"I'll believe it when I see it." Maniakes' laugh held less bitterness than he'd expected. "As long as they don't riot in the streets when I ride by, I'll settle for that."

  "You may be surprised," his cousin said. "They were starting to give you your due back there before you went into the westlands."

  "You may be surprised," Maniakes retorted. "That was just because they were glad they had me in the city instead of Etzilios and Abivard. If a goatherd saves a pretty girl who's fallen down a well, she might go to bed with him once to say thanks, but that doesn't mean she'd want to marry him. And the city mob in the capital is more fickle than any pretty girl ever born."

  "Which only goes to show, you don't know as much about pretty girls as you think you do," Rhegorios said.

  "I'm sure there are a great many things you can teach me, 0 sage of the age," Maniakes said. "I'm sure there are a great many things you can teach most billy goats, for that matter." Rhegorios made a face at him. He ignored it, continuing, "But one thing you can't teach me about, by the good god, is the mob in Videssos the city."

  "We'll see," was all his cousin said. "If I'm wrong, I may ask to borrow Askbrand's axe."

  "Honh!" the guardsman said. "An these stupid city people give not the Avtokrator his due, maybe he will turn all the Halogai loose on them. They would remember that a long time, I bet you."

  He swung the axe again. His pale, intent eyes lit up, perhaps in anticipation.

  "I don't think so," Maniakes said hastily. "There are ways to be remembered, yes, but that's not one I care for. We'll go home and see what happens, that's all. Whatever it is, I can live with it."

  XIII

  It rained on Maniakes' parade. it had rained the day before, and the day before that, too. It was liable to keep on raining for the next week.

  He didn't care. He'd returned to Videssos the city before the fall rains began, which meant traveling had been easy. He'd ordered the parade more because he thought the city mob expected one than because he had anything spectacular to display. The sole disadvantage of having peacefully reacquired the westlands was the absence of captured siege gear, dejected prisoners in chains, and most of the other elements that made a procession dramatic and worth watching.

  Without prisoners and booty, Maniakes paraded his own soldiers. Without those soldiers, he never would have been able to take the war to Makuran or to defend Videssos the city against the Makuraners and Kubratoi. They deserved the credit for the victories that would go down in the chronicles as his.

  He'd thought the rain and the relatively mundane nature of the parade—which he'd taken pains to announce beforehand—would hold down the crowd. He didn't mind that. If only dedicated parade-goers came out, he'd reasoned, fewer of the people lining Middle Street would be of the sort who amused themselves by hissing him and shouting obscenities at Lysia.

  Looking at the way men and women packed the capital's chief thoroughfare, though, he turned to Rhegorios and remarked, "More folk came out than I expected. Must be the colonnades—I'd forgotten how they let people stay dry even in wet weather."

  Rhegorios didn't answer right away. Like Maniakes, he was busy waving to the people as he rode along. Unlike Maniakes', most of his waves seemed aimed at the pretty girls in the crowd; he hadn't let his disappointment over Phosia dishearten him for long. At last, he said, "Cousin of mine, you may as well get used to it: they've decided they like you after all."

  "What? Nonsense!" Maniakes exclaimed. He'd grown so used to being an object of derision in Videssos the city that any other role seemed unnatural.

  "All right, don't listen to me," Rhegorios said equably. "You're the Avtokrator; you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. But if you don't pay attention to what's going on around you, you're in a pretty sorry state, wouldn't you say?"

  Stung by that, Maniakes did listen harder. A few shouts of "Incest!" and "Vaspurakaner heretic!"—this despite his orthodoxy— did come out of the crowd. He always listened for shouts like that Because he always listened for them, he always heard them.

  Now, though, along with them and, to his amazement, nearly drowning them out, came others: "Maniakes!" "Huzzah for the restorer of the westlands!" "Maniakes, conqueror of Kubrat and Makuran!" 'Thou conquerest, Maniakes!" He hadn't heard that last one since his acclamation as Avtokrator. It was shouted during acclamations as a pious hope. Now he'd earned it in truth.

  "Maybe I really have convinced them," he said, as much to himself as to Rhegorios. He'd hoped victory would do that for him—hoped and hoped and hoped. Up till this past campaigning season, he hadn't won enough victories to put the theory to a proper test.

  "You're a hero," Rhegorios said with a grin. "Get used to it." The grin got wider. "So am I. I like it."

  "There could be worse fates," Maniakes admitted. "We almost found out about a good many of them, these past few months."

  "Didn't we, though?" Rhegorios said. "But it came right in the end. Why, the mime troupes may even leave you alone this Midwinter's Day."

  Maniakes considered that. He didn't need long. "I don't believe it for a minute," he said. "The mime troupes don't ever leave anybody alone: that's what they're for. And if you're the Avtokrator, you have to sit on the spine of the Amphitheater and pretend it's funny. On Midwinter's Day, that's what the Avtokrator's for." After a moment, he added in a wistful, almost hopeful voice, "Maybe they won't bite quite so hard this year, though." He didn't even believe that, not down deep. Midwinter's Day was still a couple of months away. By then, renewed familiarity would surely have blunted the respect the city mob felt for him now.

  Rhegorios said, "Enjoy this while it lasts, anyhow." By the way he spoke, he didn't think it would last indefinitely, either.

  In the crowd, a man held up a little baby in one hand, pointed to it with the other, and shouted, "Maniakes!"—he'd named the boy for the Avtokrator.

  "Take him home and get him out of the rain, before he comes down with the croup," Maniakes called. Several nearby women— including, by the look of things, the infant Maniakes' mother— expressed loud and emphatic agreement with that sentiment.

  Agathios the patriarch, who was riding a mule just behind Maniakes and Rhegorios, said, "Today, everyone delights in honoring you, your Majesty."

  "Yes. Today," Maniakes said. But being honored was better man being despised; he couldn't deny that. Having experienced both, he could compare them.

  And he was still despised, here and there. From the margins of the crowd, a priest cried, "Skotos' ice still awaits you for your lewdness and the travesty you have made of the marriage vow."

  Maniakes looked back over his shoulder toward Agathios. "Do you know, most holy sir," he said in thoughtful tones, "just how badly we need priests to preach against the Vaspurakaner heresy in the towns and villages of the westlands? A passionate fellow like that is really wasted in Videssos the city, wouldn't you say? He would do so much better in a place like, oh, Patrodoton, for instance."

  Agathios was not an astute politician, but he knew what Maniakes had in mind when making a suggestion like that. "I shall do my utmost to find out who that, ah, intrepid spirit is, your Majesty, and to translate him to a sphere where, as you rightly remark, his zeal might be put to good use."

  "Speaking of good use, you'll get that out of the westlands," Rhegorios murmured to his cousin. "Now that we have them back, you've got a whole raft of new places to dump blue-robes who get on your nerves."

  "If you think that's a joke, cousin of mine, you're wrong," Maniakes said. "If priests don't care to deal with sinful me in this sinful city, they can—and they will—go off somewhere quiet and out of the way and see how they like that."

  A certain bloodthirsty gleam—or maybe it was just the rain— came into Rhegorios' eyes. "You ought to send the really zealous ones up to Kubrat, to see if they can convert Etzilios and the rest of the nomads. If they do, well and good. If they don't, the lord with the great and good mind will have some new martyrs, and you'll be rid of some old nuisances."

  He'd intended only Maniakes to hear that. But he spoke a little too loudly, so that it also reached Agathios' ears. In tones of reproof, the ecumenical patriarch said, "Your Highness, mock not martyrdom. Think on the tale of the holy Kveldoulphios the Haloga, who laid down his life in the hope that his brave and glorious ending would inspire his people to the worship of the good god."

  "I crave your pardon, most holy sir," Rhegorios said. Like any other Videssian, he was at bottom pious. Like any other Videssian high in the government, he also thought of the faith as an instrument of policy, holding both views at the same time without either confusion or separation.

  Maniakes turned back and said to Agathios, "But the Halogai follow their own gods to this day, and the holy Kveldoulphios lived—what?—several hundred years ago, anyhow. Long before the civil wars that tore us to pieces."

  "Your Majesty is, of course, correct." The patriarch let out a sigh so mournful, Maniakes wondered if he shed a tear or two along with it. In the rain, he could not tell. Agathios went on, "But he went gloriously to martyrdom of his own free will, rather than being hounded into it by the machinations of others."

  "Very well, most holy sir. I do take the point," Maniakes said. Patriarchs were, in their way, government functionaries, too. Each one of them, though, had a point beyond which his obligations to Phos took precedence over his obligations to the Avtokrator. Maniakes realized the talk of deliberately creating martyrs had pushed Agathios close to that point.

  "Thou conquerest, Maniakes!" "Maniakes, savior of the city!" "Maniakes, savior of the Empire!" Those shouts, and more like them, kept coming from the crowd. They didn't quite swallow up all the other shouts, the ones that had been hurled at Maniakes since the day he married his first cousin, but there were more of them and fewer of the others. If he hadn't won any great love, the Avtokrator had gained respect.

  Pacing the floor, Maniakes said, "I hate this." In the Red Room, Zoile the midwife was with Lysia, and custom binding as manacles kept him from being there. Having lost his first wife in childbed, he knew only too well the dangers Lysia faced.

  His father set a hand on his shoulder. "Hard for us men at a time like this," the elder Maniakes said. "Just don't let your wife ever hear you say so, or you won't hear the last of it. It's the difference between watching a battle and going through one yourself, I suppose."

  "That's probably about right," Maniakes said. "How many people here were watching from the seawall when our fleet beat the Kubratoi? They could drink wine and point to this and that and say how exciting it all was, but they weren't in any danger." He paused. "Of course, they would have been if we'd lost the sea fight instead of winning it."

  "Nobody's going to lose any fights, by the good god," Symvatios said. "Lysia's going to give you another brat to howl around this place so a man can't get a decent night's sleep here."

  "Ha!" The elder Maniakes raised an eyebrow at his brother. "You're more likely to be looking for an indecent night's sleep, anyhow."

  Symvatios growled something in mock high dudgeon. Maniakes, his own worries forgotten for a moment, grinned at his father and uncle. They'd been bickering like that since they were boys, and enjoying it, too. Maniakes and Rhegorios bickered and bantered like that. Maniakes had done the same with Parsmanios... when they were boys. But between the two of them, the jealousy that had grown up was real.

  As if picking the thought from his son's mind, the elder Maniakes said, "Your nephew, the little fellow who's named for the two of us, seems a likely lad."

  "I hope so, for his sake," Maniakes said. "Zenonis and her boy have been here a good deal longer than I have, so you'll have seen more of them than I have. They don't seek me out, either." The corners of his mouth turned down. "You're her father-in-law, but in her mind—and I suppose in the boy's mind, too—I'm the chap who sent her husband into exile across the sea."

  "Couldn't be helped, son," the elder Maniakes said heavily. "After he did what he undoubtedly did to you, I don't see that you had any choice. I've never held it against you—you know that."

  His heavy features got a little heavier. He'd had three sons. One, his namesake, was a great success. But one was a proved traitor, and one long years missing and surely dead. A great weight of sorrow had to lurk there, though he spoke of it but seldom.

  Symvatios said, "Sometimes there isn't any help for the things that happen, and that's all there is to it. You do the best you can with what you've got and you go on."

  One of the things that had happened, of course, was Lysia and Maniakes falling in love with each other. Symvatios tolerated Maniakes as son-in-law as well as nephew, as the elder Maniakes was resigned to having Lysia as daughter-in-law. The marriage had been one of the things—though jealousy of Rhegorios played a bigger role—pushing Parsmanios away from the rest of the family and toward Tzikas' plot. Neither Maniakes' father nor his uncle had ever blamed him for that, not out loud. He was grateful to them for so much.

  With a sigh, he said, "We always were a tight-knit clan. Now we're knitted tighter than ever." That was his doing, his and Lysia's. But the world, as far as he was concerned, wasn't worth living in without her.

  Kameas came in. "Wine, your Majesty, your Highnesses?" he said.

  "Yes, wine," Maniakes said. Wine would not take away the worry. Nothing would take away the worry. But, after three or four cups, it got blurry around the edges. That would do.

  The vestiarios glided away, looking as he always did as if he propelled his vast bulk without moving his feet up and down when he walked. He returned a few moments later with that same ponderous grace. "I have an extra cup here, if his Highness the Sevastos should join you," he said.

  "You think of everything," Maniakes said. Kameas nodded slightly, as if to say that was part of his job. Suddenly Maniakes wished this were his fourth cup of wine, not his first. He forced out a question: "Have you seen to Philetos?"

  "Oh, yes, your Majesty. One of the prominent sirs—" He used the palace term for a lower-ranking eunuch. "—is attending to him, down by the Red Room." Kameas sketched Phos' sun-circle above his breast. "We all pray, of course, that the holy sir's presence shall prove unnecessary."

  "Aye, we do, don't we?" Maniakes said harshly. That Philetos was a priest was not why, or not precisely why, he'd been summoned to the imperial residence when Lysia's pangs began. He was also a healer-priest, the finest in Videssos the city. If anything went wrong... If anything went wrong, he might be able to help, and then again he might not. He hadn't been able to help when Niphone died giving birth to Likarios.

  With a distinct effort of will, the Avtokrator forced his thoughts away from that track. He spat on the floor in rejection of Skotos, at the same time raising his cup toward Phos and his holy light. The elder Maniakes and Symvatios did as he did. Then Maniakes drank. The wine, golden in a silver cup, slid down his throat smooth as if it were sunlight itself.

  "Well," Rhegorios said indignantly, walking into the little dining hall where his kinsfolk waited. "Shows the importance I have around here, when people start drinking without me."

  Maniakes pointed to the extra cup Kameas had left behind. "We don't have a long start on you, cousin of mine—not like the one Abivard got on us when he moved against the city while we were sailing to Lyssaion. If you apply yourself, I expect you can catch up."

  "Apply myself to wine?" Rhegorios raised an eyebrow. "Now there's a shocking notion." He used the dipper to fill the cup.

  "I'm not shocked at it." Symvatios said. Rhegorios winced, rhetorically betrayed by his own father. After a perfectly timed pause, Symvatios went on, "I daresay you get it from me."

  The elder Maniakes said, "It's a gift that runs in the family, I expect. Father certainly had it." Symvatios nodded at that. The elder Maniakes went on, "He had so much of it, sometimes he needed two or three tries before he could make it through a door."

  "He was right when it mattered, though," Symvatios said. "When he did his drinking, it was when he didn't have to do anything else." He paused again. "Well, most of the time, anyhow."

  "You're scandalizing your children, you know, the two of you," Rhegorios told his father and uncle. "Maniakes and I don't remember Grandfather all that well, so if you tell us he was an old soak, we'll believe you."

  "What else will you believe if we tell it to you?" Symvatios asked. "Will you believe we're as wise and clever as we say?"

  "Of course not," Rhegorios replied at once. "We do know you."

  Both Maniakai, father and son, laughed. So did Symvatios. Kameas brought in a tray full of little squid sauteed in olive oil, vinegar, and garlic. They went well with the wine. Before too long, the jar was empty. The vestiarios fetched in another of the same vintage. For a little while, Maniakes managed to enjoy the company of his kin enough to take his mind off what Lysia was going through in the Red Room.

  But time stretched. If Maniakes didn't intend to emulate his grandfather—or the account of his grandfather his father and uncle gave—he had to keep from drinking himself blind. And if he slowed his drinking so as to keep his wits about him, those wits kept returning to his wife.

  Lysia had begun her labor around midmorning. The sun was sinking toward late autumn's early setting when Zoile strode into the little dining hall and thrust a blanket-wrapped bundle at Maniakes. "Your Majesty, you have a daughter," the midwife announced.

  Maniakes stared down at the baby, who was staring up at him. Their eyes met for a moment before those of the tiny girl wandered away. She was a dusky red color, and her head wasn't quite me right shape. Maniakes had learned all that was normal enough. He asked the question uppermost in his mind: "Is Lysia all right?"

  "She seems very well." If Zoile disapproved of his having married his cousin, she didn't show it. Since Maniakes had the strong impressions she was as frank as a Haloga, he took that for a good omen. The midwife went on, "She has been through this business a time or two, you know."