Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (47 page)

It was cold in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, and the tribune felt very much alone as he made his report to Thorisin Gavras. The Sviodos had crossed with him to the capital, and Styppes—for whatever his company was worth—but Marcus had sent his Romans back to Gaius Philippus at Garsavra. Without the Namdaleni to guard, there was no point keeping them; Gaius Philippus could use them, and in Garsavra they did not risk the Avtokrator’s wrath.

He told the truth, as much of it, at least, as had happened outside his tent. Thorisin was silent when he finished, studying him stony-faced over steepled fingers. When I first met him, Marcus thought, he would have worn his feelings on his sleeve. But he was learning the emperor’s art of never revealing too much; his eyes were perfectly opaque.

Then the imperial façade cracked across and showed the man behind it. “Damn you, Scaurus,” he said heavily, the words ripped from him one by one, “why must I always love you and hate you at the same bloody time?”

The officers who sat in council with him stirred. The Roman did not
know many of them well, nor they him. They were most of them younger men, come to prominence under the Emperor’s eye this past campaigning season while the tribune was far away in the westlands; so many of the marshals who had served with Scaurus under Mavrikios Gavras were dead or in disgrace as rebels—or both.

“Your Highness, you cannot credit this tale, can you?” protested one of the new men, a cavalry officer named Provhos Mourtzouphlos. The disbelief on his handsome, whiskery face—like several other soldiers round the council table, he imitated Thorisin’s carelessness about hair and beard—was manifest. Heads bobbed in agreement with him.

“I can,” the Emperor replied. He kept on examining Scaurus, as if wondering whether the tribune had left something out. “I haven’t said I do, yet.”

“Well, you ought to,” Taron Leimmokheir told him abruptly. His, at least, was a familiar face and voice; as always, the drungarios of the fleet’s raspy bass, used to roaring out commands at sea, sounded too big for any enclosed space, even one the size of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches. Smiling at Marcus, he went on, “Anyone with the courage to come back to you after such misfortunes deserves honor, not blame. And what if the fornicating Gamblers got away in the end? There’s no New Namdalen over the Cattle-Crossing, and for that you have only the outlander here to thank.”

Mourtzouphlos sent an aristocrat’s sneer toward the gray-bearded admiral, who had risen from the ranks by dint of courage, strength, and—rare among Videssians—unswerving, outspoken honesty. The cavalryman said, “No wonder Leimmokheir speaks up for the foreigner. He owes him enough.”

“So I do, and proud to own it, by Phos,” the drungarios said.

The Emperor, though, frowned, remembering how Leimmokheir had sworn loyalty to Ortaias before he knew Thorisin had survived Maragha—and how, with his stubborn loyalty, he refused to go back on that oath. He also remembered the assassination attempt he had blamed on the admiral, and the months Leimmokheir had spent in prison until Scaurus proved him guiltless—and touched off Baanes Onomagoulos’ revolt by showing him to be the man behind the plot.

Thorisin passed a weary hand in front of his eyes, then scratched his left temple. The dark brown hair there was thinner than it had been when Marcus and the legionaries came to Videssos, and more streaked with gray as well. At last he said, “I think I do believe you, Roman. Not for what Taron here says, though there’s truth in that, too. But I know you have the wit to make a better lie than the yarn you spun, so it’s most likely true. Aye, most likely,” he repeated, half to himself. Then, straightening abruptly on his gilded chair, he finished, “Stay in the city a while; you needn’t hurry back to Garsavra. That lieutenant of yours is plenty able to hold the town when winter slows everyone to a crawl, Yezda and us alike.”

“As you wish, of course, sir,” Marcus said, saluting. The Emperor was right; if anything, Gaius Philippus was a better tactician than Scaurus. But the order was strange enough to make the tribune ask, “What would you have me do here?”

The question seemed to catch Thorisin Gavras by surprise. He scratched his head again, thinking. After a few seconds he answered, “For one thing, I want a full report in writing from you, covering what you’ve told me today in more detail. The Namdaleni are demons to fight; anything I can learn from what you did to them will be useful. And, oh yes,” he went on, struck by a happy afterthought, “you can ride herd on the plague-taken pen-pushers as you did last winter.”

Marcus bowed, but he was somber as he took his seat. Although Thorisin professed believing him, he did not expect he would be trusted to command again any time soon.

The Emperor had already dismissed him from his mind. He looked round the hall. “Now for the next piece of good news,” he said. He unrolled a square sheet of parchment, elaborately sealed and written in a large, gorgeous hand. Gavras held it as if it gave off a bad smell. “This little missive is from our dear friend Zemarkhos,” he announced sardonically, and began to read aloud.

Stripped of the fanatic priest’s turgid phrasing, the proclamation declared Amorion and the westlands surrounding that city the rightful principality of Phos on earth and hurled venomous anathemas at Thorisin and Balsamon the patriarch of Videssos. “By which the madman means
we’ve no taste for massacring Vaspurakaners,” the emperor growled. He tore the parchment in half, threw it behind him. “What do we do about such tripe?”

The council threw out a few suggestions, but they were all halfhearted, suicidal, or both. The plain truth was that, since a wide stretch of territory held by the Yezda—whom Zemarkhos hated almost as much as he did heretics within his own faith—separated Amorion from imperial troops, Thorisin could not do much but fume.

He glared at his advisors for being as unable to get around that as he was himself. “No more brilliant schemes, the lot of you?” he asked at last. Silence answered. He shook his head in disgust. “No? Go on, then. This council is dismissed.”

Servants swung back the Hall of the Nineteen Couches’ mirror-bright bronze doors. Videssos’ officers trooped out. Marcus wrapped himself in his cape to ward off the icy breeze. At least, he thought, the bureaucrats kept their offices warm.

Videssian troops occupied two of the four barracks halls the legionaries had used in the palace complex; a company of Halogai, newly come from their cold northern home, was quartered in the third. The last stood empty, but Scaurus had no desire to rattle around in it like a pebble inside a huge Yezda drum. Instead, he took up residence in an empty second-floor room of the bureaucrats’ wing of the compound that held the Grand Courtroom. The seal-stampers greeted him with wary politeness, recalling his meddling in business they considered theirs alone.

He worked in a desultory way on the report the Emperor had requested, but it seemed stale and flat even as he wrote it. He could not attach any importance to it; in trying to numb himself to the shock of Helvis’ leaving him as she had, he pulled away from the rest of the world as well. He moved in a gray haze that had nothing to do with the weather.

He did his best to disregard the knock on his door—which he kept closed most of the time—but it went on and on. Sighing, he rose from a low chair by the window and lifted the latch.

Waiting outside, beringed hands on hips, was a plump, smooth-cheeked man of uncertain age, clad in a robe of saffron silk shot through
with green embroidery—one of the eunuchs who served the Videssian Emperors as chamberlains. “Took you long enough,” he sniffed, giving Marcus the smallest bow protocol allowed. He went on, “You are bidden to attend his Imperial Majesty this evening in his private chambers at the beginning of the second hour of the night.” The Videssians, like the Romans, divided day and night into twelve hours each, beginning respectively at dawn and sunset.

Marcus started; Thorisin had ignored him in the week since the officers’ council. He asked the chamberlain, “Does he expect my account of the western campaign? I’m afraid it’s not quite done.” Only he knew how much an understatement that was.

The eunuch’s shrug set his puddingy jowls shaking. “I know nothing of such things, only that an attendant will come to lead you thither at the hour I named. And I hope,” he added, putting Scaurus in his place, “you will be prompter in greeting him than you were for me.” He turned his back on the tribune and waddled away.

The attendant proved to be another eunuch, somewhat less splendidly robed than his predecessor. He started shivering as soon as he stepped from the well-heated wing of the Grand Courtroom into the keen night breeze. Scaurus knew a moment of sympathy. He himself wore trousers, as most Videssians did when not performing some ceremonial function. He did not miss his Roman toga; the Empire’s winters demanded warmth.

The cherry trees surrounding the imperial family’s personal quarters sent bare branches reaching skeletal fingers into the sky—no fragrant blooms at this season of the year. A squad of Halogai stood guard at the doorway, their two-handed axes at the ready. In fur robes of otter and white bear and fox and snow leopard over gilded cuirasses, the big blond men seemed perfectly at ease. And why not, the tribune thought—they were used to worse weather than this. They eyed him curiously; he looked as much like one of them as like an imperial. They discussed him in their own guttural language as the chamberlain led him by; he caught the word “Namdalen” spoken in a questioning tone.

The entrance hall still showed scars from the fighting this past spring, when Baanes Onomagoulos had slipped a murder-squad into the city to try to do away with Thorisin. The legionaries, opportunely returning
from a practice march, had foiled that. Scaurus glanced at a portrait of the great conquering Emperor Laskaris, now seven and a half centuries dead. As always, the tribune thought Laskaris looked more like a veteran underofficer than Avtokrator of the Videssians, but now a bloodstain marred the lower left quadrant of his image, and sword strokes had chipped at the hunting scenes of the floor mosaics over which the tribune walked.

The chamberlain paused. “Wait here. I will announce you.”

“Of course.” As the eunuch bustled down the passage, Marcus leaned against a wall and studied the alabaster ceiling panels. They were dark now, of course, but the translucent stones were cut so thin that during the day they lit the hall with a pale, shifting, pearly light.

The imperial servitor vanished round a corner, but he did not go far. Scaurus heard his own name spoken, heard Thorisin’s impatient reply: “Well, fetch him.” The eunuch reappeared, beckoned Marcus on.

The Emperor was leaning forward in his chair, as if willing the Roman into the room. On a couch beside him sat his niece; Marcus’ heart gave a painful thump to see her. As was often true, especially since her torment at the hands of Vardanes Sphrantzes, Alypia’s face wore an abstracted expression, but warmth came into her fine green eyes as Marcus entered.

Remembering his etiquette, the tribune bowed first to Thorisin, then to the princess. “Your Majesty. Your Highness.” The eunuch frowned when he did not prostrate himself, but Thorisin, like Mavrikios before him, had always tolerated that bit of republican Roman stubbornness.

Now, though, his finger darted forward. “Seize him!” Two Halogai sprang out from behind the chamber’s double doors to lock Scaurus’ arms back of him in an unbreakable grip. Struggle would have been useless; the burly warriors overtopped even the tribune’s inches by half a head. Like some of the sentries outside, they wore their hair in thick braids that hung down to the small of their backs, but there was nothing effeminate about them. Their hands were big as shovels, hard as horn.

Surprise and alarm drove discretion from the tribune. “This is no way to get a proskynesis,” he blurted.

A smile flickered on Alypia’s face, but Thorisin’s remained hard. “Be silent,” he said, and then turned to the other occupant of the room. “Nepos, is that hell-brew of yours ready yet?”

First seeing Alypia and then being collared by the Haloga giants, Marcus had hardly noticed the tubby little priest, who was busily grinding gray, green, and yellow powders together. “Very nearly, your Majesty,” Nepos replied. He beamed at the Roman. “Hello, outlander. It’s good to see you again.”

“Is it?” Scaurus said. He did not like the sound of “hell-brew.” Nepos was mage as well as priest, and a master at his craft, master to the point of teaching theoretical thaumaturgy at the Videssian Academy. The tribune wondered if he was so expendable as to be only an experimental animal. He had no relish for life since Helvis had forsaken him, but there were ends and ends. Nepos, cheerfully oblivious, poured his mixed powders into a golden goblet of wine, stirred it with a short glass rod.

“Can’t use wood or brass for this, you know,” he said, perhaps to Thorisin, perhaps to Marcus, perhaps only because he was used to lecturing. “They’d not be the better afterward.” The Roman gulped despite himself.

The Emperor fixed him with the same searching glance he had brought to bear in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches. “After you let the islanders loose, outlander, my first thought was to put you on the shelf and leave you there till the dust covered you up. You’ve always been too thick with the Namdaleni for me to really trust you.” The irony of that almost jerked laughter from Scaurus, but Thorisin was going on, not altogether happily, “Still and all, there are those who think you truly are loyal, and so we’ll find out tonight.” Alypia Gavra would not meet the tribune’s eye.

Nepos raised the goblet by its graceful stem. “Do you remember Avshar’s puppet,” he asked Marcus, “the Khamorth who attacked you with the spell-wound knife after you bested Avshar at swords?” The tribune nodded. “Well, this is the same drug that wrung the truth from him.”

“And he died when you were done questioning him, too,” Scaurus said harshly.

The priest gestured in abhorrence. “That was Avshar’s sorcery, not mine.”

“Give it to me, then,” the tribune said. “Let’s be done with it.”

At Thorisin’s nod, the Haloga who pinioned Scaurus’ right arm let
go. The Avtokrator warned, “Spilling it will do you no good. There’ll just be another batch, and a funnel down your throat.”