“I’D LIKE TO HAVE A BETTER LOOK AT THAT ONE, IF I COULD,” Marcus Aemilius Scaurus said, pointing to a necklace.
“Which?” asked the jeweler, a fat, bald little man with a curly black beard. The Roman pointed again. A grin flashed across the craftsman’s face; he bobbed a quick bow. “You have good taste, my master—that is a piece fit for a princess.”
The military tribune grinned, too, at the unintended truth in the jeweler’s sales talk. I intend it for one, he thought. That he did not say; what he did came out in a growl: “With a price to match, no doubt.” Best to start beating the fellow down before he named a figure, for Scaurus intended to have the necklace.
The jeweler, who had played this game many times, assumed a look of injured innocence. “Who spoke of money? Here,” he said, pressing the chain into Marcus’ hands, “take it over to the window; see if it is not as fine as I say. Once you are satisfied of that, we can speak further, if you like.”
The shop had its shutters flung wide. The sun shone bravely, though every so often the northerly breeze would send a patch of cloud in front of it, dimming for a moment the hundreds of gilded spheres that topped Phos’ temples, large and small, all through Videssos the city. It was still winter, but spring was in the air. Gulls scrawked high overhead; they lived in the Videssian Empire’s capital the year around. Closer by, the tribune heard a chiffchaff, an early arrival, whistle from a rooftop.
He hefted the necklace. The thick, intricately worked chain had the massy, sensuous feel of pure gold. He held it close to his face; months of work with tax receipts in the imperial chancery were making him a trifle nearsighted. The nine square-cut emeralds were perfectly matched in size and color, a deep, luminous green. They would play up Alypia Gavra’s eyes, he thought, smiling again. Between them were eight oval beads of mother-of-pearl. In the shifting light their elusive color shimmered and danced, as if seen underwater.
“I’ve seen worse,” Marcus said grudgingly as he walked back to the jeweler behind his counter, and the bargaining began in earnest. Both of them were sweating by the time they agreed on a price.
“Whew!” said the artisan, dabbing at his forehead with a linen rag and eyeing the tribune with new respect. “From your fairness and accent I took you for a Haloga, and Phos the lord of the great and good mind knows how free the northerners are with their gold. But you, sir, you haggle like a city man.”
“I’ll take that for a compliment,” Scaurus said. Videssians often mistook the tribune for one of the big, towheaded north-men who served the Empire as mercenaries. Most of his Romans were short, olive-skinned, and dark of hair and eye, like the folk into whose land they had been swept three and a half years before, but he sprang from the north Italian town of Mediolanum. Some long-forgotten Celtic strain gave him extra inches and yellow hair, though his features were aquiline rather than Gallic sharp or blunt like a German’s—or, in this world, a Haloga’s.
The jeweler was wrapping the necklace in wool batting to protect the stones. Marcus counted out goldpieces to pay him. The artisan, taking no chances, counted them again, nodded, and opened a stout iron strongbox. He dropped them in, saying, “And I owe you a sixth. Would you like it in gold or silver?”
“Silver, I think.” Videssian sixth-goldpieces were shoddy things, stamped from the same dies as the one-third coins but only half as thick. They were fairly scarce, and for good reason. In a purse they bent and even broke, and they were more likely to be of short weight or debased metal than more common money.
Marcus put the four silver coins in his belt-pouch and tucked the necklace away inside his tunic. He would have to cross the plaza of Palamas to get back to his room in the palace complex, and light-fingered men flocked to the great square no less than honest merchants. The jeweler tipped him a wink, understanding perfectly. “You’re a careful one. You wouldn’t want to lose your pretty so soon after you get it.”
“No indeed.”
The jeweler bowed, and held the bow until Scaurus left his shop. He waved as the tribune walked past the window. Well pleased, the Roman returned the salute.
He walked west along Middle Street toward the plaza of Palamas. Videssians bustled all around him, paying him no mind. Most of the men wore thick, plainly cut tunics and baggy woolen trousers like his own. Despite the chilly weather, a few favored the long brocaded robes that were more often used as ceremonial garb than street wear. Town toughs swaggered along in their own costume: tunics with great billowing sleeves pulled tight at the wrists and clinging hose dyed in as many bright colors as they could get. Some of them shaved the backs of their heads. The Namdaleni—sometimes mercenaries, sometimes deadly foes for Videssos—had that style, too, but with them it served a purpose: to let their heads fit their helmets more snugly. For Videssos’ ruffians it was simply a fad.
The tribune jumped when one of the roughnecks shouted his name and came up to him, hand outstretched. Then he recognized the fellow, more by his bad teeth than anything else. “Hello, Arsaber,” he said, clasping hands. The bravo had been one of the men who threw open the gates to the city when Thorisin Gavras took the imperial throne from the usurper Ortaias Sphrantzes, and had fought bravely enough on the Romans’ side.
“Good to see you, Ronam,” Arsaber boomed, and Marcus gritted his teeth—that idiot usher’s mispronunciation at a long-ago banquet looked to be immortal. Cheerfully oblivious, the Videssian went on, “Meet my woman, Zenonis, and these three lads are my sons: Tzetzes, Stotzas, and Boethios. Love, boys, this is the famous Scaurus, the one who beat the Namdaleni and the bureaucrats both.” He winked at the tribune. “My bet is, the pen-pushers’re tougher.”
“Some ways,” Marcus admitted. He nodded to Zenonis, a small, happy-looking woman of about thirty in flowered silk headscarf, rabbit-fur jacket, and long wool skirt; gravely shook hands with Tzetzes, who was about six. The other two boys were too young to pay much attention to him—Stotzas was two or so, while Zenonis carried Boethios, a tiny babe swaddled in a blanket.
Arsaber stood by, beaming, as the tribune made small talk with his family. The ruffian would have been the very picture of domesticity but for his outlandish clothes and the stout bludgeon that hung on his belt. After a while he said, “Come on, dear, we’ll be late to cousin Dryos’. Roast quails,” he explained to Scaurus, pumping his hand again.
The tribune caught himself looking down at his fingers; it was a good idea to count them after shaking hands with Arsaber. He surreptitiously patted his chest to make sure the smiling rogue had not managed to filch away his necklace.
The chance meeting saddened him; it took a while to figure out why. Then he realized that Arsaber’s family reminded him achingly of the one he had built up until Helvis found her native Namdalener ties more important than the ones that bound her to him and deserted him, helping her brother Soteric and several other important prisoners escape in the process. The child they had been expecting would only be a little younger than Boethios—but Helvis was in Namdalen now, and Scaurus did not know if it was boy or girl.
In vanished Italy, in a youth he would never see again, he had trained in the Stoic school of philosophy, had been taught to stay untroubled in the face of sickness, death, slander, and intrigue. The sentiment was noble, but, he feared, past his attainment after her betrayal of their love.
The thought of Italy brought to mind the remaining Romans, the survivors of everything this world could throw at them. In many ways he missed them more even than Helvis and his children. They alone shared with him a language, indeed an entire past that was alien to Videssos and all its neighbors. He knew they had spent an easy winter at their garrison duty in the western town of Garsavra; that much Gaius Philippus’ three or four brief notes had made clear. But the senior centurion, though a soldier without peer, was only sketchily literate, and his scrawled words did not call up the feeling of being with the legionaries that Scaurus needed in his semi-exile in the capital.
Boots squelching through dirty, half-melted snow, he walked past the block-long red granite pile of a building that housed the imperial archives, various government ministries, and the city prison. His somber mood lifted; he smiled and reached inside his tunic to touch the necklace once more. For all he knew, Alypia Gavra might be going through the archives now, looking for material to add to her history. So she had been doing on Midwinter’s Day a few months past, when she happened to encounter the tribune as she left the government offices.
That night a friendship had become much more. Their meetings since, though, were far fewer than Marcus would have wanted. As Thorisin’s niece, Alypia was hemmed round with the elaborate ceremonial of an ancient empire, the more so since the Emperor had no legitimate heir.
The Roman tried not to think of the danger he courted along with her. If discovered, he could expect scant mercy. Thorisin sat none too secure on his throne. The Emperor would only see him as an ambitious mercenary captain seeking to improve his own position through an affair with the princess. Scaurus had done great service for him, but he had also flouted Thorisin’s will more than once—and, worse perhaps, proved right in doing so.
The plaza of Palamas drove such worries from his head. If Videssos the city was a microcosm of the polyglot Empire of Videssos, then its great square made a miniature of a miniature. Goods from every corner of the world appeared there, and merchants from every corner of the world to sell them. A few nomadic Khamorth crossed the Videssian Sea from the imperial outpost at Prista to hawk the products of the Pardrayan steppe—tallow, honey, wax—at the capital. A couple of huge Halogai, their hair in yellow braids, had set up a booth for the furs and amber of their northern home. Despite the war with Yezd, caravans still reached Videssos from the west with silks and spices, slaves and sugar. A Namadalener trader spat at the feet of a bored-looking Videssian who had offered him a poor price for his cargo of ale; another was displaying a table of knives. A Khatrisher, a lithe little man who looked like a Khamorth but acted like an imperial, dickered with a factor over what he could get for the load of timber he had brought to the city.
And along with the foreigners were the Videssians themselves: proud, clever, vivid, loud, quick to take offense, and as quick to give it. Minstrels strolled through the surging crowds, singing and accompanying themselves on drums, lutes, or pandouras, which had a more plangent, mournful tone. Marcus, who had no ear for music, ignored them as best he could. Some of the locals were not so kind. “Why don’t you drown that poor cat and have done?” somebody shouted, whereupon the maligned musician broke his lute over the critic’s head. The people around them pulled them apart.
Shaven-headed priests and monks of Phos moved here and there in their blue robes, some exhorting the faithful to pray to the good god, others, on some mission from temple or monastery, haggling with as much vigor and skill as any secular. Scribes stood behind little portable podiums, each with stylus or quill poised to write for folk who had money but no letters. A juggler cursed a skinny carpenter who had bumped him and made him drop a plate. “And to Skotos’ ice with you,” the other returned. “If you were any good, you would have caught it.” Courtesans of every description and price strutted and pranced, wearing bright, hard smiles. Touts sidled up to strangers, praising this horse or sneering at that.
Venders, some in stalls, others wanderers themselves, cried their wares: squid, tunny, eels, prawns—as a port, the city ate great quantities of seafood. There was bread from wheat, rye, barley; ripe cheeses; porridge; oranges and lemons from the westlands; olives and olive oil; garlic and onions; fermented fish sauce. Wine was offered, most of it too sweet for Scaurus’ taste, though that did not stop him from drinking it. Spoons, goblets, plates of iron, brass, wood, or solid silver were offered; drugs and potions allegedly medicinal, others allegedly aphrodisiacal; perfumes; icons, amulets, and books of spells. The tribune was cautious even toward small-time wizards here in Videssos, where magic was realer than it had been in Rome. Boots, sandals, tooled-leather belts; hats of straw, leather, linen, cloth-of-gold; and scores more whose yells Marcus could not catch because they drowned each other out.
A shout like the roar of a god came from the Amphitheater, the huge oval of limestone and marble that formed the plaza of Palamas’ southern border. A seller of dried figs grinned at Scaurus. “A long shot came in,” he said knowingly.
“I’d bet you’re right.” The tribune bought a handful of fruit. He was popping them into his mouth one at a time when he nearly ran into an imperial cavalry officer, Provhos Mourtzouphlos.
Mourtzouphlos lifted an eyebrow; scorn spread across his handsome, aristocratic features. “Enjoying yourself, outlander?” he asked ironically. He brushed long hair back from his forehead and scratched his thickly bearded chin.
“Yes, thanks,” Marcus answered with as much aplomb as he could muster, but he felt himself flushing under the Videssian’s sardonic eye. Even though he had ten years on the brash young horseman, who was probably not yet thirty, Mourtzouphlos was native-born, which more than canceled the advantage of age. And acting like a barbarian bumpkin in front of him did not help either. Mourtzouphlos was one of the many imperials with a fine contempt for foreigners under any circumstances; that the Roman was a successful captain only made him doubly suspicious to the other.
“Thorisin tells me we’ll be moving against the Yezda in the Arandos valley after the roads west dry,” the Videssian said, carefully scoring a couple of more points against Scaurus. His casual use of the Emperor’s given name bespoke the renown he had won in the campaign with Gavras against Namdalener invaders around Opsikion in the east, while the tribune toiled unseen in the westlands against the great count Drax and more Namdaleni. And his news was from some council to which the Roman, in disfavor for letting Drax get away in the escape Helvis had devised, had not been invited.
But Marcus had a comeback ready. “I’m sure we’ll do well against them,” he said. “After all, my legionaries have held the plug of the Arandos at Garsavra the winter long.”
Mourtzouphlos scowled, not caring to be reminded of that. “Well, yes,” he grudged. “A good day to you, I’m sure.” With a flick of his cloak, he turned on his heel and was gone.
The tribune smiled at his stiff retreating back. There’s one for you, you arrogant dandy, he thought. Mourtzouphlos’ imitation of the Emperor’s shaggy beard and unkempt hair annoyed Scaurus every time he saw him. Thorisin’s carelessness about such things was part of a genuine dislike for formality, elegance, or ceremony of any sort. With the cavalryman it was pure pose, to curry favor with his master. That cape he had flourished was thick maroon samite trimmed in ermine, while he wore a belt of gold links and spurred jackboots whose leather was soft and supple enough for gloves.
When Marcus came on a vender with a tray of smoked sardines, he bought several of those and ate them, too, hoping Mourtzouphlos was watching.
Rather apprehensively, the tribune broke the sky-blue wax seal on the little roll of parchment. The note inside was in a thin, spidery hand that he knew at once, though he had not seen it for a couple of years: “I should be honored if you would attend me at my residence tomorrow afternoon.” With that seal and that script, the signature was hardly necessary: “Balsamon, ecumenical Patriarch of the Videssians.”
“What does he want?” Scaurus muttered. He came up with no good answer. True, he did not follow Phos, which would have been enough to set off almost any ecclesiastic in the Empire. Balsamon, though, was not typical of the breed. A scholar before he was made into a prelate, he brought quite un-Videssian tolerance to the patriarchal office.
All of which, Marcus thought, leaves me no closer to what he wants with me. The tribune did not flatter himself that the invitation was for the pleasure of his company; the patriarch, he was uneasily aware, was a good deal more clever than he.
His Stoic training did let him stop worrying about what he could not help; soon enough he would find out. He tucked Balsamon’s summons into his beltpouch.
The patriarchal residence was by Phos’ High Temple in the northern part of the city, not far from the Neorhesian harbor. It was a fairly modest old stucco building with a domed roof of red tiles. No one would have looked at it twice anywhere in the city; alongside the High Temple’s opulence it was doubly invisible.
The pine trees set in front of it were twisted with age, but green despite the season. Scaurus always thought of the antiquity of Videssos itself when he saw them. The rest of the shrubbery and the hedgerows to either side had not yet come into leaf and were still brown and bare.
The tribune knocked on the stout oak door. He heard footsteps inside; a tall, solidly made priest swung the door wide. “Yes? How may I serve you?” he asked, eyeing Marcus’ manifestly foreign figure with curiosity.
The Roman gave his name and handed the cleric Balsamon’s summons, watched him all but stiffen to attention as he read it. “This way, please,” the fellow said, new respect in his voice. He made a smart about-turn and led the tribune down a hallway filled with ivory figurines, icons to Phos, and other antiquities.
From his walk, his crisp manner, and the scar that furrowed his shaved pate, Marcus would have given long odds that the other had been a soldier before he became a priest. Likely he served as Thorisin Gavras’ watchdog over Balsamon as well as servant. Any Emperor with an ounce of sense kept an eye on his patriarch; politics and religion mixed inextricably in Videssos.
The priest tapped at the open door. “What is it, Saborios?” came Balsamon’s reedy voice, an old man’s tenor.
“The outlander is here to see you, your Sanctity, at your command,” Saborios said, as if reporting to a superior officer.
“Is he? Well, I’m delighted. We’ll be talking a while, you know, so why don’t you run along and sharpen your spears?” Along with having his guess confirmed, the tribune saw that Balsamon had not changed much—he had baited his last companion the same way.
But instead of scowling, as Gennadios would have done, Saborios just said, “They’re every one of them gleaming, your Sanctity. Maybe I’ll hone a dagger instead.” He nodded to Scaurus. “Go on in.” As the Roman did, the priest shut the door behind him.
“Can’t get a rise out of that man,” Balsamon grumbled, but he was chuckling, too. “Sit anywhere,” he told the tribune, waving expansively; the order was easier given than obeyed. Scrolls, codices, and writing tablets lined every wall of his study and were stacked in untidy piles on the battered couch the patriarch was using, on several tables, and on both the elderly chairs in the room.
Trying not to disturb the order they were in—if there was any—Marcus moved a stack of books from one of the chairs to the stone floor and sat down. The chair gave an alarming groan under his weight, but held.
“Wine?” Balsamon asked.
“Please.”
With a grunt of effort, Balsamon rose from the low couch, uncorked the bottle, and rummaged through the chaos around him for a couple of cups. Seen from behind, the fat old gray-beard in his shabby blue robe—a good deal less splendid than Saborios’, to say nothing of less clean—looked more like a retired cook than a prelate.
But when he turned round to hand Scaurus his wine—the cup was chipped—there was no mistaking the force of character stamped on his engagingly ugly features. When one looked at his eyes, the pug nose and wide, plump cheeks were forgotten. Wisdom dwelt in this man, try though he sometimes did to disguise it with a quirk of bushy, still-black brows.
Under his eyes, though, were dark pouches of puffy flesh; his skin was pale, with a faint sheen of sweat on his high forehead. “Are you well?” Marcus said in some alarm.
“You’re still young, to ask that question,” the patriarch said. “When a man reaches my age, either he is well or he is dead.” But his droll smile could not hide the relief with which he sank back onto the couch.
He raised his hands above his head, quickly spoke his faith’s creed: “We bless thee, Phos, Lord with the right and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.” Then he spat on the floor in rejection of the good god’s foe Skotos. The Videssian formula over food or drink completed, he drained his cup. “Drink;” he urged the Roman.
He cocked an eyebrow when Marcus failed to go through the ritual. “Heathen,” he said. In most priests’ mouths, it would have been a word to start a pogrom; from Balsamon it was simply a label, and perhaps a way to get a sly dig in at the tribune.
Of its kind, the wine was good, though as usual Scaurus longed for something less cloying. He beat Balsamon to his feet and poured a second cup for both of them. The patriarch nodded and tossed it down; settling cautiously back into his seat, Marcus worked at his more slowly.
Balsamon was studying him hard enough to make him fidget. Age might have left the patriarch’s eyes red-tracked with veins, but they were none the less piercing for that. He was one of the few people who gave the tribune the uncomfortable feeling that they could read his thoughts. “How can I help your Sanctity?” he asked, attempting briskness.
“I’m not your Sanctity, as we both know,” the patriarch retorted, but again no fanatic’s zeal was in his voice. When he spoke again, it was with what sounded like real admiration. “You don’t say a lot, do you? We Videssians talk too bloody much.”
“What would you have me say?”
“ ‘What would you have me say?’ ” Balsamon mimicked. His laugh set his soft paunch quivering. “You sit there like a natural-born innocent, and anyone who hadn’t seen you in action would take you for just another blond barbarian to be fooled like a Haloga. Yet somehow you prosper. This silence must be a useful tool.”
Without a word, Marcus spread his hands and shrugged. Balsamon laughed harder; he had a good laugh, one that invited everyone who heard it to share the joke. The tribune found himself smiling in response to it. But when he said, “Truly, I don’t call this past winter prospering,” his smile slipped.
“Some ways, no,” the patriarch said. “We’re none of us perfect, nor lucky all the time either. But some ways …” He paused, scratching his chin. His voice was musing as he went on. “What do you suppose she sees in you, anyway?”
It was a good thing Marcus’ cup was on the arm of his chair; had it been in his hand, he would have dropped it. “She?” he echoed, hoping he only sounded foolish and not frightened.
“Alypia Gavra, of course. Why did you think I sent for you?” Balsamon said matter-of-factly. Then he saw Scaurus’ face, and concern replaced the amusement on his own. “I didn’t mean to make you go so white. Finish your wine, get some wind back in your sails. She asked me to ask you here.”
Mechanically, the tribune drank. Too much was happening too fast, alarm and relief jangling together like discordant lute strings. “I think you’d best tell me more,” he said. Another fear was in there, too; had she had enough of him, and tried to pick an impersonal way to let him know?
He straightened in his chair. No—were it that, Alypia had the decency, and the courage, to tell him to his face. His memories were whispering to him; that was all. Having been abandoned by one woman he had trusted and loved, it was hard to be sure of another.
The twinkle was back in Balsamon’s eyes, a good sign. He said blandly, “She said you might be interested to learn that she had scheduled an afternoon appointment with me three days from now, to pick my brains for what I recall of Ioannakis III, the poor fool who was Avtokrator for a couple of unhappy years before Strobilos Sphrantzes.”
“And so?” Alypia had been working on her history long before the Romans came to Videssos.
“Why, only that if she happened to go someplace else when she was supposed to be here, in my senility and decrepitude I don’t think I’d know the difference, and I’d babble on about Ioannakis all the same.”
The tribune’s jaw fell; amazed gladness shouted in him. Balsamon watched, all innocence. “I must say this senility and decrepitude of yours are moderately hard to see,” Marcus said.
Did one of the patriarch’s eyelids dip? “Oh, they come and go. For instance, I suspect I shan’t remember much of this little talk of ours tomorrow. Sad, is it not?”
“A pity,” Scaurus agreed gravely.
Then Balsamon was serious once more, passing an age-spotted hand in front of his face. “You had better deserve her and the risk she runs for your sake.” He looked the Roman up and down. “You just may. I hope you do, for your sake as well as hers. She always was a good judge of such things, but with what she suffered she cannot afford to be wrong.”
Marcus nodded, biting his lip. After Alypia’s father—Thorisin’s older brother Mavrikios—was killed at Maragha, young Ortaias Sphrantzes had claimed the throne and gone through the forms of marriage with her to help cement his place. But Ortaias’ uncle Vardanes was the true power in that brief, unhappy reign and took her from his nephew as a plaything. The tribune’s hands tightened into fists whenever he thought of those months. He said, “That once, I wished I were a Yezda, to give Vardanes the requital he deserved.”
Balsamon’s mobile features grew grave as he studied Scaurus. “You’ll do, I think.” He stayed somber. “You hazard yourself in this, too,” he said. The tribune began a shrug, but Balsamon’s eyes held him still. “If you persist, greater danger will spring from it than any you have ever known, and only Phos can guess if you will win free in the end.”
The patriarch’s gaze seemed to pierce the tribune; his voice went slow and deep. Marcus felt the hair prickle on his arms and at the nape of his neck. Videssian priests had strange abilities, many of them—healing and all sorts of magery. The Roman had never thought Balsamon more than an uncommonly wise and clever man, but suddenly he was not so sure. His words sounded like foretelling, not mere warning.
“What else do you see?” Marcus demanded harshly.
The patriarch jerked as if stung. The uncanny concentration faded from his face. “Eh? Nothing,” he said in his normal voice, and Scaurus cursed his own abruptness.
After that, the talk turned to inconsequential things. Marcus found himself forgetting to be annoyed that he had not learned more. Balsamon was an endlessly absorbing talker, whether dissecting another priest’s foibles, discoursing on his collection of ivory figurines from Makuran—“Another reason to hate the Yezda. Not only are they robbers and murderous Skotos-lovers, but they’ve cut off trade since they began infesting the place.” And he swelled up in what looked like righteous wrath—or laughing at himself.
He picked at a bit of dried eggyolk on the threadbare sleeve of his robe, commenting, “You see, there is a point to my untidiness after all. Had I been wearing that—” He pointed to a surplice of cloth-of-gold and blue silk, ornamented with rows of gleaming seed pearls. “—when I was at breakfast the other day, I might have been liable to excommunication for soiling it.”
“Another reason for Zemarkhos,” Scaurus said. The fanatic priest, holding Amorion in the westlands in defiance of Yezda and Empire alike, had hurled anathemas at Balsamon and Thorisin both for refusing to acclaim his pogrom against the Vaspurakaners driven into his territory by Yezda raiders—their crime was not worshiping Phos the same way the Videssians did.
“Don’t twit me over that one,” Balsamon said, wincing. “The man is a wolf in priest’s clothing, and a rabid wolf at that. I tried to persuade the local synod that chose him to reconsider, but they would not. ‘Unwarranted interference from the capital,’ they called it. He reminds me of the tailor’s cat that fell into a vat of blue dye. The mice thought he’d become a monk and given up eating meat.”
Marcus chuckled, but the patriarch’s stubby fingers drummed on his knee; his mouth twisted in frustration. “I wonder how many he’s burned since power fell into his lap—and what more I could have done to stop him.” He sighed, shaking his head.
In an odd way, his gloom reassured the tribune. After his own failures, it did not hurt to be reminded that even as keen a man as Balsamon could sometimes come up short.
Saborios, certainly as efficient as a soldier if he was not one, had the door open for Scaurus even as he reached for the latch.
Alypia Gavra sat up in the narrow bed and poked Marcus in the ribs. He yelped. She touched the heavy gold of the necklace. “You are a madman for this,” she said. “It’s so beautiful I’ll want to wear it, and how can I? Where will I say it came from? Why won’t anyone have seen it before?”
“A pox on practicality,” Scaurus said.
She laughed at him. “Coming from you, that’s the next thing to blasphemy.”
“Hrmmp.” The Roman leaned back lazily. “I thought it would look good on you and I was right—the more so,” he smiled, “when it’s all you’re wearing.”
He watched a slow flush of pleasure rise from her breasts to her face. It showed plainly; she was fairer of skin than most Videssian women. He sometimes wondered if her dead mother had a touch of Haloga blood. Her features were not as sharply sculpted as those of her father or uncle, and her eyes were a clear green, rare among the imperials.
Mischief danced in them. “Beast,” she said, and tried to poke him again. He jerked away. Once he had made the mistake of grabbing her instead and seen her go rigid in unreasoning panic; after Vardanes, she could not stand being restrained in any way.
The sudden motion nearly tumbled both of them out of bed. “There, you see,” the tribune said. “That poking is a habit of mine you never should have picked up. Look what it brings on.”
“I like doing things as you do,” she said seriously. That brought him up short, as such remarks of hers always did. Helvis had tried to push him toward her own ways, which only made him more stubborn in clinging to his. It was strange, hearing from a woman that those were worth something.
He gave a sober nod, one suited to acknowledging something a legionary might have said, then grunted in annoyance, feeling very much a fool. He sat up himself and kissed her thoroughly. “That’s better,” she said.
Chickens clucked and scratched below the second-story window, whose shutters were flung wide to let in the mild air. Marcus could see the ponderous bulk of Phos’ High Temple pushing into the sky not far away. He and Alypia had managed one meeting at this inn during the winter, so had it become a natural trysting place when she was supposed to be visiting Balsamon.
The innkeeper, a stout, middle-aged man named Aetios, shouted at a stableboy for forgetting to curry a mule. The fellow’s eyes had sparked with recognition when Scaurus and the princess asked for a room, but the tribune was sure it was only because he had seen them before, not that he knew Alypia by sight. And in any case, with him, silver was better than wine for washing unpleasant memories away. His lumpish face came alive at the sweet sound of coins jingling in his palm.
Alypia made as if to get up, saying, “I really should go see Balsamon, if only for a little while. That way neither he nor I can be caught in a lie.”
“If you must,” Marcus said grumpily. With the ceremony that surrounded her as niece and closest kin of the Avtokrator, she could steal away but rarely, and the chance she took in doing so hung like a storm cloud over their meetings. He savored every moment with her, never sure it would not be the last.
As if reading his thoughts, she clung to him, crying, “What will we do? Thorisin is bound to find out, and then—” She came to a ragged stop, not wanting to think about “and then.” In his short-tempered way, Thorisin Gavras was a decent man, but quick to lash out at anything he saw as a threat to his throne. After the strife he had already faced in his two and a half years on it, the tribune found it hard to blame him.
Or he would have, had the Emperor’s suspicions affected anyone but him. “I wish,” he said with illogical resentment, “your uncle would marry and get himself an heir. Then he’d have less reason to worry about you.”
Alypia shook her head violently. “Oh, aye, I’d be safe then—safe to be married off to one of his cronies. He dares not now, for fear whoever had me would use me against him. Let his own line be set, though, and I become an asset to bind someone to him.”
She stared at nothing; her nails bit his shoulder. Through clenched teeth she said, as much to herself as to him, “I will die before I lie again with a man not of my choosing.”
Scaurus did not doubt she meant exactly that. He ran a slow hand up the smooth column of her back, trying to gentle her. “If only I were a Videssian,” he said. That a princess of the blood could be given to an outland mercenary captain, even one more perfectly trusted than himself, was past thinking of in haughty Videssos.
“Wishes, wishes, wishes!” Alypia said. “What good are they? All we can truly count on is our danger growing worse the longer we go on, and only Phos knows when we will be free of it.”
The tribune stared; in Videssos he was never sure where coincidence stopped and the uncanny began. “Balsamon told me something much like that,” he said slowly, and at Alypia’s inquiring glance recounted the strange moment when the patriarch had seemed to prophesy.
When he was done, he was startled to see her pale and shaken. She did not want to explain herself, but sat silent beside him. But he pressed her, and at last she said, “I have known him thus before. He gazed at you as if to read your soul, and there was none of his usual sport in his words.” It was statement, not question.
“You have it,” Scaurus acknowledged. “When did you see him so?”
“Only once, though I know the fit has taken him more often than that. ‘Phos’ gift,’ he calls it, but I think curse would be a better name. He has spoken of it to me a few times; that he trusts me to share such a burden is the finest compliment I’ve ever had. You guessed well, dear Marcus,” she said, touching his hand: “He sometimes has the prescient gift. But all he ever learns with it is of destruction and despair.”
The Roman whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “It is a curse.” He shook his head. “And how much more bitter for a joyful man like him. To see only the coming trouble, and to have to stay steady in the teeth of it … He’s braver than I could be.”
Alypia’s face reflected the same distress the tribune felt.
“When was it you saw him?” he asked her again.
“He was visiting my father, just before he set out for Maragha. They were arguing and trading insults—you remember how the two of them used to carry on, neither meaning a word of what he said. Finally they ran out of darts to throw, and Balsamon got up to leave. You could see it coming over him, like the weight of the world. He stood there for a few seconds; my father and I started to ease him back down to a chair, thinking he’d been taken ill. But he shrugged us away and turned to my father and said one word in that—certain—voice.”
“I know what you mean,” Scaurus said. “What was it?”
“ ‘Good-bye.’ ” Alypia was a good mimic; the doom she packed into the word froze the Roman for a moment. She shivered herself at the memory. “No use pretending it was just an ordinary leave-taking, though my father and Balsamon did their best. Neither believed it; I’ve never seen Balsamon so flat in a sermon as he was at the High Temple the next day.”
“I remember that!” Marcus said. “I was there, along with the rest of the officers. It troubled me at the time; I thought we deserved a better farewell than we got. I guess we were lucky to have any.”
“Was that luck, as it turned out?” she asked, her voice low. She did not wait for a reply, but rushed on, “And now he sees peril to you. I’ll leave you, I swear it, before I let you come to harm because of me.” But instead of leaving, she clung to him with something close to desperation.
“Nothing the old man said made me think separating would matter,” said Scaurus. “Whatever happens will happen as it should.” The Stoic maxim did nothing to ease her; his lips on hers were a better cure. They sank back together onto the bed. The bedding sighed as their weight pressed the straw flat.
Some time later she reached up to touch his cheek and smiled, as she often did, at the faint rasp of newly shaved whiskers under her fingers. “You are a stubborn man,” she said fondly; in a land of beards, the tribune still held to the smooth-faced Roman style. She took his head between her palms. “Oh, how could I think to leave you? But how can I stay?”
“I love you,” he said, hugging her until she gave a startled gasp. It was true but, he knew too well, not an answer.
“I know, and I you. How much safer it would be for both of us if we did not.” She glanced out the window, exclaimed in dismay when she saw how long the shadows had grown. “Let me up, dearest. Now I really must go.”
Marcus rolled away; she scrambled to her feet. He admired her slim body for a last few seconds as she raised her arms over her head to slide on the long dress of deep gold wool; geometrically decorated insets of silk accented her narrow waist and the swell of her hips. “It suits you well,” he said.
“Quite the courtier today, aren’t you?” She smiled, slipping on sandals. She patted at her hair, which she wore short and straight. With a woman’s practicality, she said, “It’s lucky I don’t fancy those piled-up heads of curls that are all the rage these days. They couldn’t be repaired so easily.”
She wrapped an orange linen shawl embroidered with flowers and butterflies around her shoulders and started for the door. “The necklace,” Marcus said reluctantly. He was out of bed himself, fastening his tunic closed.
Her hand flew to her throat, but then she let it drop once more. “Balsamon can see it before I tuck it into my bag. After all, what other chance will I have to show it, and to show how thoughtful—to say nothing of daft—you were to give it to me?”
He felt himself glow with her praise; he had not heard much—nor, to be fair, given much—as he and Helvis quarreled toward their disastrous parting. Alypia gasped at the kiss he gave her. “Well!” she said, eyes glowing. “A bit more of that, sirrah, and Balsamon will get no look at my bauble today.”
The tribune stepped back. “Too dangerous,” he said with what tatters of Roman hardheadedness he had left. Alypia nodded and turned to go. As she did, something rattled inside her purse. Marcus laughed. “I know that noise, I’ll wager: stylus and waxed tablet. Who was it the patriarch said, Ioannakis II?”
“The third; the second is three hundred years dead.” She spoke with perfect seriousness; the history she was composing occupied a good deal of her time. When Scaurus caught her eye, she said, “There are pleasures and pleasures, you know.”
“No need to apologize to me,” he said quickly, and meant it. Were it not for her active wit and sense of detail, the two of them could not have met even half so often as they did, and likely would have been discovered long since.
“Apologize? I wasn’t.” Her voice turned frosty on the instant; she would not stand being taken lightly over her work.
“All right,” he said mildly, and saw her relax. He went on, “You might want to compare notes with my friend Gorgidas when the embassy to the Arshaum comes back from the steppe.” With a sudden stab of loneliness, he wondered how the Greek physician was faring; despite his acerbic front, he was what Homer called “a friend to mankind.”
Many Videssians would have raised an eyebrow at the idea of learning anything from outlanders, but Alypia said eagerly, “Yes, you’ve told me how the folk in the world you came from write history, too. How valuable it will be for me to have such a different view of the art—we’ve been copying each other for too long, I fear.”
She looked out the window again, grimaced in annoyance. “And now for a third time I’ll try and go. No, say not one word more; I really must be gone.” She stepped into his arms, kissed him firmly but quickly, and slipped out the door.
Marcus stayed behind for a few minutes; they chanced being seen together as little as they could. Meeting more than once at the same place was a risk in itself, but the inn’s convenience to the patriarchal residence weighed against the danger—and Aetios, once paid, asked no questions.
To spin out the time, the tribune went downstairs to the taproom and ordered a jack of ale; sometimes he preferred it to the sweet Videssian wine. Aetios handed him the tall tarred-leather mug with a knowing smirk, then grunted when the Roman stared back stonily, refusing to rise to the bait. Muttering to himself, the innkeeper went off to serve someone else.
The taproom, almost empty when Scaurus had come to the inn early in the afternoon, was filling as day drew to a close. The crowd was mostly workingmen: painters smeared with paint; bakers with flour; carpenters; tailors; a barber, his mustaches and the end of his beard waxed to points; bootmakers; an effeminate-looking fellow who was probably a bathhouse attendant. Many of them seemed regulars and called greetings to each other as they saw faces they knew. A barmaid squeaked indignantly when the barber pinched her behind. One of the painters, who was guzzling down wine, started a song, and half the tavern joined him. Even Marcus knew the chorus: “The wine gets drunk, but you get drunker.”
He finished his ale and picked his way out through the growing crowd. He heard someone say to a tablemate, “What’s the dirty foreigner doing here, anyway?” but his size—to say nothing of the yard-long Gallic sword that swung on his hip—let him pass unchallenged.
He bore the blade wherever he went. He might have laughed at the power of the druids when he was serving with Caesar’s army, but their enchantments, wrapped in his sword and Viridovix’, had swept the legionaries from Gaul to Videssos. And in Videssos, with sorcery a fact of life, the two enchanted weapons showed still greater power. Not only were they unnaturally strong in the attack, cleaving mail and plate, but the druids’ marks stamped into the blades turned aside harmful magic.
The great golden globes on spires above the High Temple glowed ruddily in the light of the setting sun. After a brief glance their way, Marcus turned his back and walked south toward Middle Street. His progress was slow; traffic clogged Videssos’ twisting lanes: people afoot; women on donkeys or in litters; men riding mules and horses; and carts and wagons, some drawn by as many as half a dozen beasts, full of vegetables, fruits, and grain to keep the ever-hungry city fed. Animals brayed; teamsters clapped hands to belt-knives as they wrangled over a narrow right-of-way; ungreased axles screeched.
“Well, go ahead, walk right past me. I’ll pretend I don’t know you either,” said an indignant voice at the tribune’s elbow.
He spun around. “Oh, hello, Taso. I’m sorry; I really didn’t see you.”
“A likely story, with this mat of fuzz on my chin.” The ambassador from Khatrish sniffed. A small, birdlike man, Taso Vones would have looked perfectly Videssian except that, instead of trimming his beard as did all imperials save priests, he let it tumble in bushy splendor halfway down his chest. He loathed the style, but his sovereign the khagan insisted on it as a reminder that the Khatrisher ruling class ultimately sprang from Khamorth stock. That they had been intermarrying with their once-Videssian subjects for something close to eight hundred years now was not allowed to interfere with the warrior tradition.
Vones cocked his head to one side, reminding Scaurus more than ever of a sparrow: bright, perky, unendingly curious. “You haven’t been out and about much, have you? Thorisin finally let you off the string, eh?” he guessed shrewdly.
“You might say so,” the Roman answered, casting about for a story that would cover him. Whatever it was going to be, he knew he would have to work it into the conversation naturally; just throwing it out would make the envoy take it for a lie and, being gleefully cynical about such things, call him on it at once.
But Vones did not seem much interested in Marcus’ answer; he was full of news of his own. “Had we not met this way, I’d have come to see you in the next day or two.”
“Always a pleasure.”
“Always a nuisance, you mean,” the Khatrisher chuckled. Marcus’ denials were, on the whole, sincere; Taso’s breezy frankness was a refreshing relief from the Videssian style, which raised innuendo to a high art. Even Vones, though, hesitated before going on. “I’ve news from Metepont, if you care to hear it.”
Scaurus stiffened. “Do you?” he said in as neutral a tone as he could manage. Metepont lay on the west coast of the island Duchy of Namdalen; more to the point, it was Helvis’ town. Sighing, the tribune said, “You’d best give it to me. I’d sooner have it from you than most other people I could think of.”
“For which praise I thank you.” Vones looked faintly embarrassed, an expression the Roman had not seen on him before. At last he said, “You have a daughter there. My news must be weeks old by now, but from all I know, mother and child were both doing well. She named it Emilia. That’s not a Namdalener name; does it come from your people?”
“Hmm? Yes, it’s one of ours,” Marcus said absently. No reason to expect the Khatrisher to remember his gentile name, not when he’d only heard it a couple of times years ago. He wondered whether Helvis was twisting the knife further, or thought of it as some sort of apology. He shook his head. A child he would never see … “How did you learn about it?”
“As you might expect—from the great count Drax. He’s hiring mercenaries again, to replace the regiment you broke up for him last year. He had a message of his own for you, too—said he’d like to have you on his side for a change, and he’d make it worth your while to switch.”
With studied deliberation, Scaurus spat into the dirt between two flagstones. “He’s a fool to want me. Any man who’d turn his coat once’ll turn it twice.”
Vones laughed at his grimness. “He also said he knew you’d tell him to go to the ice, so get your chin off your chest.”
Marcus stayed somber. He could think of a way for Drax to have a chance of prying him away from Videssos: send Thorisin the same message he’d given Taso, and let the Emperor’s suspicion do the rest. He wondered if that would occur to the Namdalener. It might; Drax had the mind of a snake. While many islanders aped Videssian ways, the great count could match the imperials at their own intrigues.
Scaurus shook his head again, slowly, like a man bedeviled by bees. The past, it was clear, was not done stinging him yet.
“Hello, look who’s coming up behind you,” Taso Vones said, snapping his reverie. “Everyone’s favorite Videssian officer.” The tribune turned to see who had earned that sardonic compliment. He gave a grunt of laughter when he spotted Provhos Mourtzouphlos halfway down the block, almost hidden behind a cart piled high with apples.
The cavalryman looked for a moment as though he would spurn their company, but came up when Taso waved to him. The little Khatrisher bowed from the waist, a paradigm of politeness. “Good evening to you, your excellency. Out slumming, I see.” Instead of his usual coxcomb’s clothes, Mourtzouphlos was in an ill-fitting homespun tunic, with baggy, mud-colored trousers tucked into torn boots.
He had lost none of his arrogance, though. Looking down his long nose at Vones, he said, “If you must know, easterner, I was hoping a show of poverty would help beat a knave down on the price of a filly.” That showed more wit than Marcus would have expected from him.
“And what of you two?” the Videssian went on. “Hatching plots?” He did not bother hiding his disdain.
“Foiling them, if I can,” Scaurus said. He gave Mourtzouphlos Taso’s news of Drax, adding, “Since you see so much of the Avtokrator these days, best you pass the warning on.”
The sarcasm rolled off Mourtzouphlos without sticking, though Taso Vones suffered a sudden coughing fit and had to be slapped on the back. Watching the cavalryman trying to be gracious in his thanks was satisfaction enough for Marcus, though he recovered too quickly to suit the Roman. He had hoped for several minutes of awkwardness, but got only a few sentences’ worth.
“Will there be anything more?” Mourtzouphlos asked, for all the world as if Scaurus and Vones had approached him rather than the other way round. When they were silent, he jerked his head in a single short nod. “A pleasant evening to you both, then.” He started down the street as though they did not exist.
He actually jumped when Vones called after him, “Did you buy that filly, my lord?”
“Eh?” Mourtzouphlos blinked, collected himself, and said with a scowl, “No; I found some ne’er-do-well’s been riding her hard. She’s of no value jaded so.” He chuckled unpleasantly. “An interesting experience, all the same.” And he was off again, swaggering in his shabby boots.
“Self-satisfied bastard,” Marcus said as soon as he was out of earshot.
“Isn’t he, though?” Taso did a wicked imitation of the officer’s nasty laugh. “Like most of that sort, he’s satisfied with very little.” He plucked at Scaurus’ sleeve. “Come with me, why don’t you, if you have some gold in your pouch? Come anyway; I’ll stake you. I’m for a dice game at a Namdalener tin-merchant’s house—you know how the islanders love to gamble. And old Frednis sets a rare table, too. Just wait till you taste the smoked oysters—ah! And the asparagus and crabmeat …” He ran his tongue over his lips, like a cat that scents cream.
The Roman patted guiltily at his midriff; these long dull weeks hunched over a desk were putting weight on him. Well, he told himself, you don’t have to eat much. “Why not?” he said.
Stumbling in the darkness, Scaurus climbed the stone stairs to his small chamber in the bureaucrat’s wing of the Grand Court. The hallways, full of the bustle of imperial business during the day, echoed to the slap of his boots. He could still hear Taso Vones singing, faint in the distance, as the Khatrisher lurched off toward his quarters in the Hall of the Ambassadors.
He had not lied, the tribune thought muzzily. Frednis the Namdalener did not stint his guests, not with food nor drink. And the dice were hot; new gold clinked in Scaurus’ belt pouch. At any Roman game he would have been skinned, but to the Videssians a double one was a good throw, not a loser: “Phos’ suns,” they called it.
Pale shafts of moonlight from narrow outer windows guided him down the corridor. He carefully counted doorways as he passed them; the chambers to either side of his own were mere storerooms.
Then his hand was on his sword hilt, for a line of light from a lamp, yellow as butter, slipped out from beneath the bottom of his door. He slid the blade free as quietly as he could. Whoever was inside—sneak thief? spy? assassin?—would regret it. His first thought was of Avshar and wizardry, but the druids’ marks on his blade did not glow as they did when magic was near. Only a man, then.
He seized the latch and threw the door wide as he sprang into the room. “Who the—?” he started to roar, and then half choked as his shout was swallowed in a gurgle of amazement.
Gaius Philippus stood in a wary fencer’s crouch beside the tribune’s bed, gladius at guard position; the senior centurion had not lived to grow gray by taking chances. When he saw it was Scaurus coming through the doorway, he swung the shortsword up in salute. “Took you long enough,” he remarked. “Must be past midnight.”
“What are you doing here?” Marcus said, stepping forward to clasp his hand. Not until he felt the other’s callused palm against his own did he wholly believe Frednis’ wine had not left him seeing things.
“Cooling my heels, till now,” the stocky veteran replied, grinning at the tribune’s confusion. That was literally true; he was barefoot, his unlaced caligae kicked into a corner, one with its hobnailed sole flipped over. He had made himself comfortable during his wait in other ways as well, if the empty jug of wine not far away was any indication.
“And beyond that?” Marcus was smiling, too, mainly at the pleasure of feeling sonorous Latin roll off his tongue; he had not used his birthspeech all winter long. And Gaius Philippus was a Roman’s Roman: brave, practical, without much imagination, but stubborn enough to bull ahead on any course he set himself.
His presence was a marker of that last trait, for he explained: “Your bloody damn fool pen-pushers here, sir, haven’t sent our lads a single goldpiece the last two months. If they don’t see some money pretty fornicating quick they’ll start plundering the countryside round Garsavra, and then it’s Hades out to lunch for discipline, as well you know. That we can’t have.”
Scaurus nodded; the legionaries took more delicate handling as mercenaries for Videssos than they had with the full weight of Roman military tradition on them. It was what remained of that tradition that made them as effective as they were in the Empire, where most infantry was no better than rabble. But with their pay in arrears they were tinder waiting for a spark.
The tribune asked, “Why didn’t you write me?”
“For one thing, these cursed dirt roads the Videssians insist on using for the sake of their precious horses were arse-deep in mud till a couple of weeks ago, and what were the odds of a letter getting through? For another, I’m not sure I could write that much. It doesn’t come easy to me, you know.
“Besides—” Gaius Philippus set his jaw as he came to the meat of things. “—you want something done right, do it yourself. I want you to find me the seal-stamper who bungled this business so I can tell him where to head in. If the damned imperials are going to hire troops to do their fighting for ’em, they’d best treat ’em right. And one of ’em’s going to remember it from now on.”
Scaurus already knew who the guilty bureaucrat was; the picture of the senior centurion chewing him out in his best parade-ground bellow was irresistible delightful. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I want to watch: it’ll be like throwing a hiveful of wasps on a desk and then whacking it with a stick.”
“Aye, won’t it just?” Gaius Philippus said with no less anticipation. He gave a satisfied nod. Not for the first time, Marcus thought his features belonged on a sestertius or denarius—his neat, short cap of iron-gray hair; scarred, jutting chin; angular cheekbones; and proud aquiline nose made him ideal for the starkly realistic portraiture of a Roman coin.
The veteran waved round the bare little room, which held no furniture save Scaurus’ mattress, a chair that doubled as lampstand, and a much-battered pine wardrobe with a Videssian obscenity carved into one side.
“I thought you lived softer than this,” he said. “If this is all Thorisin’s giving you, you’d do better coming back to us. When will you, anyway?”
Marcus spread his hands helplessly. “It’s not that simple. I’m not in good odor here, after letting Drax go.”
“Oh. That,” Gaius Philippus said with distaste. Of course he knew the story; the legionaries Scaurus had sent back after the great count escaped would have brought it with them. The senior centurion hesitated, then went on in what was meant for sympathy, “A plague take the scheming bitch.” Anger and rough contempt filled his voice; beyond his body’s pleasure, he had scant use for women.
Caught between gratitude and the irrational urge to spring to Helvis’ defense, the tribune said nothing. After an awkward few seconds Gaius Philippus changed the subject. “The lads miss you, sir, and asked me to give you their best.”
“Did they?” Marcus said, touched. “That’s good of them.” A thought struck him. “Who’s in charge there, with you in the city?”
“Well, with you not there after Junius Blaesus, uh, died—” Gaius Philippus got through that as quickly as he could; Helvis had knifed the junior centurion. “—I bumped Sextus Minucius up to his spot.” Seeing Marcus raise an eyebrow, he said, “I know he’s young for it, but he’s shaping well. He’s a worker, that one, and nobody’s fool. He’s tough enough to flatten anyone who talks back, too.”
“All right. You know best, I’m sure.” With more than thirty years in the legions, the senior centurion made a better judge of soldiers than Scaurus himself, and the tribune was wise enough to realize it. He did ask, though, “How do the outlanders take to him?” Since coming to Videssos, the legionaries had had a good many local recruits to help fill out their ranks; in his Romanness, Gaius Philippus might not even have seen their acceptance of Minucius as a problem.
But his answer showed he had. “Gagik gets on with him fine.” Bagratouni headed a two-hundred-man contingent of Vaspurakaners, organized as an oversize maniple; driven from their homeland by the Yezda and then caught in Zemarkhos’ pogrom, they fought with a dour, savage valor under their canny nakharar. Gaius Philippus’ next sentence further reassured Scaurus: “Minucius isn’t too proud to ask Bagratouni what he thinks, either.”
“That’s fine,” the tribune said. “I’m glad I had the sense to do the same, with you.” He had learned the warrior’s trade now, but when he joined Caesar in Gaul, he had been a raw political appointee, very much dependent on his senior centurion. Gaius Philippus grunted at the praise. Marcus asked, “How’s Zeprin the Red faring?”
The veteran grunted again, but with a different intonation. “He still just wants to be a common trooper, worse luck.”
Marcus shook his head. “Too bad. There’s a good man wasting himself.” The burly Haloga had been a marshal in Mavrikios Gavras’ Imperial Guards, but after he survived Maragha when the Emperor and the rest of the guards regiment were slain he blamed himself and turned his back on officer’s rank. Soldiering was all he knew, but he refused to endanger anyone but himself by his actions.
“And Pakhymer?” Scaurus asked.
This time it was a snort from Gaius Philippus. “Pakhymer is—Pakhymer.” The two Romans grinned at each other. Laon Pakhymer’s brigade of light cavalry from Khatrish was not strictly a part of their command, but the two forces had served side by side since the Maragha campaign. Pakhymer’s easy going, catch-as-catch-can style had driven the methodical senior centurion quietly mad all that time. However he did it, though, he generally got results.
“What else do I need to tell you?” Gaius Philippus said to himself, absently scratching at one of the puckered scars on his right forearm; his left, protected by his scutum, was almost unmarked. He brightened. “Oh, yes—a pair of new underofficers: Pullo and Vorenus.”
“Both at once, eh?” Marcus asked slyly.
“Aye, both at once,” Gaius Philippus said, not rising to the tribune’s teasing. “You think I had the ballocks to promote one and not the other?” The two legionaries had fought for years over which made the better soldier, a feud that ended only when they saved each other’s lives in a skirmish with Drax’ Namdaleni.
“No quarrel, no quarrel,” Scaurus said in some haste. He sighed; the wine he had drunk at Frednis’ was making him low. “Seems you’ve done a splendid job, Gaius. I don’t know why anyone would miss me; you’ve managed everything just as I would have.”
“Don’t say that, sir!” Gaius Philippus cried, real alarm in his voice. “Begging your pardon, but I wouldn’t have your bloody job on a bet. Oh, I can handle this end of it: who to promote, who to slap down, which march route to pick, how to dress my line. But the rest of it, especially in this mercenary’s game—picking your way through the factions as Thorisin and the pen-pushers square off against each other, knowing when to keep your mouth shut, keeping some shriveled old turd of an officer happy so he doesn’t bugger you the minute you turn your back … Thank the gods the road from the city to Garsavra’s been all over mud what with winter and all, so the damned Videssians weren’t able to pull me eight ways at once.” He threw up his hands. “Take it back, please. We need you for it!”
It was probably the longest speech Marcus had ever heard him make. Moved, he reached out and clasped the senior centurion’s hand. “Thanks, old friend,” he said softly.
“For what? The truth?” Gaius Philippus said, outwardly as scornful as ever of any show of emotion. But his hard features could not quite hide his pleasure, and he shuffled his feet awkwardly. He fetched up against the empty jug of wine, which rolled away, bumping on the slightly uneven floor. The veteran followed it with his eyes. “You know,” he said, “that wasn’t nearly enough. We should have more.”
Marcus swallowed a groan. He was already expecting a thick head, but he could not turn the senior centurion down. Gamely he said, “Why not?” for the second time that evening. Come morning, he knew, he would have his answer, but he went out even so.