His face was perfectly straight. Maniakes stared at him, then burst out laughing. "I haven't heard anything so funny in years. Likinios was a skinflint, Genesios murdered people for the sport of it, and I-"
"Yes, your Majesty?" Bagdasares asked innocently.
"I'm trying to save the Empire. Considering the state it's in right now, if that's not a foible, to the ice with me if I know what is."
Without Kameas, the imperial household ran less smoothly than it had before. The other eunuchs were willing and gracious, but the vestiarios had known how everything worked and where everything was. No one else attained to such omniscience. Maniakes caught a couple of servitors on the point of coming to blows over a crimson sash each of them claimed the other had mislaid. Such squabbles would not have happened with Kameas supervising the staff, or, if they had, Maniakes would never have known of them.
That the eunuchs were jockeying to be named vestiarios did nothing to improve matters. They all tried so hard to impress Maniakes that they ended up irking him as often as not. He kept putting off the decision; none of them completely satisfied him.
A couple of weeks after he returned from the north, the first snow fell. Maniakes watched the flakes swirl in the wind with something less than enthusiasm. When the cold froze the ground, the Kubratoi would be able to sweep over the roads and fields and steal whatever they had missed on earlier raids.
Sure enough, a couple of days later a band of nomads rode down into sight of the walls of Videssos the city. Maniakes went over to the wall to glare at them. They weren't doing much, just sitting their horses and staring at the capital's fortifications. Maniakes understood that; the great works were plenty to inspire awe even in a Videssian.
"Shall we drive them off, your Majesty?" Ipokasios asked. "We have force aplenty to do it."
Maniakes was sure he wanted to perform well in front of the Avtokrator's eye after his earlier embarrassment. But he answered, "No, let them look all they like. The more they see about Videssos that impresses them, the more they'll come to understand that, once our present troubles are over, we are not to be trifled with." He almost made the sun-circle as he replied; he seemed even to himself to be speaking more in pious hope than from any knowledge of when, if ever, Videssos' troubles would end.
But the Kubratoi, after spending some time looking at the wall from beyond the range of its stone- and dart-throwing engines, rode away to the north-all but one of them, who was left behind on foot. That one started slowly walking toward the wall. As he drew nearer, Maniakes saw he wore no beard. He plucked at his own whiskers; he had never seen nor heard of a clean-shaven Kubrati.
The fellow called up to the soldiers atop the wall. "Open the gate, I pray you, that I may enter." He spoke Videssian like a cultured man of the city. But was he a man? The voice could as easily have been contralto as tenor.
"Kameas!" Maniakes shouted. "Is it you?' "More or less, your Majesty," the vestiarios answered. "I would be surer inside the city than I am out here. I have seen more of the wide, wild world than I ever expected to know."
"Let him in," Maniakes told the men on the wall. He hurried down a stairway at the rear of the wall and embraced Kameas when he came through the gateway they opened for him.
"Please, your Majesty, such familiarity is improper," Kameas said.
"You're not in the palaces, esteemed sir, not yet, nor in my pavilion. That means you don't tell me what to do. I tell you. And if I want to hug you, I bloody well will."
"Very well. Under these circumstances, I shall not be argumentative," Kameas said with the air of one making a great concession. Had he been his normal sprightly self, he might have given the Avtokrator more backtalk. But he was thin and worn and pale even for a eunuch, and, though the Kubratoi had dressed him in wool trousers and sheepskin jacket in place of his robes, he looked half frozen.
Concerned, Maniakes said, "Come on, esteemed sir. We'll get you back to the palaces, soak you in a warm pool, and feed you hot spiced wine and candied figs and apricots. Can you ride a horse across the city, or shall I have a litter brought for you?"
"I can ride a horse." Kameas rolled his eyes. "That is not a skill I ever thought I should acquire, but acquire it I have. From all I have seen, among the Kubratoi one either rides or is left behind for the delectation of the wolves." He shuddered. "After the journeys I have made, the trip to the palaces will be like a spring stroll through the cherry trees around the imperial residence when their blossoms fill the air with sweetness."
"I couldn't muster up that much poetry when I'm perfectly well, let alone after what you've been through," Maniakes told him. "Here, we'll get you a nice, gentle animal, not one of those steppe ponies with a mouth like iron and a will that comes straight from Skotos." He spat on the cobblestones.
"You're familiar with the breed, then," Kameas said. When Maniakes nodded, the vestiarios went on, "I did wonder if the problems I was having were entirely due to my own ineptitude. But the Kubratoi had no trouble with their horses. I suppose they're as harsh as the beasts they ride."
He swung up onto the mare that was fetched for him-the prospect of getting him a gelding had struck the Avtokrator as being in poor taste-and seemed capable enough in the saddle, if not what Maniakes would have called comfortable there. "How did they catch you?" he asked. "What happened to you then?"
"How did they catch me?" Kameas echoed. "Your Majesty, I shall always be grateful to you for your advice to hide; had the nomads spotted me out in the open, most likely they would have ridden me down and slaughtered me. But the places for proper concealment were few. I ran into a tent, covered myself over with bedding, and hoped for the best.
"Unfortunately for me, the Kubratoi soon proceeded to loot the tents. One of the blankets under which I lay was a quilted one with a fine cover of crimson silk. A barbarian pulled it away-and discovered me."
"Did he already know you were there?" Maniakes asked delicately; the vestiarios had been considerably bulkier on the day of the Kubrati surprise.
"Well, yes, your Majesty, you might say so. He had his breeches down around his ankles when he pulled the blanket off me. I spoke none of the Kubrati language then, and have learned but few words, most of them vile, since. Still, I had no trouble figuring out his disappointment that I was not a woman. Had I been a man of the ordinary sort, I think he would have slain me out of sheer pique.
"But he did not know what to make of me, and in his curiosity decided I might be more interesting alive than dead. He fetched me out and showed me to someone of higher rank than himself, who in turn took me to a barbarian of still more exalted rank-from excellent to eminent, you might say-and, shortly thereafter, I was fetched before Etzilios.
"He had seen me attending you, your Majesty, and knew I had to be one of your eunuchs, but he did not know what a eunuch was, at least not in detail. He kept insisting they must have made me into a woman. I denied this, but refused to, ah, let him examine the evidence for himself."
"Clever," Maniakes said. "The more curious he was about you, the less likely he'd hurt you."
"I thought of that only later," Kameas said. "Your Majesty, you are a gentleman of finest quality; you have never shown any unseemly interest in the nature of my mutilation. This has not always been the case among the powerful, in my experience." The vestiarios' voice was bleak. Maniakes wondered what indignities he had suffered during Genesios' reign.
Kameas went on, "Etzilios could have forced me to expose my nakedness, of course, but having me serve him amused him more: he boasted how he'd taken everything of yours, from the imperial robe-which he wore over his furs and leathers-to the imperial eunuch. Perhaps he thought I would poison him if I was sufficiently humiliated. I wish I had indeed had the wherewithal to prove him right."