Krispos the Emperor (39 page)

There lay the nut of it, as was Krispos' way, in one sentence. The Avtokrator shook his head. Phostis was so young; who could say what latest enthusiasm he'd seized on? At that same age, Krispos knew he'd had a good core of solid sense. But at just past twenty, he'd been a peasant still, and he could imagine no stronger dose of reality than that. Phostis had grown up in the palaces, where flights of fancy were far more easily sustained. And Phostis had always taken pleasure in going dead against whatever Krispos had in mind.

"What of Katakolon?" Barsymes asked.

"I'll take him with me—I'll need one spatharios. at any rate," Krispos said. "He did tolerably well in the westlands himself, and rather better than that during the Midwinter's Day riots. One thing these past few months have taught me: all my sons need such training in command as I can give them. Counting on Phos' mercy instead of providing for the times to come is foolish and wasteful."

"Few have accused your Majesty of harboring those traits— none truthfully."

"For which, believe me, you have my thanks," Krispos said. "Find Evripos for me, would you? I've not yet told him what I have in mind."

"Of course, your Majesty." Barsymes went back inside the imperial residence. Krispos stood and enjoyed the sunshine. The cherry trees around the residence were putting on leaves; soon, for a few glorious weeks, they'd be a riot of sweet pink and white blossoms. Krispos' thoughts drifted away from them and back toward raising troops, moving troops, supplying troops ...

He sighed. Being Avtokrator meant having to worry about things you'd rather ignore. He wondered if the rebels he'd put down ever realized how much work the job of ruling the Empire really was. He certainly hadn't, back when he took it away from Anthimos.

If I thought Livanios wouldn't botch things, I ought to give him the crown and let him see how he likes it,
he thought angrily. But he knew that would never happen: the only way Livanios would take the crown from him was by prying it out of his dead fingers.

"What is it, Father?" Evripos asked, coming up in Barsymes' wake. The wariness in his voice was different from what Krispos was used to hearing from Phostis. Phostis and he simply disagreed every chance they got. Evripos resented being born second; it made his opinions not worth serious disagreement.

Or it had made them so. Now Krispos explained what he had in mind for his son. "This is serious business," he emphasized. "If real trouble does come, I won't want you throwing out orders at random. That's why I'll leave a steady captain with you. I expect you to heed his advice on matters military."

Evripos had puffed out his chest with pride at the trust Krispos placed in him. Now he said, "But what if I think he's wrong, Father?"

Obey him anyhow,
Krispos started to say. But the words did not pass his lips. He remembered when Petronas had maneuvered him into the position of vestiarios for Anthimos. The then-Avtokrator's uncle had made it very clear that he expected nothing but obedience to him from Krispos. He remembered asking Petronas a question very similar to the one he'd just heard from Evripos.

"You have command," he said slowly. "If you think your advisor is wrong, you'd better do what you reckon right. But you have to remember, son, that with command comes responsibility. If you choose to go against the officer I give you and your course goes wrong, you will answer to me. Do you understand?"

"Aye, Father, I do. You're telling me I'd better be sure—and even if I am sure, I'd better be right. Is that the meat of it?"

"That's it exactly," Krispos agreed. "I'm not putting you in this place as part of a game, Evripos. The post is not only real but also important. A mistake would be important, too, in how much damage it could do. So if you go off on your own, against the advice of a man older and wiser than you are, what you do had better not turn out badly, for your sake and the Empire's both."

With the prickliness of youth, Evripos bristled like a hedgehog. "How do you know this officer you'll appoint for me will be smarter than I am?"

"I didn't say that. You're as smart as you'll ever be, son, and I have no reason to doubt that's very smart indeed. But you're not as wise as you're going to be, say, twenty years from now. Wisdom comes from using the wits you have to think on what's happened to you during your life, and you haven't lived long enough yet to have stored up much of it."

Evripos looked eloquently unconvinced. Krispos didn't blame him; at Evripos' age, he hadn't believed experience mattered, either. Now that he had a good deal of it, he was sure he'd been wrong before—but the only way for Evripos to come to the same conclusion was with the slow passage of the years. He couldn't afford to wait for that.

His middle son said, "Suppose this officer you name suggests a course I think is wrong, but I go along with it for fear of what you've just said. And suppose it does turn out to be the wrong course. What then, Father?"

"Maybe you should be pleading your case in the courts, not commanding men in the field," Krispos said. But the question was too much to the point to be answered with a sour joke. Slowly, the Avtokrator went on, "If I put you in the post, you will be the commander. When the time comes, making the judgment will be up to you. That's the hardest burden anyone can lay on a man. If you don't care to bear it, speak up now."

"Oh, I'll bear it. Father. I just wanted to be sure I understood what you were asking of me," Evripos said.

"Good," Krispos said. "I'll give you one piece of advice and one only—I know how you won't much care to listen. It's just this: if you have to decide, do it firmly. No matter how much doubt, no matter how much fear and trembling you feel, don't let it show. Half the business of leading people is just keeping up a solid front."

"That may be worth remembering," Evripos said, as big a concession as Krispos knew he was likely to get. His son asked, "What will Katakolon be doing while I'm here in the city?"

"He'll go the westlands as my spatharios. Another campaign will do him good, I think."

"Ah." If Evripos wanted to take issue with that, he didn't find any way to manage it. After a pause a tiny bit longer than a more experienced man would have given, he nodded brusquely and changed the subject. "I hope I'll serve as you'd have me do, Father."

"I hope you will, too. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't. If the lord with the great and good mind hears my prayers, you'll have a quiet time of it. I don't really
want
you to see action here; you'd better understand that. The less fighting there is, the happier I'll be."

"Then why take the army out?" Evripos asked.

Krispos sighed. "Because sometimes it's needful, as you know very well. If I don't go to the fighting this summer, it will come to me. Given that choice, I'd sooner do it on my own terms, or as nearly as I can."

"Aye, that makes sense," Evripos said after a moment's thought. "Sometimes the world won't let you have things all as you'd like them."

He was probably speaking from bitterness at not being first in line for the throne. Nonetheless, Krispos was moved to reach out and set a hand on his shoulder. "That's an important truth, son. You'd do well to remember it." It was, he thought, a truth Phostis hadn't fully grasped—but then Phostis, as firstborn, hadn't had the need. Each son was so different from the other two ... "Where's Katakolon? Do you know?"

Evripos pointed. "One of the rooms down that hallway: second or third on the left, I think."

"Thanks." Later, Krispos realized he hadn't asked what his youngest son was doing. If Evripos knew, he kept his mouth shut, a useful ploy he might well have picked up from his father. Krispos walked down the hallway. The second chamber on the left, a sewing room for the serving women, was empty.

The door to the third room on the left was closed. Krispos worked the latch. He saw a tangle of bare arms and legs, heard a couple of horrified squawks, and shut the door again in a hurry. He stood chuckling in the hall until Katakolon, his robe rumpled and his face red, came out a couple of minutes later.

He let Katakolon steer him down the corridor, and was anything but surprised to hear the door open and close behind him. He didn't look back, but started to laugh. Katakolon gave him a dirty look. "What's so funny?"

"You are," Krispos answered. "I do apologize for interrupting."

Katakolon's glare got blacker, but he seemed confused as well as annoyed. "Is that all you're going to say?"

"Yes, I think so. After all, it's nothing I haven't seen before. Remember, I was Anthimos' vestiarios." He decided not to go into detail about Anthimos' orgies. Katakolon was too likely to try imitating them.

Looking at his youngest son's face, Krispos had all he could do to keep from laughing again. Katakolon was obviously having heavy going imagining his rather paunchy, gray-bearded father reveling with an Avtokrator who, even after a generation, remained a byword for debauchery of all sorts.

Krispos patted his son on the back. "You have to bear in mind, lad, that once upon a time I wasn't a creaking elder. I had the same yen for good wine and bad women as any other young man."

"Yes, Father," Katakolon said, but not as if he believed it.

Sighing, Krispos said, "If you have too much trouble picturing me with a zest for life, try to imagine Iakovitzes, say, as a young man. The exercise will do your wits good."

He gave Katakolon credit: the youth visibly did try. After a few seconds, he whistled. "He'd have been something, wouldn't he?"

"Oh, he was," Krispos said. "He's still something, come to that."

All at once, he wondered if Iakovitzes had ever tried his blandishments on Katakolon. He didn't think the old lecher would have got anywhere; like his other two sons, his youngest seemed interested only in women. If Iakovitzes had ever tried to seduce Katakolon or one of the other boys, they'd never brought Krispos the tale.

"Now let me tell you why I interrupted you at a tender moment—" Krispos explained what he had in mind for the most junior Avtokrator.

"Of course, Father. I'll come with you, and help as I can," Katakolon said when he was done; of the three boys, he was the most tractable. Even the stubborn streak he shared with his brothers and Krispos was in him good-natured. "I don't expect I'll be busy every moment, and some of the provincial lasses last summer were tastier than I'd have expected away from the capital. When do we start out?"

"As soon as the roads are dry." Dry himself, Krispos added, "You won't be devastating the local girls by leaving quite yet."

"All right," Katakolon said. "In that case, if you'll excuse me—" He started down the hall, more purpose in his stride than on any mission for his father. Krispos wondered if he'd burned that hot at seventeen. He probably had, but he had almost as much trouble believing it as Katakolon did in placing him at one of Anthimos' revels.

Livanios addressed his assembled fighters: "Soon we fare forth, both to fight and to advance along the gleaming path. We shall not go alone. By the lord with the great and good mind, I swear our trouble will not be raising men but rather making sure we are not overwhelmed by those who would join us. We shall spread across the countryside like a fire through grassland; no one and nothing can hold us back."

The men cheered. By their look, a good many of them were herders from the westlands' central plateau: lean, weatherbeat-en, sunbaked men intimately acquainted with grass fires. Now they carried javelins in their hands, not staves. They were not the best-disciplined troops in the world, but fanaticism went a long way toward making up for sloppy formations.

Phostis cheered when everyone else did. Standing there silent and glum would have got him noticed, and not in a way he wanted. He was trying to cultivate invisibility, the way a farmer cultivated radishes. He wished Livanios would forget he existed.

The heresiarch was in full spate: "The leeches who live in Videssos the city think they can suck our life's blood forever. We'll show them they're wrong, by the good god, and if the gleaming path leads through the smoking ruins of the palaces built from poor men's blood, why then, it does."

More cheers. Phostis didn't feel quite such a hypocrite in joining these: the ostentatious wealth the capital held was what had made him flirt with the doctrines of the Thanasioi in the first place. But Livanios' speech was a harangue and nothing more. If any Avtokrator of recent generations was sensitive to the peasant's plight, it was Krispos. Phostis was sick of hearing how his father had been taxed off his land, but he knew the experience made Krispos want not to visit it on anyone else.

"We'll hang up the fat ecclesiastics by their thumbs, too," Livanios shouted. "Whatever gold the Emperors don't get, the clerics do. Has Phos the need for fancy houses?"

"No!" the men roared back, and Phostis with them. In spite of everything, he still had some sympathy for what Thanasios had preached. He wondered if Livanios could truly say the same. And he wondered still more just how much hold Artapan had on the rebel leader. He was no closer to knowing that for certain than he had been on the day when he and Olyvria first became lovers.

Whenever she crossed his mind, his blood ran hotter. Digenis would have scolded him, or more likely given up on him as an incorrigible sinner and sensualist. He didn't care. He wanted her more with every passing day—and he knew she also wanted him.