Krispos the Emperor (57 page)

The Haloga pointed again. "Ha! Look, young Majesty— smoke. With blazing brand they burn their burg."

Sure enough, a thick column of smoke rose from inside the walls, orange-tinted gray against the black of the night sky. Phostis tried to figure out where in the town the fire had flared. His best guess was that it wasn't far from the Vaspurakaner cobbler's shop where he and Olyvria had first made love.

Another plume of smoke sprang up, and a few minutes later yet another. A tongue of yellow fire, perhaps from a burning roof, leapt into sight above the walls like a live thing, then sullenly fell back.

Before long, more and more flames sprang into view, and not all of them died down again. Fire was a terror in any city; it could so easily race ahead of anything men were able to do to hold it back. Fire in a city at war with itself was a horror to rank with the ice in Skotos' hell: how could you hope to fight it when your hand was turned against your neighbor, your friend—and his against you?

The answer was, you couldn't. The fires in Etchmiadzin burned on and on. The air of the imperial camp grew thick with the stink of smoke and, now and again, of burned flesh. Screams rent the air, some of terror, some of agony, but most of hate. In the burning streets, the battle among the Thanasioi went on.

After a while, Olyvria came out of the tent to stand beside Phostis. She slipped her hand into his without saying anything. Silently, they watched Etchmiadzin burn. Olyvria wiped at her eyes. The smoke made Phostis' sting, too. For the sake of his own peace of mind, he assumed that smoke was why she dabbed at hers.

He yawned and said, "I'm going back inside the tent. Maybe the air will be fresher in there."

Olyvria followed him in, still without speaking. Only when they were away from the guards did she say in a low voice, "There is the dowry I bring to you and your father— Etchmiadzin."

"You knew that," he answered. "You must have known it, or you'd not have answered the priest as you did."

"I suppose I did know, in a way. But knowing in advance what a thing is and seeing what it looks like when it comes to pass are not the same. Tonight I'm finding out how different they can be." She shook her head.

Had Krispos been in the tent, Phostis suspected he would have said that was one of the lessons of growing up. Phostis couldn't put a middle-aged rasp in his voice to make that sound convincing. He asked, "If you'd known, would you have done differently?"

Olyvria stayed quiet so long, he wondered if she'd heard. At last she said, "No, I suppose I would have left things as they were, but I'd have thought about them more beforehand."

"That's fair," Phostis agreed. He yawned again. "Shall we try to get some more sleep? I don't think they're going to sally against us; they're too busy warring with each other."

"I suppose so." Olyvria lay down and closed her eyes. Phostis lay down beside her. To his surprise, he dropped off almost at once.

Olyvria must have fallen asleep, too, for she jerked up at the same time as he when a great cheer roared through the encampment. He needed a moment to realize what time it was— sunshine against the east side of the tent meant dawn had broken.

As he had the night before, he poked out his head and asked a Haloga what was going on. The northerner answered, "Those in there, they have yielded themselves. The gates are thrown wide."

"Then the war is over," Phostis blurted. When he realized what he'd said, he repeated it: "The war is over." He wanted to say it again and again; he couldn't imagine four more wonderful words.

a line of men and women and children trudging wearily 
down a dirt track, carrying such belongings as they could, the cows and goats and donkeys with them as thin and worn as they were. The only difference Krispos could see between them and the uprooted Thanasioi was the direction of their journey: they were moving west, not east.

No, there was another: they'd not rebelled to give him a reason to remove them from their old homes. But the land from which war and policy had removed the Thanasioi could not stay empty. That was asking for trouble. And so peasants who lived in a relatively crowded—and safely loyal—stretch of territory between Develtos and Opsikion east of Videssos the city were taking the place of the Thanasioi whether they liked the idea or not.

Phostis rode up alongside Krispos and pointed to the villagers on the way to resettlement. "Is that justice?" he asked.

"I just put the same question to myself," Krispos answered. "I don't think the answer is clear or easy. If you asked any one of them now, no doubt they'd curse me to the skies. But after two years, who can say? I've granted them tax exemptions for that long, and put them on half rates for three years more. I'm not moving them just to fill space—I want them to thrive."

"It may work out well enough for them," Phostis persisted, "but is it justice?"

"Probably not," Krispos answered, sighing. He fought back a smile; he'd managed to surprise Phostis. "Probably not," he repeated, "but is it justice to empty a land so no crops to speak of are raised on it, so it becomes a haven for brigands and outlaws, so it tempts the Makuraners to try to gobble it up? Makuran hasn't much troubled us lately, but that's because Rubyab King of Kings sees me as strong. It hasn't always been so."

"How do you aim to pay Rubyab back for sponsoring the Thanasioi?" Phostis asked.

Krispos took the change of subject to mean that Phostis thought he had a point. He answered, "I don't know right now. A big war, like the one we fought with Makuran a century and a half ago, could leave both lands prostrate for years. I don't want that. But believe me, that s not a debt to forget. Maybe it'll be one I leave to you to repay."

Phostis responded to that with a calculating look Krispos had seldom seen on him before he was kidnapped. "Fomenting the Vaspurakaners against Mashiz is likely to be worth trying."

"Aye, maybe, if the Makuraners commit some outrage in the princes' lands, or they're troubled with foes farther west," Krispos said. "But that's not as sure a bet as it looks, because the Makuraners are always on the watch for it. The beauty of Rubyab's ploy was that it used our own people against us: Videssos has known so much religious strife over the years that for a long time I didn't see the Makuraner hand in the Thanasiot glove."

"The beauty of it?" Phostis shook his head. "I don't see how you can use that word for something that caused so much trouble and death."

"It's like an unexpected clever move at the board game," Krispos said. "The board here, though, stretches all the way across the world, and you can change the rules you play by."

"And the pieces you take off the board are real people," Phostis said, "and you can't bring them back again and play them somewhere else."

"Can't I?" Krispos said. "What do you think this resettlement is, if not capturing a piece and playing it on a better square?"

He watched Phostis chew on that. The young man said, "I suppose I should have learned to stop arguing with you. No matter how well I start out. most of the time you end up turning things your way. Experience." By the way that sounded in his mouth, it might as well have been a filthy word. It was something he lacked, at any rate, which of itself made its possession suspect.

Krispos pulled a silk handkerchief from a pocket of his surcoat and dabbed at his dripping forehead. He'd left some of the imperial army back in and around Etchmiadzin, both to watch the border with Makuraner-held Vaspurakan and to help uprooted arrivals settle in. More troops were strung out along the line of travel between west and east. With what remained, he was drawing near Videssos the city.

That meant, of course, that he and his men were passing through the coastal lowlands. In late summer, there were other places he'd sooner have been; at the moment, he would have welcomed some of Skotos' ice, so long as he did not have to meet its master. It was so hot and sticky that sweat wouldn't dry; it just clung to you and rolled greasily along your skin.

"By the good god, I wish I didn't have to wear the imperial regalia," he said. "In this country, I'd sooner be dressed like them." He pointed to the peasants working in the fields to either side of the road. Some of them were in thin linen tunics that came down about half the distance from buttocks to knee. Others didn't even bother with that, but were content to wrap a loincloth around their middles.

Phostis shook his head. "If I dressed like that, it would mean I lived here all year around. I don't think I could stand that."

"You'd best be glad someone can," Krispos said. "The soil here is wonderful, and they get plenty of rain. The crops they bring in are bigger than anywhere else in the Empire. If it weren't for the lowlands, Videssos the city wouldn't have enough to eat."

"The peasants aren't fleeing from us the way they did when we set out," Katakolon said, stopping his horse by his father and brother.

"A good thing, too," Krispos answered. "One reason we have an army is to protect them. If they think soldiers are something they need to be protected from, we aren't doing the job as we should." He knew as well as anyone else that soldiers plundered peasants when they got the chance. The trick was not giving them the chance and making the peasants know they wouldn't get it. He wouldn't have to worry about that much longer on this campaign—almost home now. He said that aloud.

Katakolon leered at him. "You needn't be in such a swiv-et to get back to Drina, Father. Remember, she'll be out to here by now." He held a hand a couple of feet in front of his belly.

"She's not giving birth to a foal, by the good god," Krispos said. "If she were out to
there,
I might think you meant an elephant." He glared at his youngest, but couldn't help snorting as he went on, "And I'll thank you not to twit me any more about her having my by-blow. Only fool luck I'm not paying for six or seven of yours; Phos knows it's not your lack of effort."

"He's just giving you twit for twat, Father," Phostis said helpfully.

Beset from both sides, Krispos threw his hands in the air. "The two of you will be the death of me. If Evripos were here, I'd be altogether surrounded. I expect I shall be when we get back to the palaces. That's the first decent argument I've heard for making this march take longer."

"I thought it was an indecent argument," Katakolon said, not willing to be outdone by Phostis.

"Enough, enough!" Krispos groaned. "Have mercy on your poor decrepit father. I've got softening of the brain from too many years of staring at tax receipts and edicts; you can't expect me to throw puns about the way you do."

Just then, the scouts up ahead started raising a racket. One of them rode back to the van of the main body. Saluting Krispos, he said, "Your Majesty, the sharp-eyed among us have spied the sun glinting off the temple domes of Videssos the city."

Krispos peered ahead. He wasn't particularly sharp-sighted any longer; things in the distance got blurry for him. But whether he could see them or not, knowing the temples and their domes were so close made him feel the journey was coming to its end.

"Almost home," he said again. He looked from Phostis to Katakolon, daring them to make more wisecracks. They both kept quiet. He nodded, pleased with himself: the young bulls still respected the old bull's horns.

The folk of Videssos the city packed the colonnaded sidewalks of Middle Street, cheering as the triumphal procession made its way toward the plaza of Palamas. Phostis rode near the head of the procession, Olyvria at his side. He wore a gilded mail shirt and helmet to let the people know who he was—and to make sure no diehard Thanasiot assassinated him for the greater glory of the gleaming path.

As he rode, he waved, which brought fresh applause from the crowd. He turned to Olyvria and said quietly, "I wonder how many of these same people were screaming for Thanasios and trying to burn down the city not long ago."

"A fair number, I'd say," she answered.

He nodded. "I think you're right." Rooting Thanasioi out from Videssos the city wasn't nearly so straightforward as uprooting and transplanting villages. Unless you caught someone setting fires or wrecking, how could you know what was in his heart? You couldn't; that was the long and short of it. Thanasios' followers surely lingered here. If they stayed quiet, they might go unnoticed for generations—those who cared to raise new generations, at any rate.

Middle Street showed few scars from the rioting. Countless fires burned in the city every day, for cooking and heating and at smithies and other workplaces. Whitewashed buildings were usually gray with soot in a few months' time. The soot that came from the rioters' blazes looked no different from any other after the fact.

The procession passed through the Forum of the Ox, about a third of the way from the Silver Gate in the great land wall to the plaza of Palamas. The stalls in the Forum of the Ox sold cheap goods to people who could afford no better. Most of the folk who packed the square wore either ragged tunics or gaudy finery whose "gold" threads were apt to turn green in a matter of days. Phostis would have bet that plenty of them had bawled for the gleaming path.

Now, though, they cried out Krispos' name as loudly as anyone else—and that despite some former market stalls that were now only charred ruins. "Maybe they'll come back to orthodoxy now that they've really seen what their heresy leads to," Phostis said. He spoke more softly still: "That's more or less what I did, after all."