"Well, if they won't listen to you, they won't listen to anybody." Zautzes chuckled. "After all, if they don't pay attention to you, you'll make them sorry, in this world and the next."
Rhavas wanted to despair. "Don't tell me you believe in that idiotic nonsense about curses! That's all it is—nonsense. Any rational man knows as much."
"No doubt," Zautzes said. "But then, how many men are rational?" He walked away before Rhavas could find an answer for that. The prelate wasn't sure he liked the answer he found.
A matron descending from the women's gallery told him what a charming sermon he'd preached. He'd thought of a lot of words for it, but that wasn't any of them. On the other hand, she seemed to have no idea that so many townsfolk feared him. A rational man himself—or so he believed, at any rate—he hadn't dreamt mere ignorance could be so comforting.
Because he was so comforted, he listened to her longer than he would have otherwise. Even so, he turned away when Ingegerd came toward him. The matron muttered something about barbarians and sluts, not quite far enough under her breath. She never knew how close Rhavas came to cursing her then and there—or how lucky she was that he didn't.
"You spoke well, very holy sir," Ingegerd said. "But then, you commonly do."
Rhavas bowed. "I thank you. I thank you very much. Do you think anyone will heed me? That is the true measure of speaking well."
The garrison commander's wife only shrugged. "I cannot tell you. I wish I could. Folk have a way of hearing what they want to hear—no more and no less. And you Videssians, meaning no offense, have a way of quarreling amongst yourselves."
"How can I take offense at what is so plainly true?" Rhavas asked.
Ingegerd shrugged again. "Plenty of people have no trouble at all." That was also true, even if, once more, he wished it weren't. She went on, "You are trying to take these folk in the direction they ought to go. You deserve the credit for that, and they deserve the blame if they will not follow."
"I am not the one who will punish them if they do not," Rhavas said. "The Khamorth will lash them with whips of scorpions."
"So they will, if Phos decides they should." Ingegerd was a convert to faith in the good god, but her belief was firm.
"Yes, if Phos decides they should," Rhavas agreed, ashamed that she should have to remind him the lord with the great and good mind lay behind the barbarians' actions.
Ingegerd sketched the sun-sign. If Rhavas paid more attention to her smoothly rounded bosom than to the sun-sign itself . . . if he did, he was the only one who knew it. And he had already given himself penance for a wandering eye. He could always give himself more.
Yes, go ahead, he jeered silently. You care for the sin more than you care about the penance. The more you prostrate yourself and pray before the altar, the more you wish you were doing other things.
He hoped none of what he was thinking showed on his face. It must not have, for Ingegerd did not pull back from him in anger or disgust. She did ask, "Very holy sir, has this city done anything to ready itself if the Khamorth should break in?"
"Not so far as I know," the prelate replied. "Everything that has been done, has been done to hold them out."
She nodded. "We must do everything we can to hold them out. But we should also try to be ready in case everything we do is not enough. Or do you think I am wrong? Do you think I see doom where doom looms not?"
"I don't know," Rhavas said heavily. "By the lord with the great and good mind, I just don't know. Nor am I any sort of fighting man. You might do better to speak to Zautzes or to Voilas. You are the garrison commander's wife, and can be expected to know somewhat of these matters. As for me . . . I am the man who, they think, cursed their commander. Whatever I say to them, they are not likely to heed me."
"They may not love you," Ingegerd said, "but I think they will heed you. They would be fools if they did not." She gave him the beginnings of a curtsy and walked out of the temple.
Not for the first time, Rhavas had trouble paying attention to the Videssian who came up to him next.
After what Ingegerd said, Rhavas had trouble seeing Skopentzana's walls as barriers against the Khamorth. Might they not also be traps? If the barbarians did break in, how would the folk of Skopentzana protect themselves, defend themselves, escape the foe? Though he had told her he wouldn't, the prelate went to Zautzes with the question.
"If they break in, very holy sir?" Zautzes stared at him. "If they break in, we're ruined. It's as simple as that. We can put up the best fight we know how, or we can hide the best way we know how, but it isn't likely to make much difference one way or the other. Or do you say otherwise?"
"No," Rhavas answered unhappily. "I wish I could."
"Holding them out is what walls are for." The eparch warmed to his theme. "Walls keep the savages out and the civilized folk in. That's what makes Videssos the city such a special place: it has better walls than any other city in the world. Folk there don't have to lose any sleep worrying about whether barbarians will slaughter them in the streets."
"No, indeed," Rhavas said with politeness as frigid as the weather. "They can worry about Videssian rebels slaughtering them in the streets instead. See the progress our wonderful civilization has brought us?"
Zautzes gave him a reproachful look. "You haven't got the right attitude, very holy sir."
"No?" Rhavas shrugged. "And all the time I thought that was the Khamorth and the Videssian traitors. Only goes to show you never can tell, doesn't it? Good morning, most honorable sir." He left the eparch's office with no ceremony whatsoever. He felt Zautzes' eyes boring into his back, but the other man said not a word.
An icy breeze brought tears to Rhavas' eyes as he started across the square toward the temple and his own residence. Winter would have been hard enough without the barbarians prowling beyond the gates. Knowing the Khamorth were out there added a different sort of chill to the air.
There beyond the statues in the center of the square, two small groups of men were moving toward each other. Because his eyes were tearing, Rhavas couldn't tell just who was in either group. He didn't get much of a chance to look, either. When the men, whoever they were, spotted his robe of sky blue and sun gold, someone exclaimed, "Phaos! It's the prelate!" Both groups promptly dissolved. In the blink of an eye, Skopentzana's central square emptied—except for Rhavas himself.
He sighed, shook his head, and kept on walking. He didn't know for a fact that militiamen and peasant refugees had been about to square off against one another again. Because he didn't know it, he didn't have to do anything about it. No curses would fly on either side.
He did wish he could have taken Voilas and the most prominent peasant and knocked their stubborn, empty heads together. That might have done more good for Skopentzana—and certainly would have done more good for him—than all the curses and anathemas he could have hurled.
Two days later, Voilas sought him out in his residence. The new militia commander gave him a venomous stare. "Have you heard the latest, very holy sir?"
"Probably not," Rhavas admitted. "But, since you obviously came here to enlighten me, that won't matter much, and it won't matter long. Go ahead; tell me the latest. Be my guest."
"Some more of those stinking peasants are saying they'd sooner live under the savages than in here," Voilas said venomously. "Why would they say such a thing? Why? Tell me why, by the lord with the great and good mind!"
"Because they hate you?" Rhavas suggested. "Because you militiamen have treated them worse than the barbarians would have?"
Voilas gaped as if the prelate had just spat in his face. "But that's crazy!" he exclaimed. "What have we done?"