"Or what?" She fairly snapped at him. Yes, she was nervous about how things had changed.
He took a deep breath. "Or you can stay with me till we get to Videssos the city, and for as long as you care to after that. For the rest of our lives, I hope."
She studied him, wondering, no doubt, if this was but one more trap to make eventual revenge sweeter. "You mean it," she said at last, and then, "Of course I will," and then, "But what will your father say?"
"He'll probably have kittens," Phostis said cheerfully. "So what? I'm of a man's years, so he can't make me put you aside. And besides, people don't always remember these days—it's been a long time, after all—but my mother was Anthimos' Empress before she was my father's. Since I was born less than a year after my father took the throne, you can see his ways there weren't perfectly regular, either."
Phostis listened to that sentence again in his mind. As a matter of fact, he'd been born quite a bit less than a year after Krispos became Avtokrator. He hadn't really thought about how much less till just now. He wondered if Krispos had sired him ... or Anthimos. By his birthdate, either was possible.
Maybe he frowned, for Olyvria said, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he said, and then again, more firmly, "Nothing." Anthimos wasn't around any more to claim him and, even if Krispos never had quite warmed to him—all at once, he wondered if he saw a new reason for that—he'd named him junior Avtokrator before he was out of swaddling clothes. Krispos wouldn't dispossess him of the succession now, especially when he'd escaped from danger by his own efforts—and those of Olyvria.
She was looking off to starboard again. Land now was just a strip of green and occasional brown on the horizon there; they were too far out to sea to make out any detail. Smiling, she turned to Phostis. "If nothing's wrong, you can prove it."
He started to say, "How am I supposed to do that?" Before he got out more than a couple of words, she took off her hat. shook down her hair, and then pulled her tunic up over her head. Sure enough, he found a way to show her everything was all right.
"Your Majesty!" That was Zaidas, calling from outside the imperial pavilion before the army got moving on a day full of muggy heat. "I've news, your Majesty!"
Inside the pavilion, Krispos was wearing a decidedly unimperial pair of linen drawers and nothing more. To the ice with ceremony, he thought, and called, "Well, come in and tell it, then." He smiled at Zaidas' pop-eyed expression. "Never mind the proskynesis, sorcerous sir. Just brush aside the mosquito netting and let me know what you've learned."
Zaidas inhaled portentously. "May it please your Majesty, my sorcery shows your son Phostis has traveled from Etchmiadzin down to Pityos on the coast."
"Has he?" Krispos growled. As usual with news prefaced by that formula, it pleased him not at all. "Bloody good thing I ordered the fleet to Tavas, then. The only reason I can find for him to go down to the port is to try and forestall us. But Livanios sent him to the wrong place, by Phos." He smacked one fist into the other palm. "The Thanasioi have spies among us, sure enough, but they didn't learn enough, not this time."
"No, your Majesty," Zaidas agreed. He hesitated, then went on, "Your Majesty, I might add that Phostis' sorcerous trace, if you will forgive an inexact expression, has itself become inexact."
"More interference from that accursed Makuraner." Krispos made it statement, not question.
But Zaidas shook his head. "I think not, your Majesty. It's almost as if the trace is attenuated by—water, perhaps. I'm puzzled to come up with any other explanation, yet the heretics would scarcely send Phostis out by sea, would they?"
"Not a chance," Krispos said, his voice flat. "Livanios isn't such a fool; I wish to Phos he were. Keep searching. The lord with the great and good mind willing, you'll come up with something that makes better sense. Believe me, sorcerous sir, I still have full confidence in you."
"More than I have in myself sometimes." Zaidas shook his head. "I'll do my best for you."
Krispos started sweating hard as soon as he put on his gilded mail shirt. He sighed; summer felt as if it were here already. He went out to stand in line with the soldiers for his morning bowl of porridge. The cooks never knew which line he'd pick. The food in all of them was better for it. This morning, for instance, the barley porridge was thick with onions and cloves of garlic, and almost every spoonful had a bit of chopped ham with an intensely smoky flavor.
He emptied the bowl. "If I'd eaten this well on my farm, I'd never have wanted to come to Videssos the city," he remarked.
Several of the soldiers nodded. Life on a farm, as Krispos knew, was seldom easy. That was one of the big reasons men left the country: if nothing else, soldiers ate regularly. But while farm work was harder day in and day out, soldiers sometimes earned their keep harder than any man who lived off the land.
The army's discipline, not bad when the men set out from the capital, had improved steadily since. Everyone knew his place, and went to it with a minimum of fuss. The cooks' kettles went back onto the supply wagons, the troopers mounted their horses, and the army pushed on through the lowlands toward Tavas.
Krispos rode at the head of the main body, a few hundred yards behind the vanguard. Peasants looked up from the fields in wonder as he went by, as if he were some kind of being altogether different from themselves. Had Anthimos' father Rhaptes ever happened to parade past the village where Krispos had grown to manhood, he was sure he would have gaped the same way.
A little before noon, a messenger on a lathered, blowing horse caught up with the army from behind. The animal gulped in great draughts of air as the fellow brought it down to a slow trot beside the Avtokrator's horse. He pulled out a sealed tube of oiled leather and handed it to Krispos. "From the city, your Majesty."
The seal was a sunburst stamped into the sky-blue wax that was an imperial prerogative, which meant the dispatch came from Evripos. Krispos could think of only one reason why his son would send out an urgent message. Filled with foreboding, he broke the seal.
His son's script still retained some of the copybook clarity that years of quickly scribbling will erode. The words were as legible as they were unwelcome: "Evripos to his father. Greetings. Riots flared here night before last, and have grown worse rather than better since. Forces under my command are doing all they can to restore order. I shall send more news as it becomes available. Phos guard you and this city both. Farewell."
"Do you know anything of this?" Krispos asked the messenger, waving the parchment in his direction.
"No, your Majesty, I'm sorry but I don't," the man answered. "I'm but the latest of a string of relay riders. I hear tell from the fellow who gave me the tube that there's some sort of trouble back at the city. Is that so?"
"Aye, that's so," Krispos answered grimly. He'd known the Thanasioi might try that ploy to distract him and, prepared for it as well as he could. Whether well as he could was well enough would come clear before long.
Then he thought of something else, something that chilled him: was Phostis on the sea to go to the capital and lead the rioters against loyal troops? If he was, he might throw the city into worse turmoil than even Krispos had expected. Have to warn Evripos about that, the Avtokrator thought.
"Is there a reply, your Majesty?" the messenger asked.
"Yes, by the good god, there is," Krispos said. But before he could give it, another dispatch rider rode up on an abused horse and waved a message tube in his face. He didn't like the fearful look in the newcomer's eyes. "Rest easy there, you. I've never been in the habit of blaming the messenger for the word he brings."