Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"I don't think it will be very long," I answered in a low voice. A few of my guests leaned forward to try to hear what I was saying to Myakes, but only a few, most being less obvious in their inquisitiveness. I went on, "They'll want to be departing soon, as they expect to rise with the sun tomorrow. I won't delay them. Is the nomisma ready?"

"Oh, aye, Emperor," he said in a hollow voice. "Helias's little joke."

He did not approve. I did, saying, "I like it." He shrugged, bowed, and departed.

About half an hour later, taking advantage of a lull in the conversation, I rose, thus formally ending the banquet. The functionaries, familiar with such ceremonial dicta from the time during which Leontios and Apsimaros sat on the throne, rose as one man and, with fulsome praises, thanked me for the boon of my company. Along with Theodora, I departed by the doorway leading toward my bedchamber. The guests left through the other door, the hallway outside of which took them straight to the entrance.

But that was not the only passage in the grand palace leading to the entrance. Theodora and I doubled back through the maze, she following close behind me, trusting me to know the way. And so I did, despite a long absence and visits only rare after my return. Even before stepping out of the door, I heard voices raised in complaint and argument.

Through the complaints, Helias kept saying, "This is all at the express order of the Emperor."

"Well, where is he, so that we may protest to him?" one of the functionaries demanded, his voice full of indignation.

"Here I am," I said, showing myself. Armed and armored excubitores surrounded my erstwhile guests on three sides and, now that I had appeared, moved to cut them off from access to the grand palace as well.

"What is the meaning of this?" that same loud functionary asked, loudly.

"The meaning is simple," I replied. "The lot of you prostituted yourselves with the usurpers. For your whoredom you shall pay. 'Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.'\a160" Where before I had quoted the nineteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of Luke, now I used the verse following, the twentieth. Pointing to the big-mouthed wretch, I said, "Go up to Helias."

As if in a daze, he obeyed. My spatharios tossed a nomisma in the air, caught it, and looked to see whether it showed my image or that of the Son of God. "Emperor, it is the Emperor," he told me.

"That is the power of the sword," I replied. Fitting action to word, Helias drew his own sword, which came free from the scabbard with a rasp of metal. Without a word of warning, he drove it deep into the bureaucrat's belly, twisting his wrist to insure the stroke was mortal. The bureaucrat fell with a shriek, futilely clutching at his torn flesh.

The other functionaries shrieked, too, in horror and anticipation rather than anguish, though their anguish would come soon enough. I pointed to one of them, whom I chose at random. "You. Go to Helias." When he balked, I added, "Whatever happens to you afterwards, it will be worse if you disobey me now."

Trembling, the fellow approached my spatharios. Helias tossed the coin again. He looked at it, then toward me. "Emperor, it is the face of our Lord."

"These days," I said, "we no longer use the cross, out of reverence for Him Who was crucified on it. The gibbet serves instead. Truss up this son of a whore and hang him, once you've found out how many of his traitor friends go with him."

Two excubitores seized the functionary. Thoughtfully, Helias had made sure he brought plenty of rope. Even more thoughtfully, he had brought gags with which to silence the cries of the men bound and awaiting execution. That, however, lessened the racket only a little, for my guests, realizing they were all fated for one death or the other, howled like dogs crushed under wagon wheels. They surged against the excubitores, only to be driven back by bared blades.

One by one, with me picking some and Theodora the rest, the functionaries and bureaucrats, weep and bawl and blubber and foul their clothes as they might, were compelled to go before Helias for the toss of the coin. As I recall, rather more than half of them were put to the sword, the rest bound and gagged and then hauled off to the gibbets to meet the fate fortune had decreed. The last few died (or were gagged) cursing me. Die they did, though.

When the last one had been cut down, I spoke to the excubitores: "Take this carrion and throw it into the cemetery of Pelagios with the suicides, for these vile beasts brought their deaths upon themselves." Turning to Theodora, I added, "Tomorrow morning, the servants will have to wash down the walk with buckets of water, lest this blood draw flies."

"Good," she said. "Yes. We will do that."

We went back into the palace. We saw no servants as we hurried toward the bedchamber in which, I suppose, I had been conceived- the night's work had put fear in the hearts of everyone who heard it, as I had hoped it would. Once in the bedchamber, we coupled like ferrets, both of us heated red by the spectacle we had watched. Theodora bit my shoulder, hard enough to draw blood. "Have to get a bucket of water poured on that, too," I said. We laughed, loud and long.

Look, Brother Elpidios, if Justinian felt like getting rid of people who had done something to him, I didn't have a word to say against that. Besides, people who had done things to him had done things to me, too.

But he's right. I wasn't happy about this. It wasn't that I was jealous of Helias. Really, it wasn't. It's just that I didn't see much point to slaughtering the men Justinian felt like killing that night. The only thing they'd done was, they'd kept working while Leontios and Apsimaros were Emperor. If they hadn't kept working- them and people like them- the Empire would have started falling apart. Why did he blame them for that?

And if he was going to kill them, he shouldn't have made a game out of it. I was a soldier for a long time, Brother; killing is a serious business, or it should be. Doing it that way makes it cheap. Degrades it, you say? Yes. thanks. That's a word I wouldn't have come up with on my own.

Justinian said he wanted the people afraid of him. And they were, all right. But when a ruler is strong and they know he'll land on them if they get out of line, that's one kind of fear. If they're afraid of him on account of they don't know what the devil he's liable to do next, that's fear, too, but it's a different kind. Justinian either didn't care about the difference or couldn't tell there was one.

He'd sworn he wouldn't spare one of his enemies. The way he acted, he was making sure he'd have plenty of 'em.

When morning came, my mother raised a fuss, as I had known she would. "They were traitors to our house, and so deserved whatever fate I chose to give them," I told her. She would have kept on complaining, but I turned my back on her and walked out of the grand palace.

Outside, servants were still busy cleaning up the mess. Had I had it to do over, I would have had the excubitores slay the functionaries farther from the palace: something to remember in case I decided to play the same game again instead of inventing a new one.

Having called for a horse, I rode west from the palace to the city wall to view the gibbets that had gone up there the night before to accommodate those of my guests to whom chance had given that death. A couple of gibbets stood empty, as more than half the functionaries had been put to the sword. I was sure I could find deserving men for those empty gibbets, and vowed to myself they would not stay empty long.

Only a few crows and gulls attended the corpses, the meat not yet being ripe. Down below the inner wall, people stared up at the bodies on display, but not with such avid curiosity as they had immediately after my return to the capital: to the Constantinopolitan urban sophisticates, mere executions had lost some of their power to entertain, if not to edify.