Harry Turtledove - Justinian

I also surveyed the dead courtiers with something less than the pleasure I had expected. Turning to one of the guards, I said, "The trouble with these wretches is, they didn't die well. Once they knew that would be their fate, they should have accepted it. Herakleios- the usurper's brother- was worth all of them and more besides."

"Yes, Emperor," the guard answered. What else could he possibly have said? If he disagreed with me, he might have gone up on one of those empty gibbets himself.

Having viewed all of last night's guests, today's executed traitors, I rode back to the Blakhernai palace, to which, by that time, Theodora and Tiberius had also returned. "You go, and your mother shouts and shouts at me," Theodora said. "I tell her I think they should die, too, and she shouts louder."

"My mother will speak her mind," I said. "Anyone would think I was related to her." For a moment, Theodora looked puzzled at that. Then understanding spread over her face and she laughed.

In truth, I was not paying full attention to her words or my own. Ever since my mentioning Herakleios up on the wall, he had been in my mind. As general of the military district of the Anatolics, he might well have been able to give me a harder fight than he did. Most of west-central and southwestern Anatolia fell into that military district. Had he stayed there and resisted with his full power, he would have been harder to overcome than he was, caught with a scratch force in Thrace after I had seized Constantinople.

Summoning Myakes, Leo, and Helias, I put my sudden insight to them: "God did not speak from a burning bush to ordain that the military district of the Anatolics should be as it is. Any general there has to think of becoming a usurper, if for no other reason than that he commands such a large army."

"He needs a large army," Helias said, "to help fight the Arabs."

"Not that large," I answered, "and the soldiers would still be there, only under two commanders rather than one."

"Ah." Leo's eyes lit. "You want to divide the military district, not pension off soldiers. Yes, that is good, I think, or at least not bad."

"If you do it that way, who would the new general be?" Myakes asked.

"Barisbakourios writes that a tourmarch of the military district of the Opsikion, a certain Christopher from Philippopolis in Thrace, has done good work and deserves a reward," I said. "Do any of you know this man?"

Myakes and Helias both shook their heads. Leo, however, spoke up at once, saying, "Yes, he is a good fighter. He gave the Bulgars fits a few years ago, when he was still in Thrace." That Leo should have known Christopher surprised me not at all. By then, I had come to suspect that, if I asked him about some petty Frankish noble in a land no Roman has seen for a hundred years, he would have furnished accurate particulars without batting an eye.

"What will you call the new military district, Emperor?" Myakes asked.

"Not the military district of the Philippopolitans, I hope," Helias said. "No one could hope to say it." He had stumbled over it himself. We all laughed.

Leo said, "How about the military district of the Thrakesians, after Christopher of Thrace?"

Having savored that, I dipped my head in assent, like pagan Zeus in the Iliad. "Let it be so," I said, and so it was. Christopher, receiving his new appointment, worked diligently to separate the men and town under his command from those remaining in the military district of the Anatolics. He did this, of course, to enhance his own position, but it served my purposes, too, placing two potential rivals in an area that had formerly known but a single powerful- too powerful, sometimes- leader.

When I invited a couple of dozen bureaucrats of middling station to a feast at the Blakhernai palace, only eight of them came to the Anastasiakos dining hall. The rest were suddenly taken ill with such an astonishing variety of diseases that anyone would have thought a whole wave of plagues had suddenly descended on Constantinople- which God prevent from ever actually taking place.

With so few guests attending, we all gorged ourselves, the cooks having prepared far more than our small party could consume. I thought we could have done better still, but some of the bureaucrats seemed slightly off their feed, for no reason I could fathom.

"Here," I told them after the servants cleared away what was left. "I had planned to give each of my friends five nomismata, but, since so many of your colleagues were taken ill, each of you gets t hree purses, not one, and fifteen nomismata in all." I passed out the presents with my own hands.

"God bless you, Emperor," they gasped out almost in unison, and, on my giving them leave to go, all but fled the palace.

Turning to Theodora, I remarked, "Anyone would think they expected to find soldiers waiting for them out there."

"I do not know why," she answered in her slow, deliberate Greek. "This is not the grand palace." We both found that very funny.

Our guests having departed, I summoned Myakes. Before the feast, I had taken pains to learn the dwelling places of all the functionaries I would invite. At my order, Theophylaktos brought me this list, a pen, and a jar of ink. I lined through the names of the men who had joined me at supper. That done, I gave the list to Myakes, saying, "Gather your men together and arrest everyone whose name you see here. I want all of them back at this palace before the sun comes up tomorrow morning."

"Yes, Emperor," Myakes said. "I'll see to it." He had never had my fire, and some of what he had had was gone out of him. But he would obey, even if he persisted in asking questions like, "What will you do with them?"

"Wipe their noses," I snarled. "Get you gone." He bowed and departed.

Yes, of course I knew what he'd do with them, Brother Elpidios, or I had a pretty good idea, anyhow. No, I didn't want to see him do it, especially not so soon after the last massacre. But he gave the orders. If I didn't do what he said, I figured I'd be next up on a gibbet. All he could think about, near enough, was paying back everybody he thought had ever wronged him.

I took a look at the list, divided it into four parts, and sent out four troops of excubitores. I led one of them. I can do my own dirty work, I can. First door we knocked on, the fellow we came for opened it himself. "You don't look sick," says I to him. He tried to slam the door, but I stuck a foot in it and my boys went in and grabbed him. His wife and brats were wailing behind us when he left.

The other three were just as easy, and none of them looked sick, either. Back we went to Blakhernai. Getting all four of them hadn't taken two hours. "Have mercy on us!" they kept saying, over and over. "In the name of Christ, have mercy!"

But that wasn't for me to say. It was up to Justinian. I didn't think any of those sixteen poor bastards would get away with his neck. Turned out I was wrong, though.

All the bureaucrats who had refused my invitation to dine having been assembled, I inspected them. One, a thin, pale fellow with shadows under his eyes, coughed wetly, rackingly. Thick yellowish mucus kept streaming from his nose, which he wiped on the sleeve of his tunic.

"You are\a160… John son of Eusebios, the customs inspector, not so?" I said.

"Yes, Emperor." He coughed again. "I am sorry I could not"- still more coughs-"join you tonight, but may I ask why your men hauled me from my bed?"

"No, you may not," I told him. He bowed his head, whereupon snot dripped down onto his sandals. "Go home and go about your business." I turned to Myakes. "Give him an escort, so no footpad falls on him in the night." To Theophylaktos, I added, "See that John is sent fifteen nomismata in the morning."