"You're late," she said crossly.
"I'm sorry, Sirikia." He kissed her, to show how sorry he was. "Just as I was leaving to see you, Petronas the Sevastokrator came to visit my master, and they needed my help for a little while." He hoped she would imagine more intimate help than standing in the kitchen pouring wine.
Evidently she did, for her annoyance vanished. "I met the Sevastokrator once," she told Krispos. She was just a seamstress. Though he would not have said so out loud, he doubted her until she proudly explained: "On Midwinter's Day a couple of years ago, he pinched my bottom."
"Anything can happen on Midwinter's Day," he agreed soberly. He smiled at her. "I thought Petronas was a man of good taste."
She thought that over for a moment, blinked, and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Krispos, you say the sweetest things!" The rest of the morning passed most enjoyably.
Gomaris spotted Krispos on his way back to the grooms' quarters that afternoon. "Not so fast," the steward said. "Iakovitzes wants to see you."
"Why? He knows this was my morning off."
"He didn't tell me why. He just told me to look out for you. Now I've found you. He's in the small waiting room—you know, the one next to his bedchamber."
Wondering what sort of trouble he was in, and hoping his master did remember he'd had the morning free, Krispos hurried to the waiting room. Iakovitzes was sitting behind a small table with several thick scrolls of parchment, looking for all the world like a tax collector. At the moment, his scowl made him look like a tax collector visiting a village badly in arrears.
"Oh, it's you," he said as Krispos walked in. "About time. Go pack."
Krispos gulped. "Sir?" Of all the things he'd expected, being so baldly ordered to hit the streets was the last. "What did I do, sir? Can I make amends for it?"
"What are you talking about?" Iakovitzes said peevishly. After a few seconds, his face cleared. "No, you don't know what I'm talking about. It seems there's some sort of squabble going on between our people and the Khatrishers over who owns a stretch of land between two little streams north of the town of Opsikion. The local eparch can't make the Khatrishers see sense—but then, trying to dicker with Khatrishers'd drive Skotos mad. Petronas doesn't want this mess blowing up into a border war. He's sending me to Opsikion to try to make sense of it."
The explanation left Krispos as confused as before. "What does that have to do with me packing?"
"You're coming with me."
Krispos opened his mouth, then closed it again when he discovered he had nothing worthwhile to say. This would be travel on far more comfortable terms than the slog from his village to Videssos the city. Once he got to Opsikion, he could also hope to learn a good deal about what Iakovitzes was doing and how he did it. The more he learned, he was discovering, the more possibilities opened up in his life.
On the other hand, Iakovitzes would surely use the trip as one long chance to try to get him into bed. He had trouble gauging just how big a nuisance that would be, or how annoyed Iakovitzes might get when he kept saying no.
An opportunity, a likelihood of trouble. As far as he could tell, they balanced. He certainly had no other good options, so he said, "Very well, excellent sir. I'll pack at once."
The road dipped one last time. Suddenly, instead of mountains and trees all around, Krispos saw ahead of him hills dipping swiftly toward the blue sea. Where land and water met stood Opsikion, its red tile roofs glowing in the sun. He reined in his horse to admire the view.
Iakovitzes came up beside him. He also stopped. "Well, that's very pretty, isn't it?" he said. He let go of the reins with his right hand. As if by accident, it fell on Krispos' thigh.
"Yes, it is," Krispos said, sighing. He dug his heels into his horse's flanks. It started forward, almost at a trot.
Also sighing, Iakovitzes followed. "You are the most stubborn man I've ever wanted," he said, his voice tight with irritation.
Krispos did not answer. If Iakovitzes wanted to see stubbornness, he thought, all he needed to do was peer at his reflection in a stream. In the month they'd taken to ride east from Videssos the city to Opsikion, he'd tried seducing Krispos every night and most afternoons. That he'd got nowhere did not stop him; neither did the several times he'd bedded other, more complacent, partners.
Iakovitzes pulled alongside again. "If I didn't find you so lovely, curse it, I'd break you for your obstinacy," he snapped. "Don't push me too far. I might anyhow."
Krispos had no doubt Iakovitzes meant what he said. As he had before, he laughed. "I was a peasant taxed off my farm. How could you break me any lower than that?" As long as Iakovitzes knew he was not afraid of such threats, Krispos thought, the peppery little man would hesitate before he acted on them.
So it proved now. Iakovitzes fumed but subsided. They rode together toward Opsikion.
As they were in none-too-clean travelers' clothes, the gate guards paid no more attention to them than to anyone else. They waited while the guards poked swords into bales of wool a fuzzy-bearded Khatrisher merchant was bringing to town, making sure he wasn't smuggling anything inside them. The merchant's face was so perfectly innocent that Krispos suspected him on general principles.
Iakovitzes did not take kindly to waiting. "Here, you?" he called to one of the guards in peremptory tones. "Stop messing about with that fellow and see to us."
The guard set hands on hips and looked Iakovitzes over. "And why should I, small stuff?" Without waiting for a reply, he started to turn back to what he'd been doing.
"Because, you insolent, ill-smelling, pock-faced lout, I am the direct representative of his illustrious Highness the Sevastokrator Petronas and of his Imperial Majesty the Avtokrator Anthimos III, come to this miserable latrine trench of a town to settle matters your eparch has botched, bungled, and generally mishandled."
Iakovitzes bit off each word with savage relish. As he spoke, he unrolled and displayed the large parchment that proved he was what he claimed. It was daubed with seals in several colors of wax and bore the Avtokrator's signature in appallingly official scarlet ink.
The gate guard went from furious red to terrified white in the space of three heartbeats. "Sorry, Brison," he muttered to the wool merchant. "You've just got to hang on for a bit."
"Now there's a fine kettle of crabs," Brison said in a lisping accent. "Maybe I'll pass the time mixing my horses around so you won't be sure which ones you've checked." He grinned to see how the gate guard liked that idea.
"Oh, go to the ice," the harassed guard said. Brison laughed out loud. Ignoring him, the guard turned to Iakovitzes. "I—I crave pardon for my rough tongue, excellent sir. How may I help you?"
"Better." Iakovitzes nodded. "I won't ask for your name after all. Tell me how to reach the eparch's residence. Then you can go back to your petty games with this chap here. I suggest that while you're at it, you sword his beard as well as his wool."
Brison laughed again, quite merrily. The gate guard stuttered out directions. Iakovitzes rode past them. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not deigning to acknowledge either man any further. Krispos followed.
"I put that arrogant bastard in chain mail in his place nicely enough," Iakovitzes said once he and Krispos got into town, "but Khatrishers are too light-minded to notice when they've been insulted. Cheeky buggers, the lot of them." Failing to get under someone's skin always annoyed him. He swore softly as he rode down Opsikion's main street.
Krispos paid his master little attention; he was resigned to his bad temper. Opsikion interested him more. It was a little larger than Imbros; a year ago, he thought, it would have seemed enormous to him. After Videssos, it reminded him of a toy city, small but perfect. Even Phos' temple in the central square was modeled after the great High Temple of the capital.