"Madness is here, whether we invited it or not," Rhavas said. "Shall we pretend nothing has gone wrong in Videssos and everything is the same as it was a couple of years ago?"
"Videssos is already upside down in too many other ways," Maleinos said. "I don't want priests getting unruly and throwing things at each other, too. Stylianos would start screaming that I was a heretic, and I can't stand that. I can't afford it, either. Do you understand me?"
"Your Majesty, are we not right to follow the truth wherever it leads?" Rhavas asked stiffly.
The Avtokrator glared at him. "You are trying to cause a scandal." He might have been a father laying down the law to a scapegrace son. Rhavas wouldn't have cared for that tone even from an older man. It really rankled from someone his own age. Oblivious—or maybe just indifferent—to his anger, Maleinos went on, "There will be no theological scandals while I rule here. There most especially will be no theological scandals started by a kinsman of mine while I rule here. Whatever else happens, that had better not. Do I make myself plain enough, cousin?" His voice was heavy with menace.
"You are unmistakably plain, your Majesty," Rhavas answered.
"Good. We'll say no more about it, then." Maleinos was confident he could have his way when and as he chose. Such confidence was part of what being Avtokrator of the Videssians was all about.
And Rhavas did say no more about it . . . then.
Coming back to Videssos the city meant coming back to the High Temple. To Rhavas, that was much more important than coming back to his cousin, though he had the good sense to make sure Maleinos knew nothing of his opinion.
The High Temple's beauty was only part of its appeal. Every time Rhavas saw its grand—even grandiose—shape shouldering its way over other buildings to dominate the skyline, he sneered at the temple in Skopentzana where he'd served so long. A ridiculous, provincial structure, and one surely downfallen now, to the Khamorth and to the earthquake that had finished the ruination the barbarians had begun.
Just as the temple in Skopentzana had been at the center of Rhavas' life in the far northeast, so the High Temple lay at the center of the ecumenical patriarch's life—and at the center of theological life for the whole Empire. Maleinos granted Rhavas quarters in the imperial residence. He would go that far for a cousin. After their first meeting, though, the Avtokrator had little to do with him. Maleinos had more urgent things to worry about. Like a spider at the center of its web, he kept all his senses alert for the slightest touch of Stylianos.
Left to his own devices, Rhavas became a theologian again. As prelate, he hadn't had the time to do as much serious theological work as he would have liked. The book he'd written up in Skopentzana was as dead as the murdered city and, probably, the scribe who'd put the fair copy down on parchment. He missed it less than he'd expected to. His thoughts had gone in different—radically different—directions since.
Before long, Kameniates summoned him to the High Temple and the patriarchal residence. He was not too surprised; his name would have been bandied about as a possible successor to the patriarchal throne even while his body was far, far away. What with his accomplishments and his ancestry, that seemed inevitable as the sunrise.
Kameniates was in his late sixties, his long white beard wispy as clouds on a breezy spring afternoon. He had big, bushy eyebrows, too, and tufts of hair growing out of his ears, which Rhavas found repulsive. The present holder of the patriarchate had neither disgraced himself nor covered himself with glory; he seemed more a placeholder than anything else.
"Most holy sir," Rhavas murmured, respecting his office if not his person. He bowed very low. "It is a privilege to make your acquaintance at last, after so many years so far from the heart of the Empire."
"I am also pleased to meet you," Kameniates said, though Rhavas hadn't mentioned anything about pleasure. The patriarch added, "Even though you were translated to a distant city, your name was ever in my ear."
By the way he said it, Rhavas might have been translated into a foreign language rather than another ecclesiastical situation. And Kameniates had probably listened with no small worry whenever Rhavas' name came up, too. If the present patriarch annoyed the Avtokrator enough, he could become the former patriarch in the blink of an eye. And Rhavas was the logical one to succeed him.
"It's good to be back in the imperial city," Rhavas said now. "Even so, I would rather have stayed in Skopentzana. That would mean the Empire was still strong beyond the mountains."
"Your sentiments do you credit," Kameniates said.
Hadn't Ingegerd told him something like that? How much good had his sentiments done her? None at all, as he knew only too well. But Kameniates didn't need to know about Ingegerd. There were, in fact, quite a few things Kameniates didn't need to know about. Rhavas didn't intend to tell him, either. All he said was, "I thank you, most holy sir."
Kameniates coughed once or twice. "You will forgive me, very holy sir, but some of the stories that come out of the north speak of doctrines being preached there that are, ah, not completely orthodox."
Maybe the ecumenical patriarch already knew about some things of which he should have been ignorant. Rhavas said, "You will forgive me, most holy sir, but stories speak of all sorts of things."
Before Kameniates could reply, a young priest brought in wine and honey cakes covered with chopped pistachios and almonds. Up in Skopentzana, the same recipe would have used walnuts, and probably butter in place of oil. Rhavas went through the ritual of wine without a flaw, conscious of Kameniates' eye on him. The patriarch ate with every sign of enjoyment. He said, "Some of the stories are truly strange."
"Many things that have happened in the north since the civil war began are truly strange," Rhavas answered. "I could begin with the abandonment of the frontier forts and go on to speak of the fall not only of Skopentzana but also of many lesser towns and cities. The Empire has spent centuries carrying civilization to that part of the world. Much of what we did, I fear, is lost forever."
"Surely you exaggerate," Kameniates said around a mouthful of honey cake. "Once this civil strife does finally end, we'll set our house in order soon enough."
He sounded comfortably certain. And why shouldn't he be comfortable? Nothing bad had happened here, and he hadn't gone where anything had. Rhavas said, "Most holy sir, you would have an easier time unscrambling an egg than you would restoring life the way it was north of the mountains."
"Well, you may be right," Kameniates said—an infuriating way to change the subject. Actually, he didn't change it, but swung it back toward what he'd been talking about before: "The stories I've heard from up there, though, haven't got much to do with the Khamorth. They have more to say about our own priests."
"Ah?" Rhavas made a noncommittal noise, and forced himself to follow it with a chuckle. "I'm one of those priests. Maybe the stories are about me."
Kameniates laughed uproariously. "I beg your pardon, but what I'd heard of you didn't make me think you were such a funny fellow," he said. What he would have said had he known Rhavas wasn't joking was no doubt very different. As things were, he went on, "I doubt you're a priest who slays by dark sorcery. I doubt you're a priest who's turned his back on the lord with the great and good mind." What did that prove? Only that what he'd heard about Rhavas—what he knew he'd heard about Rhavas—bore little relationship to the truth.
Rhavas said nothing about sorcery of any sort. He did say, "Most holy sir, I am going to call for a general synod of the priests and prelates and monks and abbots within the Empire."