“I daresay.”
“Oh, think what you will,” Mirrane said impatiently. “I serve the King of Kings no less than you your Avtokrator. If my body aids in that service, then it does, and there is no more to be said about it.” She paused a moment. “No, I take that back. I will say, Basil, that Goarios is not one I would have bedded of my own free choice, and that that is not true of you.”
Ever since those few nights in Daras, Argyros had wondered whether the passion she showed then was real or simply a ploy in an unending struggle between Persia and the Roman Empire. He wondered still; Mirrane might say anything to gain advantage. That mixture of suspicious curiosity and anger roughened his words: “Say whatever you like. Whether or not you care a follis for him, Goarios dances to your tune, in bed and out.”
Mirrane’s laugh had an edge to it. “Were that so, I’d not be here talking with you now—you would have been a dead man the instant Tskhinvali called your name. But I need you alive.”
For the first time, Argyros began to think she might be telling the truth, or some of it. She had no reason not to unmask him if she did fully control the king of the Alans. Trusting her, though, went against every instinct the magistrianos had, and against the evidence as well. “If Goarios is his own man, as you say, why has he turned his back on God’s only begotten Son Jesus Christ and embraced your false Ormazd?
Whence comes that, if not from you?”
“I find my faith as true as you yours,” Mirrane said tartly.
“As for Goarios, he is his own man, and his own god as well—the only thing he worships is himself. The words he mouths are whichever ones suit him for the time being. I saw that too late, and that is why I need your help.”
“Now we come down to it,” Argyros said.
Mirrane nodded. “Now indeed. What he intends, you see, is opening the Caspian Gates to the Kirghiz and as many other nomad clans as care to join them. His own army will join the nomads; he thinks he will end by ruling them all.” Her sigh was full of unfeigned regret. “And to think that that was what I labored so hard to accomplish, and here I find it worse than useless.”
Argyros found it appalling: it was George Lakhanodrakon’s worst nightmare, come to life. The magistrianos said, “Why should you not be glad to see the nomads ravage Roman provinces?”
“I told you once—if that were all, you would be dead. But Goarios and the men from the steppe have bigger plans. They want to invade Persia too. Goarios thinks to play Iskander.” Argyros frowned for a couple of seconds before recognizing the Persian pronunciation of the name Alexander. Many had tried to rule both east and west in the sixteen hundred years since Alexander the Great; no one had succeeded.
Then again, no one had tried with the backing of the nomads. “You think he may do it, then,” the magistrianos said slowly.
“He might; he just might,” Miranne answered. “He is a man who believes he can do anything, and those are the ones who are sometimes right.” She hesitated, then added, “He frightens me.”
That admission startled Argyros, who had never imagined hearing it from Mirrane. All the same, he said, “It’s hard to imagine a conquering army erupting out of the Caucasus. The mountains here are a refuge of defeat, not stepping-stones to triumph.” He spelled out the chain of thought he’d had coming into Dariel. Mirrane’s eyes lit. She followed him at once. He knew how clever she was. Her wit rather than her beauty made her truly formidable, though she was twice as dangerous because she had both. She said, “This once, though, the Alans have raised up a leader for themselves. He is ... strange, but sometimes that makes people follow a man more readily, for they see him as being marked by—well, by whatever god they follow.” Her smile invited Argyros to notice the concession she had made him. He did not rise to it. Over the centuries, the agents who served the Roman Empire had learned to gauge when diplomacy would serve and when war was required, when to pay tribute, and when instead to incite a tribe’s enemies to distract it from the frontier. If a hero had appeared in Alania, that long experience told Argyros what to do. “Kill him,” the magistrianos said. “The chaos from that should be plenty to keep the Alans safely squabbling among themselves.”
“I thought of that, or course,” Mirrane said, “but, aside from being fond of staying healthy and intact myself, it’s too late. The Kirghiz control the pass these days, not the Alans.”
“Oh, damnation.”
“Yes, the whole damn nation,” Mirrane echoed, her somber voice belying the lighthearted tone of the pun. “Their khan Dayir, I would say, is using Goarios for his own ends as much as Goarios is using him. And where Goarios would be Iskander if he could, Dayir also has one after whom he models his conduct.”
Argyros thought of the nomad chieftains who had plagued the Roman Empire through the centuries.
“Attila,” he said, naming the first and worst of them.
Mirrane frowned. “Of him I never heard.” The magistrianos was briefly startled, then realized she had no reason to be familiar with all the old tales from what was to her the distant west: Attila had never plundered Persia. But she knew of one who had: “I was thinking of the king of the Ephthalites, who long ago slew Peroz King of Kings by a trick.”
Argyros nodded; Prokopios had preserved in Roman memory the story of that disaster. “Enough of ancient history, though,” he said with the same grim pragmatism that had made him urge Mirrane to assassinate Goarios. “We need now to decide how to deal with this Dayir.” Only when he noticed he had said “we” was the magistrianos sure he believed Mirrane.
She accepted that tacit agreement as no less than her due. “So we do. Unfortunately, I see no easy way. I doubt we’d be able to pry him and Goarios apart. Until they’ve succeeded, their interests run in the same direction.”
“And afterward,” Argyros said gloomily, “will be too late to do us much good.”
Mirrane smiled at the understatement. “Ah, Basil, I knew one day Constantinople would get around to sending someone to see what was going wrong in Alania: Goarios will brag, instead of having the wit to let his plans grow in the quiet dark until they are ripe. I’m glad the Master of Offices chose you. We think alike, you and I.”
A hot retort rose to the magistrianos’s lips, but did not get past. Despite the differences between them, there was much truth in what Mirrane said; he was reminded of it every time he spoke with her. Certainly he had more in common with her than with some Constantinopolitan dyeshop owner whose mental horizon reached no further than the next day’s races in the hippodrome. “We use different tongues,” he observed, “but the same language.”
“Well said!” She leaned forward, stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek. She giggled. “You keep your beard neater than Goarios—there’s more room on your face. I like it.” Laughing still, she kissed his other cheek, just missing his mouth.
He knew she took care to calculate her effects. He reached for her all the same. The touch of her lips reminded him again of those few days back at Daras.
Sinuous as an eel, she slipped away. “What would be left of you, if you were caught molesting the king’s kept woman?” She abruptly turned serious. “I must get back. Leaving the palace is always a risk, but less so at noon, because Goarios sleeps then, the better to roister at night. But he’ll be rousing soon, and might call for me.”
Argyros could say nothing to that, and knew it. He watched Mirrane glide across the market square; she moved with the grace of a dancer and had once used that role as a cover in Daras. The magistrianos stood rubbing his chin in thought for several minutes after she finally disappeared, then made his own way back to Supsa’s inn.