"Esteemed sir, you don't need my permission to attend to such matters," Maniakes answered. "As far as birth is concerned, Niphone's serving women have made it quite clear that I am, in their words, a large, stupid man, and not to be trusted with anything of greater weight than staying out of the way and not getting underfoot."
"I was not seeking permission, your Majesty, merely informing you of what I was about to do," the vestiarios said. "This notification, I trust, will enable you to succeed at the tasks the maidservants set you."
Maniakes considered that, then said, "Have a care with that wit of yours, lest you pierce someone with it by accident."
"As always, I obey your Majesty," Kameas said. Maniakes had the satisfaction of winning a rare smile from the eunuch before Kameas hurried off to do as Niphone had asked.
The midwife was a plump, middle-aged woman named Zoile. By the way she strode confidently through the halls of the imperial residence, she had come here before: perhaps she had helped Genesios' wife give birth, or perhaps she had aided servants at their confinements. Maniakes didn't have the nerve to ask. She was the ruler of a province where he could not go and carried herself with a ruler's pride.
"Now you just sit yourself down, your Majesty-find someplace comfortable, let them fetch you some wine, and settle yourself down to wait," she said, echoing, consciously or unconsciously, the maidservants' advice. "It may take a while, but I'll make sure you get yourself a fine baby and a healthy lady, too."
"Thank you," Maniakes said. Large, stupid man though he was, he knew Zoile could not make the guarantee she claimed. Women died in childbirth, and afterward from fever, in spite of everything midwives could do. If fever took Niphone, he had a healer-priest ready to summon. But even healers could do only so much, and their art told cruelly on them. He prayed he would not have to make the call for which he was prepared.
After a while, Kameas came into the chamber where he sat worrying. The vestiarios said, "Under Zoile's direction, we have transferred her majesty to the Red Room. The heir, if such the birth should produce, shall come into the world in the chamber set aside for the confinements of Empresses."
Maniakes had been born by the side of the road. So had his father; he remembered his grandmother talking about it. However steeped in ceremony Videssos was, being born in the Red Room wasn't required for imperial rank. Kameas surely knew as much. Bluntly pointing it out, however, struck Maniakes as impolitic.
The vestiarios asked, "Does your Majesty require anything?"
"Nothing I can think of, esteemed sir; thank you," Maniakes answered. "Just come in and dust me off occasionally, as you need to."
"The process should not take so long as that," Kameas said with a hint of reproof in his voice. "In my admittedly limited experience-" He left it there, undoubtedly because part of his limited experience did involve Genesios' wife, and he was too polite to make much of that in Maniakes' presence.
Periodically reports came to Maniakes of what Genesios' survivors were doing in the monastery and convents where they lived out their days. The reports always boiled down to nothing much. So long as they kept boiling down to that, Maniakes was content, at least there.
Kameas went off to put the finishing touches on the feast that would celebrate the birth of Maniakes' first child. So it was described, anyhow, though the vestiarios knew he had a bastard son. He wondered how Atalarikhos was doing these days. If Niphone gave him legitimate children as fine as the son Rotrude had borne, he would be a lucky man.
With nothing to do but wait, he did that as well as he could. Every so often, his kinsfolk would come in to pat him on the shoulder and wish him and Niphone luck. "I know what you're going through, son," the elder Maniakes said. "It's never easy, though if you listen to the women, they'd gladly trade places with you."
A little while after his father left, Lysia peered into the chamber where Maniakes sat. "The good god grant everything goes well in the Red Room," she said.
He sketched the sun-circle over his heart. "May it be so," he said, and then, "She's been in there a long time, hasn't she?"
Lysia smiled at that. "It seems so to you, and no doubt it seems so to Niphone, but it's not really. These things do take a while, you know."
"I suppose so," he said vaguely. "I ought to be getting some work done, not just hiding myself away, but I've tried. I can't."
"I'd worry about you if you could," his cousin replied. "The Empire won't crumble to pieces because you're not watching it for a few hours. If you want to give the stack of parchments to Rhegorios, I'm sure he'd make short work of them." Her eyes twinkled.
"The work your brother would give them is too short to suit me," Maniakes answered with a snort. "He's a clever chap, and I'm glad to have him for my Sevastos even with Father here, but he sees the whole mosaic and doesn't pay enough attention to any one tessera in it."
"Of the two of us, I got that," Lysia's mouth twisted. "It does less good in me than it might in him, me being a woman."
"If I were to make you Sevastos, or rather Sevaste-"
"Don't mock me," Lysia said, more sharply than she was in the habit of speaking. "We both know that cannot be."
Maniakes looked at her as if he had never seen her before. "I'm sorry," he said slowly. "Till this moment, it never occurred to me that you might want the job."
"Why does that not surprise me?" she said, and then sighed. "I know why, of course. It could be worse. I know that, too. Even after I got done explaining myself, you still might not have had any idea what I was talking about. I'm glad you did figure it out, though."
"Cousin, much as I love you-" Maniakes began.
"If you loved me, you would take me seriously," Lysia broke in.
"Take you seriously? I do. I always have." Maniakes spread his hands. "If we ever find peace, maybe I'll get the chance to prove it to you. But if I'm fighting the Kubratoi and the Makuraners both, I can't set men and women in Videssos against each other, and if I appoint you to the rank you'd like-not that you wouldn't fill it well-that's what I'd do. We can't afford it. I have to find a better way."
"I know," she answered. "Realistically, I know. Sometimes, though, being kept for a brood mare and valued only for the marriage I might make and the sons I might bear is hard to stand."
"Whatever happens, you'll have a place with me," Maniakes said. "You always need to remember that."
Lysia sighed again. "You mean that well, and I thank you for it. It's far more than almost any woman in the Empire has. I hope you won't think me ungrateful if I say it's not enough." She turned and walked out before he could find an answer. He had the feeling she might have waited a long time before he came up with a good one.
But she did not have to wait now. He did. The waiting went on for what became by anyone's standards a long time. Kameas brought him supper-he ate without noticing what was on the plate in front of him-put him to bed, and then, when he woke, served him breakfast. No word came from the Red Room.
"They've been in there most of the day now," he said. "How much longer can it be?"
"I have spoken with Zoile," the vestiarios answered. "From what she says, the lady your wife is doing as well as can be expected for a first birth, but proceeding more slowly than is often the case."
"A lot more slowly," Maniakes said. Would a midwife tell a chamberlain all she knew-or feared? Would Kameas shade whatever he did hear from the midwife? The answers that formed in Maniakes' mind were not necessarily and very likely, respectively.