Harry Turtledove - Krispos the Emperor

Afterward, she quickly slipped back into deep sleep. Krispos got out of bed to use the chamber pot, then lay down beside her again. He, too, was almost asleep when he suddenly wondered, not for the first time, whether Barsymes knew him better than he knew himself.

The trouble with the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, Phostis thought, was that the windows were too big. The ceremonial hall, named back in the days when Videssian nobles actually ate reclining, was cooler in summer than most, thanks to those large windows. But the torches, lamps, and candles needed for nighttime feasts were lodestones for moths, mosquitoes, water bugs, even bats and birds. Watching a crisped moth land in the middle of a bowl of pickled octopus tentacles did not inflame the appetite. Watching a nightjar swoop down and snatch the moth out of the bowl made Phostis wish he'd never summoned his friends to the feast in the first place.

He thought about announcing it was over, but that wouldn't do, either. Inevitably, word would get back to his father. He could already hear Krispos' peasant-accented voice ringing in his ears: The least you could do, son, is make up your mind.

The imagined scolding seemed so real that he whipped his head around in alarm, wondering if Krispos had somehow snuck up behind him. But no—save for his own companions, he was alone here.

He felt very much alone. One thing his father had succeeded in doing was to make him wonder who cared for him because he was himself and who merely because he was junior Avtokrator and heir to the Videssian throne. Asking the question, though, often proved easier than answering it. so he had lingering suspicions about almost everyone he knew.

"You won't need to look over your shoulder like that forever, your Majesty," said Vatatzes. who was sitting at Phostis' right hand. He trusted Vatatzes further than most of his friends; being only the son of a mid-level logothete, the youth was unlikely to have designs on the crown himself. Now he slapped Krispos on the shoulder and went on, "Surely one day before too long, you'll be able to hold your feasts when and as you like."

One more word and he would have spoken treason. Phostis' friends frequently walked that fine line. So far. to his relief, nobody had forced him to pretend not to hear something. He. too, wondered—how could he help but wonder?—how long his father would stay vigorous. It might be another day, it might be another twenty years. No way to tell without magic, and even that held risks greater than he cared to take. For one thing, as was but fitting, the finest sorcerous talent in the Empire shielded the Avtokrator's fate from those who would spy it out. For another, seeking to divine an Emperor's future was in and of itself a capital crime.

Phostis wondered what Krispos was doing now. Administering affairs, probably: that was what his father usually did. A couple of years before. Krispos had tried to get him to share some of the burden. He'd tried, too, but it hadn't been pleasant work, especially because Krispos stood behind him while he shuffled through parchments.

Again, he could almost hear his father: "Hurry up, boy! One way or another, you have to decide. If you don't do it, who will?"

And his own wail: "But what if I'm wrong?"

"You will be, sometimes." Krispos had spoken with such maddening certainty that he wanted to hit him. "You try to do a couple of things: You try not to make the same mistake twice, and you take the chance to set one right later if it comes along."

Put that way, it sounded so easy. But after a couple of days of case after complex case, Phostis concluded ease in anything—fishing, sword-swallowing, running an empire, anything—came only with having done the job for years and years. As most young men do, he suspected he was brighter than his father. He certainly had a better education: He was good at ciphering, he could quote secular poets and historians as well as Phos' holy scriptures, and he didn't talk as if he'd just stepped away from a plow.

But Krispos had one thing he lacked: experience. His father did what needed doing almost without thinking about it, then went on to the next thing and took care of that, too. Meanwhile Phostis himself floundered and bit his lip, wondering where proper action lay. By the time he made one choice, three more had grown up to stare him in the face.

He knew he'd disappointed his father when he asked to be excused from his share of imperial business. "How will you learn what you need to know, save by this work?" Krispos had asked.

"But I can't do it properly," he'd answered. To him, that explained everything—if something didn't come easy, why not work at something else instead?

Krispos had shaken his head. "Wouldn't you sooner find that out now, while I'm here to show you what you need, then after I'm gone and you find the whole sack of barley on your back at once?"

The rustic metaphor hadn't helped persuade Phostis. He wished his family's nobility ran back farther than his father, wished he wasn't named for a poor farmer dead of cholera.

Vatatzes snapped him out of his gloomy reverie. "What say we go find us some girls, eh, your Majesty?"

"Go on if you care to. You'll probably run into my brothers if you do." Phostis laughed without much mirth, as much at himself as at Evripos and Katakolon. He couldn't even enjoy the perquisites of imperial life as they did. Ever since he'd discovered how many women would lie down with him merely on account of the title he bore, much of the enjoyment had gone out of the game.

Some nobles kept little enclosures where they hand-raised deer and boar until the animals grew tame as pets. Then they'd shoot them. Phostis had never seen the sport in that, or in bedding girls who either didn't dare say no or else turned sleeping with him into as cold-blooded a calculation as any Krispos made in the age-long struggle between Videssos and Makuran.

He'd tried explaining that to his brothers once, not long after Katakolon, then fourteen, seduced—or was seduced by—one of the women who did the palace laundry. Exalted by his own youthful prowess, he'd paid no heed whatever to Phostis. As for Evripos, he'd said only. "Do you want to don the blue robe and live out your life as a monk? Suit yourself, big brother, but it's not the life for me."

Had he wanted a monastic life, it would have been easy to arrange. But the sole reason he'd ever considered it was to get away from his father. He lacked both a monkish vocation and a monkish temperament. It wasn't that he sought to mortify his flesh, but rather that he—usually—found loveless or mercenary coupling more mortifying than none.

He often wondered how he would do when Krispos decided to marry him off. He was just glad that day had not yet arrived. When it did, he was sure his father would pick him a bride with more of an eye toward advantage for the imperial house than toward his happiness. Sometimes marriages of that sort worked as well as any others. Sometimes—

He turned to Vatatzes. "My friend, you know not how fortunate you are. coming from a family of but middling rank. All too often, I feel my birth more as a cage or a curse than as something in which to rejoice."

"Ah, your Majesty, you've drunk yourself sad, that's all it is." Vatatzes turned to the panpiper and pandoura player who made soft music as a background against which to talk. He snapped his fingers and raised his voice. "Here, you fellows, give us something lively now, to lift the young Majesty's spirits."

The musicians put their heads together for a moment. The man with the panpipes set them down and picked up a kettle-shaped drum. Heads came up all through the Hall of the Nineteen Couches as his hands evoked thunder from the drumhead. The pandoura player struck a ringing, fiery chord. Phostis recognized the Vaspurakaner dance they played, but it failed to gladden him.