Rhavas was, in fact, in about the same spot on Middle Street as he had been when his cousin went off to war. Stylianos' parade was almost identical to that of the fallen Avtokrator, the main difference being that he went from the Silver Gate to the palaces, not the other way round.
The acclamations were different, too. People shouted Stylianos' name and "Stylianos Avtokrator!" and "Many years to the Avtokrator Stylianos!" Those same cries had greeted every Avtokrator who preceded him—Maleinos included—and would no doubt greet all his successors as well.
A man standing beside Rhavas nudged him with an elbow. "How come you're not yelling, holy sir?" he asked.
"I've got a frog in my throat," Rhavas answered in a husky whisper. "I can hardly even talk." Satisfied, the nosy man nodded. Maybe he was keeping lists of people who weren't celebrating enough. Plenty of new Avtokrators made lists like that. Rhavas wasn't worried about them, or not very much. He assumed he was already on whatever lists Stylianos had.
Here came the new Avtokrator, behind his standard-bearers. Stylianos rode a fine white horse, as Maleinos had before him. Along with his gilded armor, that set him apart from his officers. Though he was round-faced, he looked harder and more weathered than Rhavas had expected: certainly harder than Maleinos. Rhavas' cousin had spent most of this time in the imperial city, while Stylianos lived in the field.
I could point my finger . . . Rhavas thought. But what good would that do? It wouldn't bring Maleinos back to life. It would probably just set off another round of civil war, or maybe more than one. Rhavas looked down at his own hands. Even the power to kill had limits. Who would have imagined that?
Stylianos was gone, bound for the palaces. The servants would tend to him as they'd tended to Maleinos. Nothing ever happened to them, no matter who ruled Videssos. They were indispensable, and they knew it.
Stylianos' soldiers looked like . . . soldiers. Rhavas couldn't see that they were any different from the men Maleinos had led. For all he knew, some of them were men Maleinos had led. Stylianos commanded all the soldiers in the Empire now, and would until and unless some new rebel rose against him.
A few city folk trailed after the soldiers, singing their praises and their master's. Most just went on about their business once the parade passed them by. Avtokrators came and went. The people of the capital praised them when they took the throne and generally jeered them afterward. Every once in a while, an Avtokrator would respond to scorn with massacre. That seldom stopped more scorn from raining down on him, and commonly gave him a black name in history.
Rhavas made his way back to the inn. He half expected to find soldiers there, men waiting to haul him up before Stylianos. But there were none. He pointed to the taverner. "You didn't want to see our new sovereign?"
"Not me." Lardys went on pouring olives from a jug into a bowl. "I'm no highborn mucky-muck. Why should I care whose face goes on the goldpieces, as long as I can spend 'em?" He set down the jug, reached under the bar, and pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment. "Fellow brought this here for you."
"Thanks." Rhavas took it. The image stamped on the seal was a good copy of the portrait of Phos in the High Temple. Sozomenos, Rhavas thought. He broke the seal—he took a peculiar pleasure in breaking the seal, in fact—and unrolled the parchment.
The ecumenical patriarch's handwriting was thin and spidery, but clear enough to be easy to read. You would do well to think of disappearing, Sozomenos wrote. The synod will surely condemn you, and you will as surely face the most severe punishment. Is it not better to be refuted while absent than to subject yourself to the rigors of the new regime?
Walking over to the hearth, Rhavas tossed the note into the fire. The parchment charred and crumpled and burst into flame. In no more than a handful of heartbeats, it was gone. Its memory, though . . . That lingered. Sozomenos opposed Rhavas with all his heart—with all his soul, in fact. Even so, the patriarch did not seem to want to see him dead.
That sort of magnanimity . . . made no sense to Rhavas. Were he ecumenical patriarch and Sozomenos his theological rival, he would have done everything he could to destroy the other man. Did Stylianos' soldiers have orders to arrest any priest caught trying to sneak out of the city? Rhavas wouldn't have been surprised.
"What was it, holy sir?" Lardys asked. "What was that all about?"
"Nothing," Rhavas answered. "Nothing at all."
In due course, the synod reconvened. The soldiers outside the High Temple eyed Rhavas with mixed scorn and caution. The caution won: none of them had the nerve to mock. The story of what had happened to Arkadios plainly had lost nothing in the telling. Who would want to take a chance that the same thing might happen to him?
Priests and prelates drew aside from Rhavas when he walked into the High Temple. Yes, he might have been carrying some loathsome disease. And so I am, he thought. The truth. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear. And, now, he also carried the wrong blood in his veins, which only made things worse.
Sozomenos stood there talking with a couple of ecclesiastics. He broke away from them as soon as he saw Rhavas. "Very holy sir!" the patriarch called, hurrying toward him. "Did you not get my letter?" His face was a mask of distress.
"I got it," Rhavas said coolly.
"Then why did you not heed it?"
Rhavas looked at him—looked through him. "I think that should be plain enough, most holy sir."
"No." Sozomenos shook his head. "No, it is not plain at all. Unless—" He broke off, bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again, tears glinted in his eyes. "I did not—I truly did not—believe the dark god had taken up residence in your heart, to make you mistrust those who would be your friend even if they think you mistaken." When he spat in rejection of Skotos, it was with obvious sorrow.
Of all the things in the world Rhavas could not stand, being pitied stood perhaps highest on the list. "Curse you, Sozomenos," he snarled, his voice clotted with hate. "Curse you to death."
And nothing happened.
Astonished, Rhavas stared at the ecumenical patriarch. He'd felt no resistance to the curse, as he had with Koubatzes and the mages who rode with Himerios. It simply . . . had not touched Sozomenos—and for the life of him, Rhavas could not understand why not.
"I will pray for you, very holy sir," the patriarch said quietly. "Those who are lost are not always lost forever." He gathered himself. "Since you are here, we shall have to proceed with this whole unfortunate business. If you will excuse me . . ."
"Wait," Rhavas said, and Sozomenos did. "Curse you, why don't you fall?" There. He'd said it again, and meant it with all his being.
Sozomenos gave him a sad little shrug. "You, it seems, have your god, in whose powers you trust. Can you not see I have mine as well?"
He walked off toward the pulpit. Had Rhavas been less steeped in the certainty of his own rightness . . . But he was what he was. He was sure he understood why the world worked as it did. And anything that happened to contradict that? He did not—he would not—see it.
As courteously as if Rhavas had not tried to kill him, Sozomenos gave him the floor and let him do his best to persuade the assembled ecclesiastics of his new doctrine. He did his best, piling more—and more graphic—examples and more quotations from Phos' holy scriptures atop the introduction he had given in the synod's earlier session. He alarmed them. He horrified them. He persuaded them . . . not at all.