Harry Turtledove - Krispos Rising

"Better." Iakovitzes nodded. "I won't ask for your name after all. Tell me how to reach the eparch's residence. Then you can go back to your petty games with this chap here. I suggest that while you're at it, you sword his beard as well as his wool."

Brison laughed again, quite merrily. The gate guard stuttered out directions. Iakovitzes rode past them. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not deigning to acknowledge either man any further. Krispos followed.

"I put that arrogant bastard in chain mail in his place nicely enough," Iakovitzes said once he and Krispos got into town, "but Khatrishers are too light-minded to notice when they've been insulted. Cheeky buggers, the lot of them." Failing to get under someone's skin always annoyed him. He swore softly as he rode down Opsikion's main street.

Krispos paid his master little attention; he was resigned to his bad temper. Opsikion interested him more. It was a little larger than Imbros; a year ago, he thought, it would have seemed enormous to him. After Videssos, it reminded him of a toy city, small but perfect. Even Phos' temple in the central square was modeled after the great High Temple of the capital.

The eparch's hall was across the square from the temple. Iakovitzes took out his frustration over leaving Brison in good spirits by baiting a clerk as mercilessly as he had the gate guard. His tactics were cruel, but also effective. Moments later, the clerk ushered him and Krispos into the eparch's office.

The local governor was a thin, sour-looking man named Sisinnios. "So you've come to dicker with the Khatrishers, have you?" he said when Iakovitzes presented his impressive scroll. "May you get more joy from it than I have. These days, my belly starts paining me the day before I talk with 'em and doesn't let up for three days afterward."

"What's the trouble, exactly?" Iakovitzes asked. "I presume we have documents to prove the land in question is ours by right?" Though he phrased it as a question, he spoke with the same certainty he would have used in reciting Phos' creed. Krispos sometimes thought nothing really existed in Videssos without a document to show it was there.

When Sisinnios rolled his eyes, the dark bags under them made him look like a mournful hound. "Oh, we have documents," he agreed morosely. "Getting the Khatrishers to pay 'em any mind is something else again."

" I'll fix that ," Iakovitzes promised. "Does this place boast a decent inn?"

"Bolkanes' is probably the best," Sisinnios said. "It's not far." He gave directions.

"Good. Krispos, go set us up with rooms there. Now, sir—" This he directed to Sisinnios, "—let's see these documents. And set me up a meeting with this Khatrisher who ignores them."

Bolkanes' inn proved good enough, and by the standards of Videssos the city absurdly cheap. Taking Iakovitzes literally, Krispos rented separate rooms for his master and himself. He knew Iakovitzes would be irked, but did not feel like guarding himself every minute of every night.

Indeed, Iakovitzes did grumble when he came to the inn a couple of hours later and discovered the arrangements Krispos had made. The grumble, though, was an abstracted one; most of his mind remained on the fat folder of documents he carried under one arm. He took negotiations seriously.

"You'll have to amuse yourself as best you can for a while, Krispos," he said as they sat down to a dinner of steamed prawns in mustard sauce. "Phos alone knows how long I'm liable to be closeted with this Lexo from Khatrish. If he's as bad as Sisinnios makes him out to be, maybe forever."

"If you please sir," Krispos said hesitantly, "may I join you at your talks?"

Iakovitzes paused with a prawn in mid-air. "Why on earth would you want to do that?" His eyes narrowed. No Videssian noble trusted what he did not understand.

"To learn what I can," Krispos answered. "Please remember, sir, I'm but a couple of seasons away from my village. Most of your other grooms know much more than I do, just because they've lived in Videssos the city all their lives. I ought to take whatever chances I have to pick up useful things to know."

"Hmm." That watchful expression did not leave Iakovitzes' face. "You're apt to be bored."

"If I am, I'll leave."

"Hmm," Iakovitzes said again, and then, "Well, why not? I'd thought you content with the horses, but if you think you're fit for more, no harm in your trying. Who can say? It may turn out to my advantage as well as yours." Now Iakovitzes looked calculating, a look Krispos knew well. One of the noble's eyebrows quirked upward as he went on, "I didn't bring you here with that in mind, however."

"I know." Krispos was beginning to learn to keep his own maneuvers hidden. Now his thoughts were that, if he made himself useful enough to Iakovitzes in other ways, the noble might give up on coaxing him into bed.

"We'll see how it goes," Iakovitzes said. "Sisinnios is setting up the meeting with the Khatrisher for around the third hour of the day tomorrow—halfway between sunrise and noon." He smiled a smile Krispos had seen even more often than his calculating look. "Reading by lamplight gives me a headache. I can think of a better way to spend the night..."

Krispos sighed. Iakovitzes hadn't given up yet.

Sisinnios said, "Excellency, I present to you Lexo, who represents Gumush the khagan of Khatrish. Lexo, here is the most eminent Iakovitzes from Videssos the city, and his spatharios Krispos."

The title the eparch gave Krispos was the vaguest one in the Videssian hierarchy; it literally meant "sword bearer," and by extension "aide." An Avtokrator's spatharios might be a very important man. A noble's spatharios was not. Krispos was grateful to hear it all the same. Sisinnios could have introduced him as a groom and let it go at that.

"And now, noble sirs, if you will excuse me, I have other business to which I must attend," the eparch said. He left a little more quickly than was polite, but with every sign of relief.

Lexo the Khatrisher was dressed in what would have been a stylish linen tunic but for the leaping stags and panthers embroidered over every inch of it. "I've heard of you, eminent sir," he told Iakovitzes, bowing in his seat. His beard and mustaches were so full and bushy that Krispos could hardly see his lips move. Among Videssians, such unkempt whiskers were only for priests.

"You have the advantage of me, sir." Iakovitzes would not let a foreigner outdo him in courtesy. "I am willing to assume, however, that any emissary of your khagan is sure to be a most able man."

"You are too gracious to someone you do not know," Lexo purred. His gaze swung to Krispos. "So, young fellow, you're Iakovitzes' spatharios, are you? Tell me, just where do you bear that sword of his?"

The Khatrisher's smile was bland. Even so, Krispos jerked as if stung. For a moment, all he could think of was wiping the floor with Lexo, who was more than twice his age and weighed more than he did though several inches shorter. But months of living with Iakovitzes had taught him the game was not always played with fists. Doing his best to pull his face straight, he answered, "Against his foes, and the Avtokrator's." He looked Lexo in the eye.

"Your sentiments do you credit, I'm sure," Lexo murmured. He turned back to Iakovitzes. "Well, eminent sir, how do you propose to settle what his excellency the good Sisinnios and I have been haggling over for months?"

"By looking at the facts instead of haggling." Iakovitzes leaned forward, discarding formal ways like a cast-off cloak. He touched the folder the eparch had given him. "The facts are here, you will agree. I have here copies of all documents pertaining to the border between Videssos and Khatrish for as long as your state has been such, rather than merely nomad bandits too ignorant to sign a treaty and too treacherous to honor one. The latter trait, I notice, you still display."