Maniakes thought it was funny, though he didn't say so. If a cheat of a merchant was the only one who appreciated Tzikas, what did that say about the overversatile Videssian officer? Idly, the Avtokrator asked, «When you sold him the ten pounds of mutton, how badly did you bilk him?»
«Not a barleycorn's worth,» Vetranios answered, wide-eyed. «He killed a man here who gave him short weight last year.»
«I remember that!» Broios exclaimed: such a calamity had obviously created a lasting impression on the merchants of Serrhes. «I didn't know the name of the fellow who did it.»
Thoughtfully, Bagdasares said, «Ten pounds of smoked mutton? That's traveler's food, something somebody would want if he was going on a long journey.»
«So it is.» Maniakes was thoughtful, too. «The timing strikes me odd, though. You're sure he was here only three weeks before I came to Serrhes, Vetranios? It wasn't longer ago than that?»
«By the lord with the great and good mind I swear it, your Majesty.» To emphasize his words, Vetranios sketched Phos' sun-circle over his heart.
«I wish you'd said longer.» Maniakes wondered if Vetranios, like a lot of merchants, would change his story to suit his customer better. But the plump trader shook his head and drew the sun-sign again. Maniakes drummed the fingers of one hand on a tabletop. «It doesn't fit. He wouldn't have dawdled here in the westlands so long, not if he was all hotfoot to warn Sharbaraz. Phos, he could have gone to Mashiz and come back here in that time. But why on earth would he do that?»
It was a rhetorical question. He hoped Bagdasares, one of the mages from Serrhes, or one of the merchants would answer it nonetheless. No one did. Instead, Bagdasares added more questions of his own: «And if he did do it, what need would he have for smoked mutton? He could have stayed here with Tegin and gone west with the Makuraner garrison. We'd be none the wiser.»
«I didn't see him here after he bought the mutton from me,» Vetranios said. «If he'd stayed with the garrison, I might not have seen him, but I think I would.»
Phosteinos coughed to draw attention to himself and then said, «I also know this man somewhat. I agree with my principal in this matter: the visit to Serrhes was but a brief one.»
Maniakes' glance toward the local wizard was anything but mild and friendly. «You know Tzikas, eh?» he asked. Phosteinos nodded. The Avtokrator interrogated him as he had with Vetranios: «Did you ever perform any magical service for him?» Phosteinos nodded again. Maniakes pounced: «And what sort of service was that, sirrah?»
«Why, to use the laws of similarity and contagion to help him find one of a pair of fancy spurs early this year, your Majesty,» Phosteinos answered.
«Nothing else?» Maniakes' voice was cold.
«Why, no,» Phosteinos said. «I don't understand why—»
«Because when the son of a whore tried to murder me, he did it with a wizard's help,» the Avtokrator interrupted. Phosteinos' eyes went big in his pinched face. Maniakes pressed on: «Now, are you sure this was the only sorcerous service he ever had of you?»
Phosteinos was as eager to swear by Phos as Vetranios had been. Maniakes reckoned both those oaths as being worth only so much: a man might easily prefer risking Skotos' ice in the world to come to the Avtokrator's wrath in the world that was here. But then Sozomenos spoke up: «May it please your Majesty, I have no great love for my scrawny colleague here, but in all our years of acquaintance I have never known him to work magic to harm a man's health, let alone seek his death.»
To Bagdasares, Maniakes said, «I'd sooner have your word on that than the word of someone I don't know if I can trust.»
Sozomenos looked affronted. Maniakes didn't care. Bagdasares looked troubled. That worried the Avtokrator. Bagdasares said, «Judging a wizard's truthfulness by sorcerous means is different from gauging that of an ordinary man. Mages have too many subtle ways to confuse the results of such examinations.»
«I was afraid you were going to say something like that,» Maniakes said unhappily. He studied Phosteinos and Sozomenos. Both of them fairly radiated candor; had they been lamps, he would have had to shield his eyes against their glow. What Bagdasares told him meant he would have to gauge whether they were telling the truth by his usual, mundane complement of senses—either that or try to drag truth out of them by torture. He wasn't fond of torture; under the lash or more ingenious means of interrogation, people were too apt to say whatever they thought likeliest to make the pain stop.
Reluctantly, he decided he believed the two sorcerers from Serrhes. That left one last thing to do. Turning to Broios and Vetranios, he said, «And now to deal with the two of you.»
Both merchants started. Both, Maniakes guessed, had hoped he'd forgotten about them. «What—what will you do with us, your Majesty?» Broios asked, his voice trembling.
«I don't know which of you is worse,» Maniakes said. «You're both liars and cheats.» He stroked his beard while he thought, then suddenly smiled. Broios and Vetranios quailed under that smile. Maniakes took an ignoble but very real pleasure in passing sentence: «First, you are fined fifty goldpieces each—or their weight in perfect silver—for tampering with the currency. The money is due tomorrow. And second, both of you shall be sent out to the center of the square here between the city governor's residence and Phos' holy temple. There in the square, a Haloga will give each of you a sturdy kick in the arse. If you can't get honesty through your heads, maybe we can send it up from the other direction.»
«But, your Majesty, publicly humiliating us will make us laughing-stocks in the city,» Vetranios protested. «Good,» Maniakes said. «Don't you think you deserve to be?» Neither merchant answered that. If they agreed, they humiliated themselves. If they disagreed, they contradicted the Avtokrator of the Videssians. Given those choices, silence was better.
Maniakes escorted them out of the room where Bagdasares had performed his sorcery. When he told the guardsmen outside about the sentence, they shouted approval and almost came to blows in their eagerness to be the two who would deliver the kicks.
The Avtokrator came back into the chamber. He found Bagdasares talking shop with Phosteinos and Sozomenos. That convinced him the wizards shared his view of the two merchants from Serrhes. To those two, he said, «I presume you were doing nothing to threaten me. Because of that, you may go.»
They thanked him and left in a hurry, giving him no chance to change his mind. «What was Tzikas doing here so recently?» Bagdasares asked again as soon as they were out of earshot.
«To the ice with me if I know,» Maniakes answered. «It makes no more sense to me now than it did when we first found out about it.» He scowled at Bagdasares even more fiercely than he had at Vetranios and Broios. «But I'm sure of one thing.» «What's that?» Bagdasares asked. «It makes sense to Tzikas.»
For as long as Maniakes stayed in Serrhes, he heard no more from his squabbling merchants. That suited him fine; it meant they were on their best behavior. The other alternative was that it meant they were cheating so well, no one was catching them and complaining. Maniakes supposed that was possible, but he didn't believe it: neither Broios nor Vetranios was likely to be that good a thief.
Rhegorios did keep sighing over Phosia. Maniakes kept threatening him with cold water. After a while, his cousin fell silent.
As long as Abivard had stayed in the Videssian westlands, he'd sent streams of messengers to Maniakes. Once he crossed back into territory long Makuraner, though, the stream shrank to a trickle. Maniakes worried that something had gone wrong.