Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"Not yet," I answered. "Not fully. Not till Apsimaros stands before me, loaded with chains. But he will." I smacked one fist into the other palm. "And Leontios and Kallinikos are already in the hollow of my hand." I smiled, anticipating.

"Your face," she said sadly. "Your poor face."

"It could be worse," I told her. "Leontios is uglier than I am these days, by all I hear. And he'll be uglier yet when I'm through with him." I changed the subject: "Tell me- my daughter Epiphaneia, is she well?"

My mother's face glowed as if a lamp shone through it. "She is indeed. Do you know, I think this may be the first time you have ever asked after her."

"Is she wed?" I persisted, wondering which half of my bargain I would have to keep with Tervel.

"No," my mother replied. "Neither of the usurpers would permit her betrothal. They feared any man who married her would plot against them because of who she was. And, of course, she was still very young while Leontios disgraced the throne. In fact, she-"

"Good." I interrupted her. "If she is unwed, I can marry her off to Tervel the Bulgar, to repay him for the men who helped put me back on the throne." Without those men, I never would have been able to approach the city and enter the pipe that brought me into it. Tervel might not have been confident of my triumph, but had helped make it possible- and his army remained encamped just beyond the wall. Keeping our bargain seemed the better part of wisdom.

"You would give the child of your flesh to minister to the lusts of a barbarian?" my mother whispered, turning pale. "It cannot be."

"If she is still unmarried, it shall be," I said. "It's either that or let Tervel tear up the countryside- and break my oath to him, too."

"It cannot be," my mother repeated, more firmly this time. "As she judged herself unlikely to be allowed to wed a man, she became a bride of Christ year before last, and dwells in the nunnery dedicated to the Mother of God near the Forum of Arkadios."

"In that case, you're right- it cannot be," I agreed. "I'll have to name the Bulgar Caesar instead." She began to gabble at that, too, so I left her. Not even the Emperor's mother may scold him against his will, a telling proof of the power inherent in the imperial dignity.

On leaving her, I intended to go and speak with Tervel, but Leo and some city folk I did not know hailed Kallinikos before me. "Emperor!" cried the patriarch, prostrating himself before me when his captives released him so he could do so. "Congratulations on your glorious return to the imperial city!"

I stared at him. He was, I saw to my astonishment, so base of soul as to be absolutely sincere. He had abandoned me to consecrate Leontios, abandoned Leontios to crown Apsimaros, and now stood ready, or rather sprawled ready, to abandon Apsimaros for me once more. He had the perfect temperament for a whore. A patriarch, however, needed judging by different standards.

"Wretch!" I shouted, and kicked him in the face- not hard, not even hard enough to break his nose. "You are the spineless slug who announced Leontios's accession with the opening words of the Easter service, as if he were Christ come again. And now you think you can serve me once more? You have never been so wrong in all your life, and that says a great deal."

"Mercy!" he wailed, as he should have done from the beginning- not that it would have helped him, not that anything would have helped him.

"When I was coming down to Constantinople, I swore a great oath to have mercy on none of my enemies," I replied. He shrank in on himself, like a loaf of bread falling when the oven door opens at the wrong time. Then, thoughtfully, I asked, "Has the pope in Rome yet accepted the canons of my fifth-sixth synod?"

Blood dripped down his cheek where I had kicked him. Though he still groveled on his belly before me, his face showed sudden hope. "No, Emperor, the wicked, stubborn fellow has not. He still thunders defiance at the synod inspired by the Holy Spirit. Only spare me, and I shall send anathemas against him that-"

"Be silent," I told him, and he was silent. After some little while passed in thought, I snapped my fingers and smiled. "I have it! The very thing!"

"Excommunication?" Kallinikos asked. "A drastic step, Emperor, but, should you require it, I-"

"Be silent," I said again, and then spoke to Leo: "Take him to the executioners. Let him be blinded with red-hot irons, and then let him be exiled to Rome. Thus I not only punish his betrayal but also warn the pope, whatever his name is these days…" Kallinikos did not answer, past bleating like a ram as it is made into a wether. No one else knew. Shrugging, I went on, "Whoever the pope is, he needs to remember I have my eye on him." I pointed to Kallinikos. "Take this offal away."

Away he went, still bleating. I never saw him again. He never saw anything again. Leo was laughing as he led him thither. "You'll need a new patriarch now," Myakes remarked.

"I know," I answered. "I have the man, too: one who was loyal to me at cost to himself, not disloyal at gain for himself."

Myakes looked sly. "I know what you're going to do: you're going to name Cyrus."

"That's just what I'm going to do," I said. "He was loyal to me. How can I be anything but loyal to him? He's earned the patriarchal throne. He'll be glad to get out of Kherson, too- what man wouldn't? But first things first." I started out of the palace, on the mission I had begun when the matter of Kallinikos interrupted me. "I have to see Tervel."

Looking down from the wall at the khagan of the Bulgars, I saw him and his army in a light different from that in which I had viewed him when we marched on Constantinople together. All the gates of the imperial city remained barred against the Bulgars, as against any other barbarians.

From a couple of steps beyond the ditch in front of the wall, Tervel waved to me. "You are on your throne again! Well done!" The words were fulsome enough. The tone\a160… the tone was that a man uses when a friend has some unexpected piece of good fortune fall into his lap: he is glad for his friend, no doubt, but cannot help wondering why the good fortune did not come to him instead.

"I am on my throne again," I agreed, wishing I could repudiate every promise I had made. But, with Apsimaros uncaptured, with his brother Herakleios an important commander in Anatolia, I could not afford to affront the Bulgars. "Now I can give you what I swore would be yours."

Now he hesitated before speaking. He had not thought I should be in a position where I had to make good on my promises. In such a position, I think I startled him by doing so. Carefully, he said, "You will give me your daughter to wed?"

"No, I cannot do that," I said. "I learn that she is a nun, and does not wish to come forth from her convent. But I told you that, if the marriage could not be, I would make you Caesar, and that I will do, and gladly. Come into the city in a week's time, and I will grant you the robe and crown of your office, and rich gifts besides."

"My men, who have come so far for you, would like to see the city before then," he said.

"They may," I said, and he brightened, doubtless hoping I would be foolish enough to allow his whole army into Constantinople at once, thereby giving him the chance to seize it. Quickly, I laid that hope to rest: "They may enter in parties of a hundred, and two hundred may be in the city at any one time. I will stock taverns where they may drink their fill for free, but if they rob or rape or kill, I will punish them as if they were Romans. Agreed?"

"Agreed," he answered. I was not lavish, but neither was I so niggardly as to rouse wrath- and now I held the Queen of Cities.

To show him I would abide by my pledge, I ordered the Kharisian Gate opened at once, that he might send his first contingent of Bulgars into the city. The nomads stared in astonishment at Constantinople, they being even less prepared for its magnificence than my followers from Kherson. Seeing their wonder, I smiled and turned to Myakes, who had accompanied me out to the wall. "I wonder what Theodora will have to say about the imperial city here, thinking she knows all about cities because she has seen Phanagoria."