An Emperor for the Legion (38 page)

The brown slate flags of the path from the Grand Courtroom to the forum of Palamas were wet and slippery; most of the snow that had blanketed the palace complex’ lawns was gone. The sun was almost hot in a bright blue sky. The tribune eyed it suspiciously. There had been another of these spells a couple of weeks before, followed close by the worst blizzard of the winter. This one, though, might be spring after all.

The tribune had a good idea of the reception he would get at the imperial offices that housed the archives—nor was he disappointed. Functionaries herded him from file to musty file until he began to hate the smell of old parchment. There was no sign of the document he sought, or of any less than three years old. Some were much older than that; he turned up one that seemed to speak of Namdalen as still part of the Empire, though fading ink and strange, archaic script made it impossible to be sure.

When he showed the ancient scroll to the secretary in charge of those files, that worthy said, “You needn’t look as if you’re blaming me. What would you expect to find in the archives but old papers?” He seemed scandalized that anyone could expect him to produce a recent document.

“I have been through all three floors of this building,” Scaurus said, fighting to hold his patience. “Is there any other place the scurvy thing might be lurking?”

“I suppose it might be in the sub-basement,” the secretary answered, his tone saying he was sure it wasn’t. “That’s where the real antiques get stowed, below the prisons.”

“I may as well try, as long as I’m here.”

“Take a lamp with you,” the secretary advised, “and keep your sword drawn. The rats down there aren’t often bothered and they can be fierce.”

“Splendid,” the tribune muttered. It was useful information all the same; though he had known the imperial offices held a jail, he had not been aware there was anything beneath it. He made sure the lamp he chose was full of oil.

He was glad of the lamp as soon as he started down the stairway to the prison, for even that was below the level of the street and had no light save what came from the torches flickering in their iron brackets every few feet along the walls. The rough-hewn blocks of stone above them were thick with soot that had not been cleaned away for years.

It was time for the prisoners’ daily meal. A pair of bored guards pushed a squeaking handcart down the central aisle-way. Two more, almost equally bored, covered them with drawn bows as they passed out loaves of coarse, husk-filled bread, small bowls of fish stew that smelled none too fresh, and squat earthen jugs of water. The fare was miserable, but the inmates crowded to the front of their cells to get it. One made a face as he tasted the stew. “You washed your feet in it again, Podopagouros,” he said.

“Aye, well, they needed it,” the guard answered, unperturbed.

The tribune had to ask his way down to the sub-basement. He walked past the rows of cells to a small door whose hinges creaked rustily as he opened it. As with many doorways in the imperial offices, an image of the Emperor was set above this one. But Scaurus blinked at the portrait: a roundfaced old man with a short white beard. Who—? He held up his lamp to read the accompanying text: “Phos preserve the Avtokrator Strobilos Sphrantzes.” It had been more than five years now since Strobilos was Emperor.

Long before he reached the bottom of the stairway, Marcus knew he would never find the taxroll, even if it was here. The little clay lamp in his hand was not very bright, but it shed enough light for him to see boxes of records haphazardly piled on one another. Some were overturned, their contents half-buried in the dust and mold on the floor. The air tasted dead.

The lamp flickered. Scaurus felt his heart jump with it. There could be no worse fate than to be lost down here, alone in the blackness. No, not altogether alone; as the flame blazed up again, its glow came back greenly from scores of gleaming eyes. Some of them, the tribune thought nervously, were higher off the ground than a rat’s eyes had any right to be.

He retreated, making very sure that little door was bolted. Strobilos stared incuriously down at him; even the imperial artist had had trouble portraying him as anything but a dullard.

Its torches bright and cheerful, the prison level seemed almost attractive compared to what was below it. The guards with their handcart had not moved ahead more than six or seven cells. Their rhythm was slow, nearly hypnotic—a loaf to the left, a bowl of stew to the right; a bowl of stew to the left, a loaf to the right; a water jar to either side; creak forward and repeat.

“You, there!” someone called from one of the cells. “Yes, you, outlander!” Marcus had been about to go on, sure no one down here could be talking to him, but that second call stopped him. He looked round curiously.

He had not recognized Taron Leimmokheir in his shabby linen prison robe. The ex-admiral had lost weight, and his hair and beard were long and shaggy; months in this sunless place had robbed him of his sailor’s tan. But as Scaurus walked over to his cell, he saw Leimmokheir still bore himself with military erectness. The cell itself was neat and clean as it could be, cleaner, in fact, than the passageway outside.

“What is it, Leimmokheir?” the tribune asked, not very kindly. The man on the other side of those rust-flaked bars had come too close to killing him and was condemned to be here for planning the murder of the Emperor the Roman supported.

“I’d have you take a message to Gavras, if you would.” The words were a request, but Leimmokheir’s deep hoarse voice somehow kept its tone of command, prisoner though he was. Marcus waited.

Leimmokheir read his face. “Oh, I’m not such a fool as to ask to be set free. I know the odds of that. But by Phos, outlander, tell him he holds an innocent man. By Phos and his light, by the hope of heaven and the fear of Skotos’ ice below, I swear it.” He drew the sun-sign over his breast, repeating harshly, “He holds an innocent man!”

The convict in the next cell, a sallow man with a weasel’s narrow wicked face, leered at Scaurus. “Aye, we’re all innocent here,” he said. “That’s why they keep us here, you know, to save us from the guilty ones outside. Innocent!” His laugh made the word a filthy joke.

The Roman, though, paused in some uncertainty. Barefoot and unkempt Leimmokheir might be, but his speech still had
the oddly compelling quality Marcus had noted when he first heard it on that midnight beach, still carried the conviction that here was a man who would not, or could not, lie. His eyes bored into the tribune’s, and Scaurus lowered his first.

The food cart came groaning up. The tribune made his decision. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. Leimmokheir acknowledged him not with a nod, but with lowered head and right hand on heart—the imperial soldier’s salute to a superior. If this was acting, Scaurus thought, it deserved a prize.

He began to regret his promise before he got back to the palace compound. As if he didn’t have troubles enough, without trying to convince Gavras he might have made a mistake. Thorisin was much more mistrustful of his aides than Mavrikios had been—with reason, Marcus had to admit. If he ever learned the tribune had planned to defect …! It did not bear thinking about.

If, on the other hand, he approached the Emperor through Alypia Gavra, that might blunt Thorisin’s suspicions, the more so if she took his side. At least he could learn what she thought of Leimmokheir, which would give better perspective on how far to credit the ex-admiral. He smacked fist into open palm, pleased with his own cleverness.

She might even know where that fornicating tax roll was, he thought.

The eunuch steward Mizizios rapped lightly at the handsome door. Like most of those in the small secluded building that was the imperial family’s private household, it was ornamented with inlays of ebony and red cedar. “Yes, bring him in, of course,” Scaurus heard the princess say. Mizizios bowed as he worked the silver latch.

He followed the tribune into the chamber, but Alypia waved him away. “Let us talk in peace.” Seeing the eunuch hesitate, she added, “Go on; my virtue’s safe with him.” It was, Marcus thought, as much the bitterness in her voice as the order itself that made Mizizios flee.

But she was gracious again as she offered the Roman a chair, urged him to take wine and cakes. “Thank you, your Majesty,” he said. “It’s kind of you to see me on such short notice.” He bit into one of the little cakes with enjoyment. They were stuffed with raisins and nuts and dusted lightly
with cinnamon; better here than over goose, he thought. That midwinter meal still rankled.

“My uncle has made it plain to both of us that the pen-pushers’ iniquities are of the highest importance, has he not?” she said, raising her eyebrows slightly. Was that surprise at his thanks, Scaurus wondered, or lurking sarcasm? He could not read Alypia at all and did not think the reverse was true; he felt at a disadvantage.

“If I’m interrupting anything …” he said, and let the sentence drop.

“Nothing that won’t keep,” she said, waving to a desk as overloaded with scrolls and books as his own. He could read the title picked out in gold leaf on a leather-bound volume’s spine: the
Chronicle of Seven Reigns
. She followed his eye, nodded. “History is a business that takes its own time.”

The desk itself was plain pine, no finer than the one Marcus used. The rest of the furnishings, including the chairs on which he and Alypia sat, were as austere. The only ornament was an icon of Phos above the desk, an image stern in judgment.

At first glance, the princess seemed almost equally severe. She wore blouse and skirt of plain dark brown, unrelieved by jewelry; her hair was pulled back into a small, tight bun at the nape of her neck. But her green eyes—rare for a Videssian—held just enough ironic amusement to temper the harshness she tried to project. “To what pen-pushers’ inquities are we referring?” she asked, and Scaurus heard it in her voice as well.

“None,” he admitted, “unless you happen to know where they’ve spirited away Kybistra’s tax records.”

“I don’t,” she said at once, “but surely you could have a mage find them for you.”

“Why, so I could,” Scaurus said, amazed. The notion had never entered his mind. For all his time in Videssos, down deep he still did not accept magic, and it rarely occurred to him to use it. He wondered how much sorcery went on around him, unnoticed, every day among folk who took it as much for granted as a cloak against the cold.

Such musings vanished as he remembered his chief reason for seeing the princess. “I’m not here on account of the pen-pushers, actually,” he began, and set out the story of how
Taron Leimmokheir had recognized him and insisted on his own innocence.

Alypia grew serious as she listened, alert and intent. The expression suited her face perfectly; Marcus thought of the goddess Minerva as he watched her. She was silent for several moments after he finished, then asked at last, “What do you make of what he said?”

“I don’t know what to believe. The evidence against him is strong, and yet I thought the first time I heard his voice that he was a man whose word was good. It troubles me.”

“Well it might. I’ve known Leimmokheir five years now, since my father won the throne, and never seen him do anything dishonorable or base.” Her mouth twitched in a mirthless smile. “He even treated me as if I were really Empress. He may have been artless enough to think I was.”

Scaurus rested his chin on the back of his hand, looked down at the floor. “Then I’d best see your uncle, hadn’t I?” He did not relish the prospect; Thorisin was anything but reasonable on the matter of Leimmokheir.

Alypia understood that, too. “I’ll come with you, if you like.”

“I’d be grateful,” he said frankly. “It would make me less likely to be taken for a traitor.”

She smiled. “Hardly that. Shall we find him now?”

The bare-branched trees’ shadows were long outside. “Tomorrow will do well enough. I’d like to see to my men with what’s left of today; as is, I don’t get as much chance as I should.”

“All right. My uncle likes to ride in the early morning, so I’ll meet you at midday outside the Grand Courtroom.” She stood, a sign the audience was at an end.

“Thanks,” he said, rising too.

He took another little cake from the enamelwork tray, then smiled himself as the memory came back. He’d had these cakes before and knew who baked them. “They’re as good as I remembered,” he said.

For the first time he saw Alypia’s reserve crack. Her eyes widened slightly, her hand fluttered as if to brush the compliment away. “Tomorrow, then,” she said quietly.

“Tomorrow.”

*   *   *

When the tribune got back to the barracks he found an argument in full swing. Gorgidas had made the mistake of trying to explain the Greek notion of democracy to Viridovix and succeeded only in horrifying the Celtic noble.

“It’s fair unnatural,” Viridovix said. “ ’Twas the gods themselves set some folk above the rest.” Arigh Arghun’s son, who was there visiting the Gaul and soaking up some wine, nodded vigorously.

“Nonsense,” Scaurus said. The Roman patricians had tried to put that one over on the rest of the people, too. It had been centuries since it worked.

But Gorgidas turned on him, snapping, “What makes you think I need
your
help? Your precious Roman republic has its nobles, too, though they buy their way to the role instead of being born into it. Why is a Crassus a man worth hearing, if not for his moneybags?”

“What are you yattering about?” Arigh said impatiently; the allusion meant nothing to him and hardly more to Viridovix. The Arshaum was a chieftain’s son, though, and knew what he thought of the Greek’s idea. “A clan has nobles for the same reason an army has generals—so when trouble comes, people know whom to follow.”

Gorgidas shot back, “Why follow anyone simply because of birth? Wisdom would be a better guide.”

“Be a man never so wise, if he comes dung-footed from the fields and speaks like the clodhopper born, no one’ll be after hearing his widsom regardless,” Viridovix said.

Arigh’s flat features showed his contempt for all farmers, noble and peasant alike, but he followed the principle the Celt was laying down. In his harsh, clipped speech he said to Gorgidas, “Here, outlander, let me tell you a story to show you what I mean.”