Harry Turtledove - Krispos Rising

"Does he sneak in enough to make it worth his while?"

"That's a sharp question—I thought you were Iakovitzes' groom, not his bookkeeper. The only answer I know is, he must think so or he wouldn't keep doing it. But not this run, though." The patrol leader's eyes, almost the only part of his face visible, narrowed in satisfaction.

Iakovitzes howled with glee when Krispos told him the story that evening. They were sitting much closer than usual to Bolkanes' big fire; Krispos had a mug of hot spiced wine close at hand. He smiled gratefully when one of the barmaids refilled it. Iakovitzes said. "It'll serve Gumush right. Nothing I enjoy more than a thief having to pay for his own thievery."

"Won't he just raise the price later on to make up for it?' Krispos asked. "The legitimate price, I mean."

"Probably, probably," Iakovitzes admitted. "But what do I care? I don't much fancy amber. And no matter how hard hesqueezes, the world doesn't hold enough gold for him to buy his way out of embarrassment." Contemplating someone else's discomfiture would put Iakovitzes in a good mood if anything would.

A couple of nights later, Tanilis proved coldly furious that the amber had been seized. "I made the arrangements for it myself with Gumush," she said. "Four parts in ten off the going rate here, which still allowed him a profit, seeing as the tariff is five parts in ten. He already has half the money, too. Do you suppose he'll send it back when he ransoms his courier?" Her bitter laugh told how likely that was.

"But ..." Krispos scratched his head. "The Avtokrator needs the money from the tariffs, to pay for soldiers and furs and roads and—"

"And courtesans and fine wines and fripperies," Tanilis finished for him; she sounded as scornful of Anthimos III as Pyrrhos had. "But even if it were only as you say, I need money, too, for the good of my own estates. Why should I pay twice as much for amber as I need to for the sake of a handful of rich men in Videssos the city who do nothing for me?"

"Don't they?" Krispos asked. "Seems to me I wouldn't have come here with my master if the men in the city weren't worried about the border with Khatrish. Or are you such a queen here that your peasants would have fought off the nomad horsemen on their own?" He recalled the Kubratoi descending on his vanished boyhood village as if it had happened only the day before.

Tanilis frowned. "No, I am no queen, so what you say has some truth. But the Avtokrator and Sevastokrator chose peace with Khatrish for their own reasons, not mine."

Remembering Petronas' ambitions against Makuran, Krispos knew she was right. But he said,"It works out the same for you either way, doesn't it? If it does, you ought to be willing to pay for it." He and his fellow villagers had been willing to pay anything within reason to prevent another invasion from Kubrat. Only the Empire's demands reaching beyond reason had detached him from the land, and the rest of the villagers were there still.

"You speak well, and to the point," Tanilis said. "I must confess, my loyalty is to my lands first, and to the Empire of Videssos only after that. What I say is true of most nobles, I think, almost all those away from Videssos the city. To us, the Empire seems more often to check our strength than to protect it, and so we evade demands from the capital as best we can."

The more Krispos talked with Tanilis, the more complex his picture of the world grew. Back in his village, he'd thought of nobles as agents of the Empire and thanked Phos that the freeholders among whom he'd lived owed service to no lord. Yet Tanilis seemed no ally to the will of Videssos the city, but rather a rival. But she was no great friend of the peasants, either; she simply wanted to control them herself in place of the central government. Krispos tried to imagine how things looked from Petronas' perspective. Maybe one day he'd ask the Sevastokrator—after all, he'd met him. He laughed a little, amused at his own presumption.

"What do you find funny?" Tanilis asked.

Krispos' cheeks grew warm. Sometimes when he was with Tanilis, he felt he was a scroll she could unroll and read as she wished. Annoyed at himself for being so open, and sure he could not lie successfully, he explained.

She took him seriously. She always did; he had to give her that. Though he was certain he often seemed very young and raw to her, she went out of her way not to mock his enthusiasms, even if she let him see she did not share many of them. Even more than the sweet lure of her body, the respect she gave him made him want to spend time with her, in bed and out of it. He wondered if this was how love began.

The thought so startled him that he missed her reply. She saw that, too, and repeated herself: "If Petronas would tell you, I daresay you'd learn a great deal. A regent who can keep the reins of power even after his ward comes of age—and in such a way that the ward does not hate him—is a man to be reckoned with."

"I suppose so." Krispos knew he sounded abstracted and hoped Tanilis would not figure out why. Loving her could only complicate his life, the more so as he knew she did not love him.

Slow as the flow of syrup on ice, news dripped into Opsikion through the winter. Krispos heard of the death of khagan Omurtag weeks after it happened; a son named Malomir ascended to the rule of Kubrat. In Thatagush, north and east of Khatrish, a band of Haloga raiders under a chief called Harvas Black-Robe sacked a whole string of towns and smashed the army that tried to drive them away. Some nobles promptly joined forces with the Halogai against their khagan. The King of Kings of Makuran sent a peace embassy to Videssos the city. Petronas sent it back. "By the lord with the great and good mind, I gave Petronas what he wanted here," Iakovitzes said when that report reached him. "Now let's see what he does with it." His chuckle had a gloating tone to it. "Not as much as he wants, I'll wager."

"No?" Krispos helped his master out of a chair. The noble could walk with a stick these days, but he still limped badly; his left calf was only half as big around as his right. Krispos went on carefully, "The Sevastokrator strikes me as a man who generally gets what he wants."

"Oh, aye, he is. Here, I'm all right now. Thanks." Iakovitzes hissed as he put weight on his healing leg. Ordanes had given him a set of exercises to strengthen it. He swore through clenched teeth every time he began them, but never missed a day.

Now he took a couple of steps toward the stairway that led up to his room before he continued. "But what Petronas wants is to overthrow Makuran, and that won't happen. Stavrakios the Great couldn't do it, not when the Empire of Videssos ran all the way up to the border of the Haloga country. I suppose the Makurani Kings of Kings dream of worshiping their Four Prophets in the High Temple in Videssos the city, and that won't happen, either. If Petronas can bite off a chunk of Vaspurakan, he'll have done something worthwhile, at any rate. We can use the metals there and the men, even if they are heretics."

A guardsman coming off duty threw open the door to Bolkanes' taproom. Though he slammed it again right away, Krispos and Iakovitzes both shivered at the icy blast he let in. He stood in the front hall brushing snow off his clothes and out of his beard.

"Beastly weather," Iakovitzes said. "I could ride now, but what's the point? The odds are too good I'd end up a block of ice somewhere halfway between here and the city, and that would be a piteous waste. Come to think of it, you'd freeze, too."

"Thank you for thinking of me," Krispos said mildly.

Iakovitzes cocked an eyebrow. "You're getting better at that innocent-sounding comeback, aren't you? Do you practice in front of a mirror?"

"Er—no." Krispos knew his fencing with Tanilis helped sharpen both his wits and his wit. He hadn't realized anyone else would notice.