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"I know that—we have done this business a few times before," Krispos answered, amiably enough. "But we'll go on campaign as soon as weather and supplies allow, and if they're still ragged then, it will cost lives and maybe battles."

"They won't be." Sarkis put grim promise into his voice. Krispos smiled; he'd hoped to hear that note.

A company rode hard toward upright bales of hay that simulated an enemy. They drew up eighty or ninety yards away, plied the targets with arrows as rapidly as they could draw bow, and then, at an officer's command, yanked out their swords and charged the imaginary foe with fierce and sanguinary roars.

The iron blades glittering in the bright sun made a fine martial spectacle. Nonetheless, Krispos turned to Sarkis and remarked, "This whole business of war would be a lot easier if the Thanasioi didn't fight back any harder than those bales."

Sarkis' doughy face twitched in a grin. "Isn't it the truth, your Majesty? Every general wants every campaign to be a walkover, but you can make yourself a reputation that will live forever if you get one of those in a lifetime. The trouble is, you see, the chap on the other side wants his walkover, too, and doesn't much care to cooperate in yours. Rude and inconsiderate of him, if you ask me."

"At the very least," Krispos agreed. After the company of archers reassembled well beyond the hay bales, another unit approached and pelted the targets with javelins. Farther away, a regiment split in two to get in some more realistic mounted swordwork. They tried not to hurt one another in practices like that, but Krispos knew the healers would have some extra work tonight.

"Their spirits seem as high as you could hope for," Sarkis said judiciously. "No hesitation about going out for another crack at the heretics, anyhow." He used the word with no irony whatever, though his own beliefs were anything but orthodox.

Krispos didn't twit him about it, not today. After some thought, he'd figured out the difference between the Vaspurakaners' heterodoxy and that of the Thanasioi. The "princes" might not want any part of that version of the faith that emanated from Videssos the city, but they also weren't interested in imposing their version on Videssos the city. Krispos could live with that.

He said, "Where do you suppose the Thanasioi will pop up this season?"

"Wherever they can make the worst nuisances of themselves," Sarkis answered at once. "Livanios proved how dangerous he is last year. He won't hurt us in a small way if he has the chance to hurt us in a big one."

Since that accorded all too well with Krispos' view of the situation, he only grunted by way of reply. Not far away, a youngster in gilded chain mail rode up to the hay-bale targets and flung light spears at them. Katakolon's aim wasn't bad, but could have been better.

Krispos cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, "Everybody knows you can use your lance, son, but you've got to get the javelin down, too!"

Katakolon's head whipped around. He spotted his father and stuck out his tongue at him. Ribald howls rose from the horsemen who heard. Sarkis' chuckle held dry amusement. "You'll give him a reputation that way. I suppose it's what you have in mind."

"As a matter of fact, yes. If you're a lecher at my age, you're a laughingstock, but young men pride themselves on how hard they can go—so to speak."

"So to speak, indeed." Sarkis chuckled again, even more dryly than before. Then he sighed. "We ought to get some practice in ourselves. Battles take funny turns sometimes."

"So we should." Krispos sighed, too. "The good god knows I'll be sore for a long time after I start working, though. I begin to see I won't be able to go out on a campaign forever."

"You?" Sarkis ran a hand along his own corpulent frame. "Your Majesty, you're still svelte. I've put almost another me inside my mail here."

Krispos made an imperial decision. "I'll start exercising— tomorrow." The trouble with being Avtokrator was that none of the demands of the job went away when you concentrated on any one thing. You had to plug leaks everywhere at once, or some of them would get beyond the plugging stage while you weren't watching.

He went back to the palaces to make sure he didn't fall too far behind on matters of trade and commerce. He was examining customs reports from Prista, the imperial outpost on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea, when someone tapped on the door to the study. He glanced up, expecting to see Barsymes or another of the chamberlains. But it was none of them—it was Drina.

His frown was almost a scowl. She should have known better than to bother him while he was working. "Yes?" he said curtly.

Drina looked more than nervous—she looked frightened. She dropped to her knees and then to her belly in a full proskynesis. Krispos took a couple of seconds to wonder about the propriety of having the woman who warmed his bed prostrate herself before him. But by the time he decided she needn't bother, she was already rising. But she kept her eyes to the floor; her voice was small and her stammer large as she began, "May it p-please your Majesty—"

With that start, it probably wouldn't Krispos almost said as much. The only thing that held him back was a strong suspicion she'd flee if he pressed her too hard. Since she'd braved bearding him at his work, whatever she had on her mind was important to her. Trying at least to sound neutral, he asked, "What's troubling you, Drina?"

"Your Majesty, I'm pregnant" she blurted.

He opened his mouth to answer her, but no words came out. After a little while, he realized she didn't need to keep looking at the back of his throat. He needed two tries to close his mouth, but managed in the end. "You're telling me it's mine?" he got out at last.

Drina nodded. "Your Majesty, I didn't—I mean, I haven't— so it must—" She spread her hands, as if that would help her explain better than her tongue, which seemed as fumbling as Krispos'.

"Well, well," he said, and then again, because it let him make noise without making sense, "Well, well." Another pause and he produced a coherent sentence, then a second one: "I didn't expect that to happen. If it was the night I think it was, I didn't expect anything to happen."

"People never do, your Majesty." Drina tried a wary smile, but still looked ready to run away. "But it does happen, or there wouldn't be any more people after a while."

The Thanasioi would like that, he thought. He shook his head. Drina was too much a creature of her body and her urges ever to make a Thanasiot, just as he was himself. "An imperial bastard," he said, more to himself than to her.

"Is it your first, your Majesty?" she asked. Now fear and a peculiar sort of pride warred in her voice. She held her chin a little higher.

"The first time I've fathered a child since Dara died, you mean? No," Krispos said. "It happened twice before, as a matter of fact but once the mother miscarried and the other time the babe lived but a couple of days. Phos' choice, not mine, if that's what you're wondering. Both were years ago; I thought my seed had gone cold. I hope your luck will be better."

Hearing that, she let her face open up like a flower suddenly touched by the sun. "Oh, thank you, your Majesty!" she breathed.

"Neither you nor the child will ever want," Krispos promised. "If you don't know I care for my own, you don't know me." For the past twenty years, the whole Empire had been his own. Maybe that was why he worried so much about every detail of its life.

"Everyone knows your Majesty is kind and generous." Drina's smile got wider still.

"Everyone doesn't know any such thing," he answered sharply. "So you don't misunderstand, here are two things I won't do: number one, I won't marry you. I won't let this babe disturb the succession if it turns out to be a boy. Trying to get me to break my word about that will be the fastest way you can think of to make me angry. Do you have that?"