Videssos Besieged ttot-4

by Harry Turtledove

  «So it is.» Maniakes was thoughtful, too. «The timing strikes me odd, though. You're sure he was here only three weeks before I came to Serrhes, Vetranios? It wasn't longer ago than that?»

  «By the lord with the great and good mind I swear it, your Majesty.» To emphasize his words, Vetranios sketched Phos' sun-circle over his heart.

  «I wish you'd said longer.» Maniakes wondered if Vetranios, like a lot of merchants, would change his story to suit his customer better. But the plump trader shook his head and drew the sun-sign again. Maniakes drummed the fingers of one hand on a tabletop. «It doesn't fit. He wouldn't have dawdled here in the westlands so long, not if he was all hotfoot to warn Sharbaraz. Phos, he could have gone to Mashiz and come back here in that time. But why on earth would he do that?»

  It was a rhetorical question. He hoped Bagdasares, one of the mages from Serrhes, or one of the merchants would answer it nonetheless. No one did. Instead, Bagdasares added more questions of his own: «And if he did do it, what need would he have for smoked mutton? He could have stayed here with Tegin and gone west with the Makuraner garrison. We'd be none the wiser.»

  «I didn't see him here after he bought the mutton from me,» Vetranios said. «If he'd stayed with the garrison, I might not have seen him, but I think I would.»

  Phosteinos coughed to draw attention to himself and then said, «I also know this man somewhat. I agree with my principal in this matter: the visit to Serrhes was but a brief one.»

  Maniakes' glance toward the local wizard was anything but mild and friendly. «You know Tzikas, eh?» he asked. Phosteinos nodded. The Avtokrator interrogated him as he had with Vetranios: «Did you ever perform any magical service for him?» Phosteinos nodded again. Maniakes pounced: «And what sort of service was that, sirrah?»

  «Why, to use the laws of similarity and contagion to help him find one of a pair of fancy spurs early this year, your Majesty,» Phosteinos answered.

  «Nothing else?» Maniakes' voice was cold.

  «Why, no,» Phosteinos said. «I don't understand why—»

  «Because when the son of a whore tried to murder me, he did it with a wizard's help,» the Avtokrator interrupted. Phosteinos' eyes went big in his pinched face. Maniakes pressed on: «Now, are you sure this was the only sorcerous service he ever had of you?»

  Phosteinos was as eager to swear by Phos as Vetranios had been. Maniakes reckoned both those oaths as being worth only so much: a man might easily prefer risking Skotos' ice in the world to come to the Avtokrator's wrath in the world that was here. But then Sozomenos spoke up: «May it please your Majesty, I have no great love for my scrawny colleague here, but in all our years of acquaintance I have never known him to work magic to harm a man's health, let alone seek his death.»

  To Bagdasares, Maniakes said, «I'd sooner have your word on that than the word of someone I don't know if I can trust.»

  Sozomenos looked affronted. Maniakes didn't care. Bagdasares looked troubled. That worried the Avtokrator. Bagdasares said, «Judging a wizard's truthfulness by sorcerous means is different from gauging that of an ordinary man. Mages have too many subtle ways to confuse the results of such examinations.»

  «I was afraid you were going to say something like that,» Maniakes said unhappily. He studied Phosteinos and Sozomenos. Both of them fairly radiated candor; had they been lamps, he would have had to shield his eyes against their glow. What Bagdasares told him meant he would have to gauge whether they were telling the truth by his usual, mundane complement of senses—either that or try to drag truth out of them by torture. He wasn't fond of torture; under the lash or more ingenious means of interrogation, people were too apt to say whatever they thought likeliest to make the pain stop.

  Reluctantly, he decided he believed the two sorcerers from Serrhes. That left one last thing to do. Turning to Broios and Vetranios, he said, «And now to deal with the two of you.»

  Both merchants started. Both, Maniakes guessed, had hoped he'd forgotten about them. «What—what will you do with us, your Majesty?» Broios asked, his voice trembling.

  «I don't know which of you is worse,» Maniakes said. «You're both liars and cheats.» He stroked his beard while he thought, then suddenly smiled. Broios and Vetranios quailed under that smile. Maniakes took an ignoble but very real pleasure in passing sentence: «First, you are fined fifty goldpieces each—or their weight in perfect silver—for tampering with the currency. The money is due tomorrow. And second, both of you shall be sent out to the center of the square here between the city governor's residence and Phos' holy temple. There in the square, a Haloga will give each of you a sturdy kick in the arse. If you can't get honesty through your heads, maybe we can send it up from the other direction.»

  «But, your Majesty, publicly humiliating us will make us laughing-stocks in the city,» Vetranios protested. «Good,» Maniakes said. «Don't you think you deserve to be?» Neither merchant answered that. If they agreed, they humiliated themselves. If they disagreed, they contradicted the Avtokrator of the Videssians. Given those choices, silence was better.

  Maniakes escorted them out of the room where Bagdasares had performed his sorcery. When he told the guardsmen outside about the sentence, they shouted approval and almost came to blows in their eagerness to be the two who would deliver the kicks.

  The Avtokrator came back into the chamber. He found Bagdasares talking shop with Phosteinos and Sozomenos. That convinced him the wizards shared his view of the two merchants from Serrhes. To those two, he said, «I presume you were doing nothing to threaten me. Because of that, you may go.»

  They thanked him and left in a hurry, giving him no chance to change his mind. «What was Tzikas doing here so recently?» Bagdasares asked again as soon as they were out of earshot.

  «To the ice with me if I know,» Maniakes answered. «It makes no more sense to me now than it did when we first found out about it.» He scowled at Bagdasares even more fiercely than he had at Vetranios and Broios. «But I'm sure of one thing.» «What's that?» Bagdasares asked. «It makes sense to Tzikas.»

  For as long as Maniakes stayed in Serrhes, he heard no more from his squabbling merchants. That suited him fine; it meant they were on their best behavior. The other alternative was that it meant they were cheating so well, no one was catching them and complaining. Maniakes supposed that was possible, but he didn't believe it: neither Broios nor Vetranios was likely to be that good a thief.

  Rhegorios did keep sighing over Phosia. Maniakes kept threatening him with cold water. After a while, his cousin fell silent.

  As long as Abivard had stayed in the Videssian westlands, he'd sent streams of messengers to Maniakes. Once he crossed back into territory long Makuraner, though, the stream shrank to a trickle. Maniakes worried that something had gone wrong.

  «What's likely wrong,» Rhegorios said, one day when the Avtokrator had been fretting more than usual, «is that Tegin has got between us and Abivard. The little garrison force couldn't do anything much against Abivard, mind you, but it's big enough to pick off a courier or two.»

  «You're right about that, of course,» Maniakes said. «And you're probably right that that's what's causing the trouble. I should have thought of it for myself.» Thinking of everything was part of what went with the Avtokrator's job. That it was impossible didn't make it any less necessary. Every time Maniakes missed a point, he felt bad for days.

  He cheered up when a rider did come from out of the west. The fellow wore the full panoply of a Makuraner boiler boy; either he'd worried about running into Tegin's men or about running into Maniakes'. His armor clattered about him as he prostrated himself before the Avtokrator of the Videssians.

  «Majesty,» he said, rising with noisy grace, «know that the forces led by Abivard the new sun of Makuran have encountered those foolishly loyal to Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps in the Land of the Thousand Cities. Know further that Abivard's forces have the victory.»

  «Good news!» Maniakes exclaimed. «I'm always glad to hear good news.�
�

  The messenger nodded. His chain-mail veil rattled. Above that veil, all Maniakes could see of the man himself were his eyes. They snapped with excitement. «We have Sharbaraz on the run now, Majesty,» he said. «A good part of his army came over to ours, which made him flee back to Mashiz.»

  «That's better than good news,» Maniakes said. «Press hard and he's yours. Once his forces start crumbling, they'll go like mud brick in the rain.»

  «Even so, or so we hope,» the messenger said. «When I was detached to come east to you, the field force was making ready to follow Sharbaraz's fugitives to the capital.»

  «Press hard,» Maniakes repeated. «If you don't, you give Sharbaraz a chance to recover.» From behind the messenger's veil came an unmistakable chuckle. «What's funny?» the Avtokrator asked. «Majesty, you speak my language well,» the messenger answered. Maniakes knew he was politely stretching a point, but let him do it. The fellow went on, «No one, though, would ever take you for a Makuraner, not by the way you say the name of the man Abivard will overthrow.»

  Maniakes proved his command of the Makuraner tongue left something to be desired by needing a moment to sort through that and figure out what the messenger meant. «Did I say Sarbaraz again?» he demanded, and the man nodded. Maniakes snapped his fingers in chagrin. «Oh, a pestilence! I've spent a lot of time learning how to pronounce that strange sound you use. His name is… is… Sarbaraz.» He started to raise a hand in triumph, then realized he'd failed again. Really angry now, he concentrated hard. «Sar… Sar… Sharbaraz! There.»

  «Well done!» the messenger said. «Most of you hissing, squeaking Videssians never do manage to get that one right, try as you will.»

  «You can tell a Makuraner by the way he speaks Videssian, too,» Maniakes said, to which the messenger nodded. Maniakes went on, «You haven't—or Abivard hasn't—by any chance got word of where Tzikas is lurking these days?»

  «The traitor? No, indeed, Majesty. I wish I did know, though I'd tell Abivard before I told you. He's offering a good-sized reward for word of him and a bigger one for his head.» «So am I,» Maniakes said.

  «Are you?» The Makuraner's eyes widened. «How much?» His people claimed to scorn Videssians as a race of merchants and shopkeepers. Maniakes' experience was that the men of Makuran were no more immune to the lure of gold and silver than anyone else. And when Maniakes told him how much he might earn for finding Tzikas, he whistled softly. «If I hear anything, I'll tell you and not Abivard.»

  «Tell whichever of us has the best chance of catching the renegade,» Maniakes said. «If he is caught thanks to you, get word to me and I'll make good the difference between Abivard's reward and mine, I promise. Tell all your friends, too, and tell them to tell their friends.»

  «I'll do that,» the messenger promised.

  «Good,» Maniakes said. «If I had to guess, I'd say he's somewhere not far from here, but I know that could be wildly wrong.» He explained what he'd learned from Vetranios and Phosteinos.

  «He is more likely to be here than he is in the Land of the Thousand Cities or in Mashiz, I think,» the messenger said. «Here, at least, he can open his mouth without betraying himself every time he does it.»

  «When Tzikas opens his mouth, he betrays other people, not himself,» Maniakes said, which made the messenger laugh. «You think I'm joking,» the Avtokrator told him. He was, but only to a degree. And the Makuraner's comments made him thoughtful. If Tzikas wanted to disappear in the westlands, he could. Maniakes had found it impossible to imagine a Tzikas who wanted to disappear. He admitted to himself he might have been wrong.

  He gave the messenger a goldpiece, warned him about Tegin's small force of men still loyal to Sharbaraz, and sent him back to Abivard with congratulations. That done, he went outside the city governor's residence instead of getting on to the next order of business in Serrhes.

  Everything looked normal. A few peasants from the surrounding countryside were selling sheep and pigs and ducks. Some other peasants, having made their sales, were buying pots and hatchets and other things they couldn't get on their farms. One of them was showing a harlot some money. The two went off together. If the peasant's wife ever found out about that, Maniakes could think of at least one thing the fellow wasn't likely to get on the farm.

  So many people: tall, short, bald, hairy, young, old. And, if Tzikas had decided to disappear instead of trying to get his revenge, he might have been about one out of three of the men. The thought was disquieting, freighted as it was with a heavy burden of anticlimax.

  Maniakes had needed to hold off the Kubratoi and Makuraners. He'd done that. He'd needed to find a way to get the Makuraners out of the westlands. Thanks to some unwitting help from Sharbaraz, he'd done that, too. And now, either Abivard would beat Sharbaraz or the other way round in the Makuraner civil war he'd helped create. Whichever happened, he'd know, and handle what came next accordingly.

  Sharp, decisive answers—like anyone, he was fond of those. He already had ambiguity in his life: he'd never found out, and doubted he ever would find out, what had happened to his brother Tatoules. He knew what was most likely to have happened to him, but that wasn't the same.

  Getting rid of Tzikas would be a sharp, decisive answer. Even knowing what had happened to Tzikas, regardless of whether he'd had anything to do with it, would be a sharp, decisive answer. Never learning for certain whether Tzikas was alive or dead, or where he was or what he was doing if he was alive… Maniakes didn't care for that notion at all.

  He understood only too well how dangerous ambiguity could be when connected to Tzikas. He might be riding down a street in Videssos the city ten years from now, having seen or heard nothing of the renegade in all that time, having nearly forgotten him, only to be pierced by an arrow from a patient enemy who had not forgotten him. Or he might spend those ten years worrying about Tzikas every day when the wretch was long since dead.

  «No way to know,» he muttered. A writer of romances would not have approved. Everything in romances always came out neat and tidy. Avtokrators in romances were never foolish—unless they were wicked rulers being overthrown by someone who would do the job right. Maniakes snorted. He'd done exactly that, but, somehow, it hadn't kept him from remaining a human being.

  «No matter how much I want the son of a whore dead, I may never live to see it.» That was another matter, and made him as discontented as the first. If Tzikas chose obscurity, he could cheat the headsman. Would obscurity be punishment enough? It might have to be, no matter how little Maniakes cared for the notion.

  He kicked at the dirt, angry at himself and Tzikas both. This should have been the greatest triumph of his career, the greatest triumph any Avtokrator had enjoyed since the civil wars the Empire had suffered a century and a half before cost it most of its eastern provinces. Instead of being able to enjoy the triumph, he was still spending far too much of his time and energy fretting over the loose end Tzikas had become.

  He knew one certain cure for that. As fast as he could, he went back to the city governor's residence. «The Empress, your Majesty?» a servant said. «I believe she's upstairs in the sewing room.»

  Lysia wasn't sewing when Maniakes got up there. She and some of the serving women of the household were spinning flax into thread and, by the laughter that came from the sewing room as Maniakes walked down the hall toward it, using the work as an excuse for chat and gossip.

  «Is something wrong?» Lysia asked when she saw him. She set the spindle down on the projecting shelf of her belly. The serving women exclaimed in alarm: he wasn't supposed to be there at this time of day.

  «No,» he answered, which was on the whole true, his worries notwithstanding. He amplified that: «And even if it were, I know how to make it better.»

  He walked over to her and helped her rise from the stool on which she sat: the baby wouldn't wait much longer. Then, standing slightly to one side of her so he wouldn't have to lean so far over that great belly, he did a careful and thorough job of kissing her.r />
  A couple of the serving women giggled. Several more murmured back and forth to one another. He noticed all that only distantly. Some men, he'd heard, lost desire for their wives when those wives were great with child. Some of the serving women had made eyes at him, wondering if he felt like—and perhaps trying to provoke him into feeling like—amusing himself elsewhere while Lysia neared the end of her pregnancy. He'd noticed—he'd never lost his eye for pretty women—but he hadn't done anything about it.

  «Well!» Lysia said when the kiss finally ended. She rubbed at her upper lip, where his mustache must have tickled her. «What was that in aid of?»

  «Because I felt like doing it,» Maniakes answered. «I've seen how many layers the bureaucracy in the Empire has, but I've never yet seen anything that says I have to submit a requisition before I draw a kiss from my wife.»

  «I wouldn't be surprised if there was such a form,» Lysia answered, «but you can probably get away without using it even if there is. Being Avtokrator has to count for something, don't you think?»

  If that wasn't a hint, it would do till a real one came along. Maniakes kissed her again, even more thoroughly than he had before. He was so involved in what he was doing, in fact, that he was taken by surprise when he looked up at the end of the kiss and discovered the serving women had left the room. «Where did they go?» he said foolishly.

  «It doesn't matter,» Lysia said, «as long as they're gone.» This time, she kissed him.

  A little later, they went back to their bedchamber. With her so very pregnant, making love was an awkward business. When they joined, she lay on her right side facing away from him. Not only was that a position in which she was more comfortable than most others, it was also one of the relatively few where they could join without her belly getting in the way.

  The baby inside her kicked as enthusiastically then as at any other time, and managed to be distracting enough to keep her from enjoying things as much as she might have done. «Don't worry about it,» she told Maniakes afterward. «This happened before, remember?»