"Knowing a bear has teeth, your Majesty, doesn't take those teeth away," Trokoundos said. At Krispos' disappointed look, he went on, "still, since we know where he grew them, perhaps we can do something more about them. Perhaps."
"Such as?" Krispos asked eagerly.
"It's a fair guess, Majesty, that if he follows Skotos and draws his power from the dark god, his spells will invert the usages with which we're familiar. That may make them easier to meet than if he, say, truly clove to the Haloga gods or the demons and spirits the steppe nomads revere. Magic from the nomads or the northerners can come at you from any direction, if you know what I mean."
"I think so," Krispos said. "But if their mages or shamans or what have you can invoke their gods and demons and have magic work, does that make those gods and demons as true as Phos and Skotos?"
Trokoundos tugged thoughtfully at his ear. "Majesty, I think that's a question better suited to the patriarch's wisdom, or that of an ecumenical synod, than to one who aspires to nothing more than competent wizardry."
"As you wish. In any case, it takes us off the track. You know the direction from which Harvas' spells will come, you say?"
"So I believe, your Majesty. This aids us to a point, but only to a point. Harvas' strength and skill must still be overcome.' The one, I have already seen, is formidable. As for the other, three centuries ago it sufficed to free him from a warded cell. He can only have refined it in all the years since. That he remains alive to torment us proves he has refined it."
"What shall we do, then?" Krispos asked. He'd hoped having a handle on Harvas would give the mages of Videssos the means to defeat him with minimal risk to themselves or to the Empire. But he'd long since found that things in the real world had a way of being less simple and less easy than in storytellers' tales. This looked like another lesson from that school.
Trokoundos' words confirmed his own thoughts. "The best we can, your Majesty, and pray to the lord with the great and good mind that it be enough."
Bad weather settled in not long before Midwinter's Day. Blizzard after blizzard roared into Videssos the city from the northwest, off the Videssian Sea. On Midwinter's Day itself, the snow blew so hard and quick that even Krispos, with the best seat in ; the Amphitheater, made out little of the skits performed on the track before him. The people in the upper reaches of the huge oval stadium could have discerned only drifting white.
The final troupe of mimes changed its act at the last minute. They came out carrying canes and tapped their way through their routine, as if they'd all suddenly been stricken blind. On the spine of the Amphitheater, Krispos laughed loudly. So did many in his entourage, and in the first few rows of seats around the track. Everyone else must have wondered what was funny—which was just the point the mimes were making. Krispos laughed even more when he worked that out.
On the way back to the palaces after the show in the Amphitheater was done, he leaped over a bonfire to burn away misfortune for the coming year. That fire was but one of many that blazed each Midwinter's Day. This year, though, the good-luck bonfires brought misfortune with them. Whipped by winter gales, two got out of control and ignited nearby buildings.
Now Krispos saw through swirling snow the smudges of smoke he'd feared during the religious riots Pyrrhos had caused. The snow did little to slow the flames. Fire-fighting teams dashed through the city with hand pumps to shoot water from fountains and ponds, with axes and sledgehammers to knock down homes and shops to build firebreaks. Krispos had no great hope for them. When fire got loose, it usually pleased itself, not any man.
The teams amazed him. They succeeded in stopping one of the fires before it had eaten more than a block of buildings. The other blaze, by luck, had started near the city wall. It burned what it could, then came to the open space inside the barrier and died for lack of fuel.
Krispos presented a pound of gold to the head of the team that beat the first fire, a middle-age fellow with a fine head of silver hair and a matter-of-fact competence that suggested years as a soldier. Nobles and logothetes in the Grand Courtroom applauded the man, whose name was Thokyodes.
"Along with this reward from the grateful state," Krispos said, "I also give you ten goldpieces from my private purse."
More applause rose. Thokyodes clenched his right fist over his heart in salute—he was a veteran, then. "Thank you, your Majesty," he said, pleased but far from obsequious.
"Maybe you'll use one of those ten on a potion to make your eyebrows grow back faster," Krispos said, soft enough that only he and the team leader heard.
Not a bit put out, Thokyodes laughed and ran the palm of his hand across his forehead. "Aye, I do look strange without 'em, don't I? They got singed right off me." He made no effort to keep his voice down. "Fighting fires is just like fighting any other foe. The closer you get, the better you do."
"You did the city a great service," Krispos said.
"Couldn't've done it without my crew. By your leave, your Majesty, I'll share this with all of them." Thokyodes held up the sack of goldpieces.
"It's your money now, to do with as you please," Krispos said. The applause that rang out this time was unrehearsed, sincere, and startled. Few of the courtiers, men who had far more than this fireman, would have been as generous, and they knew it. Krispos wondered if he would have matched the man had fate led him to an ordinary job instead of the throne. He hoped so, but admitted to himself that he was not sure.
"I think you would have," Dara said when he wondered again later in the day, this time aloud. "This I'll tell you—Harvas wouldn't."
"Harvas? Harvas would have stood next to the fire with his cheeks puffed out, to blow it along." Krispos smiled at his conceit. A moment later the smile blew out. He sketched Phos' sun-circle. "By the good god, how do I know his magic didn't help the blazes spread?"
"You don't, but if you start seeing him under our bed whenever anything goes wrong, you'll have your head down there all the time, because we don't need Harvas to know misfortune."
"That's true," Krispos said. "You have good sense." His smile came back, this time full of gratitude. Harvas was quite bad enough without a fearful imagination making him worse.
Dara said, "I do try. It's nice that you notice. I remember when—" She stopped without telling Krispos what she remembered when. It had to do with Anthimos, then. Krispos did not blame her for steering away from that time; it had not been happy for her. But that meant several years of her life, the ones before Krispos became vestiarios, were almost blank to him, which occasionally led to awkward pauses like this one.
He wondered if every second husband and second wife endured them. Probably, he thought. It would have been more awkward yet had her marriage to Anthimos been a good one. A lot more awkward, he realized with an inward chuckle, because then she would not have told him Anthimos intended to kill him.
"Can't get much more awkward than that," he muttered under his breath.
"Than what?" Dara asked. "Nevermind."
Whenever fat Longinos burst in on him on the dead run, Krispos braced for trouble. The chamberlain, to his disappointment, did not disappoint him. "Majesty," Longinos gasped, wiping his brow with a silken kerchief—only a fat eunuch could have been sweaty after so trivial an exertion; it was freezing outside and not a great deal warmer inside the imperial residence. "Majesty, the most holy patriarch Pyrrhos—I'm sorry, your Majesty, I mean the monk Pyrrhos—is preaching against you in the street."
"Is he, by the good god?" Krispos sprang up from his desk so quickly that a couple of tax registers fluttered to the floor. He let them lie there. So Pyrrhos' indignation at being removed from the patriarchal throne really had overcome his longtime loyalty, had it? "What's he saying?"