The Khamorth stayed away from Skopentzana longer than Rhavas or anyone else there would have dared hope after the local mages and the prelate came back defeated from trying to force them away by sorcery. Koubatzes came to Rhavas' study and said, "Maybe our magic did more good than we thought. They hit us, yes, but we hit them, too."
"It could be so," Rhavas replied. "I would not presume to tell you it is not so, sorcerous sir. But I would tell you this: I prefer to account for it with the prayers the whole city offered up to the lord with the great and good mind."
"It could be so, very holy sir." Koubatzes' tone of voice was almost identical to the one Rhavas had used moments before. It showed polite skepticism, but skepticism unmistakable for anything else.
"Why do you disbelieve?" Rhavas asked.
"I don't disbelieve." Now Koubatzes showed alarm. Understandably so: the whole weight of the ecclesiastical and governmental hierarchies fell on a man who descended into heresy or apostasy. "I do not disbelieve," the wizard repeated, with even more emphasis than before. "But men have offered up prayers on all sorts of things over years uncounted without having them heard. How can you be so sure these were?"
That was a legitimate question. Rhavas said, "I will answer you in two ways. First, this prayer was for something of extraordinary importance to the city and to the Empire of Videssos. We are the ones who worship rightly, and so we may hope Phos will hear us. We cannot demand anything of the good god, but we may humbly beseech him. We may, and we have." Koubatzes stirred on his stool. Rhavas held up a hand. "I had not finished. The other thing I would say is, if our prayers failed, where are the barbarians?"
"I already gave you one other possible explanation, very holy sir," Koubatzes reminded him. "But if you think I will quarrel, if you think I will complain, you can think again. I do not know where the barbarians are. I do know that I miss them not in the least."
"Nor will I quarrel or complain over that, sorcerous sir," Rhavas said. When Koubatzes went his way, the two men were on good terms.
Rhavas began doing something he had not been in the habit of doing till then: strolling along the walkway atop Skopentzana's walls whenever the weather was good enough to let him see out into the distance and whenever it wasn't too bitterly cold to keep everyone indoors who didn't have the most urgent reasons for venturing outside.
Militiamen marched regardless of the weather, of course. Some of them greeted Rhavas with jokes when he did appear. "No wonder you didn't show up yesterday," one of them called after a day bitterly cold even by Skopentzana's stern standards. "You'd have frozen the top of your head right off."
Rhavas flipped back his hood and let his tonsured scalp shine forth for a moment. This day was also anything but warm. "Still seems to be there," he said, and the militiaman laughed.
Toxaras and some others, though, did not smile and joke when they saw the prelate. They couldn't be openly rude, not when Rhavas might punish them with anathemas. But they made a point of staying as far away from him as they could, and of being selectively deaf when he asked them questions. They remained convinced he was mistaken.
Because of that, he was surprised when Toxaras came to his residence one afternoon and said, "Please walk out to the wall with me, very holy sir, if you'd be so kind. There's something you need to see."
"Oh?" Rhavas got to his feet. "Yes, of course I'll come. Can you tell me what it is?"
"You'll know it when you see it," the mason answered, glowering at Rhavas from under his bushy brows. Rhavas feared he knew what that meant. But he was also sure Toxaras was waiting for him to ask again, so he didn't. He refused to give the militia leader the satisfaction.
By the way Toxaras kept scowling as they tramped out from the heart of Skopentzana to the western wall, he'd expected Rhavas to probe harder, and was annoyed when he failed to. Toxaras' anger was the least the prelate had to worry about.
Up the stairs they climbed, Toxaras not breathing hard, Rhavas panting a little by the time they got to the top. The militiamen atop the wall seemed much more alert than they had the last time Rhavas saw them. Nobody joked with him now. The grim-faced men were staring out to the snow-covered ground beyond the city.
"Well, go on," Toxaras said roughly, all but shoving Rhavas toward the outer perimeter. "So much for all your fancy prayers, very holy sir. There are the Khamorth. Have a look for yourself."
Like a man trapped in a nightmare, Rhavas strode out to the edge of the wall. Against all logic and reason, he hoped till the very last instant that Toxaras would prove mistaken. The leader of the militia wasn't wrong, of course. There were the nomads, just as he had said. They wore fur hats and fur jackets and unkempt beards that blended in with the one and the other. They had leather trousers and felt boots that were supposed to keep their feet warm no matter how cold it got. The small steppe ponies they rode were shaggy of mane and tail and coat in general, which only added to the animal impression the barbarians created.
"Yes, I see them," Rhavas said quietly. "They are there."
"Are you satisfied with your handiwork now?" Toxaras demanded.
"My handiwork?" Rhavas shook his head. "I had nothing to do with bringing them here. You must blame that on the civil war. I did everything I knew how to do to keep them away from Skopentzana. Obviously, I failed."
Toxaras blinked. He'd blamed Rhavas for so much, he'd plainly included some things for which the prelate was not responsible. He shrugged now. "They're there, and we've got all those stinking peasants in the city. How are we supposed to stand siege?"
"I don't know," Rhavas answered. "How are they supposed to lay siege to a city like this? I've never heard that they were the masters of rams and catapults and siege towers."
"Who says they need to be?" Toxaras returned. "All they have to do is stay around while we get hungrier and hungrier."
Rhavas looked out at the plainsmen once more. None of them was within bowshot of the walls, or even within catapult range. They just sat on their horses, eyeing Skopentzana with, perhaps, as much thoughtful—even speculative—interest as Rhavas and Toxaras and the rest of the militiamen were giving them.
"They have to eat, too," Rhavas said. "What will they live on while they wait for us to starve?"
"Their flocks. Whatever they can steal from us," Toxaras answered.
"Will it be enough?"
"How do I know? How do you know it won't be? We'd have a better chance if we had fewer useless mouths in here."
"Who are the barbarians?" Rhavas asked. "Those outside the walls, or those within?"
"Very holy sir, I'm not going to argue with you about that. You can talk rings around me. We both know it," Toxaras said. "But I'll tell you one other thing I know: I know which side I'm on. And I know you haven't done my side any good." He spat on the paving stones, rejecting Rhavas as if he were Skotos.
Propriety and holiness forgotten, Rhavas swung at him. The blow was clumsy and unpracticed. Toxaras ducked under it. Rhavas swung again, in a blind fury. Toxaras blocked with his left forearm. Then he swung. The next thing Rhavas knew, he was sitting on his backside on those paving stones, gasping and fighting for breath, the pit of his stomach one vast ache.
"Get up," Toxaras said, breathing hard. "Get up and get out of here, Skotos eat you. I didn't want to do that. I've got all the witnesses in the world that you tried to slug me first, but I still didn't want to do that. Go on. Get out. If I see you up here again, I'm liable to try and murder you."
Rhavas couldn't get up right away—not till that horrible feeling of being unable to breathe eased a little. Then, slowly and painfully, he rose. He hobbled all bent over for a few steps, like a sick old man. Pausing then, he made himself straighten. He still moved slowly, but he moved the way he should have moved. It hurt as much as anything he'd ever done, but he did it. Pride could be a terrible thing for any man, and all the more so for a priest.
As he got to the head of the stairs, he turned back and pointed at Toxaras. "I curse you as you have cursed me," he said.
The head of the militia fleered laughter. He gave Rhavas a gesture nasty boys had used on the streets of Videssian towns since time out of mind. Rhavas started to return it, then checked himself. He'd already lowered himself to Toxaras' level once. That was quite bad enough.
He went on down the stairs. Each footfall hurt. He was biting the inside of his lower lip against the pain by the time he got to the bottom. But he stayed straight. Yes, pride could be a cruel master indeed.
"Very holy sir?"
"What?" Rhavas didn't want to talk to anybody right now. He wanted to go back to his residence and pretend everything that had happened lately was only a bad dream. He knew better, of course, but the worst nightmare seemed better than this dreadful reality.
But the peasant in front of him didn't, couldn't, know anything about that. His colorless clothes, his colorful, rustic accent, and his hangdog manner all proclaimed him for what he was. "Phaos bless you, very holy sir, is all I wanted to say," he went on now. "I've heard how you done stuck up for us, and I reckoned you should ought to know we're right grateful."
Rhavas had never felt less blessed by the lord with the great and good mind. He didn't tell the peasant that. The man was being as pleasant and gracious as he knew how, and deserved to be treated the same way himself. The prelate stiffly inclined his head. "I thank you."
"No, very holy sir. I thank you." Awkwardly sketching the sun-sign, the peasant turned away.
"Phos bless you as well," Rhavas added—he should have said that first. The other man waved to him and went to do whatever such people did with their time. An aristocrat since birth, Rhavas had no real notion of what that might be.
He was still moving stiffly when he got back to his residence. "Are you all right, very holy sir?" Matzoukes asked.
"The Khamorth have come to Skopentzana," Rhavas answered. "How can anyone in the city be all right now?" The young priest exclaimed in dismay. He didn't ask Rhavas anything more about himself. That came as a little relief, or maybe more than a little.
Bit by bit, the bruise on Rhavas' midsection faced from purple to greenish blue to yellow. The bruise on his spirit took longer to heal. He wondered if it would ever fully fade.
When he and Toxaras saw each other on the streets, they both turned away at the same time. It was as if neither trusted himself in the presence of the other. Rhavas knew he didn't.
No matter what Toxaras had said, he would go up on the wall every so often to look out at the plainsmen. Somehow, the militia leader was never nearby when he did. The Khamorth would occasionally ride up and shoot a few arrows at the men on the wall. The defenders shot back. A few people got hurt, but only a few. It was a desultory sort of siege. But no one came into Skopentzana, and no one seemed eager to try to go out of the city, either.
Zautzes began rationing grain. The rations were smaller than people would have liked, but not small enough to make them suffer. They soon got used to them. Toxaras, however, scowled fiercely at the idea of food being rationed at all. And he scowled whenever he saw peasant refugees lining up to get their allotted amount of grain along with folk whose families had lived in Skopentzana for generations.
Rhavas affected not to notice that, or the whispers that followed him around. Toxaras was not the only man who resented his stand on behalf of the peasants. To the ice with all of them, the prelate thought fiercely.
He was just coming back to the residence after getting his own ration—he was too proud to have Matzoukes pick it up to him—when someone called his name. He turned and stared through spatters of snow. It was Voilas, a potter who'd become Toxaras' second in command in the militia.
"Yes? What is it?" Rhavas' voice was colder than the weather. Voilas had never made any secret of agreeing with Toxaras.
Now, though, the militia officer sketched the sun-sign on his breast before speaking. "P-p-please come with me, very holy sir." He had to try three times to choke out the first word. His face was white as the snow on the wind.
"Why should I?" Rhavas snapped. "What will you show me to lacerate my spirit now?"
"By the good god, very holy sir, this you must see." Voilas drew the sun-sign again, more vehemently this time.
Glaring, Rhavas said, "If you are fooling me, you will pay." Voilas violently shook his head. He had the air of a man rocked to the core. Something had happened. The prelate grudged him a nod. "Wait till I put my grain away, then."
"Yes, very holy sir. Whatever you say, very holy sir." If Voilas was only pretending to be rocked, he made a better actor than any Rhavas had seen in the mime troupes on Midwinter's Day.
When Rhavas came out again, the potter led him toward the western wall. Rhavas' suspicions flared again. That was where Toxaras had shown him the Khamorth after he began to hope Skopentzana had fended them off. "How now?" he growled as they neared the wall.
"You'll see for yourself in just a moment, very holy sir." Voilas kept repeating the title as if it were some kind of charm.
They came around the last steep-roofed building. A crowd of men—mostly militiamen, but a few ordinary townsfolk, too—stood near the base of the stairway Rhavas had used to reach the wall and descend from it on the day when he quarreled with Toxaras.
"Phaos! Here's the prelate!" somebody in the crowd said. The men scattered. Some of them hurried back up onto the wall. Some went into Skopentzana. Some seemed to flee almost at random, as long as they were moving away from Rhavas. That left . . .
"You see, very holy sir," Voilas whispered.
"I see." Of itself, Rhavas' hand shaped the sun-sign. There lay Toxaras, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, the right side of his face and of his skull crushed. Blood pooled beneath his ruined head. It still steamed—this had just happened. But, though his blood might still be warm, he was only too plainly dead. "How?" Rhavas asked.
"You ought to know, very holy sir," Voilas told him.
"What do you mean?" the prelate demanded irritably.
"You cursed him up there—right up there, very holy sir." Voilas pointed to the top of the wall. More militiamen were staring down at Toxaras' body. Some of them signed themselves when their eyes met Rhavas'. Voilas went on, "You cursed him up there, very holy sir, and he was coming down the stairs, and he slipped on some snow or some ice, and he fell—and there he lays."
"Lies." Rhavas made the correction without conscious thought.
He made it, and Voilas didn't understand it. "No lies, very holy sir. Nothing but the truth, by the good god. Your curse bit, and he's dead. No one's going to quarrel with you now, very holy sir. You tell us what to do, and we'll do it. You'd best believe we will. We want to keep on breathing, we do."
"Why don't you curse the Khamorth, very holy sir?" a militiaman called from the top of the wall. Several others nodded.
"This is nonsense," Rhavas said. "This is chance. Men curse one another every day. This is nothing but Toxaras' bad luck. Anyone can slip on snow or ice. I had nothing to do with it."
"Not likely, very holy sir." Voilas shook his head again. "No, not bloody likely. Bad men call on Skotos"—he spat—"and the dark god listens. Everybody knows that. If a good man calls on Phos, won't he listen, too?"
Rhavas still started at the crumpled corpse. He didn't remember calling on the good god when he cursed Toxaras. He'd just retaliated for the mason's curse on him. He said, "I have prayed to the lord with the great and good mind to send the barbarians far away. I will go on praying for that, you may be sure."
"That's not enough. That's not anywhere close to enough," Voilas insisted. "You have to curse them, very holy sir. Then we'll be rid of them."
"You think I can do more than I can," Rhavas told him.
"I know you can do more than you think." Voilas pointed to Toxaras' body. "Doesn't that tell you anything?"
"Phos! Don't just leave it lying there. Have some men take it away," Rhavas said. They wouldn't bury Toxaras for some time—not till the ground thawed out. "Does he have family? They'll need to know."
"He has a wife and four little ones," Voilas replied. "It won't be easy for them without him."
He was bound to be right about that. Even so, Rhavas said, "It's not my fault. I had nothing to do with it. I'm sorry he's dead. You can't blame me for that, and neither can his family." A wife and four children! They would have had a hard time without their breadwinner even if the Khamorth weren't prowling outside Skopentzana.
Voilas said, "Everybody knows you cursed him, very holy sir. You can say whatever you want now, but everybody knows. Everybody will know how he died, too. It's no secret."
"You told me himself how he died—he slipped on ice or snow. What has that got to do with me?" the prelate demanded.
"How many times had he been up and down those stairs before you cursed him? Did he fall down them then? Nooo." Voilas stretched the word. "Did anybody else fall down them? Nooooo." He stretched it even further.
"How many times was he up and down them after I cursed him?" Rhavas said frantically. "He didn't slip right away. This is all madness, I tell you."
"Yes, very holy sir." That wasn't Voilas agreeing with him. That was the potter being too afraid to contradict him.
The prelate stared at the body one more time. Toxaras' blood had stopped steaming now. There should have been flies. So Rhavas told himself, anyway. But Skopentzana in winter had no flies. Insects knew better to venture out in this weather. Had they tried, they would have frozen.
Did Toxaras think the curse had struck home, too? Had his last horrified moments been spent in blaming Rhavas? No one would ever know.
No news came up from the south. News in Skopentzana was often sketchy in the wintertime, but this winter it was not sketchy. It was, in a word, nonexistent. How widely had the Khamorth spread through Videssos? Rhavas couldn't know, but he could make guesses, and he liked none of them.
Zautzes began reducing the grain ration as winter wore along. It got small enough to pinch, though not to threaten people with actual starvation. Not yet, Rhavas thought gloomily. He prayed every day for the Khamorth to abandon the city. They didn't. The not-quite-siege dragged on.
The militia sent a mounted party out through a postern gate. If Skopentzana didn't know what was happening in the wider reaches of the Empire, odds were the rest of the Empire didn't know what was going on here in the northeast, either. The militiamen hoped a garrison in some nearby city would come to Skopentzana's rescue.
Rhavas suspected that was a forlorn hope. If Skopentzana's garrison had marched off to fight in the civil war, wouldn't others have done the same? It only stood to reason, or so it seemed to him. With Voilas leading them, though, how much did the militiamen care about reason? Not much—that was how it looked to the prelate, anyhow.
He prayed for the riders' success all the same. Bad odds didn't make things impossible, just unlikely.
Day followed day. No imperial soldiers marched or rode into Skopentzana from the south. None of the men who'd ridden away from the city ever came back. No one could be sure what had happened to them. No one could be sure—but, again, Rhavas liked none of the guesses he made.
People began talking behind his back. They would point at him when they thought he wasn't looking, then quickly turn away when they thought he was. Some people who'd attending the divine liturgy at his temple for years suddenly began worshiping elsewhere. Some he'd never seen before began coming to the services he led. He reckoned the trade a bad bargain. The new worshipers eyed him as if hoping he would curse someone else so they could watch the luckless victim expire before their eyes.
He felt like cursing them. He didn't do that, either. Curses were a serious business, even if they didn't seem to understand that. Or if curses weren't a serious business, then they were of no account at all, which also wasn't what the newly arrived ghouls in the congregation wanted to hear.
Rhavas tried to keep his preaching and his prayers as close to what they would have been without the civil war and the irruption of the Khamorth as he could. It wasn't always possible. He did have to keep mentioning the peasant refugees and to keep reminding his audience that the peasants were just as much Videssians as were people whose forebears had lived in Skopentzana for the past 150 years.
Not everybody appreciated being reminded. Militiamen would sometimes get up and walk out in the middle of a sermon. So would some of the more prosperous merchants and landowners in the city. When Rhavas went out to the narthex to talk informally with people after the divine liturgy, he would notice that some of the women had also left their gallery earlier than they might have.
Ingegerd was never one of those. Because of her sun-bright hair, he would have noticed if she'd been among the missing. "You do well," she told him after one of his more impassioned sermons.
He bowed as if she and not he were the one with the imperial connections. Did her good opinion matter so much to him? Plainly, it did. "I thank you very much," he told her, doing his best not to show how much that came from the heart.
"We would be fools to stir up strife inside the city when the barbarians outside trouble us so," she went on.
Some in Skopentzana would have called her a barbarian, even though she was married to a Videssian. Before he got to know her, Rhavas might have done that himself. That people would be fools to stir up strife inside Skopentzana had never occurred to the prelate, which didn't mean Ingegerd was mistaken. Rhavas said, "We would be wrong to seek to cast out the refugees."
"Well, yes. That, too, of course," Ingegerd said. The practical issue mattered more to her than the moral one.
That disappointed the prelate. Ideally, Ingegerd should have thought just the way he did. He said, "If we do not help one another, who will help us when we need help the most?"
"Even so." She nodded briskly. "I wish Phos would have made the rebel and the Avtokrator ask this same question of themselves."
She had to know Rhavas was Maleinos' cousin. He couldn't remember speaking about it, but it was anything but a secret in Skopentzana. Yet she did not hesitate to criticize Maleinos and Stylianos in the same breath. Did that make her naïve or simply confident in her own sense of what was fitting?
Not everything Maleinos had done since the rebellion broke out was something Rhavas would have done had he worn the blue boots in his cousin's place. He couldn't possibly have claimed otherwise. He said, "It is sad but true that a man will do what he thinks to be to his advantage, and then will find—or invent—all manner of reasons to explain why what he did was the only possible moral thing to do."
"Phos will judge those who act so." Ingegerd sounded as stern as the grimmest theologian Videssos the city had ever spawned.
"Phos will judge all of us," Rhavas agreed. "Any man—or any woman—who forgets the Bridge of the Separator and lives for this world alone is bound to pay the price through all eternity."
"Even so," she said again, and dropped him a curtsy no noblewoman would have been ashamed of. "And now, very holy sir, if you will excuse me . . ." Wool skirt billowing around her legs, she swept out of the temple.
Rhavas did not think he watched her with particularly close attention. He did not think so, but he could not deny he missed the first half of what a still-plump merchant said to him, and had to ask the man to repeat himself. The merchant chuckled as he did. "Aye, she's worth looking at, isn't she?" he added. "If she warmed your bed, you wouldn't have to worry about winter nights." His elbow dug into Rhavas' ribs.
Penance. I need more penance, the prelate told himself. Any man who forgets the Bridge of the Separator . . . Had he condemned himself out of his own mouth?
He'd done nothing incorrect. He hadn't tried to seduce her. He hadn't even tried to touch her hand or stroke her hair. But his thoughts were not what they should have been. Admitting as much was better than trying to pretend he was pure—wasn't it?
Usually, the temple seemed a refuge from the hurly-burly of the secular world. Now Rhavas was glad to escape it. He felt impure, unclean, unworthy of the high ecclesiastical rank he had won and the even higher rank to which he aspired. If he could not master his own animal nature, what good was he?
In the square between the temple and the prefect's residence was some sort of commotion. People came running toward the trouble from all directions, shouting as they might have when a couple of schoolboys squabbled. But these were no schoolboys. They were men, men shoving and cursing at one another. Even as Rhavas began to run that way himself, the first sword came out, its sharp edge gleaming in the sun.
The prelate needed no more than a moment to recognize what was going on. Militiamen were squaring off against peasants who'd sought refuge in Skopentzana. The sword he'd seen was in a peasant's hands. A moment later, blades also leaped from militiamen's scabbards.
"Hold!" Rhavas shouted in a great voice. "By the lord with the great and good mind, hold! Put up your blades, all of you! Put up, I say!"
They did put up, a measure of the power Rhavas had in the city even among the militiamen who despised him. As in a schoolyard fight, each side pointed at the other and shouted, "They started it!" Then they both shouted, "Liars!" at the same time and almost started brawling again.
"Who laughs when we fight among ourselves?" Rhavas demanded. "Who gains when we act like fools? I can tell you, if you are too blind to see for yourselves. The Khamorth gain, and Skotos laughs." He spat on the ground. "Can you not hear him? Do you seek to have him triumph over the good god? Do you?"
"No, very holy sir." Peasants and militiamen spoke together, in small voices. They might have been boys caught out by the schoolmaster.
But then one of the peasants said, "We're sick of having these sacks of dung stare down their snoots at us and call us names because we grow food to keep them alive and don't make our living by cheating our neighbors."
That brought forth howls from the militiamen. The peasant would have done better not to call names when he was complaining about other people calling him and his friends names. The militiamen pointed that out in angry detail.
"Enough!" Rhavas said. "Enough from both sides, by the good god! For there should be no sides inside Skopentzana. We have to face out, against the barbarians beyond the walls. If we battle among ourselves, what do we do? We make matters easier for the nomads."
"Better the barbarians than these bastards," a peasant said. "At least the plainsmen'll treat everybody bad."
"Traitors!" the militiamen shouted. "Polecats!" They yelled out as many other choice epithets as they could think of, too. The peasants shouted back. Yet again, men on both sides started reaching for weapons.
Rhavas thought of invoking Zautzes' authority. Had the eparch still had a garrison of loyal imperial regulars, the prelate would have done it. But, had the eparch had a garrison like that, there would have been no militia to begin with. Rhavas sighed. Whatever happened here, it was up to him.
He pointed first to the militiamen, then to the peasants. "You will not raise weapons against each other. You will not insult or revile each other. We are all Videssians. We are none of us savage plainsmen. We will act like what we are. Do you understand me? Do you?"
Sullenly, both peasants and militiamen nodded. "They're out to land us all in trouble," a militiaman said, in spite of nodding.
"That will be enough of that. That, in fact, is too much of that," Rhavas said. "You do not seem to want to take me seriously. I will tell you how serious I am about this business, gentlemen. If you do raise weapons against each other, my curse will fall upon you. If you do insult or revile each other, my curse will fall upon you once again. Do I make myself plain?"
Before Toxaras plunged to his death, they wouldn't have paid any attention to Rhavas. He knew that. He knew it all too well. But he was not ashamed to exploit their superstition for the good of Skopentzana. And the threat worked better than he'd dreamt it could. Militiamen and peasants all gasped in horror and dismay. They sheathed their weapons. They backed away from one another.
And they pulled away from the prelate. So did the townsfolk who'd gathered to watch the fight. When Rhavas spoke of cursing, no one wanted to be anywhere near him. All at once, he stood by himself in the middle of the square.
He was sad—and yet, at the same time, he wasn't. He'd done what he'd set out to do: he'd persuaded the militiamen and the peasants to stop fighting each other and to stop baiting each other. As long as they all stood foursquare for the defense of the city, he was sure all would be well.
I put the fear of Phos in them just in time, he thought. If that peasant thought the Khamorth a better bargain than the militiamen, then things in Skopentzana had come to a pretty pass indeed.
When next he preached at the temple, half the seats were empty. The men sitting in the others eyed him as the folk of Videssos the city eyed one of the elephants occasionally imported from the barbarous lands across the Sailors' Sea: as a strange, dangerous, and clever beast now apparently harmless but liable to break loose and devastate its surroundings at any moment. When they sketched Phos' sun-sign above their hearts, he got the feeling that they were aiming it at him.
He spoke of the need for reconciliation. "We are all followers of the lord with the great and good mind," he declared, something not far from desperation in his voice. "We are all Videssians. When we face the barbarians beyond the walls, surely this counts for more than all our differences."
Surely. The word echoed mockingly in his mind. He knew better. Every man—and every woman in the upper gallery—who heard him knew better. Faction fights were meat and drink in the Empire of Videssos. The present civil war was only the biggest symptom of the disease. At a pinch, Videssians would form factions and passionately back them regardless of the nature of the argument: theology, racing horses, which street they lived on. They reveled in controversy. If they couldn't find anything old to argue about, they would invent something new. This latest squabble between militiamen and peasants was a case in point.
After the sermon, Zautzes waddled up to him in the narthex. "By the good god, very holy sir, every word of that needed saying," the eparch told him. "Every single word. People need to hear these things, to the ice with me if they don't."
"I'm glad you think so, most honorable sir," Rhavas replied. "I am afraid people hear these things every day. What they need to do is listen to them."
"Well, if they won't listen to you, they won't listen to anybody." Zautzes chuckled. "After all, if they don't pay attention to you, you'll make them sorry, in this world and the next."
Rhavas wanted to despair. "Don't tell me you believe in that idiotic nonsense about curses! That's all it is—nonsense. Any rational man knows as much."
"No doubt," Zautzes said. "But then, how many men are rational?" He walked away before Rhavas could find an answer for that. The prelate wasn't sure he liked the answer he found.
A matron descending from the women's gallery told him what a charming sermon he'd preached. He'd thought of a lot of words for it, but that wasn't any of them. On the other hand, she seemed to have no idea that so many townsfolk feared him. A rational man himself—or so he believed, at any rate—he hadn't dreamt mere ignorance could be so comforting.
Because he was so comforted, he listened to her longer than he would have otherwise. Even so, he turned away when Ingegerd came toward him. The matron muttered something about barbarians and sluts, not quite far enough under her breath. She never knew how close Rhavas came to cursing her then and there—or how lucky she was that he didn't.
"You spoke well, very holy sir," Ingegerd said. "But then, you commonly do."
Rhavas bowed. "I thank you. I thank you very much. Do you think anyone will heed me? That is the true measure of speaking well."
The garrison commander's wife only shrugged. "I cannot tell you. I wish I could. Folk have a way of hearing what they want to hear—no more and no less. And you Videssians, meaning no offense, have a way of quarreling amongst yourselves."
"How can I take offense at what is so plainly true?" Rhavas asked.
Ingegerd shrugged again. "Plenty of people have no trouble at all." That was also true, even if, once more, he wished it weren't. She went on, "You are trying to take these folk in the direction they ought to go. You deserve the credit for that, and they deserve the blame if they will not follow."
"I am not the one who will punish them if they do not," Rhavas said. "The Khamorth will lash them with whips of scorpions."
"So they will, if Phos decides they should." Ingegerd was a convert to faith in the good god, but her belief was firm.
"Yes, if Phos decides they should," Rhavas agreed, ashamed that she should have to remind him the lord with the great and good mind lay behind the barbarians' actions.
Ingegerd sketched the sun-sign. If Rhavas paid more attention to her smoothly rounded bosom than to the sun-sign itself . . . if he did, he was the only one who knew it. And he had already given himself penance for a wandering eye. He could always give himself more.
Yes, go ahead, he jeered silently. You care for the sin more than you care about the penance. The more you prostrate yourself and pray before the altar, the more you wish you were doing other things.
He hoped none of what he was thinking showed on his face. It must not have, for Ingegerd did not pull back from him in anger or disgust. She did ask, "Very holy sir, has this city done anything to ready itself if the Khamorth should break in?"
"Not so far as I know," the prelate replied. "Everything that has been done, has been done to hold them out."
She nodded. "We must do everything we can to hold them out. But we should also try to be ready in case everything we do is not enough. Or do you think I am wrong? Do you think I see doom where doom looms not?"
"I don't know," Rhavas said heavily. "By the lord with the great and good mind, I just don't know. Nor am I any sort of fighting man. You might do better to speak to Zautzes or to Voilas. You are the garrison commander's wife, and can be expected to know somewhat of these matters. As for me . . . I am the man who, they think, cursed their commander. Whatever I say to them, they are not likely to heed me."
"They may not love you," Ingegerd said, "but I think they will heed you. They would be fools if they did not." She gave him the beginnings of a curtsy and walked out of the temple.
Not for the first time, Rhavas had trouble paying attention to the Videssian who came up to him next.
After what Ingegerd said, Rhavas had trouble seeing Skopentzana's walls as barriers against the Khamorth. Might they not also be traps? If the barbarians did break in, how would the folk of Skopentzana protect themselves, defend themselves, escape the foe? Though he had told her he wouldn't, the prelate went to Zautzes with the question.
"If they break in, very holy sir?" Zautzes stared at him. "If they break in, we're ruined. It's as simple as that. We can put up the best fight we know how, or we can hide the best way we know how, but it isn't likely to make much difference one way or the other. Or do you say otherwise?"
"No," Rhavas answered unhappily. "I wish I could."
"Holding them out is what walls are for." The eparch warmed to his theme. "Walls keep the savages out and the civilized folk in. That's what makes Videssos the city such a special place: it has better walls than any other city in the world. Folk there don't have to lose any sleep worrying about whether barbarians will slaughter them in the streets."
"No, indeed," Rhavas said with politeness as frigid as the weather. "They can worry about Videssian rebels slaughtering them in the streets instead. See the progress our wonderful civilization has brought us?"
Zautzes gave him a reproachful look. "You haven't got the right attitude, very holy sir."
"No?" Rhavas shrugged. "And all the time I thought that was the Khamorth and the Videssian traitors. Only goes to show you never can tell, doesn't it? Good morning, most honorable sir." He left the eparch's office with no ceremony whatsoever. He felt Zautzes' eyes boring into his back, but the other man said not a word.
An icy breeze brought tears to Rhavas' eyes as he started across the square toward the temple and his own residence. Winter would have been hard enough without the barbarians prowling beyond the gates. Knowing the Khamorth were out there added a different sort of chill to the air.
There beyond the statues in the center of the square, two small groups of men were moving toward each other. Because his eyes were tearing, Rhavas couldn't tell just who was in either group. He didn't get much of a chance to look, either. When the men, whoever they were, spotted his robe of sky blue and sun gold, someone exclaimed, "Phaos! It's the prelate!" Both groups promptly dissolved. In the blink of an eye, Skopentzana's central square emptied—except for Rhavas himself.
He sighed, shook his head, and kept on walking. He didn't know for a fact that militiamen and peasant refugees had been about to square off against one another again. Because he didn't know it, he didn't have to do anything about it. No curses would fly on either side.
He did wish he could have taken Voilas and the most prominent peasant and knocked their stubborn, empty heads together. That might have done more good for Skopentzana—and certainly would have done more good for him—than all the curses and anathemas he could have hurled.
Two days later, Voilas sought him out in his residence. The new militia commander gave him a venomous stare. "Have you heard the latest, very holy sir?"
"Probably not," Rhavas admitted. "But, since you obviously came here to enlighten me, that won't matter much, and it won't matter long. Go ahead; tell he the latest. Be my guest."
"Some more of those stinking peasants are saying they'd sooner live under the savages than in here," Voilas said venomously. "Why would they say such a thing? Why? Tell me why, by the lord with the great and good mind!"
"Because they hate you?" Rhavas suggested. "Because you militiamen have treated them worse than the barbarians would have?"
Voilas gaped as if the prelate had just spat in his face. "But that's crazy!" he exclaimed. "What have we done?"
"Item: you tried to keep them from coming into Skopentzana in the first place. Item: you tried to throw them out once they did take refuge here." Rhavas ticked points off on his fingers as he spoke. "Item: you don't think they ought to get rations, even though they grew the food you're eating. Item: militiamen harry them every chance they get. Item . . . Shall I go on?"
The new head of Skopentzana's militia lacked Toxaras' imposing physical presence. He was a shrewder man, though; Rhavas watched the calculation in his eyes. "What do you suppose we ought to do about that?" he asked, licking his lips.
"Not much you can do about it now, is there?" Rhavas said. "If all of you had let up on the peasants after Toxaras had his accident"—he wouldn't call it a curse, or think of it as one—"that might have done some good. If you leave those people alone from now on, that may help some, but to the ice with me if I think it will do a whole lot."
"If they're traitors, we ought to put 'em out of the city, by the good god," Voilas said viciously. "How else are we going to keep Skopentzana safe?"
"Don't you think that would make matters worse?" Rhavas inquired. "Can you be sure you'd hunt them all down? Can you be sure none of them has kin living inside the walls? Don't you see? You'd make those people hate you, too, but you wouldn't know who they were so you could watch out for them."
"You're no help at all, very holy sir," Voilas complained.
"Why? Because I don't give you leave to do what you want to do anyhow? I intend to lose not a minute of sleep over that," Rhavas said. "The most you can do is keep an eye on the noisiest troublemakers—and maybe on some of the quietest one, too, since they might be smart enough to cause trouble without trumpeting out a warning ahead of time. Do you see what I'm saying?"
Plainly, Voilas didn't want to. Just as plainly, he recognized that he had no choice. His hand fell to the hilt of the sword on his belt. But he also recognized that wouldn't do what he wished it would. Voice choked with fury, he said, "Remember, very holy sir, you called down a curse on your own head if anything went wrong. If I were you, I'd be praying hard that it doesn't come true."
He stormed away, and was gone before Rhavas could even try for the last word. The prelate made a horrible face, though no one was in the study to see it. Even had Voilas stayed to listen, how could he have responded? He had no idea. His right hand shaped the sun-sign. "I have prayed," he said. "I do pray. I intend to keep on praying." Every word of that was true. How much good would it do him—or Skopentzana?
He hated Voilas for making him think such thoughts. When he came to this distant place, he'd never dreamt a potter could shake his faith worse than any of the clever, even brilliant, theologians in Videssos the city.
For the first six weeks after Midwinter's Day, or even a little longer, the weather in Skopentzana remained mild by northern standards. Oh, there was snow on the ground, and it seemed bitterly cold to anyone who'd grown up in the capital, but no great blizzards came roaring through, as sometimes happened every other week in winter in this part of the world.
And then all that abruptly changed. For three days, howling wind and swirling snow filled the air in Skopentzana. At first, when the snowstorm descended on the city, Rhavas hoped it would either drive the Khamorth away or freeze them in place. He didn't need long to realize that was a forlorn hope indeed. The nomads endured dreadful winters on the Pardrayan steppe. Just because a blizzard afflicted Videssian soil instead wouldn't make it anything out of the ordinary for them.
It wasn't anything out of the ordinary for the Skopentzanans, either. They simply started digging out, as they did whenever winter dealt them a buffet. They took a sardonic pride in enduring the worst the season could throw at them.
"Still alive, are you?" one man would greet another as they shoveled their walks clear.
"Oh, no, not me," the second Skopentzanan might reply. "I froze to death day before yesterday." They would both laugh and get on with their work.
After two days' respite, another blizzard slammed the city, and yet another two days after that. By then, even the longtime inhabitants weren't laughing anymore. Even in a city as ready for it as Skopentzana was, too much winter could kill.
Had the Khamorth set scaling ladders against the walls when the snow was at its worst, they might easily have gained the top—who could have seen them till they were there? But they didn't. Truly, they knew nothing of siegecraft. A good thing, too, Rhavas thought.
Yet another blizzard dumped still more snow on Skopentzana a few days later. Had Videssos the city faced such weather, everything in the capital would have ground to a halt. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people would have frozen. In Skopentzana, it happened almost every winter. No one got too excited about it. Men and women had furs and thick woolen blankets. They had houses made snug against the worst winter storms could do. Even with less firewood than they might have liked, they got by.
When that latest snowstorm blew itself out at last, one of Zautzes' servants came across the square to the prelate's residence. "Very holy sir, the eparch would like to talk with you about the ration," the man said.
"I'll come," Rhavas said at once; the ration was serious business. "Is he going to cut it again?"
"Sir, that's what he wants to talk to you about," the servant replied.
Rhavas decked himself out in his warmest hooded robes. Zautzes' servant wore enough clothes to keep himself warm in Skotos' frozen hell. The blizzard might have stopped, but it remained bitterly cold outside.
Despite the hood, Rhavas felt the weather more than a secular man might have; as soon as he got outside, heat poured from the top of his head like water out of a cracked pot. He refused to let it get him down. "Good to see the sun again," he remarked.
"That's the truth, very holy sir," Zautzes' servant agreed.
Drifts of snow clotted the square and made the statues at the center of it hard to recognize. The sun shone dazzlingly. Rhavas squinted against the glare. The servant's footprints were almost the only marks in the smooth expanse of white. "Shall we follow your track back to the eparch's?" the prelate asked.
"Suits me," the servant said. "I got here, so I expect we can get back."
Almost like sled dogs, he and Rhavas plunged into the snow. The going was hard. No crust had frozen yet, so they had to flounder through the drifts instead of surmounting them. Before Rhavas got anywhere near the statues, he began to sweat. The perspiration started to freeze on him whenever he slowed, even for a moment. But he needed to pause every so often to catch his breath.
At one such halt, he pointed to an odd-shaped lump in the snow near the base of Stavrakios' statue. "What's that?"
Zautzes' servant shrugged. "Just a drift. The wind can do all kinds of funny things—you'd better believe it can."
"Oh, I know it can, but that doesn't look like anything the wind shaped to me." Rhavas started shoving snow aside with mittened hands. Even through thick felt, the cold bit into his hands.
The servant, a younger man, stood watching him for a little while, then, with an exaggerated sniff, started pushing snow around himself. "You'll see," he said. "There won't be anything except—"
"Oh, but there is." Rhavas' mittens had just bumped something firmer than the soft, fluffy snow. "It's . . . Phos!" He sketched the sun-sign. "It's a body, dumped into the drift."
Eyes wide enough to show white all around the iris, the servant signed himself, too. "You—you were right, very holy sir," he stammered. "Who—who could have done such a wicked, sinful thing?"
"Let's find out who's dead," the prelate said grimly. "That may tell us something about who killed him."
He and Zautzes' servant dragged the corpse out of the snow. "I don't recognize him," the servant said, gulping.
"I do." Rhavas sounded grimmer than ever. "He's one of the peasants who got here a jump ahead of the Khamorth. He was one of the men quarreling with the town militia just before the snowstorms started, too." Figuring out what had killed him wasn't hard, either, not with the left side of his head smashed in. He'd lain there for a while; his blood had frozen into ruby ice.
The servant turned away and was noisily sick in the snow. Steam rose from the vomit. The servant stuffed fresh, unfouled snow into his mouth and spat it out. He repeated that several times, then choked out, "Who would want to do such a horrible thing?"
"There are certain . . . obvious possibilities, shall we say?" Rhavas replied. "If this is the work of a militiaman—I don't say it is, but there we find one of those obvious possibilities—he has a great deal to answer for, not just for his own soul's sake but also for the danger in which he has placed Skopentzana."
"That'd be sweet, wouldn't it?" the servant said. "Just what we'd need, eh? Our own little civil war inside the city."
"Yes." Rhavas said no more. Really, the servant had said everything that needed saying. Videssians would fight among themselves.
"What are we going to do, very holy sir?" the servant asked, and then answered his own question before Rhavas could: "We ought to cover the body over with snow again, is what we ought to do. Then we could pretend the whole thing never happened, and nobody else in town would have any idea."
Reluctantly, Rhavas shook his head. "I'm afraid it wouldn't work. Someone will miss this fellow"—for the life of him, he couldn't come up with the peasant's name—"and then they'll find him, and then the trouble will start. And it will be worse if the peasants find him than it will if we go tell your master what happened and let him get after the killer."
"Get him after the militia, you mean," the servant said. Rhavas muttered something highly untheological under his breath. Militiamen were Skopentzana's main—no, Skopentzana's only—defenders right now. Could Zautzes afford to antagonize them?
On the other hand, could the eparch afford to ignore cold-blooded murder? Looking down at the red ice clinging to the dead man's head, Rhavas shivered. That was the right word, sure enough.
"Nothing good will come of this," the servant said mournfully. As mournfully, Rhavas reflected that Phos need not have granted the man the gift of prophecy to make that a very good guess.
They slogged across the square to the eparch's residence. Rhavas winced when he saw two militiamen in front of it instead of Ingeros or others from Zautzes' remaining handful of regulars. Ominously, they hadn't come out to see what the prelate and the servant were doing. Did they already know someone lay there dead? Did they know who? Had they put him there? Those were all good questions. Rhavas discovered he wasn't so sure he wanted the answers to any of them.
Zautzes gave him mulled wine spiced with cinnamon. Whatever reductions in the ration the eparch was contemplating, he himself still lived well. Before he could start talking about anything so mundane, Rhavas told him about the corpse in the snowbank.
The eparch made a noise down deep in his throat. It sounded as if it wanted to be a word but didn't know how. Then Zautzes gulped a gobletful of the hot wine. That done and downed, he did speak: "Why does the good god hate me so much that he gave me a city infested with idiots to govern? Can you tell me that, very holy sir?"
"Most honorable sir, I would call it a city stuffed with sinners," Rhavas replied. After a moment's thought, he added, "We may not be so very far apart after all, you and I."
"No. We may not," Zautzes said bitterly. "And much good may our concord do us, for it's all too likely to be the only concord in Skopentzana these days."
"What will you do?" Rhavas asked.
"Pray that his wife broke his head because she caught him buggering a goat," the eparch answered, which startled laughter not far from hysterical out of Rhavas. Zautzes went on, "Barring anything so, ah, convenient, I suppose I'll have to try and catch the whoreson who did do him in." He paused again, while his wits caught up with his mouth. "And if that whoreson's a militiaman, as he's only too likely to be . . . Well, isn't that just the loveliest mess you ever saw?"
"I thought so when I found the body," Rhavas said. "I was hoping you would tell me I was wrong." Something else occurred to him. "And the body was meant to be found, too. Otherwise, there are countless better places to hide it."
"You're full of good news today, aren't you?" Zautzes said.
"Do you want more?" Rhavas told him how indifferent his guardsmen were.
The eparch laughed a sour laugh. "Why am I not surprised?" He heaved his bulk up from behind his desk. "Well, those good-for-nothings won't be able to ignore it if I rub their noses in it. By Phaos, I'll make 'em sorry if they do!"
He lumbered out toward the front. He wasn't a tall man, but he was wide. Even with rationing in Skopentzana, he hadn't lost his protuberant belly. Following him—as Rhavas did—was like following a boulder rolling down a mountainside. But no boulder could have given the performance he did when he got outside. He shouted at the militiamen. He screamed at them. If they hadn't dodged smartly, he would have kicked them in the backside.
They all but dove into the snow to escape him. Rhavas noted that they didn't have to ask him where the body was. They knew, all right. They just hadn't cared till the eparch lit a fire under them.
For his part, Zautzes preened. Out there at the entrance to his residence, he strutted and swaggered. He was a frog having a very good time on his lily pad. And, unless Rhavas was vastly mistaken, he was doing his best not to think about all the unpleasant possibilities he'd outlined back in his study. The prelate had a hard time blaming him. Trouble would come all too soon. Why brood on it when it wasn't quite here?
His guards dragged the dead peasant through the snow back to the residence. It was hard work; neither of them looked happy when they got back. The peasant, of course, would have been even less delighted had he still been in any condition to express an opinion.
Glaring at the militiamen, Zautzes snapped, "Do you know who this poor lunk is?—was, I should say."
They both shook their heads. "Never seen him before, most honorable sir," one of them said. The other's head stopped going back and forth and started going up and down to show he hadn't seen the dead man before, either.
Zautzes' glare grew more menacing. "You're both lying. Skotos' ice"—he paused to spit—"I've seen him around. I just can't put a name to him. It's the same with the very holy sir here. Are you two deaf and blind? Wouldn't surprise me one bloody bit."
"He's a country clodhopper," one of the guards said sulkily—not the one who'd spoken before, but his partner. "Who gives a flying futter what his name was?"
That was too much for Rhavas. "He was a man. He was a Videssian. He was murdered, foully murdered," he thundered. The guards both blinked at his vehemence. Still full of rage, he went on, "One of your friends—or maybe one of you, for all I know—smashed in his skull. What sort of riots and bloodshed will that spawn in this city? At what time could we afford such trouble less?"
Both guards spoke together: "Wasn't us who done it."
"Who did?" Rhavas and Zautzes shouted the question at the same time. The militiamen shrugged identical shrugs.
"We'll get to the bottom of this with or without you—and Phos give you more mercy than you deserve if we find you're at the bottom of it," Zautzes snarled. He shouted for the servant who'd found the body with Rhavas. When the fellow came, the eparch said, "Go fetch Koubatzes the wizard. We'll see what he has to say about this sorry business."
Before the servant returned with the mage, a man pushed his way through the snow up to the eparch's residence. He stared at the body at the base of the stairs. "Phaos!" he exclaimed in a rural accent. "I was going to ask if you folks knew what became of poor Glykas, but now I see for my own self. Some o' them militia bastards done for him, sure as sure."
Both guards growled. Rhavas and Zautzes kept them from doing anything more than growl. The fat's in the fire now, Rhavas thought gloomily. Glykas was dead, the other peasant refugees knew it, and they had no trouble at all figuring out who'd killed him. What would they do for revenge?
"Should have let us knock him over the head, too, most honorable sir," one of the militiamen said as the peasant floundered off through the snow. "That would've kept things quiet a while longer."
"You chucklehead," Zautzes said in a deadly voice. "I'm going to do you the biggest favor I ever did: I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. But if Koubatzes tells me you had anything to do with this, you'll end up envying this dead bastard here."
Rhavas thought he was taking a chance. If his guards did know something about the killing, they were liable to turn on him now—and on the prelate as well. But they just stood there muttering to themselves. To Rhavas, that was evidence, if not proof, of their innocence.
The servant and Koubatzes took a long time coming back. Zautzes muttered and fumed while he waited. Rhavas was more philosophical. With all the snow on the ground, anybody needed a long time to get anywhere. At last the mage followed Zautzes' man back to the residence. Koubatzes carried his sorcerous paraphernalia in a leather sack.
He nodded greetings to the eparch and the prelate. "A murder, is it?" he said crisply, and then, looking down at Glykas' corpse, "Well, so it is."
"What can you tell us about it?" Rhavas asked. "If you can find out who did the deed and why, that may help keep the city quiet. We need to punish the guilty here, and we need to be seen to be punishing the guilty. If no one has any doubt we are doing what needs to be done, that will help keep the lid on. We can hope it will, anyhow."
"I understand," Koubatzes said. "I'll do what I can. Don't know how much that will be, not till I have a go." He opened the leather sack and started muttering to himself: "Marigold, pennyroyal, and mistletoe." He took dried leaves and flowers—Rhavas supposed they were the plants he named—and set them in dead Glykas' mouth. Zautzes' guards muttered, too, in disgust. Koubatzes took no notice of them. He fond another leaf and set it on his own tongue. Indistinctly, he said, "Sage."
Chanting with the herb in his mouth couldn't have been easy, but he managed. Perhaps the charm he was using was specially adapted to the circumstances. His passes were, as usual, swift and sure. Watching him work, Rhavas couldn't imagine him failing—and yet he had, and dreadfully, against the Khamorth.
The spell ended. Koubatzes stood in front of Glykas' body. He did not seem a happy man. "Well?" Rhavas asked, though he did not think all would be well.
"Well, very holy sir, magecraft won't tell anyone much about this business, I'm afraid," the wizard answered. "Whoever did the deed cast a spell on the body afterward, to shield it against magical investigation. If I'd come across the body just after it died, I might have got around the spell. When he's been lying out in the snow for the good god only knows how long . . ." He shook his head and spread his hands. "Sorry, but no."
"Wouldn't the snow preserve him, the way it would a fish?" Zautzes asked.
"I'm afraid not, most honorable sir," Koubatzes replied. "The longer ago that spell was laid, the longer it had to cling, and the snow hasn't got anything to do with that."
"How are we supposed to catch the killer, then?" Rhavas asked.
"Usual way, I would say," Koubatzes answered. "Find out who didn't like him, find out who owed him money and to whom he was in debt, find out if his woman was unfaithful, find out if some drunken fool is boasting of breaking his head in the wineshops. No magic to any of that, but it usually works well enough, even if it takes a bit of time."
"We'll do it," Zautzes said. "Yes, we'll do it, all right, but I was hoping you could make things quick and easy." The corners of his wide mouth turned down. "Nothing these days is quick or easy, worse luck." Koubatzes only shrugged and spread his hands again.
Rhavas said, "I don't know whether finding Glykas' killer will be easy or not. I do know it had better be quick. If it isn't, we'll have a war inside this city. That would be bad enough any time. With the Khamorth outside . . ." He didn't go on.
Zautzes looked unhappier still, like a frog that had swallowed a bee and was suddenly repenting of the decision. The prospect of civil strife didn't seem to bother Koubatzes—but then, his features were less mobile than the eparch's. He bowed to Zautzes and Rhavas in turn, then started back along the path he and Zautzes' servant had broken.
"I don't suppose you're interested in talking about the ration now, are you?" Zautzes said plaintively.
"Most honorable sir, I would say you'd be a fool to cut it. You would do better to wait till the fuss over this murder dies down—if it does," Rhavas replied. "If you catch the killer, then you have some hope of reducing it without stirring the city against you. Some."
"I wish I could tell you you were wrong, very holy sir. As things are . . ." As things were, Zautzes' sigh sent a cloud of fog into the chilly air.
Rhavas felt like sighing, too. Glykas' body tempted him to despair. Some folk said despair was the only unforgivable sin, the sin that opened a man's soul to Skotos' cold and greedy hand. He remembered saying it himself, in fact. Maybe it was true. But he'd never before seen folly on a scale to match this.
After bowing to Zautzes, he started back across the square toward the temple and his residence next door. As he slogged through the snow, he wondered if it concealed other corpses. He almost hoped a dead militiaman lay under it. Then, at least, dishonors would be even. Both sides in Skopentzana would have equal reason to feel ashamed—or, if the dark god had hold of them, to feel proud.
He saw no signs of other bodies. Since that meant no other Videssians had died, he supposed he should have been glad. And he was glad—in a way. But he would also have been glad, or at least relieved, to see the scales balance.
Just before he got to his residence, the light dimmed. He looked up in surprise. Sunset still came early, but not this early. And indeed, the sun hadn't set. Grayish yellow clouds had covered it, though, and were getting darker and thicker every moment. Another storm was coming. Rhavas grimaced. Hadn't Skopentzana already gone through enough?
He wondered whether Phos was trying to see how much the city could endure. The good god was piling things on thick. But Phos could send troubles when and as he wished. It was up to mankind to endure.
"Trouble, very holy sir?" Matzoukes asked when Rhavas came inside.
Rhavas didn't ask how the young priest knew; his own face had to be as grim as the growing storm outside. "Trouble?" he echoed. "You might say so. Yes, you just might say so." In a few words, he told the other man what had happened in the central square.
Matzoukes sketched Phos' sun-sign. "That's . . . dreadful, very holy sir!"
"It is indeed. The exact word, in fact, for I am filled with dread," Rhavas replied. "I think all of Skopentzana should be filled with dread. All of Skopentzana, I fear, cares very little for my opinion. The most I can hope for is that we do not fly at one another's throats."
"Surely it can't be as bad as that, very holy sir," the other priest said.
"It can be that bad. It can be worse. It can be, and I am afraid it is," Rhavas said. Shaking his head, Matzoukes left the room, as if he didn't even want to imagine such a thing.
Rhavas didn't want to imagine such a thing, either, which didn't mean he could avoid it. He was altogether too good at seeing disasters before they happened. He was not glad to possess such a knack. He would, indeed, have given almost anything not to have it. But it was part of his character—he preferred to think of it as a gift from Phos. Why the lord with the great and good mind had chosen to give him such a gift . . . Rhavas had often wondered, but never yet found an answer that even began to satisfy.
Snow started sifting out of the sky again later that afternoon. The wind didn't howl as it had in some of Skopentzana's earlier blizzards. This was a businesslike storm; it seemed to announce it was here to stay. The snow fell, and piled up, and went on falling. Rhavas was glad his residence had a steeply pitched roof that would shed most of what came down on it. He worried more about the temple, whose roof rose at a shallower angle. If the snow that stuck there got too heavy, the roof might come down.
He worried more when the snow was still falling just as hard and just as steadily two days later. People trapped in their homes without firewood would surely start to freeze. But maybe the latest snowstorm was also a sort of backhanded gift from Phos. In weather like this, militiamen and refugee peasants couldn't possibly clash. Nobody could do much of anything in weather like this.
So Rhavas thought, at any rate. Once again, he proved he hadn't been born in the Empire's far northeast. He'd learned a great deal from dwelling here so long, but he was no native, and did not think as native would.
He had to take a shovel with him when he went to the woodshed behind the residence. He was no more immune to worries about fuel for the fire than any other Skopentzanan. But, to his relief, he seemed to have plenty.
Some sort of outcry made him pause on the way back. The falling snow seemed to muffle everything. He'd noticed that even back in Videssos the city, where it happened much less often. But the noise here swelled despite the snowstorm. Soon, cupping a hand behind his ears, he could make out words: "The Khamorth! The Khamorth are in the city!"