Rhegorios started to have a terrible coughing fit. Maniakes kicked him in the ankle. The woman before him was plainly no fool and would realize how badly she was mistaken. Maniakes wanted to give her that news as gently as he could; what her husband had done was not her fault. The Avtokrator would not lie to her, though: «No, he is not back in Videssos the city. My father—his father—has the authority there while I am in the westlands.»
Zenonis' frown returned, though it was not so dark as it had been a moment before. «I do not understand,» she said.
«I know you don't,» Maniakes told her. «The explanation will take a while: no help for that. Come here at sunset for supper with me and Lysia, my wife, and with Rhegorios here—my cousin, the Sevastos.»
«Both of you have something of the look of Parsmanios,» Zenonis said. «Or maybe he has your look, I don't know.» Her frown got deeper. «But if your cousin is Sevastos, what rank does Parsmanios hold?»
Exile, Maniakes thought. Aloud, he replied, «As I said, the explanation isn't quick or simple. Let me handle the matters here that are simple. At supper, I promise I'll tell you everything you need to know. Is that all right?»
«You are the Avtokrator. You have the right to command,» Zenonis said with considerable dignity. «As you say, so shall it be.» She led her son away. The next petitioner stepped forward.
Before dealing with the fellow, Maniakes sent Rhegorios a stricken glance. «I'd forgotten all about this,» he said. «It won't be easy.»
«You aren't the only one who forgot,» his cousin answered, which did not make him feel any better. Rhegorios went on, «You're right. It won't be easy.»
Lysia grimaced. She spoke severely to her belly: «Stop that.» The baby in there didn't stop wiggling; Maniakes could see movement where her swollen middle pressed against her gown. She grimaced again. «He's kicking my bladder. Excuse me. I need to use the pot again.»
«It won't be long now,» Maniakes remarked when she came back.
«No, not long,» Lysia agreed.
Silence fell. Maniakes broke it with a sigh, and then said, «I'd sooner have an aching tooth pulled than go through with this supper, but I don't see any way not to do it.»
«Neither do I,» Lysia answered. «We'll tell her the truth and see how things go from there, that's all. I don't know what else we can do.»
«Send her into exile to keep my brother company?» Maniakes suggested. But he shook his head and held his hands out in front of him before Lysia could say anything. «No, I don't mean it. What Parsmanios did wasn't her fault.»
«No, it wasn't.» Lysia sighed, too. «And we'll have to explain about ourselves again: better she should hear it from us than from anyone else. I get tired of explaining sometimes.»
«I know. So do I.» Maniakes spread his hands once more. «We fell in love with each other. I didn't expect it, but…» His voice trailed off.
«I didn't, either,» Lysia said. «I'm not saying it hasn't been worth the fight over the dispensation and the explanations and everything else. But I do get tired.»
Rhegorios knocked on the door of the chamber they were sharing and said, «Zenonis is here. She's nervous as a cat. I gave her a big cup of wine. I hope that will settle her down. If it doesn't, she'll jump up to the ceiling when the two of you come down to the dining hall.»
«We'd better get on with it.» Maniakes stood aside to let Lysia precede him through the door. Hand in hand, the two of them followed Rhegorios downstairs.
Zenonis did jump when Maniakes came into the dining hall, enough to make a little wine slop out of the cup she was holding. She'd left young Maniakes at home. She started to prostrate herself before the Avtokrator. He waved for her not to bother. «Your Majesty is gracious,» she said, her voice under tight control. She wanted to scream questions at him—Maniakes had heard that kind of restraint before, often enough to recognize it here.
To forestall her, at least for a bit, the Avtokrator said, «Zenonis, let me present you to my wife, the Empress Lysia, who is sister to the Sevastos Rhegorios.» There. There it was, all in a lump.
At first, she simply heard the words. Then she figured out what they meant. Rhegorios was Maniakes' cousin. Lysia was Rhegorios' sister. That meant… Zenonis took a deep breath. Maniakes braced himself for trouble—thought there would surely be trouble of one sort or another tonight. «I am allied with this family by marriage,» Zenonis said after a visible pause for thought. «I am allied with all of it.»
«Well said, by the good god!» Rhegorios exclaimed. Lysia took Zenonis' hands in hers. «We do welcome you to the family,» she said. «Whether you'll be so glad of us after a while may be another question, but we'll get to that.»
The cooks brought in bread and a roasted kid covered with powdered garlic and a sharp, pungent cheese. They also presented the diners with a bowl of golden mushrooms of a sort Maniakes had never seen before. When he remarked on them, one of the cooks said, «They don't grow far from Vryetion that I know of, your Majesty. We've sauteed them in white wine for you.»
They were delicious, with a flavor half nutty, half meaty. The kid was falling-off-the-bone tender, no easy trick with goat. And yet, however good the supper proved, Maniakes knew he was enjoying it less than he should have. He kept waiting for Zenonis to stop picking at the lovely food and start asking the unlovely questions he would have to answer.
She lasted longer than he'd thought she would. But, when he showed no signs of volunteering what she wanted to know, she took a long pull at her cup of wine and said, «Parsmanios lives, you tell me.» Maniakes nodded, taking advantage of a full mouth to say nothing. His new-met sister-in-law went on, «He is not here. You said he was not in Videssos the city.» She paused, like a barrister building a case in a law court. Maniakes nodded again. Zenonis asked the first of those blunt questions: «Where is he, then?»
«In Prista,» Maniakes answered, giving blunt for blunt.
But he was not blunt enough. «Where is that?» Zenonis said. «I never heard of it. Is it important? It must be. Is he your viceroy there?»
«No, he is not my viceroy there,» Maniakes said. «Prista is a little town on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea.» It was, in its way, an important place, for it let the Empire of Videssos keep an eye on the Khamorth tribes wandering the Pardrayan steppe. But that wasn't what Zenonis had meant, and he knew it.
«That's—at the edge of the world,» she exclaimed, and the Avtokrator nodded yet again. «Why is he there and not here or in the capital?»
Yes, that was the blunt question, sure enough. «Why, lady?» Maniakes echoed. He found no way to soften his reply: «Because he and one of my generals conspired to slay me by magic. The general got away; I still haven't caught up with him. But Parsmanios—»
«No.» Zenonis' lips shaped the word, but without sound. Then she said it again, aloud this time: «No.» She shook her head, as if brushing away a buzzing fly. «It's not possible. When Parsmanios was here in Vryetion with me after you became Avtokrator, your Majesty, he would talk about going to Videssos the city so he and you and your brother Tatoules could run things the way they—» Maniakes held up his hand. «I don't know where Tatoules is. He never came to Videssos the city, and no one knows what's happened to him. If I had to guess, I'd say the Makuraners captured him in the early days of their invasion, while Genesios was still Avtokrator. Most of my family was in exile on Kalavria then. To the boiler boys, he'd have been just another officer, just another prisoner. They probably worked him to death.»
«I am sorry,» Zenonis said; she'd already shown she had good manners. «I didn't know. Parsmanios didn't know, either, of course. He would go on and on about how you three brothers would set the Empire to rights and get rich doing it, too.»
«He was welcome to help me set the Empire to rights,» Maniakes said. «By the good god, it's needed setting to rights. He did help, some. But he wanted to be promoted without having earned it, just because he was my brother. When I told him no, he didn't like that.» Rhegorios wriggled
in his seat, then held up his winecup. A servant hurried to fill it. Rhegorios hurried to empty it. The title Parsmanios had wanted was Sevastos, the title he owned. The Avtokrator had kept him in preference to his own brother. No wonder he felt a little uneasy here.
Zenonis said, «I can't believe he would turn on his own flesh and blood.»
«I couldn't believe it, either,» Maniakes answered. «Unfortunately, it happens to be true, and I nearly died from it. He always claimed he did it because he thought my marriage with Lysia was wrong and wicked. Maybe he was even telling the truth; I don't know. It doesn't matter. What he did matters, and that's all. Phos, I wish he hadn't done it.»
Zenonis' gaze flicked from him to Lysia and back again. Parsmanios' wife had spirit; Maniakes could tell she was going to challenge him. When she did, she picked her words with great care, but challenged nonetheless: «By the teachings of the holy temples, the two of you are within the prohibited degrees of kinship, and so—»
«No.» Maniakes made his voice flat. «We have a dispensation from Agathios, the most holy ecumenical patriarch. My father– Parsmanios' father—has accepted the wedding.» That was true, as far as it went. The elder Maniakes didn't like the wedding, but he accepted it. «Lysia's father has accepted it, too.» That was also true, with the same reservations. «None of them tried to overthrow me or take the throne for themselves.» Most important of all, that was true, too. «Neither did Rhegorios here.»
«Me?» Rhegorios' eyebrows shot upward. «I've seen what all the Avtokrator has to do. Looks too much like work for my taste.»
Lysia snorted. So did Maniakes. Rhegorios had a hard time keeping his own face straight. He enjoyed affecting the role of a useless, gilded fop. When he was younger, the affectation might have covered some truth. No more, though. Maniakes knew that, if he fell over dead tomorrow, his father and Rhegorios would keep the Empire running as smoothly as it could in these troubled times.
He also knew Rhegorios would do nothing to try to make him fall over dead, and everything in his power to keep him from falling over dead. There, in a sentence, was the difference between his cousin and the brother he'd had to exile.
«If the ecumenical patriarch says it is acceptable, then it is,» Zenonis said, as if stating a law of nature. If it was a law of nature, Maniakes wished more clerics and citizens were familiar with it. His sister-in-law bowed her head. «Thank you for sparing his life.»
«You're welcome,» Maniakes answered. He started to say something more, but stopped. He started again, and again left it unspoken. Whatever comments he might make about not having the stomach to spill a brother's blood would only cause him to seem smug and self-righteous, because Parsmanios had shown he had the stomach to try doing just that.
«What will you do with me?» Zenonis asked.
«I don't intend to do anything with you,» Maniakes answered. «And, in case you're still wondering, I don't intend to do anything to you, either. If you want to stay here in Vryetion, you may do that. If you want to come to Videssos the city, you may do that. If you want to go into exile with Parsmanios, you may do that, too. But think carefully before you choose that road. If you go to Prista, you will never come back.»
«I don't know what to do now,» Zenonis said. «These past few years, I've wondered whether my husband was alive. To find out he is, to be raised to the heights by that, and then to learn what he'd done and to plunge into the depths again… I don't know where I am now.» She looked down at her hands again.
Gently, Lysia said, «Alter this, you may not want anything to do with our clan any more. If you should decide to dissolve the marriage, the clerics will give you no trouble, not with your husband a proved traitor. None of us would hold it against you, I know that.» She glanced to Maniakes and Rhegorios for confirmation. Both quickly nodded. «I don't know,» Zenonis repeated.
«You don't have to decide right away,» Maniakes said. «Take your time to find what you think is best. The Makuraners aren't going to run us out of Vryetion again tomorrow, nor even the day after.» He sketched the sun-circle above his heart to make sure Phos was paying attention to his words.
«What's best for me may not be best for Maniakes—my Maniakes, I mean,» Zenonis said, thinking out loud. «And what's best for me may not be best for Parsmanios, either.» She looked up at Maniakes, half-nervous, half-defiant, as if daring him to make something of that.
Before he could reply at all, Rhegorios asked, «What was it like, living here under the Makuraners when you were the Avtokrator's sister-in-law?»
«They never knew,» Zenonis answered. «Half the people in Vryetion know who my husband is, but none of them ever told the boiler boys. I was always afraid that would happen, but it never did.»
«Interesting,» Maniakes said. That meant Zenonis was widely liked in the town. Otherwise, someone eager to curry favor with the occupiers would surely have betrayed her, as had happened so often at so many other places in the westlands. It also meant no one had hated Parsmanios enough to want to strike at him through his family, a small piece of favorable information about him but not one to be ignored.
«You are being as kind to me as you can,» Zenonis said. «For this, I am in your debt, so much I can never hope to repay.»
«Nonsense,» Maniakes said. «You've done nothing to me. Why should I want to do anything to you?»
That question answered itself in his own mind as soon as he spoke it. Genesios would have slaughtered Parsmanios in the name of vengeance, and disposed of Zenonis and little Maniakes for sport. Likinios might have got rid of them merely for efficiency's sake, to leave no potential rivals at his back. Not being so vicious as Genesios nor so cold-blooded as Likinios, Maniakes was willing to let his sister-in-law and nephew live.
«You will let me think a while on what I should do?» Zenonis said, as if she still had trouble believing Maniakes. After he had reassured her yet again, she rose and prostrated herself before him.
«Get up,» he said roughly. «Maybe people whose greatgrandfathers were Avtokrators before them got used to that, but I never have.» The confession would have dismayed Kameas, but Kameas was back in Videssos the city. The vestiarios had accompanied Maniakes on his ill-fated journey to buy peace from Etzilios. Maniakes had almost been captured then. Kameas had been, though Etzilios later released him. Since then, he'd stuck close to the imperial city.
With still more thanks, Zenonis made her way out of the city governor's residence. Maniakes looked at Rhegorios. Rhegorios looked at Lysia. Lysia looked at Maniakes.
Being the Avtokrator, he had the privilege of speaking first. He could have done without it. «That,» he said, «was ghastly. If I'd known it was coming, that would have been hard enough. To have it take me by surprise this afternoon… I knew Parsmanios had lived in Vryetion. I didn't think about everything that would mean.»
«You did as well as you could,» Lysia said.
«Yes, I think so, too,» he answered without false modesty. «But I think I'd sooner have been beaten with boards.»
Thoughtfully, Rhegorios said, «She's nicer than I thought she'd be. Not bad-looking at all, a long way from stupid… I wonder what she saw in Parsmanios.»
«No telling,» Maniakes said wearily. «He wasn't a bad fellow, you know, till jealousy ate him up from the inside out.»
A servant came in with a platter of pears, apricots, and strawberries candied in honey. He looked around in some surprise. «The lady left before the sweet?» he said in faintly scandalized tones.
«So she did.» Maniakes' imperturbability defied the servitor to make something of it. After a moment, the Avtokrator went on, «Why don't you set that tray down? We'll get around to it sooner or later. Meanwhile, bring us a fresh jar of wine.»
«Meanwhile, bring us two or three fresh jars of wine,» Rhegorios broke in.
«Yes, by the good god, bring us two or three fresh jars of wine,» Maniakes exclaimed. «I hadn't planned to get drunk tonight, but then, things can change. Till this afternoon, I hadn't planned on e
ntertaining the wife of my traitorous brother tonight, either.»
Lysia yawned. «I've had enough wine already,» she said. «I'm going upstairs to bed. I'll see what's left of the two of you in the morning.»
«She's smarter than either one of us,» Maniakes said. That judgment didn't keep him from using a small knife to scrape the pitch out from around the stopper of one of the wine jars with which the servant had presented him. Once the stopper was out, the fellow took the jar from him and poured his cup and his cousin's full.
Rhegorios lifted the goblet, spat on the floor in rejection of Skotos, and drank. «Ahh,» he said. «That's good.» He took another pull. «You forget, your magnifolent Majesty—» He and Maniakes both laughed at that. «—I grew up with Lysia. I've known for a long time that she's smarter than I am. And while I wouldn't commit lese majesty for anything…»
«I get your drift.» Maniakes drank, too, and ate a candied strawberry. Then he shook his head. «What a night. You know how the laundresses batter clothes against rocks to get the dirt out? That's how I feel now.»
«Life is full of surprises,» Rhegorios observed. «Isn't it, though?» Maniakes drained his cup and filled it again before the servant could. «I'd thought the Kubratoi and the Makuraners—to say nothing of Tzikas, which is generally a good idea—had long since taught me all I needed to know of that lesson. I was wrong.»
«I don't think Zenonis is out to kill you or overthrow the Empire—or to kill you and overthrow the Empire,» Rhegorios said.
«I don't think so, either,» Maniakes agreed. «But when you've been wrong before, you can't help wondering. I've given her a powerful reason to dislike me.»
«That's so,» his cousin admitted. «Times like this, you almost begin to understand how Genesios' ugly little mind worked.»
«I had that same thought not very long ago,» Maniakes said. «Frightening, isn't it?» He looked down into his goblet. It was empty. How did that happen? he wondered. Since no drunken mice staggered across the floor, he must have done it himself. He filled the cup again. «If I'd had some warning, I would have handled it better.»
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