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filling the High Temple.
"There's been a battle, and Stylianos has beaten and slain Maleinos! The new
Avtokrator is marching on the city!"
XII
Stylianos now the unchallenged Avtokrator Stylianos came into the capital six
days later. A few officers had thought about resisting him. They couldn't do
it in Maleinos' name anymore; one of them would have had to declare himself
Avtokrator in turn, and start a new round of civil strife. That proved the
sticking point. None of the ambitious men seemed willing to let one of his
fellows get ahead of him.
They all preferred to accept Stylianos rather than one of their friends and
rivals.
So rumor said, at any rate. None of the officers summoned Rhavas, either to
curse a rival or to curse
Stylianos himself. Maybe they didn't believe what had happened to Arkadios. Or
maybe they feared losing with or without Rhavas, and didn't want associating
with him to count against them.
Sozomenos suspended the synod again till things grew more stable. None of the
assembled ecclesiastics complained. Facing the ideas Rhavas presented and
facing Rhavas himself was more daunting than the usual sort of theological
disputation. Facing Rhavas and his ideas meant facing issues of life and
death.
Lardys stayed cheerfully cynical. "None of it really matters, holy sir," he
said. "None of it matters for beans. To the likes of me, what difference does
it make who wears a crown?"
"It makes a difference to me," Rhavas said.
"Well, yes, I suppose it would," the innkeeper allowed. "You going to light
out for the tall timber? Figure
Stylianos'll do the same for you as he did for your cousin?" Lardys remained
cheerful as he drew a finger across his throat. Why not?
His wasn't the throat that would really be slit.
Rhavas only shrugged. "No way to know ahead of time."
"I guess you're right," Lardys said. "Well, you'll find out pretty soon, won't
you?"
Like any new Avtokrator, Stylianos staged a triumphal entry into Videssos the
city. His soldiers came in the day before he did, and secured Middle Street
from the Silver Gate all the way to the palace quarter.
The capital's garrison did not presume to quarrel with the newcomers. They
knew which end of the loaf they would dip into oil.
Heralds announced Stylianos' arrival, just in case anyone in the capital had
somehow missed the news.
Rhavas had watched Maleinos ride out to battle. Now he saw Stylianos come in
after winning that battle.
Rhavas was, in fact, in about the same spot on Middle Street as he had been
when his cousin went off to war. Stylianos' parade was almost identical to
that of the fallen Avtokrator, the main difference being that he went from the
Silver Gate to the palaces, not the other way round.
The acclamations were different, too. People shouted Stylianos' name and
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"Stylianos Avtokrator!" and
"Many years to the Avtokrator Stylianos!" Those same cries had greeted every
Avtokrator who preceded him Maleinos included and would no doubt greet all his
successors as well.
A man standing beside Rhavas nudged him with an elbow. "How come you're not
yelling, holy sir?" he asked.
"I've got a frog in my throat," Rhavas answered in a husky whisper. "I can
hardly even talk." Satisfied, the nosy man nodded. Maybe he was keeping lists
of people who weren't celebrating enough. Plenty of new Avtokrators made lists
like that. Rhavas wasn't worried about them, or not very much. He assumed he
was already on whatever lists Stylianos had.
Here came the new Avtokrator, behind his standard-bearers. Stylianos rode a
fine white horse, as
Maleinos had before him. Along with his gilded armor, that set him apart from
his officers. Though he was round-faced, he looked harder and more weathered
than Rhavas had expected: certainly harder than Maleinos. Rhavas' cousin had
spent most of this time in the imperial city, while Stylianos lived in the
field.
I could point my finger . . .
Rhavas thought. But what good would that do? It wouldn't bring Maleinos back
to life. It would probably just set off another round of civil war, or maybe
more than one. Rhavas looked down at his own hands. Even the power to kill had
limits. Who would have imagined that?
Stylianos was gone, bound for the palaces. The servants would tend to him as
they'd tended to
Maleinos. Nothing ever happened to them, no matter who ruled Videssos. They
were indispensable, and they knew it.
Stylianos' soldiers looked like . . . soldiers. Rhavas couldn't see that they
were any different from the men Maleinos had led. For all he knew, some of
them were men Maleinos had led. Stylianos commanded all the soldiers in the
Empire now, and would until and unless some new rebel rose against him.
A few city folk trailed after the soldiers, singing their praises and their
master's. Most just went on about their business once the parade passed them
by. Avtokrators came and went. The people of the capital praised them when
they took the throne and generally jeered them afterward. Every once in a
while, an
Avtokrator would respond to scorn with massacre. That seldom stopped more
scorn from raining down on him, and commonly gave him a black name in history.
Rhavas made his way back to the inn. He half expected to find soldiers there,
men waiting to haul him up before Stylianos. But there were none. He pointed
to the taverner. "You didn't want to see our new sovereign?"
"Not me." Lardys went on pouring olives from a jug into a bowl. "I'm no
highborn mucky-muck. Why should I care whose face goes on the goldpieces, as [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]