Harry Turtledove - Justinian

As Mauias had after his force shattered itself against the walls of this God-guarded and imperial city, the miscalled commander of the faithful sent an embassy to Constantinople, asking our terms for breaking off the conflict. Abimelekh's ambassador, a Greek-speaking Christian named Mansour, had the gall to protest that I had broken the thirty years' truce to which my father had agreed.

In his presumption, he might as well have been one of my own advisers, not Abimelekh's. "I am not my father!" I shouted to him, as I had to my own bureaucrats. "Unless I so choose, his acts do not bind me. Here, I do not so choose."

Mansour bowed his head. What I had said was simple truth, as any fool could see. Was Abimelekh likely to do exactly as his predecessors had in all things? Of course not! It was a diplomat's trick, an effort to make me feel I was in the wrong. But I did not fall for it.

Having put old Mansour in his place, I turned him over to the diplomats whose job it was to negotiate the fine details of treaties and let him haggle with them. Unlike my father, I reckoned it beneath my dignity to dicker like a tradesman with foreign envoys.

And I had other things on my mind. I had never sired a bastard on any of the serving girls with whom I had dallied, but Eudokia's courses failed and, presently, her belly began to bulge. I puffed up with pride like a pig's bladder. To tell the truth, I had feared my seed was cold within me, and was relieved and delighted to find this not so.

"What shall we name the baby?" Eudokia asked when she was certain she was with child.

I had been thinking about that since we both began to wonder. I would have liked to name a boy Herakleios, after the founder of my dynasty, but that also meant naming him after my uncle, the traitor. "We'll call him Constantine," I said instead. I had not been overfond of my father, but he had been a strong Emperor- and the name would make my mother happy.

Timidly- more timidly than she usually spoke- Eudokia asked, "And if it should be a girl?"

My mind and my hopes being set on getting an heir, I had not worried about what name to give a girl. By chance, Eudokia herself bore the same name as the first Herakleios's first wife, from whom I am descended. "There's always Maria," I said, a careless, indifferent answer that left Eudokia visibly discontented. As I was assotted of her, I did not want that, and so put some thought into my next essay: "What about Epiphaneia? That's the name of the first Herakleios's mother."

"Epiphaneia." Eudokia tasted the name on her tongue. Her brow smoothed. "Yes, it will do."

That problem was easily solved. For my part, whenever I spoke of the child to come, I called it Constantine. Everyone around me took up the habit, as was only natural: an Emperor needs a successor. Sooner than leaving the throne empty, an Emperor might marry three or even four times, I would say.

Brother Elpidios, if you set fire to the book, you won't be able to read the rest of it. What do you mean, you don't care? You've come all this way, you've read lewd things and turned- well, hardly a hair, and now you want to feed the codex to the brazier a leaf at a time? I don't understand, and I'll own as much. Justinian was just talking about what he might have done if-

Heresy? Blasphemy? Brother, if you don't calm down, you'll feed yourself to the brazier a leaf at a time, sounds like. Tell me what's on your- Oh, marrying three or four times. He wasn't talking about it for the sake of fornication, Brother Elpidios, but for the sake of getting an heir. "It is better to marry than to burn," eh?

Not three times? Especially not four times? Not even to keep the Empire from the threat of civil war? You don't th ink an Emperor would be able to find a priest who would give him a dispensation for something like that? What? You'd break from communion with a priest who did something like that, you'd go into schism? You're a\a160… pious man, Brother Elpidios.

In any case, you don't need to burn the book. Justinian married only twice, and canon law says nothing about that, now does it? He was only saying what he thought about a might-have-been that never was. Maybe he was wrong. It wouldn't have been the only time, God knows.

What about me, Brother? No, I never married, and yes, maybe I'll burn for it. I was like Justinian before he wed Eudokia, and I didn't have his excuse of being a young pup. I liked women so well, I never settled on any one woman. Life is like that sometimes. It'll get right past you if you don't watch out, and then you look back and you say, "Oh, Lord, what have I done?" Or you say, "What have I missed?"

Do I repent of my sinful ways? I've been a blind monk these past twenty years. If I haven't repented by now, when do you suppose I'd get round to it?

I had hoped to get even more from the Arabs than we ended up acquiring, but they scored a victory or two of their own to begin balancing ours: they captured Kirkesion, our outpost on the eastern Euphrates, and raided west from Antioch. The arrival of that news made Mansour more stubborn than he had been.

Even so, thanks to the invasion of Armenia I won far better terms from Abimelekh than my father had from Mauias. Mansour agreed to pay us a slave and a high-bred horse for every week of the year, an arrangement much like the former one, but Paul the magistrianos, at the urging of Stephen the Persian, held out for a large increase in the amount of gold we were to receive each year.

When he came to me to report what Mansour had conceded, his eyes were round and staring. "A thousand nomismata a week, Emperor!" he exclaimed. "We were getting only three thousand a year before."

"You see?" I said triumphantly. "I knew we'd hurt the deniers of Christ. You may agree to that, Paul, but make certain you don't sound too eager doing it."

"I understand," he said. Then he coughed. "While the payment lies at the heart of the treaty, Emperor, it is not the only provision involved. In Abimelekh's name, Mansour has proposed an arrangement the likes of which I have never heard before; you must weigh its advantages and disadvantages for yourself."

"Tell me, then."

"He says that, while his master Abimelekh commonly controls Armenia and Iberia, our continued raids on those lands and the uprisings they spark create such disruption that he cannot collect the taxes owed him-"

"Good!" I said.

But Paul continued, "Mansour also says we do not bring in enough money from the raids to make them worth our while, either. Through him, Abimelekh proposes that both sides give over warfare in those provinces, that we let the Armenians and Iberians carry on their lives in peace, and that we then tax them and divide evenly the money we receive."

"That is a novel suggestion," I admitted, rubbing my chin. Whiskers rasped under my fingers; my beard had thickened to the point that I was letting it grow. "But is Abimelekh sincere in this, or only trying to keep us from raiding Armenia and Iberia?"

"I cannot judge, Emperor," Paul said. "Mansour seems sincere, but he is an ambassador. Did he not seem sincere, he would fail of his purpose."

"Let me think on it," I said, and sent him away. I summoned him again two days later. He having prostrated himself before me, I said, "So Abimelekh says we should stop these attacks because they cost both sides money, eh?"

"That is how Mansour represents the matter, yes," the magistrianos answered, diplomatically cautious.

I pounced: "Will Abimelekh then agree likewise to share the tax revenues from the island of Cyprus, and to order his fleets to leave off ravaging its coastal towns? If he is sincere, he will agree to stop raiding as well as to keep from being raided."