The Tale of Krispos (20 page)

Then at last some of his own urgency reached her. Kindled, she was less perfectly skilled than she had been before. Feeling her quiver beneath him, hearing her breath catch, made him want to forget all that perfect skill had wrought.

He wondered if the quivers, if the gasps, were also products of her art. He shrugged as he fastened the bone catches of his tunic. Art that fine was indistinguishable from reality; it was as if an icon of Petronas could move and speak with the Sevastokrator’s voice.

Later, as he walked down the hall behind a servant toward the small dining chamber for breakfast, he decided he was wrong. If he’d altogether failed to please her, he doubted she’d give herself to him again.

She waited for him in the dining room, her self-possession absolute as usual. “I trust you slept well,” she said in a tone any polite hostess might have used. Before he could answer, she went on, “Do try some of the honey on your bread. It’s clover and orange together, and very fine.”

He dipped it from the pot and tried it. It was good. He tried—as best he could with men and women of her household bustling in and out—to learn how she felt about the night before. She was impervious. That seemed ominous.

Then Mavros came in, looking rather the worse for wear, and Krispos had to give up. Tanilis showed more interest in her son’s boasting than she’d given to Krispos’ discreet questions.

Only as Krispos was saying his farewells did she give him even the smallest reason for hope. “Feel free to invite yourself here next time; you need not wait upon a formal invitation.”

“Thank you, Tanilis, I’ll do that,” he said, and watched her face closely. Had she shown any trace of disappointment, he would never have gone back to the villa again. She nodded and smiled instead.

He made himself wait four days before he rode back again. Evtykhes the cook hadn’t had anything special planned but, like Iakovitzes’ chef, he could make the ordinary interesting.

What happened later that night was even more interesting, and not even slightly ordinary. “Don’t delay so long the next time,” Tanilis said as she slid out of the guest room bed to return to her own chamber. “Or did you think I was seeking to entrap you with my charms?”

Krispos shook his head. Tanilis slipped away without asking anything further of him. He was not nearly sure he had truthfully answered her last question; indeed, he hadn’t trusted his voice not to give him away.

Even so, he knew he would come to the villa again, and in less than four days. Did that mean he was entrapped? Maybe it did, he thought wryly. He was sure he’d never found such tempting bait.

I
AKOVITZES LOOKED UP FROM HIS BREAKFAST PORRIDGE AS
Krispos walked toward his table in Bolkanes’ taproom. The noble’s eyebrows rose. “Good of you to join me,” he said. “Such rare signs give me hope you do still remember you work for me.”

Krispos felt his ears grow hot. He grunted—the safest response he could think of—and sat down.

Nothing was guaranteed safe with Iakovitzes. “Much as I hate to disrupt the lecherous tenor of your ways,” he went on, “I fear your little arrangement with that laundress or whatever she is at Mavros’ place will have to end.”

Krispos had found no way to keep people from knowing how often he rode out to Tanilis’ villa. Those visits—and the overnight stays that went with them—had to set tongues wagging. To make sure they did not wag in the wrong—or rather, the right—direction, he’d let on that he was having an affair with one of the servant girls. Now he said, still cautiously, “Oh? Why is that, excellent sir?”

“Because I’ve finally settled with that puff-adder of a Lexo, that’s why.”

“Have you really?” Krispos said in genuine surprise.

“Yes, I have really, and on more than decent terms. If you’d been around here as you were supposed to be instead of exercising your private parts, this might not have come as such a startling development to you.”

Krispos hung his head at the rebuke. The acid in Iakovitzes’ voice made it sting more than it might have otherwise, but he knew it was deserved. He also knew a certain amount of relief. If Iakovitzes was heading back to Videssos the city, he would have to accompany the noble. Not even Tanilis could think differently. A more convenient end to their liaison was hard to imagine.

Iakovitzes went on, “Since you do get out to Mavros’ villa, however, be so good as to let him know I shall be departing shortly. Why I don’t leave you here and head back just with him I couldn’t say, let me tell you.”

At first, the scolding washed over Krispos. If Iakovitzes meant to fire him, he would have done it long since. And even if the noble did give him the boot, Tanilis would still back him—or would she? Krispos grew more sober as he pondered that. If his fortunes changed, her vision might, too.

He decided he ought to stay in Iakovitzes’ good graces after all, or as many of them as he could keep without letting the noble seduce him. “What were the terms you finally agreed to with Lexo, excellent sir?” he asked.

“As if you care,” Iakovitzes jeered, but he was too full of himself to resist bragging about what he’d done. “The Khatrishers will all pull back of the Akkilaion by the end of next year, and three parts in four of the indemnity we pay for their leaving will go straight to the herders who get displaced, not to Gumush the khagan. I had to pay Lexo a little extra on the side to get him to go along with that, but it’s money well spent.”

“I see what you’re saying.” Krispos nodded. “If the indemnity stays with the local Khatrishers, they’ll end up spending most of it here in Opsikion, so in the long run it’ll come back to the Empire.”

“Maybe that’s why I keep you around in spite of the all-too-numerous faults you insist on flaunting,” Iakovitzes said, “for your peasant shrewdness. Even Lexo didn’t pick up the full import of that clause, and he’s been in the business of cheating Videssos a good many years now. Aye, I snuck it past him, I did, I did.” Nothing put Iakovitzes in a better mood than gloating over how he’d outsmarted an opponent.

“When do you sign the pact?” Krispos asked.

“Already did it—signed and sealed. I have one copy up in my room, and Lexo’s got the other one wherever he keeps it.” Iakovitzes knocked back a large cup of wine. Only when he swayed as he got to his feet did Krispos realize it was not his first, or even his third; his speech was perfectly clear. As the noble headed for the door, he said over his shoulder, “Come to think of it, I’m going across the square to the eparch’s residence and rub the Khatrisher’s nose in the break he gave me. Want to tag along?”

“Are you sure that’s wise, excellent sir?” Krispos said, in lieu of publicly asking his master whether he’d lost his mind. If Iakovitzes angered Lexo enough—and he could do it if anyone could—what was to keep the Khatrisher from tearing up his signed and sealed copy and either starting the war Petronas did not want or at least forcing negotiations open again?

But Iakovitzes said, “Let him wallow in his own stupidity.” He went out the door almost at a run.

Krispos heard the rumble and jingle of an approaching heavy wagon without listening to it; it was just one of the noises that went with staying in a city. Then he heard someone shout, “Watch out, you bloody drunken twit! Look over this—” That was harder to ignore; it came from right in front of the inn. At the cry of agony that followed hard on its heels, Krispos and everyone else in the taproom dashed out to see what had happened.

The wagon was full of blocks of gray limestone from one of the quarries in the hills back of Opsikion, and drawn by a team of six draft horses. Iakovitzes lay thrashing on the ground between the near wheeler and the wagon’s right front wheel. Another yard forward and it would have rolled over his body.

Krispos ran forward and dragged his master away from the wagon. Iakovitzes shrieked again as he was moved. “My leg!” He clutched at it. “My leg!”

The white-faced driver gabbled, “Fool walked right in front of me. Right in front of me like I wasn’t there, and this maybe the biggest, noisiest rig in town. Right in front of me! One of the horses must have stepped on him, or maybe more than one. Lucky I was fast on the brake, or all you could do with him is clean him off the cobbles. Right in front of me!”

A couple of passers-by confirmed that Iakovitzes had not noticed the wagon at all. “Way he was going,” one said, “he wouldn’t have noticed Phos coming down from heaven for him.” A couple of more pious souls made the sun-sign over their hearts at the mention of the good god’s name.

Krispos tugged up Iakovitzes’ robe so he could see how badly the noble was hurt. The unnatural bend between knee and ankle of his master’s left leg and the enormous black bruise that spread over the leg as he watched told him everything he needed to know. “It’s broken,” he said.

“Of course it’s broken, you wide-arsed imbecile!” Iakovitzes screamed, pain and fury making him even louder and shriller than usual. “You think I need you to tell me that?” The inventive curses that spewed from him in the next couple of minutes proved his wits were intact, even if he did have cuts over both eyes and a bruise on one cheek. He finally slowed down enough to snarl, “Why are all you incest-loving cretins just standing around gaping? Someone fetch me a healer-priest!”

One of the locals trotted away. Iakovitzes kept swearing; Krispos did not think he repeated himself once in the quarter of an hour till the priest arrived. Some of the onlookers who might normally have gone about their business stayed to listen instead.

“What happened here?” the healer-priest asked when he finally arrived.

Several people in the crowd started to explain as they stood aside to let the priest—Sabellios, his name was—pass. From the ground, Iakovitzes yelled, “I broke my miserable leg, that’s what. Why don’t you stop gabbing there and start healing?”

“He’s like that, holy sir,” Krispos whispered to Sabellios as the healer-priest crouched beside him.

“It’s not easy to be happy with a broken leg,” Sabellios observed. “Easy, sir, easy,” he went on to Iakovitzes, for the noble gasped and swore anew as the healer-priest set his hands on either side of the fracture.

Like the other healers Krispos had seen, Sabellios spoke Phos’ creed again and again as he sank into his trance. Then the words trailed away, leaving nothing between Sabellios’ will and the injury he faced. Krispos muttered with awe as he watched the swelling around the broken bone recede and the purple-black bruise fade.

The healer-priest released his hold. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his blue robe. “I have done what I can,” he said in the worn voice every healer used just after his work was done. Krispos noted the effort he needed to raise his head to look up at the spectators who still ringed him and Iakovitzes. “One of you should go and bring Ordanes the physician here. He has a gentler touch for setting bones than I do.”

“Setting bones?” Iakovitzes hissed from between clenched teeth. “Aren’t you going to heal the break?”

Sebellios stared at him. “Heal—a fracture?”

“Why not?” Iakovitzes said. “I had it done for me once in Videssos the city, after I took a fall when my cursed mount couldn’t leap a stream during a hunt. Some blue-robe from the Sorcerers’ Collegium did it for me—Heraklonas, I think his name was.”

“You were most fortunate to be treated by such a master of the art, excellent sir,” the healer-priest said. “As with most of my brethren, my power is over flesh, not bone, which I have neither the strength nor the knowledge to heal. Bone, you see, is partly dead, so it lacks the vitality upon which the healing gift draws. No one in Opsikion—perhaps no one in any city save Videssos—can heal a broken bone. I am sorry to have to be the one to tell you that.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Iakovitzes howled, anger now overcoming pain.

“Fear not, sir,” Sebellios said. “Ordanes is a skilled bone-setter, and I can abate any fever you might contract during the healing process. Surely in two or three months you will be walking again and, if you exercise your leg once the splints come off, you may not even limp.”

“Two or three months?” Iakovitzes rolled his eyes like a trapped animal. “How long before I can ride?”

Sebellios pursed his lips. “Somewhere near the same length of time, I should say. Controlling one’s horse puts considerable strain on the lower leg, as you must know.”

“Two or three months?” Iakovitzes repeated it unbelievingly. “You’re saying it’ll be winter by the time I’m up and about?”

“Well, yes, probably,” Sebellios said. “What of it?”

“No ships in winter—too many storms. No good going overland, either, or not much—snowdrifts piled twice as high as a man.” Iakovitzes had been speaking softly, almost to himself. Now, suddenly, he screamed.
“You mean to tell me I’m stuck in this backwoods Phos-forsaken shitpot pest-hole of an excuse for a town until spring?”

“Hello, hello.” A fat bald man pushed through the crowd and grinned down at Iakovitzes. “My, you sound cheerful today. Nothing like breaking a leg to do that to a man, is there?”

“I’d sooner break your neck,” Iakovitzes snarled. “Which icepit did Skotos let you out of?”

“Name’s Ordanes,” the fat man answered calmly—he was, Krispos saw, one of the rare men Iakovitzes could not infuriate with a few ill-chosen words. “I’ll set that leg for you, if you like—I expect you’ll need it whole so as you can get back to cramming both feet into your face.” As Iakovitzes gaped and spluttered, the physician went on, “I’ll need a couple of stout souls here to help hold him down. He’ll like this even less than he likes anything else.”

“I’m one,” Krispos said. “He’s my master.”

“Lucky you.” Ordanes lowered his voice so Iakovitzes would not hear. “Hate to tell you this, young fellow, but you and your master are going to be stuck here a goodish while. That’s what I heard him yelling about before, isn’t it?”

Krispos nodded.

“If you’re his man, you’ll have to wait on him like he was a baby for a while, because for the first month or so he shouldn’t even be out of bed, not if he expects those bones to heal straight. Think you’re up to it? I don’t envy you, and that’s a fact.”