Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"Yes," I said happily, as if I had invented cobblestones myself.

She kept craning her neck. "All the buildings are so high," she said; we were riding between rows of three- and four-story apartment houses, nothing at all out of the ordinary for Constantinople. People on the balconies overhanging the street peered down at us. Some of them waved. None presumed to empty chamber pots on our heads, which has happened before in the history of the city. "So high," she repeated. "Why don't they fall down?"

From time to time, in earthquakes, they do fall down. I forbore to mention that, saying instead, "Our builders know what they're about."

She accepted it: how could she do otherwise, this being her first journey through Constantinople? When we got to the palace wherein I had dwelt since returning to the imperial city- and where I dwell yet- servants and slaves and eunuchs came out and prostrated themselves before us. Though the Khazars have a somewhat different ritual, she grasped what that meant. "These are all yours?" she asked in no small astonishment.

That I understood; her brother the khagan, though living in great luxury, had but a fraction of my retainers. "These are some of what is mine," I answered proudly- and truthfully. "They are also some of what is yours."

Theophylaktos, ever so delighted to be back in the imperial city, took charge of Theodora then, conveying her to the chamber off the hall of Okeanos that had been readied against her arrival. I saw no more of her until we dined together as the sun was setting. By then, serving woman had plucked her eyebrows, powdered and rouged her cheeks, painted her lips, and curled her hair. She would never look like a woman born in the Roman Empire, but she looked more like one than I had ever seen her. "You are lovely," I told her.

"Am I?" She shrugged. "In Khazaria, we decorate horses like this, not women."

From that day forth, though, she voiced no further complaints against Roman fashion. And she praised the food highly. Full of roast goat soused with fat myself, I said, "These are the dishes they imagined they could make in Phanagoria. Now you taste them as they should be." A servant poured me more wine. "The vintages are better, too."

"Yes," she said emphatically, having also been sampling those vintages.

Presently, Theophylaktos escorted her to my bedchamber, then departed to let us celebrate a mystery in which he had no hope of sharing. Two or three of the serving women would no doubt be downcast at Theodora's return, for the attentions I had given them in her absence would cease, except, perhaps, for occasional amusements.

"My wife," I said, barring the door.

"My husband," she answered. A proper Roman wife would have cast her eyes down to the floor in modesty. Theodora boldly met my gaze. I had not the heart to reprove her, not when she had proved herself loyal to me at her brother's expense. For treachery, the sword; for its reverse, rewards.

All at once curious, I asked, "What did Ibouzeros Gliabanos say when you came back to him and Papatzun didn't?"

Her smile was exactly that which I should have used had I been in her place. "He said many, many, very many very bad things. But all the time he said them, the way he said them was-" Running out of Greek, she used a word in the Khazar language, expecting me to know what it meant.

And, for a wonder, it was a word I chanced to recall. "Admiring?" I said, giving it to her in the tongue of the Roman Empire.

"Admiring, yes, thank you," she said. "Like he hated and had pride for you at the same time."

That probably went a long way toward accounting for the khagan's mocking message after my fleet met shipwreck. Having thrown in his lot with Apsimaros, he must have hoped I would fail in overthrowing the usurper, but, on my success (and, indeed, on my successful escape from his trap before that), he could not help but show a certain reluctant respect.

Theodora looked from the barred door to the bed in front of which I stood. Pointedly, she said, "Did you call me here to talk about my brother?"

I burst out laughing, half scandalized, half delighted. As I knew, Theodora had been a maiden the night we wed. But, on being properly introduced thereto, she had come to take no small delight in that which passes between man and woman. Once I left Phanagoria, she would have done without. Of my own amusements in that regard during the time we were apart, I said nothing, nor did she inquire, knowing the man's prerogative in such affairs.

But we were apart no longer. After putting out all the lamps in the bedchamber save one alone, I divested her of the robe she wore. Even by the light of that single lamp, I saw how childbirth had changed her body. Her breasts were larger and softer than I remembered, her hips thicker, the skin on her belly looser and marked with fine pale tracings it had not held before the child she'd carried stretched it. As far as fleshly perfection went, the serving maids with whom I had been dallying in Theodora's absence were without doubt her superiors.

None of them, however, had saved me in time of need. None of them had stood apart from their brothers to save me. None of them had given me a son to be Emperor after me. And so, while they were pleasant and diverting, Theodora was my wife.

After I made myself naked, she had no cause to complain of the salute I gave her, wordless though it was. When we embraced, standing there by the bed, my lance stood between us, but only for a moment. "So warm," she said, moving it to rub against her belly.

Before long, we lay down together. Each of us knew what pleased the other; I had nothing in which to instruct her, as I had needed to do when bedding a new serving girl. Once kisses and caresses had excited us both, she rolled onto her back, her legs open, inviting me to complete the conquest of her secret place.

That I wasted no time in doing. Theodora's breath sighed out as I thrust myself deep into her. Her thighs gripped my flanks, I rode her until she gasped and called out my name and what I have always taken to be a string of Khazar endearments, though I have never asked her the meaning of the words.

I had not yet spent myself within her, as I had usually done at her moment of delight when we enjoyed the marital couch before my enforced departure from Phanagoria. Enormous in the dim lamplight, her eyes looked past me, through me, rather than at me. Realizing my lance retained its temper, she murmured, "Go on. Oh, go on"- again, immodest, but in its way immensely flattering.

On I went. Again she tensed beneath me. Again she quivered. Again she called my name. And, this time, I sent my seed deep into her womb a moment later.

"You are a big man, a great man," she said admiringly. "You go on and on, you make me crazy for you." She mimed clambering atop me and taking me by force.

I laughed with her, a laugh not far from exhaustion. The truth of things- a truth I kept from her- was that I kept on and on because I took less pleasure from each single stroke than I had before Tiberius passed out through the way on which I was now going in. The sheath into which I thrust my sword now fitting more loosely than had been the case, I had to work harder to reach my full pleasure. Her giving me less satisfaction was, precisely and in inverse proportion, as those learned in arithmetic are wont to say, the occasion for my giving her more.

Having thus labored long and hard, I fell asleep, awakening sometime later from a vivid erotic dream of the sort commonly sent by Satan to tempt us Christians away from the paths of virtue. This particular erotic dream, however, was sent not by Satan but by Theodora, who had amused herself by finding a way to revive my manhood while I lay snoring. Once I was not only revived but awake, she impaled herself on me and, moving slowly and languorously, brought both of us another round of joy. Though unsure whether I could complete my half of that wordless bargain, in the end I managed it.