"Phos will judge all of us," Rhavas agreed. "Any man—or any woman—who forgets the Bridge of the Separator and lives for this world alone is bound to pay the price through all eternity."
"Even so," she said again, and dropped him a curtsy no noblewoman would have been ashamed of. "And now, very holy sir, if you will excuse me . . ." Wool skirt billowing around her legs, she swept out of the temple.
Rhavas did not think he watched her with particularly close attention. He did not think so, but he could not deny he missed the first half of what a still-plump merchant said to him, and had to ask the man to repeat himself. The merchant chuckled as he did. "Aye, she's worth looking at, isn't she?" he added. "If she warmed your bed, you wouldn't have to worry about winter nights." His elbow dug into Rhavas' ribs.
Penance. I need more penance, the prelate told himself. Any man who forgets the Bridge of the Separator . . . Had he condemned himself out of his own mouth?
He'd done nothing incorrect. He hadn't tried to seduce her. He hadn't even tried to touch her hand or stroke her hair. But his thoughts were not what they should have been. Admitting as much was better than trying to pretend he was pure—wasn't it?
Usually, the temple seemed a refuge from the hurly-burly of the secular world. Now Rhavas was glad to escape it. He felt impure, unclean, unworthy of the high ecclesiastical rank he had won and the even higher rank to which he aspired. If he could not master his own animal nature, what good was he?
In the square between the temple and the prefect's residence was some sort of commotion. People came running toward the trouble from all directions, shouting as they might have when a couple of schoolboys squabbled. But these were no schoolboys. They were men, men shoving and cursing at one another. Even as Rhavas began to run that way himself, the first sword came out, its sharp edge gleaming in the sun.
The prelate needed no more than a moment to recognize what was going on. Militiamen were squaring off against peasants who'd sought refuge in Skopentzana. The sword he'd seen was in a peasant's hands. A moment later, blades also leaped from militiamen's scabbards.
"Hold!" Rhavas shouted in a great voice. "By the lord with the great and good mind, hold! Put up your blades, all of you! Put up, I say!"
They did put up, a measure of the power Rhavas had in the city even among the militiamen who despised him. As in a schoolyard fight, each side pointed at the other and shouted, "They started it!" Then they both shouted, "Liars!" at the same time and almost started brawling again.
"Who laughs when we fight among ourselves?" Rhavas demanded. "Who gains when we act like fools? I can tell you, if you are too blind to see for yourselves. The Khamorth gain, and Skotos laughs." He spat on the ground. "Can you not hear him? Do you seek to have him triumph over the good god? Do you?"
"No, very holy sir." Peasants and militiamen spoke together, in small voices. They might have been boys caught out by the schoolmaster.
But then one of the peasants said, "We're sick of having these sacks of dung stare down their snoots at us and call us names because we grow food to keep them alive and don't make our living by cheating our neighbors."
That brought forth howls from the militiamen. The peasant would have done better not to call names when he was complaining about other people calling him and his friends names. The militiamen pointed that out in angry detail.
"Enough!" Rhavas said. "Enough from both sides, by the good god! For there should be no sides inside Skopentzana. We have to face out, against the barbarians beyond the walls. If we battle among ourselves, what do we do? We make matters easier for the nomads."
"Better the barbarians than these bastards," a peasant said. "At least the plainsmen'll treat everybody bad."
"Traitors!" the militiamen shouted. "Polecats!" They yelled out as many other choice epithets as they could think of, too. The peasants shouted back. Yet again, men on both sides started reaching for weapons.
Rhavas thought of invoking Zautzes' authority. Had the eparch still had a garrison of loyal imperial regulars, the prelate would have done it. But, had the eparch had a garrison like that, there would have been no militia to begin with. Rhavas sighed. Whatever happened here, it was up to him.
He pointed first to the militiamen, then to the peasants. "You will not raise weapons against each other. You will not insult or revile each other. We are all Videssians. We are none of us savage plainsmen. We will act like what we are. Do you understand me? Do you? "
Sullenly, both peasants and militiamen nodded. "They're out to land us all in trouble," a militiaman said, in spite of nodding.
"That will be enough of that. That, in fact, is too much of that," Rhavas said. "You do not seem to want to take me seriously. I will tell you how serious I am about this business, gentlemen. If you do raise weapons against each other, my curse will fall upon you. If you do insult or revile each other, my curse will fall upon you once again. Do I make myself plain?"
Before Toxaras plunged to his death, they wouldn't have paid any attention to Rhavas. He knew that. He knew it all too well. But he was not ashamed to exploit their superstition for the good of Skopentzana. And the threat worked better than he'd dreamt it could. Militiamen and peasants all gasped in horror and dismay. They sheathed their weapons. They backed away from one another.
And they pulled away from the prelate. So did the townsfolk who'd gathered to watch the fight. When Rhavas spoke of cursing, no one wanted to be anywhere near him. All at once, he stood by himself in the middle of the square.
He was sad—and yet, at the same time, he wasn't. He'd done what he'd set out to do: he'd persuaded the militiamen and the peasants to stop fighting each other and to stop baiting each other. As long as they all stood foursquare for the defense of the city, he was sure all would be well.
I put the fear of Phos in them just in time, he thought. If that peasant thought the Khamorth a better bargain than the militiamen, then things in Skopentzana had come to a pretty pass indeed.
When next he preached at the temple, half the seats were empty. The men sitting in the others eyed him as the folk of Videssos the city eyed one of the elephants occasionally imported from the barbarous lands across the Sailors' Sea: as a strange, dangerous, and clever beast now apparently harmless but liable to break loose and devastate its surroundings at any moment. When they sketched Phos' sun-sign above their hearts, he got the feeling that they were aiming it at him.
He spoke of the need for reconciliation. "We are all followers of the lord with the great and good mind," he declared, something not far from desperation in his voice. "We are all Videssians. When we face the barbarians beyond the walls, surely this counts for more than all our differences."
Surely. The word echoed mockingly in his mind. He knew better. Every man—and every woman in the upper gallery—who heard him knew better. Faction fights were meat and drink in the Empire of Videssos. The present civil war was only the biggest symptom of the disease. At a pinch, Videssians would form factions and passionately back them regardless of the nature of the argument: theology, racing horses, which street they lived on. They reveled in controversy. If they couldn't find anything old to argue about, they would invent something new. This latest squabble between militiamen and peasants was a case in point.
After the sermon, Zautzes waddled up to him in the narthex. "By the good god, very holy sir, every word of that needed saying," the eparch told him. "Every single word. People need to hear these things, to the ice with me if they don't."
"I'm glad you think so, most honorable sir," Rhavas replied. "I am afraid people hear these things every day. What they need to do is listen to them."