Krispos the Emperor Read online

  Well done, he wrote at the bottom of the register. The log-othetes and clerks who handled cadasters for the treasury would know he was pleased. Without their patient, usually unloved work, Videssos would crash to the ground. As Emperor, Krispos understood that. When he'd been a peasant, he'd loved tax collectors no better than any other kind of locust.

  He got up, stretched, rubbed his eyes. Working by candlelight was hard, and had grown harder the past few years as his sight began to lengthen. He didn't know what he would do if his eyes kept getting worse: would he have to have someone read each petition to him and hope he could remember enough to decide it sensibly? He didn't look forward to that, but had trouble coming up with any better answer.

  He stretched again, yawned until his jaw creaked. "The best answer right now is some sleep," he said aloud. He lit a little lamp at one of the candles, then blew them out. The smell of hot wax filled his nostrils.

  Most of the torches in the hallway had gone out. The guttering flames of those that still burned made Krispos' shadow writhe and swoop like something with a life of its own. The lamp he carried cast a small, wan pool of light around him.

  He walked past Barsymes' chamber. He'd lived there once himself, when he'd been one of the rare vestiarioi who were not eunuchs. Now he occupied the room next door, the imperial bedchamber. He'd slept there longer than in any other quarters he'd ever had. Sometimes that just seemed a simple part of the way his world worked. Tonight, though, as often happened when he thought about it, he found it very strange.

  He opened the double doors. Inside the bedchamber, someone stirred. Ice ran up his back. He stooped to pluck a dagger from his scarlet boot, filled his lungs to shout for help from the Haloga guards at the entranceway to the imperial residence. Avtokrators of the Videssins too often died in unpeaceful ways.

  The shout died unuttered; Krispos quickly straightened. This was no assassin in his bed, only one of the palace serving maids. She smiled an invitation at him.

  He shook his head. "Not tonight, Drina," he said. "I told the esteemed sir I intended to go straight to sleep."

  "That's not what he said to me, your Majesty," Drina answered, shrugging. Her bare shoulders gleamed in the lamplight as she sat up taller in bed. The lamp left most of the rest of her in shadow, making her an even greater mystery than woman ordinarily is. "He said to come make you happy, so here I am."

  "He must have misheard." Krispos didn't believe that, not for a minute. Barsymes did not mishear his instructions. Every so often he simply decided not to listen to them. This seemed to be one of those nights. "It's all right, Drina. You may go."

  In a small voice, the maid said, "May it please your Majesty, I'd truly sooner not. The vestiarios would be most displeased if I left you."

  Who rules here, Barsymes or I? But Krispos did not say that, not out loud. He ruled the Empire, but around the palaces what was pleasing to the vestiarios had the force of law. Some eunuch chamberlains used their intimacy with the Avtokrator for their own advantage or that of their relatives. Barsymes, to his credit, had never done that. In exchange, Krispos deferred to him on matters affecting only the palaces.

  So now he yielded with such grace as he could: "Very well, stay if you care to. No one need know we'll sleep on opposite sides of the bed."

  Drina still looked worried but, like any good servant, knew how far she could safely push her master. "As you say, your Majesty." She scurried over to the far side of the bed. "Here, you rest where I've been lying. I'll have warmed it for you."

  "It's not winter yet, by the good god, and I'm no invalid," Krispos said with a snort. But he pulled his robe off over his head and draped it on a bedpost. Then he stepped out of his sandals, blew out the lamp, and got into bed. The warm silk of the sheets was kind to his skin. As his head met the down-filled pillow, he smelled the faint sweetness that said Drina had rested there before him.

  For a moment, he wanted her in spite of his own weariness. But when he opened his mouth to tell her so, what came out was an enormous yawn. He thought he excused himself, but fell asleep so fast he was never sure.

  He woke up some time in the middle of the night. That happened more and more often as the years went by. He needed a few seconds to realize what the round smoothness pressed against his side was. Drina breathed smoothly, easily, carefree as a sleeping child. Krispo envied her lack of worry, then smiled when he thought he was partly responsible for it.

  Now he did want her. When he reached over her shoulder to cup her breast in his hand, she muttered something drowsy and happy and rolled onto her back. She hardly woke up as he caressed her and then took her. He found that kind of trust strangely touching, and tried hard to be as gentle as he could.

  Afterward, she quickly slipped back into deep sleep. Krispos got out of bed to use the chamber pot, then lay down beside her again. He, too, was almost asleep when he suddenly wondered, not for the first time, whether Barsymes knew him better than he knew himself.

  The trouble with the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, Phostis thought, was that the windows were too big. The ceremonial hall, named back in the days when Videssian nobles actually ate reclining, was cooler in summer than most, thanks to those large windows. But the torches, lamps, and candles needed for nighttime feasts were lodestones for moths, mosquitoes, water bugs, even bats and birds. Watching a crisped moth land in the middle of a bowl of pickled octopus tentacles did not inflame the appetite. Watching a nightjar swoop down and snatch the moth out of the bowl made Phostis wish he'd never summoned his friends to the feast in the first place.

  He thought about announcing it was over, but that wouldn't do, either. Inevitably, word would get back to his father. He could already hear Krispos' peasant-accented voice ringing in his ears: The least you could do, son, is make up your mind.

  The imagined scolding seemed so real that he whipped his head around in alarm, wondering if Krispos had somehow snuck up behind him. But no—save for his own companions, he was alone here.

  He felt very much alone. One thing his father had succeeded in doing was to make him wonder who cared for him because he was himself and who merely because he was junior Avtokrator and heir to the Videssian throne. Asking the question, though, often proved easier than answering it. so he had lingering suspicions about almost everyone he knew.

  "You won't need to look over your shoulder like that forever, your Majesty," said Vatatzes. who was sitting at Phostis' right hand. He trusted Vatatzes further than most of his friends; being only the son of a mid-level logothete, the youth was unlikely to have designs on the crown himself. Now he slapped Krispos on the shoulder and went on, "Surely one day before too long, you'll be able to hold your feasts when and as you like."

  One more word and he would have spoken treason. Phostis' friends frequently walked that fine line. So far. to his relief, nobody had forced him to pretend not to hear something. He. too, wondered—how could he help but wonder?—how long his father would stay vigorous. It might be another day, it might be another twenty years. No way to tell without magic, and even that held risks greater than he cared to take. For one thing, as was but fitting, the finest sorcerous talent in the Empire shielded the Avtokrator's fate from those who would spy it out. For another, seeking to divine an Emperor's future was in and of itself a capital crime.

  Phostis wondered what Krispos was doing now. Administering affairs, probably: that was what his father usually did. A couple of years before. Krispos had tried to get him to share some of the burden. He'd tried, too, but it hadn't been pleasant work, especially because Krispos stood behind him while he shuffled through parchments.

  Again, he could almost hear his father: "Hurry up, boy! One way or another, you have to decide. If you don't do it, who will?"

  And his own wail: "But what if I'm wrong?"

  "You will be, sometimes." Krispos had spoken with such maddening certainty that he wanted to hit him. "You try to do a couple of things: You try not to make the same mistake twice, and you take the chance
to set one right later if it comes along."

  Put that way, it sounded so easy. But after a couple of days of case after complex case, Phostis concluded ease in anything—fishing, sword-swallowing, running an empire, anything—came only with having done the job for years and years. As most young men do, he suspected he was brighter than his father. He certainly had a better education: He was good at ciphering, he could quote secular poets and historians as well as Phos' holy scriptures, and he didn't talk as if he'd just stepped away from a plow.

  But Krispos had one thing he lacked: experience. His father did what needed doing almost without thinking about it, then went on to the next thing and took care of that, too. Meanwhile Phostis himself floundered and bit his lip, wondering where proper action lay. By the time he made one choice, three more had grown up to stare him in the face.

  He knew he'd disappointed his father when he asked to be excused from his share of imperial business. "How will you learn what you need to know, save by this work?" Krispos had asked.

  "But I can't do it properly," he'd answered. To him, that explained everything—if something didn't come easy, why not work at something else instead?

  Krispos had shaken his head. "Wouldn't you sooner find that out now, while I'm here to show you what you need, then after I'm gone and you find the whole sack of barley on your back at once?"

  The rustic metaphor hadn't helped persuade Phostis. He wished his family's nobility ran back farther than his father, wished he wasn't named for a poor farmer dead of cholera.

  Vatatzes snapped him out of his gloomy reverie. "What say we go find us some girls, eh, your Majesty?"

  "Go on if you care to. You'll probably run into my brothers if you do." Phostis laughed without much mirth, as much at himself as at Evripos and Katakolon. He couldn't even enjoy the perquisites of imperial life as they did. Ever since he'd discovered how many women would lie down with him merely on account of the title he bore, much of the enjoyment had gone out of the game.

  Some nobles kept little enclosures where they hand-raised deer and boar until the animals grew tame as pets. Then they'd shoot them. Phostis had never seen the sport in that, or in bedding girls who either didn't dare say no or else turned sleeping with him into as cold-blooded a calculation as any Krispos made in the age-long struggle between Videssos and Makuran.

  He'd tried explaining that to his brothers once, not long after Katakolon, then fourteen, seduced—or was seduced by—one of the women who did the palace laundry. Exalted by his own youthful prowess, he'd paid no heed whatever to Phostis. As for Evripos, he'd said only. "Do you want to don the blue robe and live out your life as a monk? Suit yourself, big brother, but it's not the life for me."

  Had he wanted a monastic life, it would have been easy to arrange. But the sole reason he'd ever considered it was to get away from his father. He lacked both a monkish vocation and a monkish temperament. It wasn't that he sought to mortify his flesh, but rather that he—usually—found loveless or mercenary coupling more mortifying than none.

  He often wondered how he would do when Krispos decided to marry him off. He was just glad that day had not yet arrived. When it did, he was sure his father would pick him a bride with more of an eye toward advantage for the imperial house than toward his happiness. Sometimes marriages of that sort worked as well as any others. Sometimes—

  He turned to Vatatzes. "My friend, you know not how fortunate you are. coming from a family of but middling rank. All too often, I feel my birth more as a cage or a curse than as something in which to rejoice."

  "Ah, your Majesty, you've drunk yourself sad, that's all it is." Vatatzes turned to the panpiper and pandoura player who made soft music as a background against which to talk. He snapped his fingers and raised his voice. "Here, you fellows, give us something lively now, to lift the young Majesty's spirits."

  The musicians put their heads together for a moment. The man with the panpipes set them down and picked up a kettle-shaped drum. Heads came up all through the Hall of the Nineteen Couches as his hands evoked thunder from the drumhead. The pandoura player struck a ringing, fiery chord. Phostis recognized the Vaspurakaner dance they played, but it failed to gladden him.

  Before long, almost all the feasters snaked along in a dance line, clapping their hands and shouting in time to the tune. Phostis sat in his place even when Vatatzes tugged at the sleeve of his robe. Finally, with a shrug, Vatatzes gave up and joined the dance. He prescribed for me the medicine that works for him, Phostis thought. He didn't want to be joyous, though. Discontent suited him.

  When he got to his feet, the dancers cheered. But he did not join their line. He walked through the open bronze doors of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, down the low, broad marble stairs. He looked up at the sky, gauging the time by how high the waning gibbous moon had risen. Somewhere in the fifth hour of the night, he judged—not far from midnight.

  He lowered his eyes. The imperial residence was separated from the rest of the buildings of the palace compound and Ncreened off by a grove of cherry trees, to give the Avtokrator and his family at least the illusion of privacy. Through the trees, Phostis saw one window brightly lit by candles or lamps. He nodded to himself. Yes, Krispos was at work there. With peasant persistence, his father kept on fighting against the immensity of the Empire he ruled.

  As Phostis watched, the window went dark. Even Krispos occasionally yielded to sleep, though Phostis was sure he would have evaded it if he could.

  Somebody stuck his head out through one of the Hall's many big windows. "Come on back, your Majesty." he called, voice blurry with wine. "It's just starting to get bouncy in here."

  "Go on without me," Phostis said. He wished he'd never gathered the feasters together. The ease with which they enjoyed themselves only made his own unhappiness seem worse by comparison.

  He absently swatted at a mosquito; there weren't as many out here, away from the lights. With the last lamps extin-guished in the imperial residence, it fell into invisibility behind the cherry grove. He started walking slowly in that direction; he didn't want to get there until he was sure his father had gone to bed.

  Haloga guardsmen stood outside the doorway. The big blond northerners raised their axes in salute as they recognized Phostis. Had he been a miscreant, the axes would have gone up. too, but not as a gesture of respect.

  As always, one of the palace eunuchs waited just inside the entrance. "Good evening, young Majesty," he said, bowing politely to Phostis.

  "Good evening, Mystakon," Phostis answered. Of all the eunuch chamberlains, Mystakon was closest to his own age and hence the one he thought most likely to understand and sympathize with him. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder how Mystakon felt, going through what should have been ripe young manhood already withered on the vine, so to speak. "Is my father asleep?"

  "He is in bed, yes," Mystakon answered with the peculiarly toneless voice eunuchs could affect to communicate subtle double meanings.

  Phostis, however, noticed no subtleties tonight. All he felt was a surge of relief at having got through another day without having to confront his father—or having his father confront him. "I will go to bed, too, prominent sir," he said, using Mys-takon's special title in the eunuch hierarchy.

  "Everything is in readiness for you, young Majesty," Mystakon said, a tautology: Phostis would have been shocked were his chamber not ready whenever he needed it. "If you would be so kind as to accompany me—"

  Phostis let the chamberlain guide him down the hallways he could have navigated blindfolded. In the torchlight, the souvenirs of long centuries of imperial triumph seemed somehow faded, indistinct. The conical helmet that had once belonged to a King of Kings of Makuran was just a lump of iron, the painting of Videssian troops pouring over the walls of Mashiz was a daub that could have depicted any squabble. Phostis shook his head. Was he merely tired, or was the light playing tricks on his eyes?

  His bedchamber lay as far from Krispos' as it could, in a tucked-away corner of the imp
erial residence. It had stood empty for years, maybe centuries, until he chose it as a refuge from his father not long after his beard began to sprout.

  The door to the chamber stood ajar. Butter-yellow light trickling through the opening said a lamp had been kindled. "Do you require anything further, young Majesty?" Mystakon asked. "Some wine, perhaps, or some bread and cheese? Or I could inquire if any mutton is left from that which was served to your father."

  "No, don't bother," Phostis said, more sharply than he'd intended. He tried to soften his voice. "I'm content, thank you. I just want to get some rest."

  "As you say, young Majesty." Mystakon glided away. Like many eunuchs, he was soft and plump. He walked in soft slippers, silently and with little mincing steps. With his robes swirling around him as he moved, he reminded Phostis of a beamy merchant ship under full sail.

  Phostis closed and barred the door behind him. He took off his robe and got out of his sandals. They were all-red, like his father's—about the only imperial prerogative he shared with Krispos, he thought bitterly. He threw himself down on the bed and blew out the lamp. The bedchamber plunged into blackness, and Phostis into sleep.

  He dreamed. He'd always been given to vivid dreams, and this one was more so than most. In it he found himself pacing, naked and fat, through a small enclosure. Food was everywhere-—mutton, bread and cheese, jar upon jar of wine.

  His father peered at him from over the top of a wooden fence. Phostis watched Krispos nod in sober satisfaction ... and reach for a hunting bow.

  Next thing he knew, he was awake, his heart pounding, his body bathed with cold sweat. For a moment, he thought the darkness that filled his sight meant death. Then full awareness returned. He sketched Phos' sun-circle above his chest in thanks as he realized his nightmare was not truth.

  That helped calm him, until he thought of his place at court. He shivered. Maybe the dream held some reality after all.