"You have my blessing, for whatever it may be worth to you," Rhavas said. The man bowed in thanks. He hadn't noticed that Rhavas didn't use the sun-sign or even name the good god.
"Why did you do that?" one of the mages asked. "By all the signs, you don't believe in blessings."
Rhavas shrugged. "It was simpler. If I'd said no, he would have raised a fuss."
The mage's right eyebrow quirked. "You don't worry, of course, about the fusses you raise yourself." Rhavas inclined his head, acknowledging that the other man had scored a hit.
The usual frantic hubbub of Videssos the city faded behind them when they entered the palace quarter. Gardeners trimmed shrubbery with long-handled shears. A washerwoman carried a basket of clothes on her shoulder. Two secretaries with ink-stained fingers argued about some piece of bureaucratic inconsequence as they strolled down the flagstones of a path between splendid buildings.
Rhavas had expected Stylianos to meet him in the throne room. That way, the new Avtokrator could have tried to awe him with the overwhelming majesty of the imperial office. Stylianos might well have assumed no Videssian, no matter how heretical, was altogether immune to that. He might well have been right, too.
But he decided otherwise. As Maleinos had when Rhavas came to Videssos the city, Stylianos chose to meet him in the imperial residence: as close to informality as ceremony-hedged Avtokrators could find. The furry-bearded Vaspurakaner steward who had served Maleinos now served his successor. No, who ruled the Empire made little difference to those who served the ruler.
"Come with me, please, very holy sir," the steward said when Rhavas had climbed the low, broad stairs. Remembering Rhavas' ceremonial title was the only sign he gave of ever having seen him before.
Along the winding corridors of the imperial residence they went. Rhavas nodded to himself as they walked past the high gilded helm of a Makuraner King of Kings, the one Stavrakios had brought back. People said the conquering Avtokrator had put the dent in it himself, with a mace. Rhavas didn't know if that was true. From everything he'd heard about Stavrakios, though, he wouldn't have been surprised.
Stylianos met him in the chamber where Maleinos had received him not so long before. Did the new Avtokrator know? Had he asked the stewards? Had they been happy to tell him? Rhavas didn't know that, either, which was probably just as well.
"Your Majesty." Rhavas prostrated himself, as he had before his own cousin.
"Get up, get up." Stylianos sounded as harsh and impatient as he looked. He waved Rhavas to a stool, then went on, "We can kill each other at a word. If that doesn't make us equals, what would?"
"A point." Rhavas knew he could slay Stylianos at a word. Could the Avtokrator really return the . . . favor? He might well need to summon a swarm of mages and soldiers, but odds were he could manage.
A servant came in with a silver pitcher of wine, two goblets, and a plate of pistachio-topped honey cakes on a tray of rare dark wood. After the man had bowed his way out, the Avtokrator poured wine for both of them. Stylianos went through the usual ritual. Rhavas ignored it. Stylianos eyed him. "You really want to make things easy for me, don't you?"
"What difference does it make?" Rhavas returned. "I'm Maleinos' cousin. How likely am I to get to Sozomenos' age?"
"Nobody's likely to get that old." Stylianos' chuckle held a grim edge. "Some people are less likely than others, of course. You're dead right about that." He laughed again. "Dead right's about it. But if you go on spouting heresy every time you open your mouth, I don't even have to find an excuse to get rid of you."
Rhavas shrugged. In its own way, Stylianos' blunt candor was refreshing. "Try to tell people a plain truth and see the thanks you get," Rhavas said, doing his best to match it.
"Telling people the plain truth is one of the best reasons I know for roasting somebody over a slow fire," Stylianos observed. "Without some honey smeared over it"—he picked up a cake—"life wouldn't be worth living most of the time."
"No!" Rhavas shook his head. "Enough hypocrisy!" He almost said, To the ice with hypocrisy! Old habits of thought died hard. He went on, "Too many will not admit what is only too plain: which god is really the stronger."
"How would life be any different if they did?" Stylianos asked, and took a big bite out of the cake.
"How? We would be honest, that's how!" Rhavas exclaimed. "We could herd all the Vaspurakaners into pens and slaughter them for the sport of it, and the men who did it would cry out that it was Phos' will. A wizard could melt a city into a puddle of glass and sing a hymn to Phos in his glory, as long as the city was filled with people who didn't believe as he did. Another mage could poison the very air his foes breathed, watch them choke and die, and say the lord with the great and good mind delighted in their agonies. Enough of lies! We do evil. We enjoy doing evil. We take pride in doing evil. We always have. We always will. Time to tear away the veil!"
Calmly, Stylianos finished the honey cake. He pointed to the plate. "Have one. They're good." He waited. When Rhavas only sat there, he shrugged. "Or don't, then—whatever suits you. We do evil, yes. We enjoy it, yes. But do we take pride in it? Should we take pride in it, eh?"
Rhavas remembered how he'd felt after ravishing Ingegerd and then cursing her to keep her from killing him. Had he been proud of himself? Hardly. He'd been heartsick instead. But, he told himself, he'd still been struggling against the truth then. Now he understood it and accepted it. He said, "Why shouldn't we, your Majesty? It is part of what we are, just as much as—more than—good is. We have to be taught good, from the time that we are tiny. If we aren't, we grow up knowing it not. Evil, though, evil comes forth of itself."
Stylianos studied him again, this time for some little while. The Avtokrator's eyes were hooded, opaque; they seemed more likely to have been carved from jet than to belong to a living man. "Well, very holy sir, you are more dangerous than I gave you credit for," Stylianos said at last. "The synod will see to it, though. You were brave, to try to persuade Phos' priesthood to bow down to Skotos." He spat—reflectively, Rhavas judged, rather than from reflex, before continuing, "Foolish, mind you, but brave."
"The truth is there," Rhavas insisted. "People will see it."
"It's always been there," Stylianos said with a shrug. "The sun has always been there, too." He didn't sketch Phos' sun-sign; Rhavas found the omission interesting. Stylianos went on, "If we look at the sun too long, it blinds us. Then we don't see anything at all. If we look too closely at what people are really like, we throw up our hands—or maybe just throw up—and run away. How can we help it? That's why we have faith, I think: it lets us console ourselves by thinking we might be better than we are. We might be, yes, but we're bloody well not."
"You are a better defender of Phos than most of those in the High Temple," Rhavas said slowly. "Did you study for the priesthood before you started soldiering?"
"Not me. Not a bit of it." Stylianos made his denial sound absurdly cheerful. "But I've been around a long time"—he plucked at his beard, which was grayer than Rhavas'—"and I've seen a lot of shit. And a lot of what you see in my trade, very holy sir, is shit, believe you me it is. I've seen it, and I've thought about it, and this is what I've come up with."
"You will make a formidable Avtokrator," Rhavas said. "You may make a better one than my cousin did." He'd never dreamt he would think such a thing, let alone say it. But he'd barely met Videssos' new sovereign before today.