Bridge of the Separator
- Автор: Тертлдав Гарри Норман
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Baen
- ISBN: 978-1-4165-0918-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Bridge of the Separator». Краткое содержание книги:
So did Rhavas, as he knew he had to do. "Piteous indeed, however much I wish it were otherwise," he said. "But here I am, home, as you say, at last."
Both the guard and the baker who'd accompanied Rhavas to the throne room stared in amazement. They hadn't believed him. Their eyes got even wider when Markianos swept down the stairs and embraced him, saying, "His Majesty will be glad to hear of your arrival. You may be sure of that—every bulwark against the rebel he can find means much to him."
"Yes, I believe that," Rhavas said. "I rode past a couple of battlefields. The smell of death hovers over them even now."
"Times are hard." Markianos paused. "They are, but you have come here, and we should rejoice. Would you have me inform the Avtokrator of your arrival?"
"If you would be so kind, eminent sir." Rhavas bowed again. The rituals of politeness at the imperial court were much more elaborate and much more exacting than anything in Skopentzana. Rhavas hoped he could remember enough not to embarrass himself with some gaffe that would make him out to be a bumpkin, a ruffian, a country cousin in the flesh.
"Well, why don't you come with me, then?" Markianos said. "I believe his Majesty is in the imperial residence right now."
"Should we disturb him?" Rhavas asked. The imperial residence was the only place where the Avtokrator of the Videssians got even a semblance of privacy. Everywhere else he went, he was on display. Had Rhavas been in that predicament, he would have hated it. Judging other men by his own standards, he assumed his cousin hated being on display, too.
But Markianos said, "When he learns you've come home again, he'll be glad to stop whatever he's doing and greet you." He looked sly. "In fact, I expect a reward for bringing him the news."
"You do me too much honor," Rhavas murmured. Markianos shook his head. Rhavas didn't argue with him; what point to it? But whatever reward the courtier got, Rhavas judged he wouldn't keep it, not after the returned ecclesiastic made his theological opinions plain.
Markianos told the guards to see to Rhavas' horses. Rhavas knew that meant one of the guards would go get a groom and then resume his post. That was all right. A groom would do a better job with the steppe ponies than a soldier was likely to.
More guards stood in front of the residence, which was dwarfed by the throne room and the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, the great formal dining hall. Elegant dinners in the capital were eaten reclining. That was a formality much less common in the provinces, and one Rhavas hadn't missed in Skopentzana.
The guards nodded respectfully to Markianos as he went up the low, broad stairs. Rhavas waited below. Markianos pointed down to him, no doubt explaining who he was. The courtier did not presume to enter the residence unaccompanied. One of the guards ducked inside to fetch a chamberlain. The chamberlain, a hook-nosed man with a thick black beard—probably a Vaspurakaner, from the western land constantly disputed between Videssos and Makuran—escorted Markianos inside.
Rhavas stood in the sunshine. It was warm on his shaven skull. After so long in Skopentzana, he did not think he would ever complain about heat and humidity again. He was probably wrong, but that was how he felt now.
"Is he?" That voice from the entranceway was familiar. "By the good god, he is! Welcome back, cousin!"
"Your Majesty," Rhavas said. He was not just cousin to Maleinos II, Avtokrator of the Videssians. He was also Maleinos' subject. He had to show the Avtokrator he understood that. He prostrated himself before Maleinos, going down on his knees and then on his belly, knocking his forehead against the ground. "Your Majesty!"
"Rise, rise," Maleinos told him as quickly as ritual allowed. Had the Avtokrator made him grovel there for some time, it would have been a sign of imperial displeasure. As things were, Maleinos hurried down the stairs and embraced him as soon as he was on his feet. Rhavas kissed his cousin on both cheeks. Maleinos returned the greeting in just the same way, another sign that Rhavas was in high favor. "I feared you lost," the Avtokrator said.
"More than a few times, your Majesty, I feared myself lost," Rhavas replied.
"You look—older." Maleinos laughed a sour laugh. "And so do I, worse luck. Fifteen years will do that to you." Actually, Rhavas didn't think his cousin looked fifteen years older. They were close to the same age. Maleinos' beard had about as much gray in it as Rhavas', but his hair was still dark, and had hardly receded at all, even at the temples; Rhavas would have been balding even if he weren't tonsured. Nor was Maleinos' face—a little broader, a little fleshier than Rhavas'—heavily lined. At first glance, the Avtokrator seemed nearer thirty than past forty.
But when you looked at Maleinos' eyes . . . When you looked at his eyes, he seemed closer to sixty. There he had crow's feet, and heavy dark pouches under the lower lids. Being Avtokrator wasn't easy. Being Avtokrator in troubled times had to prove doubly wearing.
"You haven't had it easy lately," Rhavas said, and couldn't help adding, "The Empire hasn't had it easy lately."
"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth!" his cousin exclaimed. "If I could have the last couple of years to do over again . . ." He ruefully shook his head. "Phos doesn't grant wishes like that, however much I wish he did. I don't suppose I can blame him. If he did, he'd stay too busy to tend to anything else."
"No doubt," Rhavas said tonelessly.
Maleinos didn't notice anything wrong with the way he sounded. The Avtokrator slapped him on the back. "Come into the residence with me. Drink some wine. Tell me about your journey. You saw the downfall of Skopentzana?"
"I did, your Majesty," Rhavas replied. "I was in the middle of it, and lucky to get out. I hadn't been out for long before an earthquake, ah, finished the city's overthrow." Did I summon that earthquake? I didn't believe it then, but I do now.
"Terrible thing," Maleinos said. "The lord with the great and good mind only knows how we're going to set things right up in the far northeast. I curse Stylianos to Skotos' ice for pulling the garrisons from the frontier forts." He spat between his feet.
So did Rhavas, a beat slower than he might have. Again, fortunately, the Avtokrator didn't notice. Rhavas said, "It isn't just the far northeast, your Majesty. North of the Paristrian Mountains, the barbarians do as they please."
"Curse Stylianos," Maleinos said again. Unlike Rhavas', his curses had no effect. Rhavas had not seen the rebel general since some time before leaving to become prelate of Skopentzana. He had no idea where in the Empire Stylianos was. All that being so, he hadn't tried a curse of his own, judging it unlikely to succeed.
His cousin led him up into the imperial residence. Alabaster panels set into the ceiling let in a pale, cool light that gave the corridors the feel almost of being underwater. Hunting mosaics picked out in bright tesserae of stone and gilded glass brightened the floor under his feet.
On tables and on the walls were trophies of past Videssian triumphs: a helmet belonging to a Makuraner King of Kings that Stavrakios had captured when he seized Mashiz, the bow case of a Khamorth chieftain, a pair of huge two-handed swords from Halogaland. Just for a moment, Rhavas thought of Ingegerd, of what might have been, of what should have been. He shook his head. What point to regret now? It was over. It was done. It was as it had been.
On my head be it. He shook that thought aside, too.
Also hanging on the wall was a portrait of Stavrakios: a tough-looking, bandy-legged man who, but for his gilded armor, seemed more like a veteran underofficer than an Avtokrator. Maleinos' eyes flicked toward it, too. He said, "I often wonder what he would do in a mess like this."
"He didn't have to fight a civil war," Rhavas said.