"Oh." Krispos hoped he didn't sound too disappointed. "Well, go ahead and do what you need to do, then."
The wizard prayed over the gleaming slab of nicomar and anointed it with sweet-smelling oil, as if it were being made a prelate or an Emperor. Krispos wondered if he would be able to feel the change in the stone, as even a person of no sorcer-ous talent could feel the curative current that passed between a healer-priest and his patient. To him, though, the nicomar remained simply a stone. He had to trust that Zaidas knew what he was about.
With a final pass that seemed to require nearly jointless fingers, Zaidas said, "The good god willing, we are now ready to proceed. First I shall examine the letter known to have been written by Harvas."
He set the nicomar over the place where he had previously splashed his magical liquid. Fierce red light blazed through the stone. Krispos said, "This tells us what we already knew."
"So it does, your Majesty," Zaidas answered. "It also tells me the nicomar is performing as it should." He lifted the thin slab of stone and held it over a brass brazier from which the pungent smoke of frankincense coiled slowly toward the ceiling. Before Krispos could ask what he was doing, he explained: "I fumigate the nicomar to remove from it the influence of the parchment it just touched. Thus on the crucial test to come, the workings of the law of contagion shall not be permitted to influence the result. Do you see?"
Without waiting for Krispos' reply, the wizard set the polished alabaser down on the letter from Taronites. Krispos waited for another flash of red. But only a steady blue light penetrated the nicomar. "What does that mean?" Krispos asked, half hoping, half dreading Zaidas would tell him something other than the obvious.
But the wizard did not. "Your Majesty, it means that, so far as my sorcery can determine, no relationship whatever exists between the Thanasioi and Harvas."
"I still find that hard to believe," Krispos said.
"As I told you before, so do I," Zaidas answered. "But if you have a choice between believing whatever you happen to feel at the moment and that which has evidence to support it, which course will you take? I trust I know you well enough to know what you would say were it a matter of law rather than one of magic."
"There you have me," Krispos admitted. "You are so confident in what these conjurations tell you, then?"
"I am, your Majesty. Were it anyone but Harvas, the first lest alone would have contented me. With the confirmation of its import by the nicomar, I would stake my life on the accuracy of what I have divined today."
"You may be doing just that, you know," Krispos said with u grim edge to his voice.
Zaidas looked startled for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, that's so, isn't it? Harvas on the loose once more would terrify the bravest." He spat on the floor between his feet to show his rejection of the evil god Skotos, the god Harvas had for a patron. "But by Phos, the lord with the great and good mind, I tell you again that Harvas is in no way connected to the Thanasioi. Misguided they may be; guided amiss by Harvas they are not."
He sounded so certain that Krispos had to believe him despite his own misgivings. As the sorcerer had said, evidence counted for more than vague feelings. And if Harvas' dread hand did not lie behind the Thanasioi, why, how dangerous could they possibly be? The Avtokrator smiled. Over the past couple of decades, he'd faced and overcome enough merely human foes to trust he had their measure.
"Thank you for relieving my mind, excellent sir. Your reward will not be small," he told Zaidas. Then, because the wizard had a habit of putting such rewards into the treasury of the Sorcerers' Collegium, he added, "Keep some for yourself this time, my friend. I command it."
"You needn't fear for that, your Majesty," Zaidas said. "In fact, I have already received the same instruction from one I reckon higher in rank than you."
Normally, the only entity a Videssian would reckon higher in rank than his Avtokrator was Phos. Krispos, though, knew perfectly well about whom Zaidas was talking. Chuckling, he said, "Tell Aulissa I say she is a good, sensible woman and makes you an excellent wife. Be sure you listen to her, too."
"I will pass your words to her as you say them," Zaidas promised. "With some other women. I might not, for fear of inflaming their notions of how important they are in the scheme of things. But since my dear Aulissa is as sensible as you say, I know she'll accept the compliment for what it's worth and not a copper more."
"The two of you are a good deal alike that way," Krispos said. "You're lucky to have each other."
Even when Dara was still alive, he'd sometimes envied Zaidas and Aulissa their tranquil happiness. They seemed to know each other's needs and adjust to each other's foibles as if they were two halves of the same person. His own marriage had not been like that. He and Dara got along well enough on the whole, but they'd always had their fall storms and wintry blizzards along with the warmth of summer. Zaidas and his wife seemed to live in late spring the year round.
The wizard said, "Besides, your Majesty, Aulissa has noted that Sotades is now twelve years old. The boy will soon begin his serious schooling, which, as she pointed out, requires serious quantities of gold."
"Ah, yes," Krispos said wisely, though as Avtokrator he had not had to worry about the expense of educating his sons: every scholar in the city was eager to have any or all of them as his pupils. Having taught the Emperor's child could only improve a savant's reputation . . . and one of those children would likely be Avtokrator himself one day. In Krispos' experience, scholars were no more immune to seeking influence than any other men.
"I am relieved for you, your Majesty, and for the Empire of Videssos," Zaidas said, nodding toward the table where he'd carried out his magic.
"I'm relieved, too." Krispos picked up the letter from Harvas which the wizard had used and quickly read it. It was the one wherein Harvas declared he had cut out Iakovitzes' tongue because the diplomat's freedom with it displeased him. Krispos was not sorry to put down the parchment. That had been far from the worst of Harvas' atrocities. Being spared the worry of another round of them was worth a goodly sum of gold.
When the Avtokrator left the conjuration chamber, the Haloga guard fell in behind him. The two axemen who had stood watch at the doorway preceded him out of the Sorcerers' Collegium. The parasol bearers had been sitting around outside the building and passing the time with the rest of the squad of imperial guards. Their canopies fluttered in agitation when the Avtokrator reappeared. After a moment, though, they formed themselves into the neat pairs that always accompanied Krispos in public.
On the trip back to the palace compound, their presence was pure ostentation, for almost the entire short journey was under covered colonnades. Not for the first time—not for the hundredth—Krispos wished he'd been able to get away with cutting the stifling ceremonial that surrounded him every hour of the day and night. But by the horror that thought evoked in the palace staff, in officials of the government, and even among his guards, he might have proposed offering sacrifice to Skotos on the altar of the High Temple. Fights against custom just were not winnable.
He turned around, glanced back north toward the Sorcerers' Collegium. He would reward Zaidas well indeed, not least for relieving his mind. If the Thanasioi had come up with their foolish heresy all on their own, he was sure he would have no trouble putting them down. In his two decades and more as Avtokrator, after all, he'd gone from one triumph to another. Why should this struggle be any different?
II
From the outside, Phos' high temple seemed more massive than beautiful. The heavy buttresses that carried the weight of the great central dome to the ground reminded Phostis of the thick, columnar legs of an elephant; one of the immense beasts had been imported to Videssos the city from the southern shore of the Sailors' Sea when he was a boy. It hadn't lived long, save in his memory.