Harry Turtledove - Justinian

I turned to the crowd and, as if seized by something more than myself, shouted in a great voice, "Yes, it is so, every word! I was and am and will be Emperor of the Romans, and will return to Constantinople to wear the crown once more!" How the loafers cheered!

How I wish he would've kept his mouth shut, Brother Elpidios! Yes, that means I was happy enough in Kherson. I had a place to sleep, I had work that wasn't too easy and wasn't too hard, either. I had plenty to eat. I had plenty to drink. If I wanted anything more, I had places where I could go. I didn't go to the same place Justinian used, but Kherson had plenty of them. Never known a town full of sailors that didn't.

But that's not what I'm talking about, not this time. I wish Justinian would have kept his mouth shut because opening it drew notice to him that he didn't want. We'd been making plans, the lot of us. We knew what we wanted to do. We just weren't quite ready to do it yet- and doing it with people keeping an eye on us was ten times tougher than if we'd been able to go about our business with nobody the wiser.

Justinian, though, he was never one for doing things by halves. What's that you say, Brother? You've seen as much? I hope you have, what with spending so much time reading his book to me. Holding back after the tudun warned him- it ate at him. He couldn't stand it, no matter how plain the need was.

Afterwards, he felt better. He was all happy and smiling and lazy, like he'd just had a woman after doing without for a long time. What? You don't know what I'm talking about? Oh, that's right, so you don't, poor fellow. Well, you're a holy man, Brother Elpidios, and God loves you. That's\a160… very fine.

But you lay a woman, you can get in trouble, too. It's not all fun. She can give you a drippy pipe. You can put a baby in her. Even if you don't put a baby in her, her brothers and her father are liable to find out you've spread her legs, and then come after you with clubs, or maybe knives.

Say you've been bragging. That helps 'em find out. And when Justinian shouted out that he was the rightful Emperor and he aimed to get his crown back, if you wouldn't call that bragging, Brother Elipidios, what would you call it?

Iwaited to see what the tudun would do after I proclaimed my intention of regaining that which I had inherited from my ancestors. What the tudun did, rather to my surprise, was nothing. Perhaps he was weaker than I had thought or than he had presented himself as being, or perhaps the khagan of the Khazars had sent him orders to moderate his treatment of me. I set Barisbakourios to investigate which of those was so.

But the tudun was not the only power in Kherson, which, like any frontier town, was rife with alliances running in more than one direction. The older families there looked more strongly toward Constantinople than toward the Khazars. They may also have remembered that Apsimaros, before usurping the throne, had been an officer of the fleet, and so more inclined to use it than Le ontios would have been- not that Leontios was ever much inclined to do anything.

I was spooning up the inevitable, inescapable salt-fish porridge in the xenodokheion one morning when Stephen burst in, all sweaty and disheveled. "Emperor!" he said. "They'll be coming for you, Emperor!"

"Who will be coming for me?" I demanded, though I already had a fair idea. Myakes was eating beside me. He had been grumbling over my announcing I intended to retake the throne, and I did not care to give him the chance to look at me as if to say I told you so, even if he was too well trained in subordination to speak the words aloud.

"The whole lot of the bastards," Stephen said, which, if imperfectly responsive, had more flavor than that porridge of mine. He went on, "They'll kill you if they catch you, or else send you back to Apsimaros."

The prominent folk in Kherson could muster more force than I could hope to withstand. And, if by some chance they chose to give me over to Apsimaros rather than slaying me themselves, he would no doubt make up for their neglect in that matter.

Myakes put down his spoon, brought the bowl from which he was eating to his lips, and gulped down what remained. "Might as well fill my belly," he remarked. "Lord knows when I'll get the chance again." That being full of homely good sense, I imitated his example.

Stephen, meanwhile, was shifting from foot to foot, as if he intended running to the latrine at any moment. "Come on!" he exclaimed, the instant I put down my bowl. "My brother has horses waiting."

I had hardly been on a horse since my exile. Kherson was not a city of such great extent as to make riding needful, shank's mare sufficing for all journeys thereabouts. But we could not stay in Kherson, not now. I sprang to my feet and followed Stephen out of the xenodokheion where I had lived for almost nine years. After that day, I never saw the place again.

I should not even have looked back at it had Cyrus not chanced to come out of the monastery as I was trotting away and to call after me, "Where are you going, Emperor?"

Stephen had not told me what Barisbakourios had in mind doing with the horses he had collected. But an answer came to my mind as readily as a sword might come to my hand: "We're going up toward the country of the Khazars." If the tudun had kept silent after my assertion of my rights, perhaps his master was indeed more inclined to friendliness toward me than he had been in the past. He could hardly have been less inclined to friendliness toward me than the local leaders of Kherson, not if they aimed to murder me or betray me to the usurper.

"I'm with you, Emperor," Cyrus said, and came running after Stephen and Myakes and me.

Had I been offered while ruling in Constantinople such a horse as one of the beasts Barisbakourios had waiting, I have no doubt I should have ordered a whipping for the wretch rash enough to insult me so. Any horse, however, was better than none, and these beasts qualified, if barely, as any horse. I mounted the least disreputable of them, and we rode by side streets toward the north gate of Kherson.

The guards there were Khazars, which probably saved my life. Had they been Khersonites, I daresay they would have refused to allow me and my companions to leave the town. As it was, they shrugged and stood aside. Out of Kherson we rode, heading north.

My first intention had been to ride straight for the court of the khagan of the Khazars, out there on the immense plain from which the peninsula containing Kherson depends like the little ball of flesh hanging at the back of a man's throat. Having just escaped one danger, though, I wondered whether I ought to thrust myself at once into another, for I would be utterly at the khagan's mercy if I arrived at his barbaric court without any sort of invitation on his part.

When I spoke my doubts aloud, the others agreed with them. "Here, I know what let's do," Barisbakourios said. "Let's hole up in Doros. The people in Doros, they don't care what anyone else thinks or does."

Before coming to Kherson, I had never heard of Doros. By then, however, I had been in exile for a quarter of my life. "The town up by the neck of the peninsula?" I said, and then nodded. "Yes, that's a good idea. We'll do it."

Like Kherson, Doros is formally under the control of the Khazars. In Kherson, that formal control has a basis in reality, the khagan making a profit from the port. The folk of Doros formerly derived their income from tolls on trade going into and out of the peninsula. The khagans of the Khazars have for some years been strong enough to forbid them that. Such income as they have these days, as best I can tell, they derive from taking in one another's washing. Having impoverished them, the Khazars no longer bother taking an interest in their affairs.