He walked back to the imperial pavilion almost as warily as he'd entered the tunnel that ran under Videssos the city. What he found here might be as dangerous as anything that had lurked there.
Salutes from the Halogai didn't make him any less nervous as he ducked his way into the pavilion. Krispos waited at the map table, a wine cup in his hand and curiosity on his face. Despite that curiosity, he waited quietly until Phostis had also filled a cup and taken a long draft. Then wine ran sweet down his throat, but gave him no extra courage. Too bad, he thought.
"Well." Krispos said when Phostis lowered the wine cup from his lips, "what's such a deep, dark secret that you can't speak of it in front of your lady love?"
Had Krispos sounded sarcastic, Phostis would have turned on his heel and strode out of the pavilion without answering. But he just seemed inquisitive—and friendly, too, which Phostis wasn't used to. He'd tried a dozen different ways of framing his question. When it escaped his lips, though, it did so without any fancy frame whatever: "Are you my father?"
He watched Krispos suddenly seem to freeze in place, all except his eyes, which grew very wide. Then, as if to give himself time to think, the Avtokrator lifted his cup and drained it dry. "I'd wondered what you wanted," he said at last. "I didn't expect you to ask me that."
"Are you?" Phostis pressed.
As young men will of their fathers—or those they believe their fathers—he'd always thought of Krispos as old, but old in the sense of conservative and powerful rather than actually elderly. Now, as the lines on Krispos' face deepened harshly, Phostis saw with eerie certainty what he would look like as an old man.
"Are you?" Phostis said again.
Krispos sighed. His shoulders sagged. He laughed for a moment, quietly and to himself. Phostis almost hit him then. Krispos walked over to the wine jar, poured himself another cup from it, then peered into the dark ruby depths. When he looked up toward Phostis, he spoke in what was almost a whisper: "Not a week's gone by, I think, since I took the crown that I haven't asked myself the same question ... and I just don't know."
Phostis had expected a yes or no, something he could get his teeth into either way. Being left with more uncertainty was— maddening. "How can you not know?" he cried.
"If you thought to ask the question, son, the answer should be plain enough," Krispos said. He drank some of the wine— maybe he was looking for courage there, too. "Your mother was Anthimos' Empress; if it hadn't been for her, Anthimos would have slain me by magic the night I took the throne. She'd been his Empress for some years before she was mine, and never conceived. None of the other women he had—and believe me, he had a great flock of them—ever quickened, either. But what does that prove? Nothing for certain. I think you're likely to be mine, but that's the most I can say with any hope for truth."
Phostis did some more quiet calculating. If Krispos had sired him, he'd likely done it before he took the throne from Anthimos ... and before he'd married Dara. He'd done it adulterously, in other words—and so had Phostis' mother.
He shied away from that thought; it was too uncomfortable to examine straight on. Instead, he said, "You always say I look like Mother."
"Oh, you do, lad—the eyes especially. That tiny fold of skin on the inner corner comes straight from her. So does the shape of your face, and so does your nose. She's the reason you don't have a great beak like mine." Krispos put thumb and forefinger on the tip of his nose.
"Unless you had nothing to do with the way my nose looks at all," Phostis said.
"There is that chance," Krispos agreed. "But if you don't take after me, you don't look like Anthimos, either. You might be handsomer if you did; nothing wrong with the way he looked. You favor Dara, though. You always have, ever since you were a baby."
In his mind's eye, Phostis had a sudden, vivid picture of
Krispos studying the infant he'd been, trying to trace resemblances. "No wonder you sometimes treated me as if I were the cuckoo's egg," he said.
"Did I?" Krispos peered down into his wine cup again. He sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, son; I truly am. I've always tried to be just with you, to put aside whatever doubts I had."
"Just? I'd say you were that," Phostis answered. "But you didn't often—" He broke off. How was he supposed to explain to Krispos that justice sufficed in the courts, but families needed more? The closest he could come was to say, "You always did seem easier with Evripos and Katakolon."
"Maybe I was ... maybe I am. Not your fault, though—the trouble's been mine." If without great warmth, Krispos had the strength to meet troubles head on. "Where do we go from here?" he asked. "What would you have of me?"
"Can you take me for what I am instead of for whose son I might be?" Phostis said. "In every way that matters, I'm yours." He told Krispos how he'd found himself imitating him while a prisoner, and how so much of what Krispos said made more sense afterward.
"I know why that is," Krispos said. Phostis made a questioning noise. Krispos went on, "It's because the only experience anyone can really learn from is his own. I was probably just wasting breath beforehand when I preached at you: you couldn't have had any idea what I was talking about. And when my words did prove of some use to you—nothing could make me prouder."
He folded Phostis into a bear hug. For a moment, resentment flared in the younger man: where had embraces like this been when he was a boy and needed them most? But he'd already worked out the answer to that for himself. He wasn't pleased with Krispos for acting as he had over the years, but now that, too, made more sense.
Phostis said, "Can we go on as we did before? Even with doubts, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have for my father than you—and that includes Anthimos."
"That cuts both ways—son," Krispos said. "With me or in spite of me, you've made yourself a man. Let's hope it's not as it was. Let's hope it's better. So it may prove, for much of the poison between us is out in the open now."
"Phos grant that it be so—Father," Phostis said. They embraced again. When they separated, Phostis found himself yawning. He said, "Now I'm going back to my tent for the night."
Krispos gave him a sly look. "Will you tell your lady what passed here?"
"One of these days, maybe," Phostis said after a little thought. "Not just yet."
"That's what I'd say in your sandals," Krispos agreed. "You think like one of mine, all right. Good night, son."
"Good night," Phostis said. He yawned again, then headed back to the tent where Olyvria was waiting. When he walked in, he found that, almost certainly against her best intentions, she'd fallen asleep. He was careful not to wake her when he lay down himself.
"All right, sorcerous sir," Krispos said to Zaidas, "having learned what you did from my son, how do you propose to exploit it to our best advantage?"
He felt a stab when he spoke thus of Phostis, but it was not the usual stab of suspicious fear, merely one of curiosity. He was beginning to see he had a man there to reckon with, and if perchance Phostis was not his by blood, he certainly was by turn of mind. What more could any ruler—any father—want?
Zaidas said, "I will show you what I can do, your Majesty. Not least by using the power he has gained from the transition of fanatical Thanasioi out of life and into death, this Makuraner wizard, this Artapan, has built his magic to a point where it is difficult to assail. This much, to my discomfiture, you have seen."
"Yes," Krispos said. Many times he'd resolved to treat Phostis as if he were certain of his parentage; as many times, till now, he'd failed. This time, he thought he might succeed.
"An arch has a keystone," Zaidas went on. "Take it out and the whole thing crashes to the ground. So with Artapan's magic. Take away this power he has wrongfully arrogated to himself and he will be. weaker than if he never meddled where he should not have. This is what I aim to do."