A serving woman wiped Lysia's face with a wet cloth. Lysia closed her eyes and sighed, enjoying that. Other maidservants cleaned up the birthing chamber. They'd already begun that before Maniakes got there. Even so, the place still had an odor to it that, like Lysia's worn features, put him in mind of the aftermath of a battle. It smelled of sweat and dung, with a faint iron undertone of blood he tasted as much as he smelled it.
Being here, smelling those smells—especially the odor of blood– also made him remember Niphone, and how she had died here. To put his fears to rest, he asked, «How do you feel?»
«Tired,» Lysia answered at once. «Sore. When I walk, I'm going to walk all bowlegged, as if I've been riding a horse for thirty years like a Khamorth nomad. And I'm hungry. I could eat a horse, too, if anyone would catch me one and serve it up with some onions and bread. And some wine. Zoile wouldn't let me have any wine while I was in labor.»
«You'd have puked it up,» the midwife said from the doorway, «and you'd have liked giving it back a lot less than you liked drinking it down.»
She stood aside then, for Kameas came gliding into the Red Room, carrying a tray whose delicious aromas helped cover the ones that had formerly lurked in the birthing chamber. «Tunny in leeks, your Majesty,» he said to Lysia, «and artichokes marinated in olive oil and garlic. And, of course, wine. Congratulations. Savellia—did I hear the name rightly?»
«Yes, that's right,» Lysia said. The eunuch set the tray down beside her on the wide bed. She smiled at him. «Good. Now I won't have to eat the horse, after all.» He looked confused. Maniakes hid a smile. Lysia went on, «Oh, and you've gone and cut everything up into little bite-sized bits for me. Thank you so much.» She sounded on the edge of tears with gratitude. Maybe she was. For the next little while, her emotions would gust wildly.
«I am glad your Majesty is pleased,» Kameas said. The Avtokrator wondered how he felt about being in the presence of new life when he could never engender it himself.
«Here.» Maniakes sat down on the bed, carefully, so as not to jar Lysia. «Let me do that.» He picked up the spoon and started feeding his wife.
«Well!» she said after he'd given her a few bites. «You're the one who's supposed to have beautiful slaves dropping grapes into your mouth whenever you deign to open it, not me.»
«I'm afraid beautiful is rather past my reach,» Maniakes said, «and it's too late in the year for fresh grapes, but if Kameas will bring me some raisins, I'll see what I can do for you.»
Kameas started to leave the Red Room, no doubt on a quest for raisins. «Wait!» Lysia called to him. «Never mind. I don't want any.» She laughed, which made her wince. «Aii!» she said. «I'm still very sore down there.» Her eyes traveled to Savellia, who had fallen asleep. «And why do you suppose that is?»
Rhegorios, Symvatios, and the elder Maniakes made themselves visible in the hall outside the open door to the Red Room. Maniakes waved for them to come in. «Ha!» Rhegorios said when he saw his cousin feeding Lysia. «We've finally gone and run out of servants, have we?»
«You be quiet,» Lysia told him. «He's being very sweet, which is more than you can say most of the time.» Maniakes knew Rhegorios would give him a hard time about that in due course, but he couldn't do anything about it now.
«Are you all right?» Symvatios asked his daughter.
«Right now? No,» Lysia answered. «Right now I feel trampled in every tender place I own, and every time I have a baby, I seem to discover a couple of tender places I never knew I did own before. But if everything goes the way it should, I will be all right in a few weeks. I don't feel any different from the way I did the first two times I went through this.»
«Good. That's good,» Symvatios said.
« 'Went through this,' eh?» the elder Maniakes rumbled. He nodded to his son. «Your own mother talked that way, right after she had you. It didn't keep her from having your brothers, mind you, but for a while there I wondered if it would.»
Maniakes did his best to make his chuckle sound light and unforced. Even what was meant for family banter could take on a bitter edge, with one of his brothers in exile and the other likely dead. He went back to feeding Lysia. Rhegorios' teasing him about that would not bite so close to the bone.
Lysia finished every morsel of tunny and every chunk of artichoke heart. She also drank down all the wine. Maniakes wondered if she would ask Kameas for raisins, after all. Instead, she yawned and pulled Savellia off her breast and said, «Will someone please put the baby in a cradle for a while? I'd like to try to sleep till she wakes up hungry again. It's been a busy day.»
Both grandfathers, her husband, and her brother reached for Savellia. She gave the new baby to Symvatios, who smiled as he held his granddaughter, then laid her in the cradle so gently, she did not wake.
«You could have a wet nurse deal with her,» Maniakes said.
«I will, soon,» Lysia answered. «The healer-priests and physicians say mother's milk is better for the first week or so, though. Babies are funny. They're tough and fragile, both at the same time. So many of them don't live to grow up, no matter what we do. I want to give mine the best chance they can have.»
«All right,» Maniakes said. She was right, too. But mothers were also tough and fragile, both at the same time. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. «Get what rest you can, then, and I hope she gives you some.»
«She will,» Lysia said. «She's a good baby.» Maniakes wondered how she could tell. He wondered if she could tell. One way or the other, they'd find out soon enough.
Savellia was a good baby. She slept for long stretches and wasn't fussy when she woke. That helped Lysia mend sooner than she might have. The new princess' brothers and half brother and half sister stared at her with curiosity ranging from grave to giggly. When they realized she was too little to do anything much, they lost interest. «She doesn't even have any hair to pull,» Likarios remarked, like a judge passing sentence.
«She will,» Maniakes promised. «Pretty soon, she'll be able to pull yours, too.» His son by Niphone—his heir, as things stood– looked horrified that anyone could presume to inflict such an indignity on him. Maniakes said, «She's already done it to me,» which surprised Likarios all over again. «So did you, for that matter,» the Avtokrator added. When a baby got a handful of beard… His cheeks hurt, just thinking about it.
Likarios went off. Maniakes watched him go. He plucked at his own beard. He'd wondered how Abivard would handle the problem of Denak's son by Sharbaraz. But Abivard was not the only one with family problems relating to the throne. Maniakes wondered what he'd do if Lysia ever suggested moving her sons ahead of Likarios in the succession. She never had, not yet. Maybe she never would. Succession by the eldest son born of the Avtokrator was a strong custom.
But strong custom was not the same as law. What if he saw young Symvatios, or even little Tatoules, shaping better than Likarios? He sighed. The answer suggested itself: in that case, when he hoped above all else for simplicity, his life would get complicated once more, in new and incalculable ways.
His mouth twisted. Parsmanios hadn't cared anything for the strong custom of rule by the eldest. That made a disaster for Parsmanios, and nearly one for the whole clan. It was liable to be as nothing, though, next to what could happen if his sons got to squabbling among themselves.
Later that day, he wondered if his thinking of Parsmanios was what made Kameas come up to him and say, «Your Majesty, the lady Zenonis requests an audience with you, at your convenience.» The eunuch's voice held nothing whatsoever: not approval, not its reverse. Maybe Kameas hadn't made up his mind about Parsmanios' wife. Maybe he had and wasn't letting on, perhaps not even to himself.