Harry Turtledove - Justinian

He wore a tunic not much different from mine. Instead of a belt, though, he had a rope around his middle, with a flat wooden box dangling from it in place of the usual leather pouch. From the box he drew a knife that reminded me of the one the executioner in Constantinople had used to try to slit my tongue.

Had I been back at the grand palace, anyone daring to produce a weapon in my presence would have met a quick end at the hands of the excubitores, or perhaps a slow end at the hands of the executioners. His intention in so doing would have mattered not at all; the act would have sufficed and more than sufficed.

But I was in a smoky tavern in Kherson. My hand went to the knife I wore on my own belt, but I did not so much as pull it from its sheath, waiting instead to learn what he would do or say. "Make from flesh of you," he repeated, and, with the knife as pointer, sketched a flap of skin on his forehead, saying, "Do cutting here, you see- you understand cutting?" He knew how limited his Greek vocabulary was.

"I understand," I told him. "You are speaking of surgery."

"Surgery," he agreed happily. "Is word I am wanting, oh very yes. Do cutting here, I say, and it go down over\a160…" He pointed to the hole where my nose had been. "Make more cutting." He ran his thumb along the bottom of his own nose. "Sew together, wait for heal, you have again nose. They no do this here?"

"They do not do this here, no." Even in my own ears, my voice sounded far away. To have a nose again\a160… I had dreamt of having a nose again, but knew too well how dreams vanish on waking. My hand moved to the scars- smooth now, and painless, from the passage of years- around my mutilation. "Would it be as good a nose as the one I once had?"

Without a moment's hesitation, he shook his head. "No. You still be ugly. You not be very, very ugly no more, oh very yes you not." No, he did not have enough Greek for politeness. As when he took out the knife, though, I remained unoffended. His attitude bespoke a certain basic truthfulness.

I found more questions: "How is it you know how to perform this surgery? Have you done it before?"

"Do it three times, me." He held up three fingers, in case I had not followed him. "How I know how? My brother- is right word, brother?- he do this times many. He\a160… baidyas." This, it turned out, was, as best I can set it down in Greek characters, the Indian word for physician, the small brown man being unable to remember its Greek equivalent, if indeed he ever knew it before I said iatros. "I do you?" he asked.

As he had not before, I did not hesitate now. "Yes, you do me," I said. At that time, in that place, what had I to lose? He could not very well have made me uglier than I already was. And if I had not died of fever when my nose and tongue were cut, I doubted I should perish of it from what, as I could see, would be a lesser infliction of the knife.

Then he revealed he was indeed a trader. I had shown myself too eager. The glow that came into his eyes had nothing to do with the lamps and torches illuminating the tavern. "What you give me to do this?" he asked.

"What do you want?" I asked, suddenly cautious. As Emperor, I had dickered with the Arabs over tribute, but, till I came to Kherson, that was my only experience with the fine art of haggling. Exile had broadened my knowledge of an art for which an Emp eror had but limited use; even so, I knew I was less acquainted with it than a man who had made his living by it from childhood would have been. I tried to distract him by asking an unrelated question: "What's your name?"

"Auriabedas," he answered; that, again, is as close as I can come to rendering it into Greek letters. He was not distracted. "Is gold good in this part of world," he said, a tribute to the quality of our Roman nomismata I could have done without at that moment. He held up a hand, showing thumb and all fingers. "You give five- this many- of gold."

"Five?" I clapped a hand to my forehead. "I am not a rich man." A humiliating thing for the Emperor of the Romans to have to say, but true. "I can give you two." I did not know how much money Myakes had, nor what he could spare.

Auriabedas's fine features assumed a look of tragedy that might have suited him for one of Euripides' dramas. "Is not enough, oh my no," he said. "You not pay five, you stay very very ugly, oh my yes."

"Three, then," I said. "I tell you, I am not made out of gold."

"Five," Auriabedas repeated. He had not much Greek, but, being a canny merchant, had made certain he knew the numbers in our language. "You no want pay, I no want cut." He looked at me. "You no want pay, maybe I say ten soon."

We were two nomismata apart. With a nose, even one that left me uglier than I should have been had my own encountered a club, I could deny I was physically imperfect and hence debarred from the Roman throne. Without a nose, I had no prayer of raising enough support to return to Constantinople; years of bitter exile had proved as much to me. Was I to throw away my chance to regain the throne in a quarrel over a couple of nomismata?

"Five," I said, hoping Myakes had five nomismata to his name.

Auriabedas beamed at me. "I fix you," he said. "You be ugly, but you not have to fuck in dark like I bet now." He cocked his head to one side, seeing if that shot went home- as indeed it did. Not since arriving at Kherson had I taken a woman in broad daylight.

"Come to the monastery tomorrow," I told him. "I will pay you." If Myakes had not the money, I knew whom to rob.

Myakes proved to have the money. He put it in my hands. The only question he asked was, "This fellow's not a mountebank?"

"I don't think so," I said. "If he were, he would boast more about how wonderful he was and how he'd never had any trouble with this surgery and how everyone to whom he's ever set a knife has come out of it handsome as a pagan god. A man who tells me straight out I'll still be ugly after he cuts strikes me as an honest man."

Having weighed that, Myakes nodded. "Maybe you're right, Emperor. Sounds like you've got a decent chance, anyways."

One thing more he did not- would not- say. To let him know I understood it without his words, I said it for him, as it had occurred to me the night before: "Besides, being as I am, what do I have to lose?" His jaw worked. He glanced down at the floor of the xenodokheion. But when his eyes returned to mine, he nodded once more. If I was to be Emperor again, I had to have a nose.

I had not told Auriabedas at what hour to come to the monastery. From sunrise on, I paced back and forth, nervous as a cat trying to watch three mouseholes at the same time. I was beginning to wonder if he would come when, a little past noon, he did. "You go outside," he said, pointing. "Need very much see what I do."

Out we went, Myakes walking a pace or two behind us, sizing up the man from India. When he did not say anything or try to dissuade me from my course, I concluded he had decided, as I had, that the fellow at least thought he knew what he was doing.

Auriabedas sat me down on a large stone. The wind was blowing off the sea, so the stink of fish was missing from the air. By then, I noticed its absence more than its presence. Auriabedas gave me a small jar. "Drink," he said, undoing the stopper. "Wine and poppy. I cut, you hurt not so much."

I drank. The stuff had a muzzy taste to it. After a while, the world began to look dimmer than it had, an effect the poppy has on the eyes. I yawned. I felt sleepy, detached, almost floating away from myself.

From his little wooden case, Auriabedas drew the knife he had shown me in the tavern; needle and thread; some linen rags for bandages; a couple of hollow wooden tubes, each one thicker than my little finger; and, absurdly, a pen-and-ink set. He leaned forward, touching me with surprising delicacy to measure the exact size of the wound he aimed to repair. Then, inking his pen, he drew on my forehead the shape of skin he intended to cut out and fold over the hole in the center of my face.