Harry Turtledove - Krispos Rising

The light from the single lamp in the bedchamber shifted shadows on her face to underscore her every change of expression. With that aid, Krispos saw he'd gained another point. "And so," she said, "I have no interest in men who seek to bed not me but my estates; nor in those who would reckon me only a prize possession, as if I were a hound; nor again in those who care just for my body and would not mind if Skotos dwelt behind my eyes. Do you see yourself in any of those groups?"

"No," Krispos said. "But in a way don't you fall into the first one, I mean with respect to me?" Tanilis stared at him. "You dare—" He admired her for the speed with which she checked herself. After a few seconds, she even laughed. "You have me, Krispos; by my own words I stand convicted. But here I am on the other end of the bargain; and I must say it looks different from how it seemed before."

To you, maybe , Krispos thought.

Tanilis went on,"A final reason I chose you, Krispos, at least after the first time, is that you learn quickly. One of the things you still need to know, though, is that sometimes you can ask too many questions."

She reached up and drew his face down to hers. But even as he responded to her teaching, he remained sure there was no such thing as asking too many questions. Finding the right way and time to ask them might be something else again, he admitted to himself. And this, he thought before all thought left him, was probably not it.

He woke the next morning to rain drumming on the roof. He knew that sound, though he was more used to the softer plashing of raindrops against thatch than the racket they made on tile. He hoped Tanilis' peasants were done with their harvest, then laughed at himself: they were done now, whether they wanted to be or not.

Tanilis, as was her way, had slipped off during the night. Sometimes he woke when she slid out of bed; more often, as last night, he did not. He wondered, not for the first time, if her servants knew they were lovers. If so, the cooks and stewards and serving maids gave no sign of it. He had learned from Iakovitzes' establishment, though, that being discreet was part of being a well-trained servant. And Tanilis tolerated no servant who was not.

He also wondered if Mavros knew. That, he doubted. Mavros was a good many things and would likely grow to become a good many more, but Krispos had trouble seeing him as discreet.

Her hair as perfectly in place as if he had never run his hands through it, Tanilis sat waiting for him in the small dining room. "You'll have a wet ride back to Opsikion, I fear," she said, waving him to the chair opposite her.

He shrugged. "I've been wet before."

"A good plate of boiled bacon should help keep you warm on the journey, if not dry."

"My lady is generous in all things," Krispos said. Tanilis' eyes lit as he dug in.

The road north had already begun to turn to glue. Krispos did not try to push his horse. If Iakovitzes could not figure out why he was late coming back to town, too bad for Iakovitzes.

Krispos wrung out his cloak in Bolkanes' front hall, then squelched up the stairs in wet boots to see how his master was doing. What he found in Iakovitzes' room startled him: the noble was on his feet, trying to stump around with two sticks. The only sign of Graptos was a lingering trace of perfume in the air.

"Hello, look what I can do!" Iakovitzes said, for once too pleased with himself to be snide.

"I've looked," Krispos said shortly. "Now will you please get back in bed where you belong? If you were a horse, excellent sir—" He'd learned the art of turning title to reproach, "—they'd have cut your throat for a broken leg and let it go at that. If you go and break it again from falling because you're on it too soon, do you think you deserve any better? Ordanes told you to stay flat at least another fortnight."

"Oh, bugger Ordanes," Iakovitzes said.

"Go ahead, but make him get on top."

The noble snorted. "No thank you."

Krispos went on more earnestly, "I can't give you orders, excellent sir, but I can ask if you'd treat one of your animals the way you're treating yourself. There's no point to it, the more so since with the fall rains starting you're not going anyplace anyhow."

"Mrmm," Iakovitzes said—a noise a long way from any sort of agreement, but one that, when the noble changed the subject, showed Krispos he had got through.

Iakovitzes continued to mend. Eventually, as Ordanes had predicted, he was able to move about with his sticks, lifting and planting them and his splinted leg so heavily that once people in the taproom directly below his chamber complained to Bolkanes about the racket he made. Since the innkeeper was getting, if not rich, then at least highly prosperous from his noble guest's protracted stay, he turned a deaf ear to the complaints. By the time Iakovitzes could stump about the inn, the rains made sure he did not travel much farther. Outside large towns, Videssos had few paved roads; dirt was kinder to horses' hooves. The price of that kindness was several weeks of impassable soup each fall and spring. Iakovitzes cursed every day that dawned gray and wet, which meant he did a lot of cursing.

Krispos tried to rebuke him. "The rain's a blessing to farmers, excellent sir, and without farmers we'd all starve." The words were several seconds out of his mouth before he realized they were his father's.

"If you like farmers so bloody well, why did you ever leave that pissant village you sprang from?" Iakovitzes retorted. Krispos gave up on changing his master's attitude; trying to get Iakovitzes to stop cursing was like trying to fit the moon in a satchel. The noble's bad temper seemed as constant as the ever-shifting phases of the moon.

And soon enough, Krispos came to curse the fall rains, too. As Iakovitzes grew more able to care for himself, Krispos found himself with more free time. He wanted to spend as much time as he could with Tanilis, both for the sake of his body's pleasure and, increasingly, to explore the boundaries of their odd relationship. Riding even as far as her villa, though, was not to be undertaken lightly, not in the fall.

Thus he was overjoyed, one cold blustery day when the rain threatened to turn to sleet, to hear her say, "I think I will go into Opsikion soon, to spend the winter there. I have a house, you know, not far from Phos' temple."

"I'd forgotten," Krispos admitted. That night, in the privacy of the guest chamber, he said, "I hope I'll be able to see you more often if you come to town. This miserable weather—"

Tanilis nodded. "I expect you will."

"Did you—" Krispos paused, then plunged: "Did you decide to go into Opsikion partly on account of me?"

Her laugh was warm enough that, though he flushed, he did not flinch. "Don't flatter yourself too much, my—well, if I call you my dear, you will flatter yourself, won't you? In any case, I go into Opsikion every year about this time. Should anything important happen, I might not learn of it for weeks were I to stay here in the villa."

"Oh." Krispos thought for a moment. "Couldn't you stay here and foresee what you need to know?"

"The gift comes as it will, not as I will," Tanilis said. "Besides, I like to see new faces every so often. If I'd prayed at the chapel here, after all, instead of coming into Opsikion for the holy Abdaas' day, I'd not have met you. You might have stayed a groom forever."

Reminded of Iakovitzes' jibe, Krispos said, "It's an easier life than the one I had before I came to the city." He also thought, a little angrily, that he would have risen further even if Tanilis hadn't met him. That he kept to himself. Instead, he said, "If you come to Opsikion, you might want to bring that pretty little laundress of yours—Phronia's her name, isn't it?—along with you."