Videssos Besieged ttot-4

by Harry Turtledove

  «Of course you did,» Broios shouted. «All the time the boiler boys were here, you did nothing but lick their backsides.»

  «Me? What about you?» Vetranios swung at the other merchant, awkwardly but with great feeling. Broios swung back, with rather greater effect. A couple of Haloga guards grabbed them and pulled them away from each other.

  «Gently, gentlemen, gently,» Maniakes said. «Did you come before me to fight or to get this dispute settled?» The question was rhetorical, but neither of the merchants quite had the nerve to say he would sooner have fought the other. Maniakes took their silence as acquiescence. «Let us continue, then. You, Vetranios, how many Videssian silver pieces did you pay to Broios here?»

  «Forty,» Vetranios answered at once. «That was all the Videssian silver I had. I made up the other two hundred and twelve with arkets. They're silver, too.»

  «You only gave me seventy-seven of them,» Broios howled.

  «That's how many I was supposed to give you, you boil on the scrotum of stupidity,» Vetranios retorted. The Haloga who was holding him let go to clap his hands together to applaud the originality of the insult. The merchant ignored that, saying, «It takes eleven Videssian silver pieces to make four arkets, weight for weight, so I gave you the proper payment; you're just too stupid to see it.»

  Maniakes would have needed pen and parchment and infinite patience to be sure whether Vetranios had done his calculations right. He decided for the time being that they were when Broios didn't protest. «This was the correct pay, then?» he asked the merchant who claimed he'd been defrauded.

  «No, your Majesty,» Broios answered. «This would have been the right pay, if this dung beetle who walked like a man hadn't cheated me. All the arkets he gave me were so badly clipped, there wasn't sixty arkets' worth of silver in the seventy-seven.»

  «Why, you lying sack of moldy tripes!» Vetranios said.

  «To the ice with me if I am,» Broios said, «and to the ice with you if I'm not.» He handed Maniakes a jingling sack of silver. «Judge for yourself, your Majesty. The cursed cheat's clipped the coins, and kept for himself the silver that was round the rim.»

  Opening the sack, Maniakes examined the silver arkets it held. They were indeed badly clipped, one and all. «May I see those, your Majesty?» Vetranios asked. When Maniakes showed them to him, his face darkened in anger—or, perhaps, in a convincing facsimile thereof; Maniakes could not for the life of him tell which. The merchant said, «These aren't the coins I gave to Broios. I gave him perfectly good silver, by Phos. If anybody clipped them, he did it himself.»

  Now Broios turned purple, as convincingly as Vetranios had done a moment before. «By the lord with the great and good mind, your Majesty, hear how this sack of manure farts through his mouth.» Vetranios tried to punch him again; the Haloga guards kept them apart.

  «Each of you says the other is a liar, eh?» Maniakes said. Both merchants nodded vehemently. Maniakes continued, «Each of you says the other clipped these coins, eh?» Both men nodded again. The Avtokrator's face went stern. «Both of you no doubt know that clipping coins comes under the same law as counterfeiting and carries the same unpleasant penalties. If I have to get all the way to the bottom of this, I fear that one of you will regret it very much.»

  Both merchants nodded again, as vigorously as before. That surprised Maniakes. He'd expected one of them—he didn't know which—to show some sign of alarm. They had nerve, these two.

  He said, «If whichever of you is lying makes a clean breast of it now, I swear by the lord with the great and good mind to make the penalty no greater than a fine of seventeen Makuraner arkets and an oath binding you never to clip coins again on penalty of further punishment.»

  He waited. Vetranios and Broios both shook their heads. Each glared at the other. Maniakes didn't know whether to be annoyed or intrigued at their stubbornness. He would sooner have had no trouble from the newly reoccupied westlands. That hadn't happened. He hadn't thought it would. Here, at least, was a dispute more interesting than the common sort, where truth was easy to find.

  «Very well, gentlemen,» he said. «For the time being, I shall keep these arkets, since they are evidence—of what sort remains to be seen—in the case between you. Come back here tomorrow at the start of the eighth hour, after the midday meal. We shall see what my sorcerer makes of this whole strange business.»

  Before the merchants returned the next day, Rhegorios came up to Maniakes and said, «I've done some of my own investigating in this case, cousin of mine.»

  «Ah?» Maniakes said. «And what did you find?»

  «That Broios has a very tasty daughter—not shaped anything like him, Phos be praised.» Rhegorios' hands described curves in the air. «Her name's Phosia. I think I'm in love.» He let out a sigh.

  «What you're in, cousin of mine,» Maniakes retorted, «is heat. I'll pour a bucket of water on you, and you'll feel better.»

  «No, wetter,» Rhegorios said. He ran his tongue across his lips. «She really is beautiful. If her father weren't a thief… Maybe even if her father is a thief…» Since Rhegorios had made similar noises in almost every town the Videssian army visited, Maniakes took no special notice of these.

  Broios and Vetranios returned to the city governor's residence within a couple of minutes of each other at the eighth hour. Maniakes had looked for that; to merchants, punctuality was hardly a lesser god than Phos. What the Avtokrator had not looked for was that each of the men from Serrhes brought his own wizard with him. Broios' champion, a certain Sozomenos, was as portly as his principal, and resembled him enough to be his cousin. Phosteinos, who represented Vetranios' interests, was by contrast thin to the point of emaciation, as if whoever had invented food had forgotten to tell him about it.

  Bagdasares looked down his long nose at both of them. «Have you gentlemen—» As Maniakes had with the merchants, he sounded like a man graciously conferring the undeserved benefit of the doubt. «—been involved in this matter from the outset?»

  «Of course, we have,» Phosteinos said in a thin, rasping voice. «Vetranios hired me to keep Broios from cheating him, and the wretch countered by paying this charlatan here to help him go on bilking my client.»

  «Why don't you blow away for good?» Sozomenos demanded. Phosteinos responded with a skeletal smile. Sozomenos ignored it, turning to Maniakes and saying, «See how they misrepresent me and my principal both?» He shrugged his plump shoulders, as if to say, What can you do? The Avtokrator was suddenly certain each merchant had spent a great deal more on this case than the seventeen arkets' worth of silver allegedly at issue.

  Bagdasares took Maniakes aside and whispered, «Your Majesty, getting to the bottom of this will be harder than we thought. These two bunglers will have muddied the waters till no one can hope to tell where the truth lies and where the lies start.»

  «Just go ahead,» the Avtokrator answered."Make it as impressive as you can.» He looked from merchant to merchant. «Makes you wonder if we shouldn't have let the Makuraners keep this place, doesn't it?»

  Bagdasares let out a loud sniff, perhaps at the notion of having to associate with wizards who, in Videssos the city, would surely have starved for lack of trade; Phosteinos looked to be on the point of starving anyhow, but Maniakes blamed that on personal asceticism rather than want of business: his robe looked expensive.

  «Very well,» Bagdasares said, that sniff having failed to make his sorcerous colleagues vanish. «We have to determine two things today: whether the coins Broios presented to his Majesty—» He had them in a bowl. «—are in fact those Vetranios paid to him, and, if so, who was responsible for clipping the aforesaid coins.»

  «We know that,» Broios and Vetranios said in the same breath with the identical intonation. They glared at each other.

  «First,» Bagdasares went on as if they had not spoken, «we shall use the law of similarity to determine whether Broios is honestly representing these arkets to be the ones he received from Vetranios.»

  «Now s
ee here,» Sozomenos said, «how can we trust you not to have it in for Broios? When the Makuraners were here, by the good god, a little coin in the right places would make magic turn out any way the chap who was paying had in mind.»

  Bagdasares started to answer. Maniakes cut him off, saying, «I will deal with this.» He glowered at the mage. «Do you think either of your clients is important enough in the scheme of things to buy off the Avtokrator of the Videssians and his chief sorcerer?»

  Before Sozomenos could say anything, Phosteinos broke in with a loud, startled cackle of laughter. Sozomenos glowered at his thin colleague, then coughed a couple of times. «Put that way, probably not, your Majesty,» he said.

  «Good. See that you remember it.» Maniakes nodded to Bagdasares. «Proceed, eminent sir. These fellows here are welcome to watch you to make sure you do nothing to favor Broios or Vetranios—not that you would—but they are not to interfere with your magic in any way.» He gave Phosteinos and Sozomenos a severe look. «Is that understood, sorcerous sirs?»

  Neither of the mages from Serrhes said no. Maniakes nodded again to Bagdasares. The Vaspurakaner wizard said, «The first thing I intend to do, as I said a little while ago, is to find out whether Broios presented to his Majesty coins he actually received from Vetranios. Vetranios, if you have an arket in that pouch on your belt, please hand it to Broios. Broios, you will then hand it to me.»

  «I just might have an arket or two,» Vetranios said, chuckling. «Yes, sir, I just might.» He opened the pouch and took out a shiny silver coin. «Not clipped at all, you'll note,» he remarked as he handed it to Broios.

  The other merchant took it from him as if it smelled bad. He handed it to Sozomenos, who in turn passed it to Bagdasares.

  Bagdasares looked pained. «We'll do that again, with a new arket,» he said, tossing the first one aside. Vetranios' eyes hungrily followed it. So did Broios'. So did those of both local wizards. «No more foolishness,» Bagdasares told them. «Anyone who fails to follow my instructions will be deemed to have forfeited his case.»

  Under Bagdasares' watchful eye, Vetranios got out another arket. This one was also undipped, but he didn't boast about it. He gave it to Broios. Broios gave it to Bagdasares without presuming to let another wizard handle it in between.

  «That's better,» Bagdasares said Maniakes hid a smile; the mage spoke with the authority of a provincial governor. The Avtokrator was suddenly thoughtful. He would need new governors for the provinces of the westlands—he would need to repair the whole system of provincial administration here, in fact. He could do much worse than Bagdasares.

  Muttering to himself, the Vaspurakaner mage dropped Vetranios' arket in among the coins Broios claimed to have received from the other merchant. It clinked sweetly; the Makuraners coined little gold, but their silver was as pure as anything from a Videssian mint. Bagdasares began to chant. Phosteinos and Sozomenos both pricked up their ears. They evidently knew the spell he was using. Maniakes watched as the mage made several swift passes over the coins. Phosteinos nodded what looked like approval of Bagdasares' technical skill.

  After one final pass, Bagdasares cried out in a commanding voice. Some of the coins in the bowl began glowing with a soft, bluish radiance. Others remained simply—coins. «Your Majesty,» Bagdasares said, «as you may judge for yourself, some of this money has indeed passed from Vetranios to Broios, as we see by the aid of the law of similarity. Some of the coins, however, did not take this route.»

  «Isn't that interesting?» Maniakes studied Broios, who seemed to be doing his best to disappear while remaining in plain sight. Gloating glee filled Vetranios' chuckle. The Avtokrator turned a mild and speculative eye on the merchant who'd brought the charges against his fellow in the first place. «Well, Broios, what have you got to say for yourself?»

  «Y-y-your M-majesty, maybe I—I mixed in a few arkets that weren't from Vetranios by—by mistake.» Broios' voice firmed. «Yes, that's it. I must have done it by mistake.»

  Vetranios walked over to look at the arkets more closely. «Likely tell,» he jeered. «You can see that all of these 'mistaken' coins are clipped.» He struck a pose so overblown, Maniakes wondered if he'd gotten it from some mime in a Midwinter's Day troupe.

  Broios said, «They're not the only ones that are clipped, though, by Phos!» He came up to the bowl and pointed to some of the shining coins. «Look at that arket there, and that one—and that one. That one's cut so bad, you can hardly see the King of Kings' face at all. They were like that when I got 'em, too.»

  «Liar!» Vetranios shouted. He turned to Maniakes. «You hear with your own ears, you see with your own eyes, what a liar he is. I don't think there's any bigger liar in the whole Empire than Broios.»

  «Liar yourself,» Broios retorted. «You have your wizard here, your Majesty. He can show you who stuck the silver from the rims of these arkets into his pouch.»

  «Yes, why don't you go ahead and show me that, Bagdasares?» Maniakes said. «I confess, by now I'm curious. And nothing about this case would surprise me any more, except perhaps finding an honest man anywhere in it.»

  Phosteinos stirred. «Your Majesty, I resent the imputation. You have proved nothing illicit about my actions.»

  «That's true,» Maniakes admitted, and the scrawny wizard Preened. Then the Avtokrator brought him down to earth: «I haven't proved anything yet.» That got a laugh from Sozomenos, a laugh that cut off very sharply when Maniakes glanced over at the sorcerer who'd been helping Broios.

  At a nod from Maniakes, Bagdasares handed Vetranios a small sharp knife and said, «I presume you have in your pouch yet another undipped arket.» Most unhappily, the merchant nodded. «Excellent,» Bagdasares declared. «Be so good as to trim the silver from the edges, then, that we may have a comparison against which to set these arkets in the bowl.»

  Vetranios looked as if he would sooner have stuck the knife into Bagdasares. He shot Phosteinos a hunted glance. Almost imperceptibly, the emaciated mage shook his head: he could do nothing– or, more likely, nothing Bagdasares wouldn't detect. Vetranios deflated like a popped pig's bladder. «Never mind,» he mumbled. «You don't need to go through the rigmarole. I clipped some of those arkets—just like every other merchant around.» Now he might have wanted to stab Broios.

  Broios took no notice of his hate-filled glare. «Who's the biggest liar in the Empire now!» he said, for all the world like one small boy scoring a point against another.

  «You're both wrong,» Maniakes said «Neither one of you knows the biggest liar in the Empire. His name is Tzikas.»

  Broios pointed at Vetranios. «He knows this Tzikas. I've heard him talk about the fellow, plenty of times.»

  Suddenly, everyone in the room was staring at Vetranios. «So you know Tzikas, do you?» Maniakes said in a soft voice. «Tell me about Tzikas, Vetranios. When did you see him last, for starters?» Vetranios knew something was wrong, but not what, nor how much. Serrhes was far from Videssos the city, and had been in Makuraner hands since the earliest days of Genesios' disastrous reign. The merchant answered, «Why, it must have been about three weeks before you came, your Majesty. He's been through the town now and again, these past few years. I've sold him this and that, and we've drunk wine together every now and then. That's about the size of it, I'd say.»

  Maniakes studied not him but Broios. If Vetranios' enemy accepted that tale, it was likely to be true. If, on the other hand, Broios found more to say… But Broios did not find more to say. Maniakes didn't know whether to be glad or disappointed. «I can understand why you wouldn't like having a Videssian working for the boiler boys,» Vetranios said, sympathy oozing from him like sticky sap from a cut spruce. «He's not the only one, though.»

  «He's the only one who's tried to overthrow me,» Maniakes said. «He's the only one who's tried to murder me. He's the only one who's betrayed both sides in this war more tunes than I can count. He's the only one who's—» He made a disgusted gesture. «Why go on?»

  Broios and Vetranios were bot
h staring at him. He could see exactly what was going on behind Broios' eyes as the merchant realized he should have done a more thorough job of slandering Vetranios. He could also see Broios realizing that now was too late, and growing furious at his own lapse.

  «Why did Tzikas come here?» Maniakes asked Vetranios.

  «I don't know for certain,» the merchant answered. «He spent a lot of time closeted with Tegin, I know that much. It had something to do with the squabbles the Makuraners are having, didn't it? They both favored Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.» He spoke the honorific formula without noticing he'd done so. Serrhes had been in Makuraner hands a long time.

  Letting that ride, Maniakes said, «So you know about whom Tzikas favored, do you?» Vetranios gave a tiny nod, as if expecting hot pincers and thumbscrews to follow upon the admission. Maniakes asked the next question: «What exactly did he say to you when the two of you talked?»

  «Let's see.» Vetranios was ready to cooperate freely, if for no better reason than to keep himself from having to cooperate any other way. «He bought ten pounds of the smoked mutton I had of this wretch here.» He pointed to Broios. «Then he said something about how hard life had been lately, and how nobody appreciated his true worth. I told him I did. For some reason, he thought that was funny.»

  Maniakes thought it was funny, though he didn't say so. If a cheat of a merchant was the only one who appreciated Tzikas, what did that say about the overversatile Videssian officer? Idly, the Avtokrator asked, «When you sold him the ten pounds of mutton, how badly did you bilk him?»

  «Not a barleycorn's worth,» Vetranios answered, wide-eyed. «He killed a man here who gave him short weight last year.»

  «I remember that!» Broios exclaimed: such a calamity had obviously created a lasting impression on the merchants of Serrhes. «I didn't know the name of the fellow who did it.»

  Thoughtfully, Bagdasares said, «Ten pounds of smoked mutton? That's traveler's food, something somebody would want if he was going on a long journey.»