But everyone in the Amphitheater could hear him. He thought of that as magic of a sort, though in fact it was nothing more—or less—than cleverly crafted acoustics. When he spoke from the Emperor's seat, it was as if he spoke straight into the ear of all the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who packed the arena.
"People of Videssos," he said, and then again, after his first words won quiet, "people of Videssos, after today the sun, the symbol of the lord with the great and good mind, turns to the north once more. Try as Skotos will, he has not the power to pull it from the sky. May the solstice and the days that follow it give everyone a lesson: even when darkness seems deepest, longer, brighter days lie ahead. And when darkness seems deepest, we celebrate to show we know it cannot rule us. Now let the Midwinter's Day festivities begin!"
He knew the cheer that rose had more to do with his opening the festival than with what he'd said. Nonetheless, the noise avalanched down on him from all sides until his head rang with it; just as from the Emperor's seat his voice flew throughout the Amphitheater, so every sound within the stone bowl was focused and magnified there.
Though he'd known in advance his speech would be largely ignored, he spoke, as always, from the center of what most concerned him at the moment. The people would forget his words the moment they were gone; he tried to take them to heart. When things seemed blackest, carrying on was never easy. But if you didn't carry on, how could you make your way to better times?
Squeals of glee greeted the first mime troupe to appear. The crowd's laughter dinned around Krispos as the performers, some dressed as soldiers, others as horses, pretended to be stuck in the mud. Even if they did lampoon his ill-fated campaign in the westlands, he found himself amused at first. Their act was highly polished, as were most that appeared in the Amphitheater. Rotten fruit and sometimes stones greeted troupes that did not live up to what the city folk thought their due.
The next group of mimes put on a skit whose theme puzzled Krispos. One of their number wore a costume that turned him into a skeleton. The other three seemed to be servants. They brought him ever more elaborate meals, finally wheeling out a prop feast that looked sumptuous enough to feed half the people in the Amphitheater. But the fellow in the skeleton suit refused everything with comic vehemence, and finally lay stiff and still in the dirt of the racetrack. His underlings picked him up and hauled him away.
The audience didn't quite know what to make of that show, j either. Most of them sat on their hands. A few roared laughter; a couple of shouts of "Blasphemy!" rang out.
Krispos got up and walked over to Oxeites the patriarch, who sat a few yards down the spine from his own place. "Blasphemy?" he asked. "Where is the blasphemy—for that matter, where is the point?—in refusing food, most holy sir? Or does the blasphemy lie in mocking that refusal?"
"Your Majesty, I do not know." The patriarch sounded worried to admit it. Well he might; if he could not untie a theological knot, who in Videssos the city could?
All the performers in the professional mime troupes were male. It wasn't that way in peasant villages like the one where Krispos had grown up; he smiled to remember the village women and girls doing wicked impressions of their husbands and brothers. But the fellow who played a woman in the next troupe seemed so feminine and so voluptuous that the Avtokrator, who knew perfectly well what he was, found lubricious thoughts prancing through his mind all the same.
The performer turned his—or her—wiles on another member of the troupe, one dressed in a robe of priestly blue. The cleric proved slaveringly eager to oblige.
The crowd howled laughter. No one yelled "Blasphemy!" Krispos turned to Oxeites again. He contented himself with raising a questioning eyebrow; if he spoke from the Emperor's seat, the whole Amphitheater would hear him.
Oxeites coughed in embarrassment. "There was, your Majesty, an, ah, unfortunate incident concerning celibacy while you were, ah, on campaign."
Krispos walked over to the patriarch's chair so he could talk without being overheard. "I saw no written reports on this, most holy sir. Did you think it would escape my notice? If so, do not make such a mistake again. When a priest drags the reputation of the temples through the bathhouses, I will find out about it. Have I made myself clear enough?"
"Y-yes, your Majesty." The patriarch was as pale as the pearls that ran riot over his regalia. Keeping unsavory secrets secret was part of the game of Videssian bureaucracy, secular and ecclesiastical alike. Getting found out meant you'd lost a round in that game.
The Avtokrator began to hope the mimes, poke fun at him as they might, would largely forget Phostis' kidnapping. That hope lasted until the next troupe came on and lampooned him for misplacing his eldest son; by the way the actor in fancy robes portrayed Krispos, his heir might have been a gold coin that had fallen through a hole in his belt pouch. The fellow kept looking behind prop bushes and under stones, as if certain he'd turn up the vanished heir in a moment.
The audience thought it all very funny. Krispos looked over to see how his other two sons were taking the mimes. He'd seldom seen such rage on Katakolon's face; his youngest son seemed ready to grab a bow and do his best to slaughter the whole troupe. The pretty girl next to Katakolon had her face carefully blank, as if she wanted to laugh but didn't dare.
A few seats away, Evripos was laughing as hard as some tinker up near the top row of the Amphitheater. He happened to catch Krispos' eye. He choked and grew sober as abruptly as if he'd been caught in some unnatural act. Krispos nodded grimly, as if to say Evripos had better keep himself quiet. He knew his second son hungered for the throne; in Evripos' shoes, he would have hungered for it, too. But displaying exultation because his brother had disappeared would not do.
By the time the last troupe made its bows and left the Amphitheater, the year's shortest day was almost done. By then, several troupes had satirized Phostis' kidnapping. Krispos endured it as best he could. Evripos sat so still, he might have been carved from stone.
To end the show, Krispos spoke to the crowd. "Tomorrow the sun will come sooner and leave the sky later. Once again Skotos—" He spat in rejection of the evil god. "—has failed to steal the light. May Phos bless you all, and may your days also be long and filled with light."
The crowd cheered, almost universally forgetting they'd giggled at the Avtokrator's expense bare minutes before. That was the way of crowds, Krispos knew. He'd started learning how to manipulate the Videssian mob while still a groom in Petronas' service, to help push out Anthimos' then-vestiarios so he could take the eunuch's place. The decades that had passed since had done little to increase his respect for the people in a collective body.
He got up from the Emperor's seat and took a few steps away from the acoustical focus. Only then could he privately talk aloud, even to himself. "Well, it's over," he said. He'd got through it, his family had got through it, and he didn't think any of the skits had done him permanent harm. Given the way the preceding few months had gone, he could hardly have hoped for better.
Twilight deepened quickly as, in the company of parasol bearers and Haloga bodyguards, he made his way out of the Amphitheater. He, of course, had his own special exit. Had he wanted to, he could have gone straight back to the palaces under a covered way. But walking through the plaza of Pala-mas, as he had on the way to the mime show in the Amphitheater, gave him a chance to finger the pulse of the city. Ceremonial separated him from his subjects too much as things were. When he got a chance like this, he took it, and so he headed back toward the imperial residence through the square.