Krispos the Emperor (20 page)

And, of course, no one had ever used him as Syagrios and Olyvria did now. All through his life, people had jumped to obey, even to anticipate, his every whim. "Die only exceptions he'd known were his father, his mother when she was alive, and his brothers—and, being the eldest, he was pretty good at getting his way with Evripos and Katakolon. That a rebel officer's daughter and a ruffian could not only disobey him but give orders themselves had never crossed his mind, even in nightmare.

That they could do anything else had never crossed their minds. As the road took another of its innumerable twists, Syagrios said, "Down flat, you. Anybody who sees you is likely to be one of us, but ain't nobody gets old on 'likely.' "

Phostis scrambled down into the wagon bed. The first time
121

Syagrios told him to do that, he'd balked—whereupon Syagrios clouted him. He couldn't jump out of the wagon and run; a stout rope bound his ankle to a post. He could stand up and yell for help, but as Syagrios had said, most of the people hereabouts were themselves Thanasioi.

Syagrios had said something else, too, when he tried to disobey: "Listen, boy, you may think you can pop up like a spring toy and get us killed. You may even be right. But you better think about this, too: I promise you won't be around to see our heads go up on the Milestone."

Was he bluffing? Phostis didn't think so. A couple of times, other wagons or horsemen had trotted past, but he'd lain quiet. Most of the times he was ordered into the wagon bed, as now, no one came round the blind corner. After a minute or two, Syagrios said, "All right, kid, you can come back up."

Phostis returned to his place between the burly driver and Olyvria. He said, "Where are you taking me, anyhow?"

He'd asked that question ever since he was kidnapped. As usual, Olyvria answered, "What you don't know, you can't tell if you're lucky enough to get away." She brushed back a curl that had slipped out to tickle her cheek. "If you decide you want to try to get away, that is."

"I might be less inclined to. if you'd trust me more," he said. In his theology he was not far from the Thanasioi. But he had a hard time loving people who'd drugged, kidnapped, beaten, and imprisoned him. He considered that from a theological point of view. Should he not approve of them for removing him from the obscenely comfortable world in which he'd dwelt?

No. Maybe he was imperfectly religious, but he still thought of those who tormented him as his enemies.

Olyvria said, "I'm not the one who can decide whether you're to be trusted. My father will do that when you come before him."

"When will that be?" Phostis asked for at least the dozenth time.

Syagrios answered before Olyvria could: "Whenever it is. You ask too bloody many questions, you know that?"

Phostis maintained what he hoped was a dignified silence. He feared hope outran reality. Dignity came easily when backed up with embroidered robes, unquestioned authority, and a fancy palace with scores of servants. It was harder to bring off for someone in a threadbare tunic with a rope round his ankle, and harder still when a few days before he'd fouled himself while in the power of the people he was trying to impress.

The wagon rattled around another bend, which meant Phostis spent more time hiding—or was the proper expression
being hidden
? Even his grammar tutor would have had trouble deciding that—in the back of the wagon. This time, though, Syagrios grunted in satisfaction when the corner was safely turned; Olyvria softly clapped her hands together.

"Come on up, you," Syagrios said. "We're just about there."

Although he couldn't smell the sea, Phostis still thought
there
would be the port of Pityos. He'd never seen Pityos, but imagined it to be something on the order of Nakoleia, though likely even smaller and dingier.

The town ahead was smaller and dingier that Nakoleia, but there its resemblance to Phostis' imaginings ceased. It was no port at all, just a huddle of houses and shops in a valley a little wider than most. A stout fortress with walls of forbidding gray limestone dominated the skyline as thoroughly as did the High Temple in Videssos the city.

"What
is
this place?" Phostis asked. He regretted his tone at once; he'd plainly implied the town was unfit for human habitation. As a matter of fact, that was his opinion—how could anyone want to live out his life trapped in a single valley? And how could anyone trapped in a single valley have a life worth living? But letting his captors know what he thought seemed less that clever.

Syagrios and Olyvria looked at each other across him. When she spoke, it was to her comrade: "He'll find out anyhow." Only when Syagrois reluctantly nodded did she answer Phostis: "The name of this town is Etchmiadzin."

For a moment, he thought she'd sneezed. Then he said, "It sounds like a Vaspurakaner name."

"It is," Olyvria said. "We're hard by the border here, and a fair number of princes still call this town home. More to the point, though, Etchmiadzin is where the pious and holy Thanasios first preached, and the chief center of those who follow his way."

If Etchmiadzin was the chief center of the Thanasioi, Phostis was glad his kidnappers hadn't taken him to some outlying hamlet. Back at Videssos the city, he would have blurted out that thought, had it occurred to him. His friends and hangers-on—sometimes it was hard to tell the one group from the other—would have bawled laughter, probably drunken laughter, too. In his present circumstances, silence again seemed the smarter course.

The people of Etchmiadzin went stolidly about their business, taking no notice of the incognito arrival in their midst of a junior Avtokrator. As Olyvria had said, a good many of them seemed to be of Vaspurakaner blood, broader-shouldered and thicker-chested than their Videssian neighbors. An old Vaspurakaner priest, his robe of different cut and a darker blue than those orthodox clerics wore, stumped down an unpaved street, leaning on a stick.

The men on guard outside the fortress were about as far removed from the Halogai in the gilded mail shirts as was possible while still retaining the name of soldier. Not one fighter's kit matched his comrade's; the guards leaned and slouched at every angle save the perpendicular. But Phostis had seen the measuring stare in these wolves' eyes on the faces of the northern men in the capital as they sized up some new arrival at the palaces.

As soon as the guards recognized Syagrios and Olyvria, though, they came to excited life, whooping, cheering, and pounding one another on the back. "By the good god, you did nab the little bugger!" one of them yelled, pointing toward Phostis. As a form of address, that hit a new low.

"Inform my father that he's here, if you would, friends," Olyvria said; from her lips, as from Digenis', the greeting of the Thanasioi came fresh and sincere.

The rough men hurried to do her bidding. Syagrios reined in and alighted from the wagon. "Give me your foot," he told Phostis. "You ain't gonna run away from here." As if reading his captive's mind, he added, "If you try to kick me in the face, boy, I won't just beat you. I'll stomp you so hard you won't breathe without hurting for the next year. You believe me?"

Phostis did, as fully as he believed in the lord with the great and good mind, not least because Syagrios looked achingly eager to do as he'd threatened. So the heir to the imperial throne sat quietly while the driver cut through the rope. Perhaps he and Syagrios shared the Thanasiot theology. That would never make them friends. Phostis had made orthodox enemies when orthodox himself; he saw no reason why one Thanasiot should not despise another as a man, even if they held to the same dogmas.

The guards came straggling back, one a few paces behind the other. The fellow who got back to his post first waved to usher Olyvria, Syagrios, and even Phostis into the fortress. Syagrios shoved Phostis forward, none too gently. "Get moving, you."

He got moving. More soldiers—no, warriors was probably a better word for them, as they had ferocity but seemed without discipline—traded strokes or shot at propped up bales of hay or simply sat around and chattered in the inner ward. They waved to Syagrios, nodded respectfully to Olyvria, and paid Phostis no attention whatever. In his plain, cheap tunic, he did not look as if he deserved attention.

The iron-fronted door to the keep was open. Propelled by another shove from Syagrios, Phostis plunged into gloom. He stumbled, not sure where he was going and even less sure of his footing. Olyvria murmured, "Turn left at the first opening."

He obeyed gratefully. Only when he was inside the chamber did he think to wonder if Syagrios was really as harsh and Olyvria as kindly as they appeared to be. Snapping him back and forth between them like a ball thrown in a bath house struck him as a good way to weaken whatever resolve he had left.

"Come in, young majesty, come in!" exclaimed the slim little man sitting in a high-backed chair at the far end of the chamber. So this was Livanios, then. He sounded as cordial as if he and Phostis were old friends, not captor and captive. The smile on his face was warm and inviting—was, in fact, Olyvria's smile set in a face framed by a neat, graying beard and marred from a couple of sword cuts. It made Phostis want to trust him—and made him want to distrust himself on account of that.

The chamber itself had been set up to imitate, as closely as was possible in the keep of a fortress in the middle of the back of beyond, the Grand Courtroom in the palace compound back at Videssos the city. To someone who had never seen the real Grand Courtroom, it might have been impressive. Phostis, who'd grown up there, found it ludicrous. Where was the marble double colonnade that led the eye to the distant throne? Where were the elegant and richly clad courtiers who took their place along the way to the Emperor? The handful of rudely staring soldiers made a poor substitute. Nor were the ragged priest and the nondescript fellow in a striped caftan adequate replacements for the ecumenical patriarch and the lofty Sevastos who stood before the Avtokrator's high seat.

Phostis knew a weird mental shift as he reminded himself he'd come to despise the pomp and ostentation that surrounded his father. He also wondered why the leader of the radically egalitarian Thanasioi wanted to mimic that pomp.

He had, however, bigger worries. Livanios brought them into sudden sharp focus, saying, "So how much will your father give to have you back. I don't mean gold; we of the gleaming path despise gold. But surely he will yield land and influence to restore you to his side."

"Will he? I wonder." Phostis' bitterness was not altogether feigned. "We've always quarreled, my father and I. For all I know, he's glad to have me gone. Why not? He has two other sons, both of them more to his liking."

"You undervalue yourself in his eyes," Livanios said. "He's turned the countryside around the imperial army upside down searching for you."

"He searches sorcerously as well, and with the same determination," the man in the caftan said. His Videssian held a vanishing trace of accent.

Phostis shrugged. Maybe what he heard was true, maybe not. Either way, it mattered little. He said, "Besides, what makes you think I want to go back to my father? By all I've heard of you Thanasioi, I'd sooner live out my days with you than smother myself in things back at the palace."

He didn't know whether he was telling the truth, telling part of the truth, or flat-out lying. The doctrines of the Thanasioi drew him powerfully. Of so much he was sure. But would men who observed all those fine-sounding principles stoop to something so sordid as kidnapping? Maybe they would, if their faith let them pretend to be orthodox to preserve themselves. If so, they were the best actors he'd ever run across. They even fooled him.

Livanios said, "I've heard somewhat of this from my daughter and the holy Digenis both. The possibilities are ... interesting. You'd truly rather live out your days in the want that is our lot than in the luxury you've always known?"

"I fear more for my soul than for my body," Phostis said. "My body is but a garment that will wear out all too soon. When it's tossed on the midden, what difference if it once was stained with fancy dyes? My soul, though—my soul goes on forever." He sketched Phos' sun-sign above his breast.

Livanios, the priest, Olyvria, even Syagrios also traced quick circles. The man in the caftan did not. Phostis wondered about that. An imperfectly pious Thanasiot struck him as a contradiction in terms. Or perhaps not—that label fit him pretty well. Was he claiming more belief than he really felt to get Livanios to treat him mildly? He had trouble reading his own heart.

"What shall we do with you?" Livanios said musingly. By his tone, Phostis would have bet the heretics' leader was wondering about the same questions that had gone through his own mind. Livanios went on, "Are you one of us, or do we treat you merely as a piece in the board game, to be placed in the square of greatest advantage to us at the proper time?"

Phostis nodded at the analogy; whatever else could be said about him, Livanios knew how to compare ideas. Pieces taken off the board in the Videssian game of stylized combat were not gone for good, but could be returned to action on the side of the player who had captured them. That made the board game harder to master, but also made it a better model for the involuted intricacies of Videssian politics and civil strife.

"Father, may I speak?" Olyvria said.

Livanios laughed. "When have I ever been able to tell you no? Aye, say what's in your mind."