Harry Turtledove - Krispos Rising

Empress sat when the strength suddenly flowed from his body like wine pouring from a jug. All at once, the tray seemed to weigh tons. Despite his desperate grip, it crashed to the floor. Anthimos and Dara both jumped; the Empress let out a squeak. "That wasn't very good, Krispos," Anthimos said, laying a finger by the side of his nose. "Even if you think the meal is bad, you should give us the chance to fling it about."

Krispos tried to answer, but only a croak came from his mouth; he was not strong enough to force his tongue to shape words. As Dara began to ask, "Are you all right?" his legs gave out from under him and he slid bonelessly down into the messy ruins of the dinner he had brought.

By luck, he landed with his head to one side. That let him keep breathing. Had he fallen face down in spilled soup or gravy, he surely would have drowned, for he could not have shifted to clear the muck from his mouth and nose.

He heard Dara scream. He could not see her; his eyes pointed in the wrong direction and he could not move them. Each breath was a separate struggle for air. His heart stuttered, uncertain in his chest.

Anthimos stooped beside him and rolled him onto his back. Breathing grew a precious trifle easier. "What's wrong, Krispos?" the Emperor demanded, staring down at him. Fetched by the racket of the dropped tray and by Dara's scream, servants rushed into the dining room. "He's had some sort of fit, poor beggar," Anthimos told them.

Barsymes said, "Let's get him to his bed. Here, Tyrovitzes, help me move him out of this muck." Grunting, the two eunuchs pulled Krispos away from the spilled food. Barsymes clicked tongue between teeth. "On second thought, we'd better clean him up before we put him into bed. We'll just take him out to the hallway first." As if he were a sack of lentils, they dragged him away from the table and out of the dining room.

"Put him down a moment," Tyrovitzes said. Barsymes helped ease Krispos to the marble flooring. Tyrovitzes went back into the dining room. "Your Majesties, I am sorry for the disturbance. Someone will be along directly, I assure you, to clean up what was unfortunately spilled and to serve you a fresh meal."

Had he been able to, Krispos would have snickered. So sorry the vestiarios turned to a puddle of mush right before your eyes, your Majesties. A fresh meal will be along directly, so don't worry about it. But had someone else been stricken in the same way, he knew he also would have tried to keep things running smoothly. That was how life worked in the palaces.

"Krispos, can you hear me? Can you understand me?" Barsymes asked. Though the answer to both was yes, Krispos could not give it. He could only stare up at Barsymes. The eunuch's smooth face lengthened in thought. "If you do understand, can you blink your eyes?"

The effort was like lifting a boulder as big as he was, but Krispos managed to close his eyelids. The world went frighteningly dark. Sweat burst out on his face as he fought to open his eyes again. At last he succeeded. He felt as worn as if a hundred harvests had all been pressed into one day.

"He has his wits, then," Tyrovitzes said. "Yes." Barsymes laid a cool hand on Krispos' forehead. "No fever, I'd say. The good god willing, we don't have to fear catching—whatever this is." The chamberlain undid Krispos' robe and eased his arms out of it as if he were a doll. "Fetch water and towels, if you would, Tyrovitzes. We'll wash him and put him to bed and see if he gets better."

"Aye, what else can we do?" Tyrovitzes' sandals flapped down the hall.

Barsymes squatted on his heels, studying Krispos. Watching him in return, Krispos realized how helpless he was. Any small remembered slight, any resentment the eunuch still felt at being passed over for a whole man, and Petronas' magic would prevail even if it had not—quite—killed him outright.

Tyrovitzes came back, setting a bucket next to Krispos' head. Without a word, the two eunuchs set to work. The water was chilly. Krispos found himself shivering. Movements not under his conscious control seemed to function, after a fashion. But that blink had been plenty to exhaust him; he could not have raised a finger to save his soul from Skotos' ice.

The eunuchs hauled him down the corridor to the chamber that had once been Skombros'. "One, two—" Barsymes said. At "three," he and Tyrovitzes lifted Krispos and put him on the bed.

Krispos stared up at the ceiling; he had no other choice. If this was what the Sevastokrator's magic had done to him while he was warded, he wondered what would have become of him without protection. About the same thing, he supposed, that happened to a bull when the fellow at the slaughterhouse hit it between the eyes with his hammer. He would have dropped down dead, and that would have been that.

Barsymes came back a little later with a wide, flat pan. As gently as he could, he worked it under Krispos' buttocks. "You won't want to soil the sheets," he observed. Krispos did his best to put a thank-you look on his blank face. That hadn't occurred to him. A lot about being completely unable to care for himself hadn't occurred to him. Over the dreadfully long, dreadfully slow course of that summer and fall, he found out about all of them.

The palace eunuchs kept him alive. They cared for members of the imperial family at all phases of life. Sometimes they treated Krispos like an infant, sometimes like a senile old man. Longinos held him upright while Barsymes massaged his throat to get him to swallow broth, a spoonful at a time. He watched himself grow thinner day by day.

Physicians poked and prodded him and went away shaking their heads. Anthimos ordered a healer-priest to come see him. The priest fell into a trance, but woke from it baffled and defeated. "I am sorry, your Majesty, but the illness has no cause upon which my talent can light," he told the Avtokrator.

That was only a few days after Krispos was stricken. For those first few days, and for a while afterward, Anthimos was constantly in his chamber, constantly making suggestions to the eunuchs about his care. Some of the suggestions were good ones; he urged the eunuchs to roll Krispos from side to side periodically to slow the start of bedsores. But when Krispos showed no signs of leaping to his feet and getting on with his duties as if nothing had happened, the Emperor began to lose interest not so much in him but in his case, and came to see him less and less often.

Although he did not leap to his feet, ever so slowly Krispos did begin to mend. Had he stayed as weak and limp as he was when the magic laid him low, he likely would have died, of slow starvation or from fluid puddling in his flaccid lungs. The milestones he reached were small ones, at first so small he scarcely noticed them himself, for who pays attention to being able to blink, or to cough? From blinking and coughing, though, he progressed to swallowing on his own, and then, later still, to chewing soft food.

He still could not speak. That required control more delicate than his muscles could yet achieve. Being able to smile again, and to frown, seemed as valuable to him. Babies used no more to let people know how they felt.

Krispos especially valued the return of expressiveness to his face when Dara visited him. She did not go into his chamber often certainly not as often as Anthimos had after he was laid low But where Anthimos lost interest in him because his condition changed so slowly, Dara kept coming back.

Once in a while she would take a bowl and spoon from one of the eunuchs, prop Krispos up with pillows, and feed him a meal. Barsymes, Tyrovitzes, Longinos, and the rest of the chamberlains were gentler and neater than she was. Krispos did not care. He was part of their duty; she helped him only because she wanted to. Being able to smile back at her let her know he understood that.