Then, Lysia beside him, the Avtokrator strode out into full view of the crowd. He was braced for the curses and jeers to come cascading down on the two of them, as they had on Midwinter's Days past. And there were curses and jeers. He heard them. But, to his delighted astonishment, a great torrent of cheers almost drowned them out.
Lysia reached out and squeezed his hand. "We've finally managed it, haven't we?" she said.
"Maybe we have," Maniakes answered. "By the good god, maybe we have."
Behind the parasol-bearers, they stepped up onto the spine of the Amphitheater. The Avtokrator's seat, set in the center, had a special property: a trick of acoustics let everyone in the enormous structure hear the words he spoke there. The converse was that he heard, or thought he heard, all the racket inside the Amphitheater, every bit of it seeming to be aimed straight at him. Sitting in that seat, he sometimes wondered if his head would explode.
When he held up his hand for quiet, he got… a little less noise. After a bit, he got still less, and decided that would have to do. "People of Videssos the city!" he called, and then, taking a chance, "My friends!" No great torrent of hisses and catcalls rained down on him, so he went on, "My friends, we've been through a lot together these past few years, and especially this past summer. The good god willing, the hard times are behind us for a while. In token of that, and in token of Phos' sun turning once more to the north after this day, let us rejoice and make merry. Anything can happen on Midwinter's Day!"
The applause almost took off the top of his head. He had to lean away from the exact focus of sound to save his ears. Then the first troupe of mimes swaggered out onto the race track. The frenzied cheers they got made what he'd received seem tepid by comparison. His grin was wry. That showed him where he stood in the hearts of the city-better than ever before, but still behind the entertainment.
He knew that would slip if he didn't at least look amused at every skit the mime troupes presented, regardless of whether it was aimed at him. The first one wasn't: it showed Etzilios fleeing up to Kubrat like a dog with its tail between its legs, and pausing to relieve himself as he went. It was crude, but Maniakes was glad enough to laugh at any portrayal of an old foe's discomfiture.
The next skit seemed to be about tavern robberies. The crowd ate it up, though it went past Maniakes. "That happened while you were in the westlands," his father said.
After that troupe came several men with shaved faces, one of whom set about poisoning the others and stabbing them in the back.
Kameas and the rest of the eunuchs on the spine of the Amphitheater laughed themselves silly over that one. Yeliif was already on the way to Opsikion. Maniakes doubted he would have been amused. The Avtokrator wondered how much the eunuchs had paid the mimes to get them to cut off their beards for their roles.
Another skit suggested that Sharbaraz, rather than thinking himself the God incarnate, thought he was the ecumenical patriarch, a dignity the mummers reckoned much more impressive. What he did when he discovered the patriarch had to be celibate made Agathios wince and giggle at the same time. Everyone was fair game on Midwinter's Day.
A new troupe came on and presented the spectacle of the Kubrati monoxyla being sunk and going up in flames. The mimes really did set one of their prop boats on fire, then leapt over it as if it were a good-luck blaze out on the plaza of Palamas.
Yet another troupe had a boiler boy obviously supposed to be Abivard trying to decide whether he should put on robes like those of the Videssian Avtokrator or the Makuraner King of Kings. When he decided on the latter, the mime who had been wearing the Videssian getup chased him around the track, to the loud delight of the crowd. Maniakes leaned over to Lysia and said, "I wish it had been that easy."
"Everything is easy-if you're a mime," she answered.
Maniakes thought he and Lysia would get away scot-free, but one mime troupe did lampoon them-and Agathios, too, for good measure. Glancing over at the patriarch, Maniakes saw him fume. That made it easier for the Avtokrator to sit and pretend he enjoyed the insults that made the city mob chortle.
But his good mood was quite restored when, in the next-and last-skit, he realized the nasty little man who kept getting kicked back and forth between mimes dressed as Videssians and others intended to be Makuraners, neither side wanting him, was Tzikas. The crowd laughed louder at that than they had at the lewd skit skewering him.
And then it was over. He got cheers when he dismissed the crowd: cheers, no doubt, from many of the people who'd jeered him during the mimes' mockery a few minutes before. He moved away from the seat at the acoustical heart of the Amphitheater and said, "That wasn't too bad-and now it's over for another year."
"Phos be praised!" Lysia said. "But you're right; it wasn't too bad." As they were making their way out of the great arena behind the parasol-bearers, she asked, "What do you want to do now?" — their ceremonial duties for the day were over.
He slipped his arm around her waist. "I know it's a little early after Savellia was born, but it is Midwinter's Day. People will be too busy looking for their own good times even to think of bothering us," Maniakes said hopefully.
"Maybe." Lysia didn't sound as if she believed that, but her arm went around his waist, too. Together, they walked through the plaza of Palamas and the palace quarter, back toward the imperial residence.