Harry Turtledove: Krispos the Emperor

"Your Majesty is gracious." The vestiarios dipped his head. "As I said, however, I remain confident Phostis will satisfy your every expectation of him."

"Maybe," was all Krispos said.

Accepting his gloom, Barsymes picked up the tray and began to take it back to the kitchens. He paused at the doorway. "Will your Majesty require anything more of me?"

"No, not for now. Just make sure the candles in the study are lit, if you'd be so kind. I have the usual pile of parchments there waiting for review, and I can't do them all by daylight."

"I shall see to it," Barsymes promised. "Er—anything besides that?"

"No, eminent sir, nothing else, thank you," Krispos said. He'd had a few women in the palaces since Dara died, but his most recent mistress had seemed convinced he would make her relatives rich and powerful regardless of their merits, which were slender. He'd sent her packing.

Now—now his desire burned cooler than it had in his younger days. Little by little, he thought, he was beginning to approach Barsymes' status. He had never said that out loud and never would, for fear both of wounding the chamberlain's feelings and of encountering his pungent sarcasm.

Krispos waited a couple of minutes, then walked down the hall to the study. The cheerful glow of candlelight greeted him from the doorway: As usual, Barsymes gave flawless service. The stack of documents on the desk was less gladsome. Sometimes Krispos likened that stack to an enemy city that had to be besieged and then taken. But a city had to be captured only once. The parchments were never vanquished for good.

He'd watched Anthimos ignore administration for the sake of pleasure. Perhaps in reaction, he ignored pleasure for administration. When the pile of parchments was very high, as tonight, he wondered if Anthimos hadn't known the better way after all. Without a doubt, Anthimos had enjoyed himself more than Krispos did now. But equally without a doubt, the Empire was better served now than it had been during Anthimos' antic reign.

Reed pens and the scarlet ink reserved for the Avtokrator of the Videssians alone, stylus and wax-covered wooden tablets, and sky-blue sealing wax waited in a neat row at the left edge of the desk, like regiments ready to be committed to battle against the implacable enemy. Feeling a moment's foolishness, Krispos saluted them, clenched right fist over his heart. Then he sat down and got to work.

Topping the pile was a tax report from the frontier province of Kubrat, between the Paristrian Mountains and the Istros River, north and east of Videssos the city. When Krispos' reign began, it had been the independent khaganate of Kubrat, a barbarous nation whose horsemen had raided the Empire for centuries. Now herds and farms and mines brought gold rather than terror south of the mountains. Solid progress there, he thought. He scrawled his signature to show he'd read the cadaster and approved its revenue total.

The second report was also from Kubrat. Even after most of a generation under Videssian rule, the prelate of Pliskavos reported, heresy and outright heathenism remained rife in the province. Many of the nomads would not turn aside from their ancestral spirits to worship Phos, the good god the Empire followed. And the folk of Videssian stock, subject for centuries to the invaders from the steppe, had fallen into strange usages and errors because they were so long cut off from the mainstream of doctrine in Videssos.

Krispos reinked the pen, reached into a pigeonhole for a blank parchment. Krispos Avtokrator to the holy sir Balaneus:

Greetings, he wrote, and then paused for thought. The pen scratched across the sheet as he resumed: By all means keep on with your efforts to bring Kubrat and its inhabitants back to the true faith. The example of our new, perfectly orthodox colonists should help you. Use compulsion only as a last resort, but in the end do not hesitate: as we have only one Empire, so we must have only one faith within it. May Phos shine his light on your work.

He sanded the letter dry, lit a stick of sealing wax at one of the candles on the desk, let several drops fall on the letter, and pressed his ring into the blob of wax while it was still soft. A courier would take the letter north tomorrow; Balaneus ought to have it in less than a week. Krispos was pleased with the prelate and his work. He was also pleased with his own writing; he hadn't done much of it before he became Emperor, but had grown fluent with a pen since.

Another tax report followed, this one from a lowland province in the westlands, across the strait called the Cattle-Crossing from Videssos the city. The lowland province yielded four times as much revenue as Kubrat. Krispos nodded, unsurprised. The lowlands had soil and climate good enough for two crops a year, and had been free of invasion for so long that many of the towns there had no walls. That would have been unimaginable—to say nothing of suicidal—in half-barbarous Kubrat.

The next report was sealed; it came from the latest Videssian embassy to Mashiz, the capital of Makuran. Krispos knew he had to handle that one with careful attention: the Kings of Kings of Makuran were the greatest rivals Videssian Avtokrators faced, and the only rulers they recognized as equals.

He smiled when he broke the seal and saw the elegant script within. It was almost as familiar as his own hand. "Iakovitzes to the Avtokrator Krispos: Greetings," he read, moving his lips slightly as he always did. "I trust you are cool and comfortable in the city by the sea. Were Skotos' hell to be charged with fire rather than the eternal ice, Mashiz would let the dark god get a good notion of what he required."

Krispos' smile broadened. He'd first met Iakovitzes when he was nine years old, when the Videssian noble ransomed his family and other peasants from captivity in Kubrat. In the more than forty years since, he'd seldom known the plump little man to have a kind word for anyone or anything.

Warming to his theme (if that was the proper phrase), Iakovitzes continued, "Rubyab King of Kings has gone and done something sneaky. I have not yet learned what it is, but the little waxed tips to his mustaches quiver whenever he deigns to grant me an audience, so I presume it is something not calculated to make you sleep better of nights, your Majesty. I've spread about a few goldpieces—the Makuraners coin only silver, as you know, so they lust for gold as I do after pretty boys—but without success as yet. I keep trying."

The smile left Krispos' face. He'd sent Iakovitzes to Makuran precisely because he was so good at worming information out of unlikely places. He read on: "Other than his mustaches, Rubyab is being reasonably cooperative. I think I shall be able to talk him out of restoring that desert fortress his troops won in our last little skirmish for the donative you have in mind. He also seems willing to lower the tolls he charges caravans for permission to enter Videssos from his realm. That, in turn, may, should, but probably will not, enable those thieves to lower their prices to us."

"Good," Krispos said aloud. He'd been after Makuran to lower those tolls since the days of Rubyab's father Nakhorgan. If the King of Kings finally intended to yield there, and to restore the fortress of Sarmizegetusa, maybe Iakovitzes was reading too much into waggling waxed mustachios.

Another cadaster followed Iakovitzes' letter from Makuran. Krispos wondered if Barsymes deliberately arranged the parchments to keep him from being stupefied by one tax list after another. The vestiarios had served in the palaces a long time now; his definition of perfect service grew broader every year.

After scrawling I have read it—Krispos at the bottom of the tax document, Krispos went on to the parchment beneath it. Like Balaneus' missive, this one also came from an ecclesiastic, here a priest from Pityos, a town on the southern coast of the Videssian Sea, just across the Rhamnos River from Vaspurakan.