Harry Turtledove - Justinian

On seeing that he had no intention of furnishing me with an army, I said, "Give me gold, then. With gold, I can get warriors." How good the warriors would prove was another question. I had given Neboulos and the Sklavenoi gold, but so had the accursed Arabs. But with gold, there were things I could do. Without it, my opportunities would be far more limited.

So much of the wealth of the Khazar khaganate depending on trade, Ibouzeros Gliabanos was an able bargainer. But I had learned a fair amount in my time of exile, and I was desperate, where he was not. I pressed him hard, finally persuading him to part with perhaps more gold than he had intended.

"Bah!" he said, and made a sour face. "Now that you have extorted this money from me, I ought to send you far away, so you do not come to think you can make a habit of it."

If he was angry at me, I did not want to stay close by him, lest he choose to vent that wrath. I doubted causing his sister unhappiness would stay him. And, if he was going to give me gold, I should have liked to be closer to Constantinople than was Atil. Atil, so far as I could tell, was close to nowhere worth reaching. Still, returning me to Doros or Kherson would have been a death sentence: a polite death sentence, but a death sentence nevertheless.

He might have been thinking along with me, for in musing tones he said, "Suppose I send you to Phanagoria. What do you think of that?"

"Phanagoria?" I pursed my lips while thinking. The town is situated next to the peninsula on which Kherson lies, just to the east of the narrow strait joining the Black Sea and the Maiotic Bay. It has some commerce with Constantinople, although less than Kherson enjoys. From it, though, I should likely have been in a good position to observe events at the Queen of Cities. I could hardly have been in a worse position for observing those events than from Atil. And no one in Phanagoria, so far as I knew, had any particular interest in killing me. I nodded to Ibouzeros Gliabanos. "Let it be as you say."

"Good, good," the khagan said expansively. "I shall give you the gold, as I said I would"- he forgot for the moment the difficulty with which he had just been persuaded to say he would-"and you will live like a king."

"No," I told him. He frowned. I explained: "I will live like an Emperor."

He liked that, laughing out loud. "You have the spirit of an Emperor," he said. "I have seen this, and seen it clearly. And Phanagoria is more like a Roman town for you. You will like living there, and my sister will see what living like a Roman is like."

"Yes, I want to show her that," I answered, though Phanagoria would be only a small, debased copy of true Roman life. Then, he having mentioned Theodora, I gave him news I might otherwise have held back for a day or two or let her pass on: "She is with child."

"Good, good," he said again. "This is why you marry."

"Your nephew will be Emperor of the Romans," I said, and watched his narrow eyes gleam as he contemplated the possibilities inherent in that. I contemplated those possibilities, too: having the vicegerent of God on earth be of their blood might bring the Khazars to Christianity wholesale, which would solidify their alliance with the Roman Empire against the deniers of Christ.

"For this news," Ibouzeros Gliabanos said, "I shall give you more gold." The news must have pleased him as greatly as appeared to be the case, for he kept his promise.

Again we traveled over the vast sea of grass. When the wind blew over it, it rippled and changed color, much as the waves did on the veritable sea. Our journey here was slower, though. Travel by land is always slower, save for couriers and others in a driving hurry, who constantly change mounts to speed themselves along.

Theodora rode on horseback, astride like a man. This would have startled me even had she not been carrying a child, but she took it as a matter of course. In a mixture of her tongue and mine, she said, "The baby is tiny yet. This does not hurt it. Khazars ride horses. I am a Khazar. I ride a horse." She had no need of my old pedagogue to teach her the elements of logic.

What was I do to? Beat her, make her stop riding, and slow us all down? I saw no sense in that. She kept riding a horse. Now that I think on it, whenever she has set her mind on doing a particular thing, she has in the end done it. Perhaps that is one of the reasons we get on so well.

Phanagoria, when we finally reached it, proved a town similar to Kherson, though smaller. It boasted several churches, better than half its populace being Romans. As with Kherson, though, it had a Khazar tudun or governor, a certain Balgitzin, who also ruled another nearby town but dwelt in Phanagoria. He dressed in Roman fashion, in a linen tunic, and spoke better Greek than his counterpart farther west.

"I am honored to have the Emperor of the Romans here as a guest in my city," he said when I presented myself to him on my arrival. "And you have wed the daughter of my splendid khagan. Will wonders never cease?" He bowed to Theodora, who had not followed everything he said. Seeing that, he spoke rapidly in the Khazar tongue.

"Yes, we are man and wife," she answered in Greek.

"I will give you a fine house, with many rooms," Balgitzin promised. He was full of promises, Balgitzin was. He was wasted as a tudun; he would have been a great success as a Constantinopolitan courtier. A man who made so many promises, though, was liable to have trouble keeping them all.

This first one, though, he kept. A minor noble of the imperial city would not have been ashamed of the house in which he installed us- not, at least, after the aforesaid noble had the house cleaned from top to bottom. Rats and mice and cockroaches and ants never stopped plaguing us as long as we lived there. Having lived much harder in Kherson, I made the best of things here.

Theodora, for her part, was enchanted. As I have previously mentioned, most of the dwellings in Atil are tents. Living within real walls and under a true roof made her feel as if she were inhabiting a palace. "Constantinople must be like this," she said one evening after we made love.

I fear I laughed at her. She got angry. I tried to explain what a small, mean, dingy town Phanagoria was when set alongside the Queen of Cities. She did not believe me. Having now seen one town, she imagined herself an expert on such things, and would not believe any city could exceed Phanagoria. Try as I would, I could not persuade her. She was stubborn in such matters, too.

Balgitzin fawned on us. We had gold from Ibouzeros Gliabanos. Theodora liked salted mackerel. To her, it was new and exotic and tasty. I paid for beef and mutton. I had had enough of salt fish and dried fish for a lifetime.

All my comrades but Myakes went back to Kherson, resuming the lives they had interrupted on my behalf and passing my regards on to Moropaulos and my other followers there who had not left. Once they were gone, I settled down to make myself as comfortable as possible in Phanagoria and to await any good news that might come from the Roman Empire.

Waiting came hard. Curiously, all the years I had passed in Kherson, up until the time when Auriabedas gave me back a nose of sorts, seemed to go by fast as a blink. However much I tried to keep my hopes burning, they had faded then. Now, with hope burning bright once more, each passing day seemed a wasted opportunity. I began spending time by the edge of the Black Sea once more, staring south and west across the water toward the imperial city as if my will could lift me and return me to my proper home.

Stephen, having returned to Kherson, sent me word that all my backers in the town where I had originally been exiled were also alert for any reports coming from Constantinople, and that they, like me, had their hopes aroused. Emperor, they cheered loud and long when I told them of your marriage to the daughter of the Khazar khagan, he wrote.