Harry Turtledove - Hammer And Anvil

"No, your Majesty," Bagdasares said sadly but without hesitation. "I regret being the agent who-"

"It's not your fault," Maniakes said. "It's my brother's fault." He walked down the hall to the room where he had left his father. He looked in.

"Parsmanios," he said. The elder Maniakes grimaced but nodded. The Avtokrator walked out to the guards who stood on the steps. He divided them in two and told one group, "Go find Parsmanios. He'll probably be in one of the wings of the Grand Courtroom at this time of day. Whatever he's doing, fetch him here at once."

The guards asked no questions, but hurried off to do his bidding. When he went back into the imperial residence, he found his father standing near the entrance. "What will you do with him? To him, I should say?" the elder Maniakes asked.

"Hear him out," Maniakes answered wearily. "Then have him tonsured and send him into exile in the monastery at Prista, up on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea. It's either that or take his head."

"I know." The elder Maniakes clapped the younger on the back. "It's a good choice." He scowled. "No. It's the best choice you could make. I never dreamed I'd have to thank you for sparing your brother's life, but I do."

Maniakes did not feel magnanimous. He felt empty, betrayed. A messenger arrived with Tzikas' reply to his note. He didn't even look at it, but sent the fellow straight on to Bagdasares. Then he went out and stared east through the cherry trees toward the Grand Courtroom.

Before long, the guards headed back to the residence, Parsmanios in their midst. He was complaining volubly: "This is an outrage, I tell you! When the Avtokrator hears of how you high-handedly jerked me out of that meeting with the eminent Themistios, logothete of petitions, and how he stared as you did so, his Majesty will-"

"Commend his men for carrying out his orders," Maniakes interrupted. He spoke to the guards: "Make sure he has no weapons." Despite Parsmanios' protests, the soldiers removed his belt knife and, after some searching, a slim holdout dagger he wore in his left boot. That done, they escorted him to the chamber to which his father had returned.

"Why, son?" the elder Maniakes asked, beating the Avtokrator to the question.

"Why what?" Parsmanios began. Then he looked from his father to his brother and saw that wouldn't get him anywhere. From assumed innocence sprang fury.

"Why do you think, the ice take you? You shut me away from everything you did, you gave Rhegorios the spot that should have been mine-"

"I didn't know you were alive when Rhegorios got the Sevastos' spot," Maniakes said. "How many times must I tell you?"

Parsmanios went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And as if that wasn't enough, you started swiving his sister. Why didn't you just take him to bed? Incest with one wouldn't be any worse than incest with the other."

"Son, you would be wiser to have a care in what you say," the elder Maniakes said. "You would have been wiser to have a care in what you did, too."

"Better you should tell that to him," Parsmanios said, pointing to his brother. "But no, you don't care what he does. You never cared what he did. He was your eldest, so it had to be right."

"My backside says you're a liar," Maniakes said, "not that you haven't shown that already."

"Say whatever you want," Parsmanios said. "It doesn't matter now. I failed, and you'll take my head, and that will be the end of it."

"I had in mind taking your hair, not your head," Maniakes said, "but listening to the swill you spew tempts me to give you what most traitors get." He shook his head. "Exile to Prista will do." He paused, wondering how best to put his next question. At last, he said, "Shall we send anyone into exile with you?"

Parsmanios stood mute. Maniakes thought of turning him over to the torturers to see what they could wring out of him, but couldn't make himself do it. He called the guards, saying "My brother is a proved traitor. I want him kept in a constantly guarded chamber here in the residence for the time being. Later, until he is sent off into exile, we'll move him to a cell under the government office building." Some of the guardsmen looked astonished, but they saluted to show they understood before leading Parsmanios away.

Maniakes looked up toward the ceiling. "Every time I think it can't possibly get any worse, can't possibly get any harder, it does."

"You did that as well as you could, son," the elder Maniakes told him. "Better than I would have managed it, and that's a fact."

"I never should have had to do it in the first place." Maniakes sat down and rested his chin on the knuckles of one hand. "My idiot brother-" He would have gone on, but Kameas paused in the doorway, waiting to be acknowledged. "Phos, what now?" Maniakes cried.

The vestiarios flinched, then gathered himself. "Your Majesty, the mage Alvinos requests your presence." He used Bagdasares' Videssian-sounding name more often than almost anyone else, perhaps because it fit in with his notions of what was proper. Vaspurakaners had played a major role in Videssian life for centuries, but Videssians seldom admitted or even noticed how large it was.

Bagdasares bowed when Maniakes came into the chamber where he labored. "I have here something I had not thought possible, your Majesty: an ambiguous result on my test of this writing from Tzikas. I do not know whether he was involved in the sorcerous attempt on your life or he was not." He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "It is a puzzlement."

"Show me what you mean by an ambiguous result," Maniakes said.

"Certainly." Bagdasares walked over to the parchment lying on the table. "As the ritual required, I sprinkled it with my mixture of wine and vinegar, then added the spiritual element of the spell and used the hematite. You see for yourself."

See Maniakes did. Most of the drops of the mixture had fallen on the writing, where they had had no effect save to blur it. But one or two had splashed down by the edge of the parchment. After Bagdasares touched his hematite to them, they had begun to glow like the entire document Parsmanios had written.

"It's almost as if Tzikas was in contact with the parchment without having written what purports to be his reply," Bagdasares said. "And yet the message is-or rather was, before it was smeared-addressed directly from him to you."

Suspicion flared in Maniakes. Tzikas was subtle, a master of defense. "I wonder if he took alarm at getting a message from me just after he tried to do me in and had someone else write a reply." He glanced at Bagdasares. "Will my looking at it or touching it do any harm?"

"No, your Majesty," the mage answered.

The Avtokrator stepped up to the makeshift worktable. As Bagdasares had said, the mixture of wine and vinegar had smeared much of the writing on the parchment. (It had also left the scraped sheepskin tangy to the nose.) Maniakes bent to examine those few words he could still make out.

"This isn't Tzikas' hand," he said after a moment. "I've seen his script often enough to recognize it, by the good god. I don't know who wrote this, but he didn't. If he took the note afterward, though-"

"That would account for the positive reaction at the edges of the sheet, where he would have touched it before returning it to your messenger," Bagdasares finished for him. "If that fellow didn't see with his own eyes Tzikas doing the writing, I think we can be confident enough in our evaluation to summon the eminent general to give an accounting of himself."

"We'll find out," Maniakes said. He called Kameas, who arranged to have the messenger return to the imperial residence.

"No, your Majesty, I didn't see him write it," the man said. "He stepped inside for a bit, then came back out. Nobody told me I was supposed to watch him do the writing." He looked anxious.