Opening the sack, Maniakes examined the silver arkets it held. They were indeed badly clipped, one and all. «May I see those, your Majesty?» Vetranios asked. When Maniakes showed them to him, his face darkened in anger—or, perhaps, in a convincing facsimile thereof; Maniakes could not for the life of him tell which. The merchant said, «These aren't the coins I gave to Broios. I gave him perfectly good silver, by Phos. If anybody clipped them, he did it himself.»
Now Broios turned purple, as convincingly as Vetranios had done a moment before. «By the lord with the great and good mind, your Majesty, hear how this sack of manure farts through his mouth.» Vetranios tried to punch him again; the Haloga guards kept them apart.
«Each of you says the other is a liar, eh?» Maniakes said. Both merchants nodded vehemently. Maniakes continued, «Each of you says the other clipped these coins, eh?» Both men nodded again. The Avtokrator's face went stern. «Both of you no doubt know that clipping coins comes under the same law as counterfeiting and carries the same unpleasant penalties. If I have to get all the way to the bottom of this, I fear that one of you will regret it very much.»
Both merchants nodded again, as vigorously as before. That surprised Maniakes. He'd expected one of them—he didn't know which—to show some sign of alarm. They had nerve, these two.
He said, «If whichever of you is lying makes a clean breast of it now, I swear by the lord with the great and good mind to make the penalty no greater than a fine of seventeen Makuraner arkets and an oath binding you never to clip coins again on penalty of further punishment.»
He waited. Vetranios and Broios both shook their heads. Each glared at the other. Maniakes didn't know whether to be annoyed or intrigued at their stubbornness. He would sooner have had no trouble from the newly reoccupied westlands. That hadn't happened. He hadn't thought it would. Here, at least, was a dispute more interesting than the common sort, where truth was easy to find.
«Very well, gentlemen,» he said. «For the time being, I shall keep these arkets, since they are evidence—of what sort remains to be seen—in the case between you. Come back here tomorrow at the start of the eighth hour, after the midday meal. We shall see what my sorcerer makes of this whole strange business.»
Before the merchants returned the next day, Rhegorios came up to Maniakes and said, «I've done some of my own investigating in this case, cousin of mine.»
«Ah?» Maniakes said. «And what did you find?»
«That Broios has a very tasty daughter—not shaped anything like him, Phos be praised.» Rhegorios' hands described curves in the air. «Her name's Phosia. I think I'm in love.» He let out a sigh.
«What you're in, cousin of mine,» Maniakes retorted, «is heat. I'll pour a bucket of water on you, and you'll feel better.»
«No, wetter,» Rhegorios said. He ran his tongue across his lips. «She really is beautiful. If her father weren't a thief… Maybe even if her father is a thief…» Since Rhegorios had made similar noises in almost every town the Videssian army visited, Maniakes took no special notice of these.
Broios and Vetranios returned to the city governor's residence within a couple of minutes of each other at the eighth hour. Maniakes had looked for that; to merchants, punctuality was hardly a lesser god than Phos. What the Avtokrator had not looked for was that each of the men from Serrhes brought his own wizard with him. Broios' champion, a certain Sozomenos, was as portly as his principal, and resembled him enough to be his cousin. Phosteinos, who represented Vetranios' interests, was by contrast thin to the point of emaciation, as if whoever had invented food had forgotten to tell him about it.
Bagdasares looked down his long nose at both of them. «Have you gentlemen—» As Maniakes had with the merchants, he sounded like a man graciously conferring the undeserved benefit of the doubt. «—been involved in this matter from the outset?»
«Of course, we have,» Phosteinos said in a thin, rasping voice. «Vetranios hired me to keep Broios from cheating him, and the wretch countered by paying this charlatan here to help him go on bilking my client.»
«Why don't you blow away for good?» Sozomenos demanded. Phosteinos responded with a skeletal smile. Sozomenos ignored it, turning to Maniakes and saying, «See how they misrepresent me and my principal both?» He shrugged his plump shoulders, as if to say, What can you do? The Avtokrator was suddenly certain each merchant had spent a great deal more on this case than the seventeen arkets' worth of silver allegedly at issue.
Bagdasares took Maniakes aside and whispered, «Your Majesty, getting to the bottom of this will be harder than we thought. These two bunglers will have muddied the waters till no one can hope to tell where the truth lies and where the lies start.»
«Just go ahead,» the Avtokrator answered."Make it as impressive as you can.» He looked from merchant to merchant. «Makes you wonder if we shouldn't have let the Makuraners keep this place, doesn't it?»
Bagdasares let out a loud sniff, perhaps at the notion of having to associate with wizards who, in Videssos the city, would surely have starved for lack of trade; Phosteinos looked to be on the point of starving anyhow, but Maniakes blamed that on personal asceticism rather than want of business: his robe looked expensive.
«Very well,» Bagdasares said, that sniff having failed to make his sorcerous colleagues vanish. «We have to determine two things today: whether the coins Broios presented to his Majesty—» He had them in a bowl. «—are in fact those Vetranios paid to him, and, if so, who was responsible for clipping the aforesaid coins.»
«We know that,» Broios and Vetranios said in the same breath with the identical intonation. They glared at each other.
«First,» Bagdasares went on as if they had not spoken, «we shall use the law of similarity to determine whether Broios is honestly representing these arkets to be the ones he received from Vetranios.»
«Now see here,» Sozomenos said, «how can we trust you not to have it in for Broios? When the Makuraners were here, by the good god, a little coin in the right places would make magic turn out any way the chap who was paying had in mind.»
Bagdasares started to answer. Maniakes cut him off, saying, «I will deal with this.» He glowered at the mage. «Do you think either of your clients is important enough in the scheme of things to buy off the Avtokrator of the Videssians and his chief sorcerer?»
Before Sozomenos could say anything, Phosteinos broke in with a loud, startled cackle of laughter. Sozomenos glowered at his thin colleague, then coughed a couple of times. «Put that way, probably not, your Majesty,» he said.
«Good. See that you remember it.» Maniakes nodded to Bagdasares. «Proceed, eminent sir. These fellows here are welcome to watch you to make sure you do nothing to favor Broios or Vetranios—not that you would—but they are not to interfere with your magic in any way.» He gave Phosteinos and Sozomenos a severe look. «Is that understood, sorcerous sirs?»
Neither of the mages from Serrhes said no. Maniakes nodded again to Bagdasares. The Vaspurakaner wizard said, «The first thing I intend to do, as I said a little while ago, is to find out whether Broios presented to his Majesty coins he actually received from Vetranios. Vetranios, if you have an arket in that pouch on your belt, please hand it to Broios. Broios, you will then hand it to me.»
«I just might have an arket or two,» Vetranios said, chuckling. «Yes, sir, I just might.» He opened the pouch and took out a shiny silver coin. «Not clipped at all, you'll note,» he remarked as he handed it to Broios.