The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  As Krispos followed Gomaris up to the house, he wondered what was going on. Something out of the ordinary, obviously. He didn’t think he was in trouble, not if Iakovitzes wanted to see Mavros, too. Unless—had Iakovitzes learned more of his connection with Tanilis, or of what she’d seen? But how could he have, here in the city when he hadn’t in Opsikion?

  A gray-haired man Krispos had not met was waiting with Iakovitzes. “Here they are, Eroulos, in all their”—Iakovitzes paused for an ostentatious sniff—“splendor.” He turned to his grooms. “Eroulos is steward of the household of his Imperial Highness the Sevastokrator Petronas.”

  Krispos bowed low. “Excellent sir,” he murmured.

  Mavros bowed even lower. “How may we serve you, eminent sir?”

  “You will not serve me, but rather the Sevastokrator,” Eroulos answered at once. He was still straight and alert, with the competent air Krispos would have expected from one of Petronas’ aides. He went on, “His Imperial Highness promised you a reward for your courage last night, Krispos. He has chosen to appoint you chief groom of his stables. You, Mavros, are bidden to come to the palaces, as well, out of the respect the Sevastokrator bears for your mother.”

  While Krispos and Mavros gaped, Iakovitzes said gruffly, “You should both know I wouldn’t permit such a raid on my staff from anyone less than Petronas. Even from him, I resent it. That’s a waste of time, though; what the Sevastokrator wants, he gets. So go on, and show him and his folk what kind of people come from this house.” That was Iakovitzes to the core, Krispos thought: as kind a farewell as the noble had in him, mixed with bragging and self-promotion.

  Then Krispos stopped worrying about what suddenly seemed the past. Going to the household of the Sevastokrator! He felt like shouting. He made himself stay calm. “Could we have a little time to pack our belongings?”

  “And bathe?” Mavros added plaintively.

  Eroulos unbent enough to smile. “I expect so. If I send a man for you tomorrow morning, will that be all right?”

  “Yes, eminent sir.”

  “That would be fine, excellent sir.”

  “Until tomorrow, then.” Eroulos rose, bowed to Iakovitzes. “Always a pleasure to see you, excellent sir.” He nodded to Gomaris. “If you will be so kind as to show me out?”

  When Eroulos had gone, Iakovitzes said, “I trust neither of you young gentlemen, now having risen higher, will forget whose house was his first in the city.”

  “Of course not,” Krispos answered, while Mavros shook his head. Krispos heard something new in Iakovitzes’ voice. All at once, his master—or rather, he thought dizzily, his former master—spoke to him as to a person of consequence instead of taking his obedience for granted. Iakovitzes never wasted respect where it was not needed. That he gave it now was Krispos’ surest sign of what Eroulos’ visit meant.

  The news of that visit had reached the grooms’ quarters by the time Krispos and Mavros got back there. The other grooms waylaid them with a great jar of wine. Krispos did not start packing until late that night. He finished quickly—he did not have a lot to pack—and fell sideways across his bed.

  “YOU CAN THROW THAT SACK ONTO ONE OF MY HORSES, IF YOU like,” Mavros said the next morning.

  “They’re loaded enough already, thanks. I can manage.” But for the spear he’d brought to the city from his village, everything Krispos owned fit into a large knapsack. He paced back and forth with the sack slung over his shoulder. “So where is this man of Petronas’?”

  “Probably in a tavern, drinking his breakfast. When you’re the Sevastokrator’s man, who this side of the Emperor is going to complain that you’re late?”

  “No one, I suppose.” Krispos kept pacing.

  The promised servant did show up a little later. “May I carry that for you?” he asked, pointing to Krispos’ knapsack. He seemed surprised when Krispos turned him down. With a shrug, he said, “Follow me, then.”

  He led Krispos and Mavros through the plaza of Palamas and into the palace quarter. The palaces, Krispos discovered, were a secret city unto themselves, with rows of carefully planted trees screening buildings from one another. He soon found himself in a part of the quarter he had never seen before. “What’s that building over there, the one by the cherry trees?” he asked.

  “Nothing for the likes of you to worry about—or me, either, come to that,” the fellow answered, grinning. “That’s the Avtokrator’s private residence, that is, and his Imperial Majesty has his own imperial servants, believe you me. They think they’re better’n anyone else, too. Of course,” he went on after a brief pause, “most of ’em are eunuchs, so I suppose they have to have something to be proud of.”

  “Eunuchs.” Krispos wet his lips. He’d seen eunuchs a few times here in the city, plodding plumply about their errands. They made him shiver; more than once, unbuttoning his fly or pulling up his robe to relieve himself, he’d thanked Phos he was a whole man. “Why eunuchs?”

  The Sevastokrator’s man chuckled to hear such naïveté. “For one thing, they can’t go plotting to make themselves Avtokrator—having no stones disbars ’em. For another, who better to trust to serve the Emperor’s wife?”

  “Nobody, I suppose.” What the servant said made sense. All the same, Krispos fingered his thick, dark, curly beard, gladder than glad he could grow it.

  The servitor led Mavros to a building not far from the Emperor’s private chambers. “You’ll be quartered here, with Petronas’ other spatharioi. Find an empty suite and get yourself comfortable there.”

  “So I’m to be a spatharios, am I?” Mavros said. “Well, there are spatharioi and then there are spatharioi, if you know what I mean. Which sort does Petronas have in mind for me to be, useful or just decorative?”

  “Whichever sort you make yourself into, I expect,” the servant answered. “I’ll tell you this, though, for whatever you think it’s worth: Petronas isn’t ashamed to get his own hands dirty when he needs to.”

  “Good. Neither am I.” When Mavros grinned, he looked even younger than he really was. “And if you doubt me, ask your Eroulos how I smelled when he came to Iakovitzes’ yesterday.”

  “Will I stay here, too?” Krispos asked.

  “Eh? No. You come on with me,” Petronas’ man said.

  With a quick wave to Mavros, Krispos obeyed. The servant took him to one of the larger and more splendid buildings in the palace complex. It made three sides of a square, closely enclosing a yard full of close-trimmed shrubberies.

  “The Grand Courtroom,” the servant explained. “His Imperial Highness the Sevastokrator lives here in the wing we’re going toward so he can be right at hand if anything comes up that he needs to deal with.”

  “I see,” Krispos said slowly. Anthimos’ residence, on the other hand, was well away from the courtroom. Petronas, Krispos decided, missed very little. Then something else struck him. He stopped. “Wait. Are you saying the Sevastokrator wants me to live here, too?”

  “Them’s the orders I have.” The servant gave an it’s-not-my-problem shrug.

  “This is finer than I expected,” Krispos said as Petronas’ man led him to the Grand Courtroom. He stopped the fellow again. “Where are the stables? If I’m going to be chief groom, don’t you think I should know how to get to my work?”

  “Maybe, and then maybe not.” The servant looked him up and down. “Hope you don’t mind my saying it, but you strike me as a trifle…raw…to be chief groom when some of the men in the stables have been there likely since before your father was born.”

  “No doubt you’re right, but that doesn’t mean I can’t put my hand to it. Or would Petronas want me to be a drone, any more than he would Mavros?”

  Now the Sevastokrator’s man stopped of his own accord. He looked at Krispos again, this time thoughtfully. “Mmm, maybe not, not if you don’t care to be.” He told Krispos how to get to the stables. “But first let’s get you settled in here.”

  Krispos could not argue with that. The servan
t led him up a stairway. A couple of armed guards in mail shirts leaned against the first doorway they passed. “This whole floor belongs to his Imperial Highness,” the servitor explained. “You want the next one up.”

  The story above the Sevastokrator’s quarters was broken up into apartments. By the spacing of the doors, the one assigned to Krispos was among the smallest. All the same, it had both a living room and a bedroom. Though he did not say so, that enormously impressed Krispos. He’d never had more than one room to himself before.

  The apartment also boasted both a large bureau and a closet. The storage space swallowed Krispos’ knapsack-worth of belongings. He tossed his spear on the bed, locked the door behind him, and went down the stairs. The bright sun outside made him blink. He looked this way and that, trying to get his bearings. That long, low brick building behind the stand of willows should have been the stables, if he’d understood Petronas’ man.

  He walked toward the building. Soon both sound and smell told him he was right. The willows, though, had helped conceal the size of the stables. They dwarfed Iakovitzes’ and Tanilis’ put together. Someone saw Krispos coming and dashed into the building. He nodded to himself. He might have known that would happen.

  By the time his feet crunched on the straw-strewn stable floor, the grooms and farriers and boys were gathered and waiting for him. He scanned their faces and saw resentment, fear, curiosity. “Believe me,” he said, “my being here surprises me as much as it does you.”

  That won him a couple of smiles, but most of the stable hands still stood quietly, arms folded across their chests, wanting to learn how he would go on. He thought for a moment. “I didn’t ask for this job. It got handed to me, so I’m going to do it the best way I can. A good many of you know more about horses than I do. I wouldn’t think of saying you don’t. You all know more about the Sevastokrator’s horses than I do. I hope you’ll help me.”

  “What if we don’t care to?” growled one of the men, a tough-looking fellow a few years older than Krispos.

  “If you go on doing what you’re supposed to do, I don’t mind,” Krispos said. “That helps me, too. But if you try to make things hard for me on purpose, I won’t like it—and neither will you.” He pointed to a bruise under one eye. “You must have heard why Petronas took me into his service. After Beshev, I think I can handle myself with just about anybody. But I didn’t come here to fight. I will if I have to, but I don’t want to. I’d sooner work.”

  Now he waited to see how the stable hands would respond. They muttered among themselves. The tough-looking groom took a step toward him. He set himself. A smaller, gray-bearded man put a hand on the groom’s arm. “No, hold on, Onorios,” he said. “He sounds fair enough. Let’s find out if he means what he says.”

  Onorios grunted. “All right, Stotzas, since it’s you who’s asking.” He scowled at Krispos. “But what do you want to bet that inside a month’s time he doesn’t bother setting foot in here? He’ll collect the pay you deserve more and he’ll stay in the Grand Courtroom soaking up wine with the rest of that lot there.”

  “I’ll take that bet, Onorios,” Krispos said sharply. “At the end of a month—or two, or three, if you’d rather—loser buys the winner all he can drink. What do you say?”

  “By the good god, you’re on.” Onorios stuck out his hand. Krispos took it. They squeezed until they both winced. When they let go, each of them opened and closed his fist several times to work the blood back in.

  Krispos said, “Stotzas, will you show me around, please?” If the senior groom was willing not to despise him on sight, he would do his best to stay on Stotzas’ good side.

  Stotzas showed him the Sevastokrator’s parade horse. “Pretty, isn’t he? Too bad he couldn’t catch a tortoise with a ten-yard start.” Then his war horse. “Stay away from his hooves—he’s trained to lash out. Maybe you should start giving him apples, so he gets to know you.” Then the beasts Petronas took hunting, mares, a couple of retired stallions and geldings, up-and-coming colts—so many animals in all that Krispos knew he would not be able to remember every one.

  By the time the tour was nearly done, Stotzas and Krispos were at the far end of the stables, well away from the other hands. The graybeard gave Krispos a sidelong look. “Think you can handle it?” he asked, his voice sly.

  “I’ll try. What more can I say right now? I only wish you could tell me about the people the same way you did about the horses.”

  Stotzas’ shoulders shook. After a moment, Krispos realized the groom was laughing. “Ah, so you’re not just a young fool with more muscles than he needs. I hoped you weren’t. Aye, the people’ll drive you madder than the beasts any day, but if you keep ’em happy and keep ’em tending to their jobs, things’ll run smooth enough. If you have that trick, sonny, you’ll do right well for yourself.”

  “I hope I do.” Krispos met Stotzas’ eyes. “I hope you’ll help me, too.”

  “Won’t stand in your road, anyhow,” Stotzas said after a brief, thoughtful pause. “Any youngster who admits he don’t know everything there is to know is worth taking a chance on, you ask me. And you handled Onorios pretty well. Reckon he’ll be buying you wine a month from now instead of the other way round.”

  “That he will,” Krispos promised.

  “Well, let’s head back,” Stotzas said. As they walked down the center aisle of the stable toward the knot of expectantly waiting hands, the senior groom raised his voice a little to ask, “So what do you think we ought to do about that hunter with the sore shins?”

  “You’ve been resting him, you said, and putting cold compresses on his legs?” Krispos waited for Stotzas’ nod, then went on, “He doesn’t look too bad. If you keep up with what you’re doing for a few more days, then start exercising him on soft ground, he should do all right.”

  Neither of them let on that they’d quietly talked about the horse’s problem in front of its stall. Stotzas rubbed his chin, nodded sagely. “Good advice, sir. We’ll take it, I expect.” He turned to the crowd of stable hands. “He’ll do.”

  Allies made life easier, Krispos thought.

  FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS, KRISPOS SPENT MOST OF HIS waking hours in the stables. He learned more about horsemanship than he’d ever known, and more about the sometimes related art of guiding men, as well. When he collected his bet from Onorios, he made a point of also buying wine for the burly groom. After they drank together, Onorios hurried to do whatever Krispos needed and did it gladly. Stotzas said nothing, but a glint of amusement showed in his eyes once in a while.

  Because he was working so hard, Krispos needed a while to notice how his life had changed since he moved to his apartment in the Grand Courtroom. At Iakovitzes’, he’d been a servant. Here he had servants of his own. His bed linen was always clean; his clothes seemed to wash themselves as if by magic and reappear, spotless, in his closet.

  He also learned that any small valuables he left out might disappear, as if by magic. He was glad he’d hidden Tanilis’ gift behind a piece of molding he’d loosened. Every so often, he would move the small cabinet he’d put in front of the loose place and add more money to his store. He lived frugally. He was too busy to do anything else.

  He was about to go to sleep one warm summer night when someone tapped on his door. He scratched his head. His acquaintance with the officials and courtiers who lived in the other apartments down this hall was nodding at best; he’d been at the stables too much to get to know them well. “Who is it?” he called.

  “Eroulos.”

  “Oh!” Krispos had not seen Petronas’ steward since the day he came to Iakovitzes’ house for him. After hastily throwing his tunic back on, he unbarred the door. “Come in!”

  “No, you come out with me,” Eroulos said. “I am bidden to bring you downstairs to the Sevastokrator. His Imperial Highness is entertaining…a guest. He would like to have him meet you.”

  “A guest?”

  “You’ll see for yourself soon enough. Come along,
if you please.”

  Krispos followed Eroulos down the hall and down the stairs. Petronas’ guards gave the steward and him a thorough patting down at the doorway to the Sevastokrator’s suite. Krispos let himself be searched without complaint; after all, he had never passed through this entrance before. But he was surprised Eroulos got the same treatment. If Petronas did not trust his own steward, whom did he trust? Maybe no one, Krispos thought.

  Finally, nodding, the guards stood aside. One of them opened the door. Eroulos waved Krispos in ahead of him. Krispos had wondered how the Sevastokrator lived. What he saw reminded him of Tanilis’ villa: a mix of great wealth and quiet good taste.

  An icon of Phos arrested his eye. Respect for both the good god and the artist made him sketch the sun-sign over his heart; he’d never seen Phos portrayed with such perfectly mingled sternness and kindness. Eroulos followed his gaze. “That is the image, they say, after which the Phos in the dome of the High Temple is modeled,” the steward remarked.

  “I can well believe it,” Krispos said. Even after he’d walked by, he had the uneasy feeling the god in the icon was still looking at him.

  “Here we are,” Eroulos said at length, halting before a door inlaid with lacy vines of gold and ivory. He tapped at it. For a moment, the two voices coming through it did not pause. One was Petronas. The other sounded lighter, younger. Eroulos tapped again. “All right, all right,” Petronas growled.

  The steward swung the door open. It moved silently, on well-greased hinges. “Here is Krispos, your Highness.”

  “Good.” The Sevastokrator turned to the man sitting across a small table from him. “Well, nephew, I suppose the argument can wait a few minutes before we pick it up again. You wanted to see the fellow who overthrew the famous Beshev and sent Gleb back to Kubrat less high and mighty than he came here. This is Krispos.”

  Petronas’ nephew! Krispos bowed low before the younger man, then went to his knees and down flat on his belly. “Your Majesty,” he whispered.