, but each time seemed a new adventure, both to him and to everyone watching.
“Now where’s that Mavros?” he said. “I’m still not what you’d call comfortable up here. Anyone who thinks I’ll waste time waiting that I could use riding will end up disappointed, I promise you that.”
Krispos did not think Iakovitzes was speaking to him in particular; he sounded more as if he were warning the world at large. Krispos checked one last time to make sure all their gear was properly stowed on the packhorses’ backs, then climbed onto his own beast.
Bolkanes came to bid his longtime guests farewell. He bowed to Iakovitzes. “A pleasure to serve you, eminent sir.”
“I should hope so. I’ve made your fortune,” Iakovitzes answered, gracious to the end.
As the innkeeper beat a hasty retreat, Mavros rode up on a big bay gelding. He looked very young and jaunty, with two pheasant plumes sticking up from his broad-brimmed hat and his right hand on the hilt of his sword. He waved to Krispos and dipped his head in Iakovitzes’ direction. “You look like you were all set to take off without me.”
“I was,” Iakovitzes snapped.
If he thought to intimidate the youth, he failed. “Well, no need for that now, seeing as I’m here,” Mavros said easily. He turned to Krispos. “My mother said to be sure to tell you good-bye from her. Now I’ve done it.” One more chore finished, his attitude seemed to say.
“Ah. That’s kind of her,” Krispos said. Although he hadn’t seen or heard from Tanilis in more than a month, she was in his thoughts every day, the memory of her as liable to sudden twinges as was Iakovitzes’ leg. A limp in the heart, though, did not show on the outside.
“If you two are done nattering like washerwomen, shall we be off?” Iakovitzes said. Without waiting for an answer, he used knees and reins to urge his horse forward. Krispos and Mavros rode after him.
Opsikion’s gate guards still had not learned to take any special notice of Iakovitzes, who, after all, had not come near the edge of the city since the summer before. But the feisty noble had no cause for complaint about the treatment he was afforded. Being with Mavros drew him such a flurry of salutes and guardsmen springing to attention that he said, not altogether in jest, “Anthimos should come here, to see what respect is.”
“Oh, I expect he gets treated about as well in his hometown,” Mavros said. Iakovitzes had to look at him sharply to catch the twinkle in his eye. The noble allowed himself a wintry chuckle, the most he usually gave wit not his own.
That chuckle, Krispos thought, was the only thing wintry about the day. It was mild and fair. New bright green covered the ground to either side of the road. Bees buzzed among fresh-sprouted flowers. The sweet, moist air was full of the songs of birds just returned from their winter stay in warmer climes.
Though the road climbed swiftly into the mountains
, this near Opsikion it remained wide and easy to travel, if not always straight. Krispos was startled when, with the sun still nearer noon than its setting, Iakovitzes reined in and said, “That’s enough. We’ll camp here till morning.” But when he watched his master dismount, he hardly needed to hear the noble go on, “My thighs are as raw as a dockside whore’s the night after the imperial fleet rows into port.”
“No wonder, excellent sir,” Krispos said. “Flat on your back as you were for so long, you’ve lost your hardening.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mavros said. “I’ve had some lovely hardenings flat on my back.”
Again, Iakovitzes’ basilisk glare failed to wilt him. The noble finally grunted and hobbled off into the bushes, unbuttoning his fly as he went. Watching that slow, spraddling gait, Krispos whistled softly. “He is saddle-sore, isn’t he? I guess he thought it couldn’t happen to him.”
“Aye, looks like he’ll have to get used to it all over again. He won’t be back from watering the grass right away, either.” Mavros lowered his voice as he reached into a saddlebag. “Which means now is as good a time as any to pass this on to you from my mother. A parting gift, you might say. She told me not to give it to you when anyone else could see.”
Krispos reached out to take the small wooden box Mavros held. He wondered what sort of last present Tanilis had for him and wondered even more, briefly alarmed, how much she’d told Mavros about what had passed between the two of them. Mavros as stepson, indeed, Krispos thought—she’d known how to cool him down, sure enough. Maybe, though, he said to himself, it’s like one of the romances minstrels sing, and she does love me but can’t admit it except by giving me this token once I’m safely gone.
The second the box was in his hand, its weight told him Tanilis’ gift was the more pragmatic one she’d promised. “Gold?” he said.
“A pound and a half,” Mavros agreed. “If you’re going to be—what you’re going to be—this will help. Money begets money, my mother says. And this will grow all the better since no one knows you have it.”
A pound and a half of gold—the box fit easily in the palm of Krispos’ hand. For Tanilis, it was not enough money to be missed. Krispos knew that if he were to desert his master and Mavros and make his way back to his village, he would be far and away the richest man there. He could go home as something close to a hero: the lad who’d made good in the big city.
But his village, he realized after a moment, was not home anymore, not really. He could no more go back now than he could have stayed in Opsikion. For better or worse, he was caught up in the faster life of Videssos the city. After a taste of it, nothing less could satisfy him.
Rustlings from the bushes announced Iakovitzes’ return. Krispos hastily stowed away the box of coins. With a hundred and eight goldpieces in his hands, he thought, he did not need to keep working for Iakovitzes anymore, either. But if he stayed on, he wouldn’t have to start spending them. He didn’t need to decide anything about that right away, not when he was only a short day’s journey out of Opsikion.
“I may live,” Iakovitzes said. He grimaced as he sat down on the ground and started pulling off his boots. “Eventually, I may even want to. What have we for supper?”
“About what you’d expect,” Krispos answered. “Twice-baked bread, sausage, hard cheese, and onions. We have a couple of wineskins, but it’s a ways to the next town, so we ought to go easy if we want to make it last. I hear a stream off that way—we’ll have plenty of water to wash things down.”
“Water. Twice-baked bread.” The petulant set of Iakovitzes’ mouth showed what he thought of that. “The next time Petronas wants me to go traveling for him, I’ll ask if I can bring a chef along. He does, when he’s out on campaign.”
“There ought to be crawfish in the stream, and trout, too,” Mavros said. “I have a couple of hooks. Shall I go see what I can come up with?”
“I’ll start a fire,” Krispos said. “Roast fish, crawfish baked in clay…” He glanced over to see how Iakovitzes liked the idea.
“Could be worse, I suppose,” the noble said grudgingly. “See if you can find some early marjoram, too, why don’t you, Mavros? It would add to the flavor.”
“I’ll do my best.” Mavros rummaged through his gear till he found the hooks and some light line. “A chunk of sausage should be bait enough for the fish, but what do you suppose I should use to lure out the marjoram?”
Iakovitzes threw a boot at him.
ONE DAY WHEN HE WAS CLOSE TO HALFWAY BACK TO THE CITY, Krispos came across the coral pendant he’d brought for Sirikia. He stared at it; the seamstress hadn’t crossed his mind in months. He hoped she’d found someone new. After Tanilis, going back to her would be like leaving Videssos for his farming village: possible, but not worth thinking about.
He was no monk on the journey westward; abstinence was not in his nature. But he had finally learned not to imagine himself in love each time his lust needed slaking. Mavros still sighed whenever he left behind another barmaid or dyeshop girl.
The travelers lay over in a town called Develtos to rest their horses. Iakovitzes surveyed the place with a jaundiced eye. His one-sentence verdict summed it up perfectly. “By the good god, it makes Opsikion look like a metropolis.”
Mavros spluttered at that, but Krispos knew what his master meant. Develtos boasted a stout wall and had little else about which to boast. Seeing how small and gloomy a town the works protected, Krispos wondered why anyone had bothered to build them in the first place.
“The road does need strongpoints every so often,” Iakovitzes told him when he said that aloud. The noble took another long look, sighed in despair. “But we’ll have to make our own fun, that’s for certain. Speaking of which…” His gaze traveled back to Krispos.
It was the groom’s turn to sigh. Iakovitzes had not bothered him much since Mavros joined them. So far as Krispos knew, he hadn’t made advances at Mavros, either. Had Krispos not seen a good-looking young stablehand a couple of towns back wearing one of the noble’s rings the morning they set out, he would have wondered if Iakovitzes was fully healed. He’d enjoyed the peace while it lasted.
The inn Iakovitzes picked proved livelier than the rest of Develtos, whose people seemed as dour as the grim gray stone from which their wall and buildings were made. That was not the innkeeper’s fault; he was as somber as any of his townsfolk. But a group of close to a dozen mother-of-pearl merchants from the eastern island of Kalavria made the place jolly in spite of its proprietor. Krispos had even met one or two of them back at Opsikion; they’d landed there before heading inland.
“Why didn’t you just sail straight on to Videssos the city?” he asked one of the traders over a mug of wine.
“Bring mother-of-pearl to the city?” exclaimed the Kalavrian, a hook-nosed fellow named Stasios. “I might as well fetch milk to a cow. Videssos has more than it needs already. Here away from the sea, though, the stuff is rare and wonderful, and we get good prices.”
“You know your business best,” Krispos said. From the way the merchants were spending money, they’d done well so far.
The taproom grew gloomy as evening came on. The innkeeper waited longer than Krispos liked before lighting candles; likely he’d hoped his guests would go to bed when it got dark and save him the expense. But the Kalavrians were in no mood for sleep. They sang and drank and swapped stories with Krispos and his companions.
After a while, one of the traders took out a pair of dice. The tiny rattle they gave as he rolled them on the table to test his luck made Iakovitzes scramble to his feet. “I’m going upstairs,” he told Krispos and Mavros, “and if the two of you have any sense you’ll come with me. You start gambling with Kalavrians and you’ll still be at it when the sun comes up again.”
The merchants laughed. “So they know our reputation even in the city?” Stasios said. “I’d have bet they did.”
“I know you would,” Iakovitzes said. “You’d bloody well bet on anything. That�
��s why I’m heading off to bed, to keep from having to stay up with you.”
Mavros hesitated, then went upstairs with him. Krispos decided to stay and play. The stakes, he saw with some relief, were pieces of silver, not gold. “We’re all friends,” one of the traders said, noticing his glance at the money they’d got out. “There’d be no joy in breaking a man, especially since he’d have to stay with us till fall even so.”
“Good enough,” Krispos answered. Before long, the man to his left threw double sixes and lost the dice. They came to him. He rattled them in his hand, then sent them spinning across the tabletop. Twin ones stared up at the gamblers. “Phos’ little suns!” Krispos said happily. He collected all the bets.
“Your first throw!” a Kalavrian said. “With luck like that, no wonder you wanted to stay down here. You knew you’d clean us out.”
“They’re your dice,” Krispos retorted. “For all I knew, you’d loaded them.”
“No, that’d be Rhangavve,” Stasios said. “He’s not with us this year—somebody back home on the island caught him at it and broke his arm for him. He’s richer than any of us, though, the cheating bastard.”
Krispos won a little, lost a little, won a little more. Eventually he found himself yawning and not being able to stop. He got up from the table. “That’s enough for me,” he said. “I want to be able to ride tomorrow without falling off my horse.”
A couple of Kalavrians waved as he headed for the stairs. More had eyes only for the spinning bone cubes. Behind the bar, the innkeeper sat dozing. He jerked awake every so often. “Aren’t you gents tired, too?” he asked plaintively, seeing Krispos leave. The traders laughed at him.
Krispos had just got to the head of the stairs when he saw someone quietly emerging from Iakovitzes’ room. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. Then he relaxed. Though only a couple of tiny lamps lit the hall, he recognized Mavros. The youth leaned back into the doorway for a moment, murmured something Krispos could not hear, and went to his own room. It was farther down the hall than Iakovitzes’, so he turned his back on Krispos and did not notice him.
The Tale of Krispos Page 19