The Tale of Krispos (64 page)

Krispos carried the tray to Dara himself. Barsymes saw him and said not a word. When he got back to the Red Room, he helped her sit up and poured wine for her. He poured for himself, as well; the cook had thoughtfully set two goblets on the tray. He raised his. “To Phostis,” he said.

“To our son,” Dara agreed. That was not quite what Krispos had said, but he drank her toast.

Dara attacked her meal—it proved to be roast kid in fermented fish sauce and garlic—as if she’d had nothing for days. Krispos watched her eat and watched Phostis, who was dozing on the bed next to her, turn his head from side to side. Thekla had been right; for a baby, Phostis did have a lot of hair. Krispos stood up and reached out a gentle hand to touch it. It was soft and fine as goose down. Phostis squirmed. Krispos took his hand away.

Dara sopped up the last of the sauce with the heel of her bread. She finished her wine and set the goblet down with a sigh. “That helped,” she said. “A bath and about a month of sleep and I’ll be—not good as new, but close enough.” She sighed again. “Thekla says it’s better for a baby to nurse with his own mother the first few days, so I won’t get that sleep right away. Afterward, though, a wet nurse can get up with him when he howls.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Krispos said in an abstracted tone that showed he’d hardly heard what she said.

“What about?” she asked cautiously. Without seeming to notice what she did, she moved closer to Phostis, as if to protect him.

“I think we ought to declare the baby co-Avtokrator even before I go out on campaign against Petronas,” he answered. “It will let the whole Empire know I intend my family to hold this throne for a long time.”

Dara’s face lit up. “Yes, let’s do that,” she said at once. Even more gently than Krispos had, she touched Phostis’ head, murmuring, “Sleep well, my tiny Emperor.” Then, after a little while, she added, “I was afraid you were thinking something else.”

Krispos shook his head. Even since he’d known Dara was pregnant, he’d also known he’d have to act as if her child was surely his. Now that the boy was born, he would not stint. If anything, he would make a show of favoring him, to make sure no one else had any doubts—or at least any public doubts—about Phostis’ paternity.

What he did was everyone’s affair. What he thought was his own.

Chapter
IV

B
ARSYMES CARRIED A MEDIUM-SIZED SILVER BOX AND A FOLDED
sheet of parchment in to Krispos. The vestiarios looked puzzled and a bit worried. “The Halogai just found this on the steps, Your Majesty. As they do not read, they asked me what the parchment said. I saw it had your name on the outside, so I brought it here.”

“Thank you,” Krispos said. Then he frowned. “What do you mean, the Halogai found it on the steps? Who brought it there?”

“I don’t know, Your Majesty. Neither do the guardsmen. From what they say, it wasn’t there one moment and was the next.”

“Magic,” Krispos said. He stared suspiciously at the box. After almost killing him once by sorcery, did Petronas think he would fall into the trap again? If so, he would be disappointed. “Send someone for Trokoundos, Barsymes. Until he tells me it’s all right, that box will stay closed.”

“No doubt you are wise, Your Majesty. I shall send someone directly.”

Krispos even wondered if unfolding the parchment was safe. He grew impatient waiting for Trokoundos to come, though, and opened it up. Nothing lethal or sorcerous—nothing at all—happened when he did. The note inscribed within was written in a crabbed, antique hand. Though it was not signed, it could only have come from Harvas Black-Robe; it read: “I accept your purchase of a year’s peace with gold. Your envoy has left my court and wends his way homeward. I believe you will find him much improved on account of that which is enclosed herewith.”

When Trokoundos arrived, Krispos showed him the parchment and explained his own suspicions. The mage nodded. “Quite right, Your Majesty. If that box hides sorcery, be sure I shall bring it to light.”

He set to work with powders and jars of bright-colored liquids. After a few minutes one of the liquids suddenly went from blue to red. Trokoundos grunted. “Ha! There
is
magic here, Your Majesty.” He made quick passes, all the while chanting under his breath.

Krispos watched the red liquid turn blue again. He asked, “Does that mean the spell is gone?”

“It should, Your Majesty.” But Trokoundos did not sound sure. He explained. “The only spell I detected was one of preservation, such as some fancy fruiterers use to let rich clients have their wares fresh but out of season. Forgive me, but I cannot imagine how such a spell could be harmful in any way. Whether it was or not, though, I have dispersed it.”

“Then nothing should happen if I open the box?” Krispos persisted.

“Nothing
should.
” Trokoundos took out more sorcerous apparatus. “If anything does, I am prepared to meet it.”

“Good.” Krispos flipped the catch that held the box shut. As he did so, Trokoundos stepped up to protect him from whatever was inside. He opened the lid. Inside the box was a curiously curved piece of meat, bloody at the thick end.

Trokoundos’ brows came together at the anticlimax. “What is that?” he demanded.

Krispos needed a minute to recognize it, too. But he had butchered a good many cows and sheep and goats in his farming days. This was too small to have come from a cow, but a sheep had one much like it…“It’s a tongue,” he said. Then horror ran through him as he remembered the note that had accompanied this gift. “It’s—Iakovitzes’ tongue,” he choked out. He slammed the lid shut, turned his head, and vomited on the fine mosaic floor.

N
EAR THE SOUTH END OF VIDESSOS THE CITY’S WALL WAS A
broad field where soldiers often exercised. Several regiments of horsemen, lancers and archers both, were drawn up in formation there. Their banners rippled in the spring breeze. They saluted as Krispos and Agapetos rode past in review.

Krispos was saying “Draw out whatever garrison troops you think the towns can spare, if they’re men who’d be any good in the field. The Kubrati nomads always liked to play the raid-and-run game. Now it’ll be our turn. If Harvas thinks he can sell us peace at the price of maiming an ambassador, we’ll teach him different. The way I see it, he’s stolen a hundred pounds of gold. We’ll take it back from his land.”

“Aye, Majesty,” Agapetos said. “But what happens if one of my raiding bands comes up against too many men for them to handle?”

“Then pull back,” Krispos told him. “Your job is to keep Harvas and his cutthroats too busy in their own country to come down into the Empire. I won’t be able to send you much support, not until Petronas is beaten. After that, the whole army will move to the northern frontier, but until then, you’re on your own.”

“Aye, Majesty. I shall do as you require.” Agapetos saluted, then raised his right arm high. Trumpets brayed brassily, pipes skirled, and drums thuttered. The cavalry regiments rolled forward. Krispos knew they were good troops. Agapetos was a good soldier, too; Videssian generals made a study of the art of war and learned scores of tricks for gaining the most with the smallest expenditure of manpower.

Then why am I worried?
Krispos asked himself. Maybe it was because the competent, serious Videssian soldiers had not faced warriors like Harvas’ Halogai before. Maybe it was because competent, serious Agapetos had already let Harvas trick him once.
And maybe,
Krispos thought,
it’s for no reason at all. No matter how well he acts the part, Harvas isn’t Skotos come again. He can be beaten. In the end, even Skotos will be beaten.

Then why am I worried?
he asked again. Angry at himself, he yanked Progress’ head around sharply enough to draw a reproachful snort from the horse. He rode back to the city at a fast trot. He knew he should already have been in the westlands, moving against Petronas. But for Harvas’ latest outrage, that campaign would have begun a fortnight before.

Krispos rode not to the palaces, but to the Sorcerers’ Collegium north of the palace quarter. Iakovitzes had reached the capital the night before, more dead than alive. The Empire’s most skillful healer-priests taught at the Collegium, passing on their art to each new generation in turn. The desperately ill came there, too, in hope of cures no one less skilled could give. Iakovitzes fell into the latter group.

“How is he?” Krispos demanded of Damasos, the head of the healing faculty.

The skin under Damasos’ eyes was smudged with fatigue, part of the price a healer-priest paid for his gift. “Majesty,” he began, and then paused to yawn. “Your pardon, Majesty. I think he may yet recover, Majesty. We are at last to the point where we may attempt the healing of the wound itself.”

“He’s been here most of a day now,” Krispos said. “Why haven’t you done anything before this?”

“We have done a great deal, Majesty,” Damasos said stiffly. He was of middle height and middle years, his pate tan, his untrimmed beard going gray. He continued, “We’ve had to do a great deal, much of it in conjunction with sorcerers who are not healers, for added to this mutilation was something I have never before encountered and pray to the good god I never see again: a spell specifically intended to thwart healing. First discovering and then defeating that spell has occupied us up to this time.”

“A spell
against
healing?” Krispos felt queasy; the very idea was an abomination worse than the torture Harvas had inflicted on Iakovitzes. “Who could conceive such a wicked thing?”

“For too long, we did not, Majesty,” Damasos said. “Even after we realized what we faced, we needed no small space of time to overcome the wizardry. Whoever set it on the wound bound it with the power of the victim’s blood, making it doubly hard to banish. It was, in effect, a deliberate perversion of my own ritual.” Tired though he was, Damasos set his jaw in outrage.

Krispos asked, “You are ready to heal now, you say?” At the healer-priest’s nod, he went on. “Take me to Iakovitzes. I would see him healed, as best he may be.” He also wanted Iakovitzes to see him, to know how guilty he felt for sending him on an embassy about which he’d had misgivings.

He gasped when Damasos ushered him into Iakovitzes’ chamber. The little noble, usually so plump and dapper, was thin, ragged, and filthy. Krispos coughed at the foul odor that rose from him: not just that of a body long unwashed, but worse, a ripe stench like rotting meat. Yellow pus dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were wide and blank with fever.

Those blank eyes slid past Krispos without recognizing him. A healer-priest sat beside the bed where Iakovitzes thrashed. Four beefy attendants stood close by. Damasos spoke to the priest. “Are you ready, Nazares?”

“Aye, holy sir.” Nazares’ glance rested on Krispos for a moment. When Krispos showed no sign of leaving, the healer-priest shrugged and nodded to the attendants. “Commence, lads.”

Two of the men seized Iakovitzes’ arms. A third grabbed his head to pull down his lower jaw, then wedged a stout stick padded with cloth between his teeth. Iakovitzes had not seemed aware of his surroundings till then. But the instant the stick touched his lips, he began to struggle like a man possessed, letting out bloodcurdling shrieks and a string of gurgles that tried to be words.

“Poor fellow,” Damasos whispered to Krispos. “In his delirium, he must think we’re about to cut him again.” Krispos’ nails bit into his palms.

In spite of the battle Iakovitzes put up, the fourth attendant forced a metal gag into his mouth, of the sort horse doctors used to hold an animal’s jaws apart so they could trim its teeth. When the gag was in place, Nazares reached into Iakovitzes’ forcibly opened mouth. Seeing Krispos still watching, the healer-priest explained, “For proper healing, I must touch the wound itself.”

Krispos started to answer, then saw Nazares was dropping into a healer’s trance. “We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.” The priest repeated the creed again and again, using it to distract his conscious mind and to concentrate his will solely on the task of healing before him.

As always, Krispos felt awed to watch a healer-priest at work. He could tell just when Nazares began to heal by the way the man suddenly went rigid. Iakovitzes continued to moan and kick, but he could have burst into flames without turning Nazares from his purpose. Almost as if lightning were in the air, Krispos felt the current of healing as it passed from Nazares to Iakovitzes.

Then, all at once, Iakovitzes quit struggling. Krispos took a step forward in alarm, afraid his onetime patron’s heart had given out. But Iakovitzes continued to breathe and Nazares continued to heal; had something been wrong, the healer-priest surely would have sensed it.

At last Nazares withdrew his hand. He wiped pus-smeared fingers on his robe. The attendant removed the gag from Iakovitzes’ mouth. Krispos saw the noble was in full possession of his senses again. Now when he moved in the grip of the two men who held him, they let him go.

He bowed low to the healer-priest, then made a series of yammering noises. After a moment, he realized no one could understand him. He signed for something to write with. One of the attendants brought him a waxed wooden tablet and stylus. He scribbled and handed the tablet to Nazares.

“‘What are you all standing around for?’” Nazares read, his voice slow and dragging from the crushing fatigue that followed healing. “‘Take me to the baths—I stink like a latrine. I could use some food, too, about a year’s worth.’”

Krispos could not help smiling—Iakovitzes might never speak an intelligible word again, but he still sounded like himself. Then Iakovitzes wrote some more and handed the tablet to him. “Next time, send someone else.”

Sobered, he nodded, saying “I know gold and honor will never give you back what you have lost, Iakovitzes, but what they can give, you will have.”

“I’d better. I earned them,” Iakovitzes wrote.

He felt inside his mouth with his fingers, poking and prodding, then let out a soft grunt of wonder and bowed again to Nazares. He scrawled again, then handed the healer-priest the tablet. “‘Holy sir, the wound feels as if it happened years ago. Only the memory is yet green,’” Nazares read. Behind the brassy front Iakovitzes habitually assumed, Krispos saw the terror that still lived in his eyes

An attendant touched Iakovitzes on the arm. He flinched, then scowled at himself and dipped his head in apology to the man. “Excellent sir, I just wanted to tell you I would take you to a bathhouse now, if you like,” the attendant said. “There’s one close by the Sorcerers’ Collegium here.”

Iakovitzes tried to speak, scowled again, and nodded. Before he left with the attendant, though, Krispos said, “A moment, Iakovitzes, please. I want to ask you something.” Iakovitzes paused. Krispos went on. “By the messages you sent me, you and Harvas traded barbs all winter long. What did you finally say that made him do—that—to you?”

The noble flinched again, this time from his own thoughts. But he bent over the tablet and wrote out his reply. He gave it to Krispos when he was done. “I didn’t even intend to insult him, worse luck. We’d settled on a price for the year’s truce and were swearing oaths to secure it. Harvas would not swear by the spirits, Kubrati-style, nor would he take oath by the Haloga gods of his followers. ‘Swear by Phos, then,’ I told him—a truce is no truce without oaths, as any child knows. Better I had told him to go swive his mother, I think. In a voice like thunder, he cried out, ‘That name shall never be in my mouth again, nor in yours either.’ And then—” The writing stopped there, but Krispos knew what had happened then.