"As you say, your Majesty." Longionos bowed deeply and departed.
He was scarcely gone when Krispos yelled, "Barsymes!" The vestiarios might have been waiting right outside; he came in almost at once. "Go to the house of Trokoundos the wizard and bring him here, if you please."
"Certainly, your Majesty. I suppose you'll want him to interrogate Gnatios," Barsymes said calmly. At Krispos' expression of surprise, he went on, "You have not kept your voice down, you know, your Majesty."
Krispos thought about that. "No, I suppose I haven't. Go get me Trokoundos now, if you please. If Gnatios did have a hand in Petronas' escape—" He pounded a clenched fist down on the tabletop. "If that's so, we'll have a new ecumenical patriarch before the day is out."
"Your pardon, Majesty, but perhaps not so quickly as that," Pyrrhos said. "You may of course remove a prelate as you wish, but the naming of his successor lies in the hands of a synod of clerics, to whom you submit a list of three candidates for their formal selection."
"You understand that all that rigmarole would just delay your own choice," Krispos said.
Pyrrhos bowed. "Your Majesty is gracious. All the same, however, observances must be fulfilled to ensure the validity of any patriarchal enthronement."
"If Gnatios helped Petronas get away, he deserves worse than being deposed," Dara said. "Some time with the torturers might be a fit answer for his treason."
"We'll worry about that later," Krispos said. With peasant patience, he settled down to see whether Gnatios or Trokoundos would be brought to the imperial residence first. When Pyrrhos began to look restive, he sent him back to his monastery. Sitting quietly, he kept on waiting.
"How can you be so easy about this?" demanded Dara, who was pacing back and forth.
"Nothing would change if I fussed," he said. Dara snorted and kept pacing.
Rather to Krispos' surprise, Tyrovitzes' party fetched back Gnatios before Barsymes arrived with Trokoundos. "Your Majesty, what is the meaning of this?" the patriarch said indignantly after the eunuch chamberlain escorted him into Krispos' presence. "I find it humiliating to be seized in the street like some low footpad and fetched here with no more consideration for my feelings than such a criminal would receive."
"Where's Petronas, Gnatios?" Krispos asked in a voice like iron.
"Why, in the monastery sacred to the holy Skirios." Gnatios' eyebrows rose. "Or are you telling me he is not? If you are, I have no idea where he is."
The patriarch sounded surprised and curious, just as he would if he were innocent. But Krispos knew he had no small rhetorical talents; sounding innocent was child's play for him. "While all the eyes of the city were on us yesterday, Gnatios, Petronas was spirited out of the monastery. To be blunt, I know you have scant love for me. Do you wonder that I have doubts about you?"
"Your Majesty, I can see that you might." Gnatios smiled his most engaging smile. "But after all, your Majesty, you know where I was yesterday. I could hardly have helped Petronas escape at the same time as I was performing the wedding ceremony for you and your new Empress." He smiled again, this time at Dara. She stared stonily back. His smile faded.
"No, but you could have planned and arranged a rescue," Krispos said. "Will you take oath on your fear of Skotos' ice that you had no part of any sort in Petronas' getting out of the monastery?"
"Your Majesty, I will swear any oath you wish," Gnatios answered at once.
Just then, Krispos saw Barsymes standing in the hall with a short spare man who shaved his head like a priest but wore a red tunic and green trousers. He carried a bulging carpetbag.
"Your Majesty," Trokoundos said. The mage started a proskynesis, but Krispos waved for him not to bother. "How may I serve you, your Majesty?" he asked, straightening. His voice was deep and rich, the voice to be expected of a man a head taller and twice as wide through the shoulders.
"Most holy sir, I will require no oath of you at all," Krispos said to Gnatios. "You might throw away your soul for the sake of advantage in this world, and that would be very sad. Instead, I will ask you the same questions you have already heard, but with this wizard standing by to make sure you speak the truth."
"I will need a little while to ready myself, your Majesty," Trokoundos said. "I have here some of the things I may use, if your vestiarios spoke accurately about your requirements." He began taking mirrors, candles, and stoppered glass vials of various sizes and colors out of the carpetbag.
Gnatios watched him prepare with indignation but no visible fear. "Your Majesty, I will even submit to this outrage, but I must inform you that I protest it," he said. "Surely you cannot imagine that I would violate my oath."
"I can," Dara said.
Krispos took a different line. "I can imagine many things, most holy sir," he told the patriarch. "I can even imagine giving you over to the torturers to find out what I must know. A mage, I think, will hurt your body and your pride less, but I can go the other way if you'd rather."
"As you will, your Majesty," Gnatios said, so boldly that Krispos wondered if he was indeed innocent. The patriarch added, "My thanks for showing consideration for me, at least to the extent you have."
"Just stay right there, if you would, most holy sir," Trokoundos said. Gnatios nodded regally as the mage set up a mirror on a jointed stand a few feet in front of him. Between mirror and patriarch, Trokoundos lit a candle. He opened a couple of his vials and shook powder from them onto the flame, which changed color and sent up a large cloud of surprisingly sweet-smelling smoke.
Muttering to himself, Trokoundos set up another mirror a few feet behind Gnatios and slightly to one side: this one faced the one he'd set up before. He fussily adjusted the two squares of polished silver until Gnatios' face, reflected from the first, was visible in the second. Then he lit another candle between the second mirror and Gnatios' back. He sprinkled different powders over this flame, whose smoke proved as noxious as the other's had been pleasant.
Coughing a little, the mage said, "Go ahead, your Majesty; ask what you will."
"Thank you." Krispos turned to the patriarch. "Most holy sir, did you help Petronas escape from the monastery dedicated to the holy Skirios?"
He watched Gnatios' lips shape the word "No" but did not hear him speak it. At the same time, the patriarch's second reflection, the one in the mirror behind him, loudly and clearly said, "Yes."
Gnatios jerked as if stung. Krispos asked, "How did you do it?"
He thought the patriarch tried to say "I had nothing to do with it." The reflection answered for him: "I sent in a monk who rather resembled him to take his place while he was at solitary prayer and to stay into the evening. Then, last night, I sent a priest who asked for the substituted monk by his proper name and brought him out of the monastery once more."
"What is the name of this monk?" Krispos demanded.
This time Gnatios stood mute. His reflection answered for him nonetheless. "Harmosounos."
Krispos nodded to Trokoundos. "This is an excellent magic." The wizard's heavy-lidded eyes lit up.
Gnatios shifted from foot to foot, awaiting the next question. "Where did Petronas plan to go?" Krispos asked him.
"I do not know," he answered, out of his own mouth.
"A moment, your Majesty," Trokoundos said sharply. He fiddled with the mirrors again. "He sought to move enough to shift his image from the second mirror."
"Don't play such games again, most holy sir. I promise you would regret it," Krispos told Gnatios. "Now I will ask once more, where did Petronas plan to go?"
"I do not know," Gnatios repeated. This time, strangely, Krispos heard the words both straight from him and from the mirror at his back. He glanced toward Trokoundos.