As Phostis soon discovered, that was because the keep was almost empty, too. His footsteps and Syagrios' echoed down the halls that had been crammed with soldiers. At least life did exist inside. A trooper came out of the chamber where Livanios had been wont to hold audiences as if he were Avtokrator. Seeing Phostis leaning on Syagrios, he asked the ruffian, "What happened to him?"
"What does it look like?" Syagrios growled. "He just found out he's been chosen patriarch and he can't even walk for the joy of it." The Thanasiot gaped; Phostis fought not to giggle as he watched the fellow realize Syagrios was being sarcastic. Syagrios pointed to the stained bandage on his shoulder. "He got shot in a scrape with the imperials—he did good."
"All right, but why bring him back here?" the soldier said. "He don't look like he's hurt too bad."
"You likely can't tell under all the dirt and stuff, but this is the Emperor's brat." Syagrios answered. "We need to take a little more care with him than with your regular fighter."
"Why?" Like any Videssian, the Thanasiot was ready to argue about his faith on any excuse or none. "We're all alike on the gleaming path."
"Yeah, but Phostis here has special worth," Syagrios returned. "If we use him right, he can help us put lots of new people on the gleaming path."
The soldier chewed on that: literally, for he gnawed at his lower lip while he thought. At last, grudgingly, he nodded. "The doctrine may be sound."
Syagrios turned his head to mutter into Phostis' ear, "The clincher is, I'd have chopped him into raven's meat if he said me nay." He gave his attention back to the trooper. "Is anybody left alive in the kitchens? We're starved, and not on purpose."
"Should be someone there," the fellow answered, though he frowned at Syagrios' levity.
Phostis had not had much appetite since he was wounded. Now his belly rumbled hungrily at the thought of food. Maybe that meant he was getting better.
The smell of bean porridge and onions and bread in the kitchens made his insides growl all over again. Bowls were piled in great stacks there, against a need that had for the moment gone. Only a handful of people sat at the long tables. Phostis' heart gave a lurch—one of them was Olyvria.
She looked around to see who the newcomers were. Phostis must have been as grimy as Syagrios had said, for she recognized the ruffian first. Then her eyes traveled from Phostis' face to the stained bandage on his shoulder and back again. He saw them widen. "What happened?" she exclaimed as she hurried over to the two men.
"I got shot," Phostis answered. Keeping his tone as light as he could, he went on, "I'll probably live." He couldn't say anything more, but did his silent best to urge her not to give anything away. Having Syagrios find out—or even suspect— they were lovers would be more likely fatal than the shaft the cavalryman had put into him.
They were lucky. Syagrios evidently didn't suspect, and so wasn't alert for any small clues they might have given him. He boomed, "Aye, he fought well—better'n I had any reason to think he would, my lady. He was riding toward the imperials when one of 'em got him. I drew the arrow myself and cleaned the wound. It seems to be healing well enough."
Now Olyvria looked at Phostis as if she didn't know what to make of him. She probably didn't: he hadn't gone out intending to fight, let alone well enough to draw praise from Syagrios. But self-preservation had made him swing his sword against the monk with the club, and the ruffian thought he'd been attacking the imperials, not trying to give himself up to them. The world got very strange sometimes.
"Could I please have some food before I fall over?" he asked plaintively.
Between them, Syagrios and Olyvria all but dragged him to a table, sat him down, and brought back bread, hard crumbly cheese, and wine he reckoned fit only for washing out wounded shoulders. He knocked back a hefty mug of it anyhow, and felt it mount quickly to his head. In between bites of bread and cheese, he gave Olyvria a carefully edited version of how he'd ended up on the pointed end of an arrow.
"I see," she said when he was through. He wasn't sure she did, but then he wasn't exactly sure himself of the wherefores of everything that had happened. She turned to Syagrios. Speaking carefully herself, and as if Phostis were not sitting across from her, she said, "When he was ordered to go out raiding, I thought the plan might be to expend him to bring woe to his father."
"That was in your father's mind, my lady," Syagrios agreed, also ignoring him, "but he doubted the lad's faith in the gleaming path. Since it's real, he becomes worth more to us alive than dead. That's what I figured, anyways."
"Let's hope you're right," Olyvria said with what Phostis hoped was a good imitation of dispassion.
He kept munching on the loaf of bread. The falser he was to what Syagrios thought him to be, the better off he did. What was the lesson there? That Syagrios was so wicked being false to him turned good? Then how to explain the way the ruffian had cared for him, brought him back to Etchmiadzin, and now poured more of that vile but potent wine into his mug?
He raised it left-handed. "Here's to—using my other arm soon."
Everyone drank.
X
Scribbling on a map ruined it for future use. So did poking pins into it. Krispos had prevailed upon Zaidas to magic some red-painted pebbles so they behaved like lodestones and clung to their appointed places on the parchment even when it was rolled up. Now he wished he'd chosen some other color: when the map was unrolled, it looked too much as if it were suffering from smallpox.
And every time he unrolled it, he had to add more stones to show fresh outbreaks of Thanasiot violence. Messengers brought in a constant stream of such reports. Most, as had been true the summer before, were in the northwest quadrant of the westlands, but far from all. He glanced at dispatches and put down two stones in the hill country in the southeastern part of the gnarled peninsula that held the Empire's heartland.
That the map lay on a folding table in the imperial pavilion rather than his study back at the palaces consoled him little. The mere fact of being on campaign would have sufficed for some Emperors, giving them the impression—justified or not—they were doing something about the religious zealots.
But Krispos saw in his mind's eye fires rising up from the map where every red pebble was placed, heard screams of triumph and of despair. Even one of those stones should have been too many, yet several dozen measled the map.
At his side, Katakolon also stared glumly at the scarlet stones. "They're everywhere," he said, shaking his head in dismay.
"They do seem that way, don't they?" Krispos said. He liked the picture no better than his son did.
"Aye, they do." Katakolon still eyed the stippled parchment. "Which of these shows where Livanios and his main band of fighters are lurking?"
"It's a good question," the Avtokrator admitted. "The Empire would be better off for a good answer. I wish I could give you one. Trouble is, the heresiarch is using all the little raids as cover to conceal that main band. They could be almost anywhere."
Put that way, the thought was especially disquieting. His own army was only a few days out of Videssos the city. If Livanios' fanatics fell on it before it was ready to fight— Krispos shook his head. It wasn't as if he didn't have sentries posted. Anyone who tried surprising him would be roughly handled. If he started jumping at shadows, Livanios was ahead of the game.
Katakolon looked from the map to him. "So you're going to have yourself another brat, are you, Father? At your age?"