"Well, we wouldn't want our lives to be dull all the time, would we?" Rhavas inquired.
"My personal life? No," Zautzes said. "My professional life? My professional life is a very different story. If nothing happened in my professional life, that would prove I was doing an excellent job."
Rhavas raised an eyebrow, but the eparch plainly wasn't joking. Rhavas still had many things he wanted to accomplish in his professional life. That book Digenis the scribe was copying was only the beginning. He still aspired to more scholarship, and to donning the patriarchal regalia one day. Poor Zautzes! He had no hope of rising further. He would never become a provincial governor or a minister in Videssos the city. Torpor and inactivity were the most he had to look forward to.
Fortunately, the eparch had no idea what Rhavas was thinking. Long years in and around the imperial court had taught the prelate how not to let his face show what went on behind it—a talent that had its uses in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, too. Zautzes said, "I don't think we need to worry much about the plainsmen. Stylianos knows better than to summon them, and, ah, they know better than to come into Videssos on their own."
The little catch in his voice gave him away. He'd started to say that the rebel had taught them not to come into Videssos on their own—that or something very much like it. He'd checked himself, but not quite soon enough. Rhavas' somber countenance hid a smile now. Zautzes had just shown why he'd never rise higher than eparch.
"If the lord with the great and good mind is kind to us, soon this civil war will be gone and forgotten," Rhavas said. "Then we won't have to worry about an irruption of nomads off the steppe."
"May it be so, very holy sir." No matter what Zautzes thought, he couldn't very well disagree with the Avtokrator's cousin. And no Videssian, regardless of whether he favored Maleinos or Stylianos, could possibly want the Khamorth rampaging through the Empire. As the mist slowly cleared, Zautzes also looked up to the statue of Stavrakios. "He'd make mincemeat out of anybody who tried to cause trouble for the Empire."
"Wouldn't he just?" Rhavas agreed. The conqueror had had a driving intensity no Avtokrator since had been able to match. He'd beaten the Makuraners in the far west and sacked Mashiz, their capital. He'd smashed the Khamorth at the edge of the steppe. And his fleets of war galleys had trounced the Halogai again and again. No other Videssian ruler had given himself over to war so completely.
"But he's not here," Zautzes said, which was another obvious truth. "We have to do the best we can on our own."
"We can. We will. And it will be good enough." Rhavas spoke confidently. The eparch nodded.
Men and women lingered in the narthex of Skopentzana's chief temple after the divine liturgy. Husbands met wives descending from the women's gallery. Brothers met sisters. And young men and young women not formally related to one another got to look as much as they wanted, which didn't happen many other places in Videssian towns.
Rhavas knew all this, knew it and paid hardly more attention to it than to the air he breathed. His duty in the narthex was talking about the sermon and, with the more prosperous members of the congregation, about donations. This wasn't one of his favorite parts of the job. It was, he knew, one of the reasons he'd been sent to Skopentzana. If he couldn't do it here, he wouldn't be able to do it at the High Temple, either.
By now, he was good enough at it. He listened with half an ear, nodding in all the right places, as a plump fur merchant who'd got rich trading with the Halogai went on and on about the sermon. Like so many Videssians, the fur trader fancied himself a theologian. Like a lot of them, he was mistaken.
When Rhavas first came to Skopentzana, he would have pointed that out in biting detail. No more. He wanted the locals to stay happy with him. If they were happy with him, they were likelier to stay happy with the Avtokrator Maleinos, too. Skopentzana had no garrison inside it, not anymore. A citizens' rising could bring it over to Stylianos' side. Anything Rhavas could do to stop that, he would.
A flash of gilt hair distracted him from the long-winded fur trader. That was probably lucky for the merchant, who was drifting so close to out-and-out heresy that Rhavas had an ever harder time holding his tongue. Videssians were a swarthy folk, almost all of them brunets. Ingegerd always stood out among them.
"Excuse me, if you'd be so kind," Rhavas told the trader, and stepped away before the man had a chance to answer. He nodded to Himerios' wife. "I hope the sermon pleased you."
"As always, you speak well," Ingegerd answered seriously. "I still find it strange to have the good god's ways and powers spoken of so openly. In Halogaland, the gods are the gods. Everyone knows what they can do, but no one talks about it very much."
"This is not Halogaland, I am glad to say," Rhavas told her. "We want to know Phos' will as well as we can. This lets us precisely follow it."
"So you say. But I sometimes think you Videssians spend so much time arguing about the lord with the great and good mind for no better reason than that you like to argue." Ingegerd's smile took most of the sting from her words—most, but not all.
Rhavas might have got angry at her if he hadn't had the same thought himself while listening to the fur trader. "We will argue about almost anything," he admitted, "but some things are more important than others." He paused for a moment. "I hope you are doing well?"
"As well as I can be, with Himerios away," she answered. Those startling blue eyes darkened, as if a shadow had crossed across the sun. "But I have no word of him. All I can do is wait and worry."
"And pray," Rhavas said stiffly.
"And pray," Ingegerd agreed. "But so many prayers go up to Phos. Who can say whether he will have time to bother with mine? Will you pray for Himerios, too, please? You are a very holy man, very holy sir, so the good god is likelier to listen to you than he is to me."
Is she mocking me? Rhavas wondered. The playful way she used his title suggested that she was. She sounded serious, though. He wanted to scratch his head. He didn't understand her. He didn't understand women generally, but he also didn't understand how thoroughly he didn't understand. With her, unlike the general case, his incomprehension was clear to him. Voice gruff, he said, "I will pray for him."
Ingegerd dropped a curtsy. "I thank you, very holy sir." She swept away, majestic as a ship under full sail.
As Rhavas watched her go, behind him the fur trader grumbled out loud to a friend or perhaps to his wife: "Calls himself a holy man—expects other people to call him a holy man, by the good god—but he'd sooner talk to that foreign chippy than he would to me. Oh, yes! I'll bet he would! And that's not all he'd sooner do to her, either, or I miss my guess."
Slowly, Rhavas turned. He remembered the mosaicwork image of Phos stern in judgment in the great dome of the High Temple. No mere mortal could rest easy under that magnificent, unforgiving gaze. At the moment, he himself might have been its incarnation. Under his eyes, blood drained from the fur trader's face, leaving it corpse-pale. "Did you say something that had to do with me?" Rhavas inquired into sudden, vast silence.
He waited, clinically curious: how much nerve did the trader have? Enough to challenge him to his face? He didn't think so, and he proved right. Still pale and frightened, the man shook his head, muttering, "No, very holy sir, not me. You, uh, you must have heard wrong."
"Must I?" Rhavas gravely considered the notion. "Well, I suppose it is possible. Not likely, mind you, but possible."