Harry Turtledove - Krispos the Emperor

"I thought it was an indecent argument," Katakolon said, not willing to be outdone by Phostis.

"Enough, enough!" Krispos groaned. "Have mercy on your poor decrepit father. I've got softening of the brain from too many years of staring at tax receipts and edicts; you can't expect me to throw puns about the way you do."

Just then, the scouts up ahead started raising a racket. One of them rode back to the van of the main body. Saluting Krispos, he said, "Your Majesty, the sharp-eyed among us have spied the sun glinting off the temple domes of Videssos the city."

Krispos peered ahead. He wasn't particularly sharp-sighted any longer; things in the distance got blurry for him. But whether he could see them or not, knowing the temples and their domes were so close made him feel the journey was coming to its end.

"Almost home," he said again. He looked from Phostis to Katakolon, daring them to make more wisecracks. They both kept quiet. He nodded, pleased with himself: the young bulls still respected the old bull's horns.

The folk of Videssos the city packed the colonnaded sidewalks of Middle Street, cheering as the triumphal procession made its way toward the plaza of Palamas. Phostis rode near the head of the procession, Olyvria at his side. He wore a gilded mail shirt and helmet to let the people know who he was—and to make sure no diehard Thanasiot assassinated him for the greater glory of the gleaming path.

As he rode, he waved, which brought fresh applause from the crowd. He turned to Olyvria and said quietly, "I wonder how many of these same people were screaming for Thanasios and trying to burn down the city not long ago."

"A fair number, I'd say," she answered.

He nodded. "I think you're right." Rooting Thanasioi out from Videssos the city wasn't nearly so straightforward as uprooting and transplanting villages. Unless you caught someone setting fires or wrecking, how could you know what was in his heart? You couldn't; that was the long and short of it. Thanasios' followers surely lingered here. If they stayed quiet, they might go unnoticed for generations—those who cared to raise new generations, at any rate.

Middle Street showed few scars from the rioting. Countless fires burned in the city every day, for cooking and heating and at smithies and other workplaces. Whitewashed buildings were usually gray with soot in a few months' time. The soot that came from the rioters' blazes looked no different from any other after the fact.

The procession passed through the Forum of the Ox, about a third of the way from the Silver Gate in the great land wall to the plaza of Palamas. The stalls in the Forum of the Ox sold cheap goods to people who could afford no better. Most of the folk who packed the square wore either ragged tunics or gaudy finery whose "gold" threads were apt to turn green in a matter of days. Phostis would have bet that plenty of them had bawled for the gleaming path.

Now, though, they cried out Krispos' name as loudly as anyone else—and that despite some former market stalls that were now only charred ruins. "Maybe they'll come back to orthodoxy now that they've really seen what their heresy leads to," Phostis said. He spoke more softly still: "That's more or less what I did, after all."

"Maybe," Olyvria said, her voice so neutral he couldn't tell whether she agreed with him or not.

We'll know twenty years from now, he thought. Looking about as far ahead as he'd already lived felt strange, almost unnatural, to him, but he was beginning to do it. He didn't know whether that was because he'd started taking seriously the idea of ruling or simply because he was getting older.

Off to the north of Middle Street, between the Forum of the Ox and the plaza of Palamas, stood the huge mass of the High Temple. It was undamaged, not from any lack of malevolence on the part of the Thanasioi but because soldiers and ecclesiastics armed with stout staves had ringed it day and night until rioting subsided.

Phostis still felt uncomfortable as he rode past the High Temple: He looked on it as an enormous sponge that had soaked up endless gold that might have been better spent elsewhere. But he had returned to the faith that found deepest expression beneath that marvelous dome. He shook his head. Not all puzzles had neat solutions. This one, too, would have to wait for more years to do their work in defining his views.

The red granite facing of the government office building caught his eye and told him the plaza of Palamas was drawing near. Somewhere under there, in the jail levels below ground, Digenis the priest had starved himself to death.

"Digenis might have been right to be angry about how the rich have too much, but I don't think making everyone poor is the right answer," Phostis said to Olyvria. "Still, I can't hate him, not when I met you through him."

She smiled at that, but answered, "Aren't you putting your own affairs above those of the Empire there?"

He needed a moment to realize she was teasing. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said. "Or at least one affair. Katakolon's the fellow who keeps four of them in the air at the same time." She made a face at him, which let him think he'd come out best in that little skirmish.

Up ahead, a great roar announced that Krispos had entered the packed plaza of Palamas. With the Avtokrator marched servitors armed not with weapons but with sacks of gold and silver. Many an Emperor had kept the city mob happy with largess, and Krispos had shown over and over that he was able to profit from others' examples. Letting people squabble over money flung among them might keep them from more serious uprisings like the one Videssos the city had just seen.

Sky-blue ribbons—and Haloga guardsmen—kept the crowds from swamping the route the procession took to the western edge of the plaza. Krispos had ascended to a wooden platform whose pieces were stored in a palace outbuilding against time of need. Phostis wondered how many times Krispos had mounted that platform to speak to the people of the city. Quite a few, he thought.

He dismounted, then reached out to help Olyvria do the same. Grooms took their horses. Hand in hand, the two of them went up onto the platform themselves.

"It's a sea of people out there," Phostis exclaimed, looking out at the restless mass. Their noise rose and fell in almost regular waves, like the surf.

For the first time, Phostis had a chance to see that part of the procession which had been behind him. A parade was not a parade without soldiers. A company of Halogai marched around Krispos, Phostis, and Olyvria, for protection and show both. Behind them came several regiments of Videssians. some mounted, others afoot. They tramped along looking neither right nor left, as if the people of the city were not worth their notice. Not only were they part of the spectacle, they also served as a reminder that Krispos had powerful forces ready at hand should rioting break out again.

The Halogai formed up in front of the platform. The rest of the troops headed past the plaza of Palamas and into the palace quarter. Some had barracks there; others would be dismissed back to the countryside after the celebration was over.

Between one regiment and the next walked dejected Thanasiot prisoners. Some of them still showed the marks of wounds; none wore anything more than ragged drawers; all had their hands tied behind their backs. The crowd jeered them and pelted them with eggs and rotten fruit and the occasional stone.

Olyvria said, "A lot of Avtokrators would have capped this parade with a massacre."

"I know," Phostis said. "But Father has seen real massacres—ask him about Harvas Black-Robe some time. Having seen the beast, he doesn't want to give birth to it."

The prisoners took the same route out of the plaza as had the soldiers. Their fate would not be much different: they'd be sent off to live on the land with the rest of the uprooted Thanasioi, with luck in peace. Unlike the soldiers, though, they would get no choice about where they went.