If the assembled ecclesiastics didn't go along with him . . . In that case, there would be some sudden and unexpected demises. There might even be some at the synod itself. If people refused to look at what was obviously true, he would just have to rub their noses in it. After that, with a little luck, the survivors would have better sense.
If there were any survivors, of course.
The patriarchal residence opened on the plaza of Palamas. Rhavas had to make his way through it to go down Middle Street to his definitely less than fashionable inn. As far as the city's great market square went, the civil war might as well not have existed. Somewhere not far away, a vendor hawked fried squid. Rhavas' stomach growled, though the last one he'd eaten hadn't been especially good.
Fish caught in nearby waters gleamed under the sun. Customers sneered at the quality. Fishmongers swore at customers. A thieving cat ran off with a fat prawn hanging out of its mouth. The man who owned that stall flung a rock after the cat. He missed. The rock bounced off the cobbles, skipping crazily before coming to rest at last.
A juggler kept a fountain of balls and knives—and another fountain of stale jokes—in the air. A bowl with a few coins in it sat at his feet. Rhavas wondered if he'd put the money in there himself to encourage others. A singer accompanied himself on the lute. He used a hollowed-out calabash instead of a bowl. A scribe wrote a letter for an angry-looking peasant. A soothsayer offered to tell anyone anything—for a price. Rhavas turned away from him. He wanted nothing to do with soothsayers anymore. And if this soothsayer really could see the future, he probably wouldn't want anything to do with Rhavas, either.
Stolid grandmothers (some, actually, grimmer than stolid), their heads covered in bright scarves, sold green beans and onions and asparagus and dill and thyme and fennel and a dozen other vegetables and spices from baskets in front of them. They haggled with customers and gossiped among themselves. A couple of them watched Rhavas thread through the crowd. One sketched the sun-sign. In the interest of remaining a chameleon, he returned the gesture. Satisfied, she nodded.
He could have bought books or knives or puppies or rope or jewelry or a woman or a boy or an icon or olives or olive oil or a charm guaranteed to make him do better with the woman or boy he could have bought or a medicine guaranteed to cure whatever he caught from the woman or boy he could have bought or a belt or a belt pouch to wear on it or a tunic or the dye to change a tunic's color or (had he been a secular man and not an ecclesiastic) a trim for his beard or a manicure or a chicken or a toy oxcart or a full-sized one or a ball or a pair of stout boots with which to kick it or a pound of prawns or the scale to weigh them on and a set of weights to go with it or prunes or dried apricots or poppy juice to close up his bowels after the fruit opened them or . . .
The square had been like that before Rhavas left Videssos the city, too. If you wandered around cataloguing everything you could buy, you might end up spending all your time wandering and none of it buying. Plenty of people did. Their glazed eyes gave them away. There wasn't another place to shop like this in all the Empire.
Rhavas resolutely worked through it. He felt like patting himself on the back when he reached Middle Street and started up it. The main boulevard was itself lined with shops and with buildings devoted to the imperial administration. Though it had temptations of its own, it wasn't a patch on the plaza of Palamas.
When he turned off Middle Street and found his inn, the innkeeper gave him a peculiar look. "Ask you something, holy sir?" Lardys said.
"You can always ask. I don't promise to answer," Rhavas replied.
"Well, I'll see if I can loosen your tongue a bit." The taverner dipped up a mug of wine and slid it down the bar to Rhavas. "Have some of that, why don't you?"
"Let me get you a mug, too." The coin Rhavas set on the bar ensured that the taverner wouldn't regret his own generosity or resent Rhavas as the object thereof.
"You're a gent, holy sir." Lardys wasn't shy about drinking on the job. He poured wine for himself, spat in rejection of Skotos (so did Rhavas), and drank. After a long pull at the mug, he inquired, "Is what people say about you true?"
"I don't know," Rhavas said. "What do people say about me?" He tried to keep his tone light, but could not help a stab of fear. If news from the north had attached itself to his name after all . . .
But what Lardys said was, "I heard you were some kind of kinsman to the Avtokrator. Is that so? Can that be so?"
"Anything can be so." As usual, Rhavas was relentlessly precise. "As a matter of fact, though, that does happen to be so."
Lardys stared at him in owlish amazement. "Phos, man, in that case what are you doing here?"
"Staying here. Sleeping. Eating. Drinking wine. The kinds of things people usually do at an inn," Rhavas answered. Taking a barmaid to bed now and then. But his tonsure kept him from talking about that, if not from doing it.
The innkeeper went right on staring. "But . . . But . . . Why are you doing it here, holy sir? Why aren't you in a fancy room in the palace quarter eating suckling pig off golden plates? Doesn't the Avtokrator need all the help he can get? Kinsmen, now, kinsmen are beyond price, on account of he can be pretty sure they'll stay loyal. So why aren't you there?"
"Well, for one thing, his Majesty isn't all that fond of suckling pig," Rhavas said. Lardys made an impatient—and very rude—gesture. With a shrug of his own, Rhavas went on, "For another, his Majesty isn't all that fond of me."
"Oh." Having digested that, and having decided Rhavas was serious, Lardys said, "That's pretty stupid."
"Of his Majesty? I doubt it." Rhavas knew how much he'd done to antagonize his cousin, even if a lot of it had been inadvertent.
Impatiently, the other man shook his head. "No, no, no—of you, for throwing a connection like that over the side. Think of everything you could have done with it." Glorious dreams of what was probably larceny made his face shine.
"You may be right," Rhavas answered, which was one of those things you could always say without offending anyone, but which had no real meaning. It could also be a polite way of saying, Well, to the ice with you, which was how Rhavas intended it this time.
Not realizing that, Lardys said, "You'd better believe I am. How could it not matter? Tell me that, my brilliant friend."
Rhavas didn't care to be baited. He said, "If Stylianos wins the civil war, my connection with his Majesty won't matter a counterfeit copper—unless it sets me up for the headsman's sword."
"Oh." The taverner looked foolish. "Well, there is that, isn't there?"
"You might say so. Yes, you just might." Rhavas went upstairs with the satisfaction of the last word. He didn't tell Lardys that associating with the Avtokrator's cousin could set him up for the headsman's sword if Stylianos won the civil war. If the fellow couldn't figure that out for himself, he was in the wrong place and the wrong line of work.
With some ecclesiastics cut off from Videssos the city by barbarian invasion and perhaps slain, with others unable to cross from land Stylianos held to that controlled by Maleinos, and with still others caught by marching and countermarching armies, priests and prelates, monks and abbots were slow to come into the capital for the synod Kameniates had convened.
Delay, here, worried Rhavas not at all. It gave him more time to pore over Phos' holy scriptures to find texts that would bolster the examples the world provided only too abundantly. And it let him study the late Koubatzes' grimoire. Little by little, he began to gain control of the magic the wizard had been able to work.