"I never should have had to do it in the first place." Maniakes sat down and rested his chin on the knuckles of one hand. "My idiot brother-" He would have gone on, but Kameas paused in the doorway, waiting to be acknowledged. "Phos, what now?" Maniakes cried.

The vestiarios flinched, then gathered himself. "Your Majesty, the mage Alvinos requests your presence." He used Bagdasares' Videssian-sounding name more often than almost anyone else, perhaps because it fit in with his notions of what was proper. Vaspurakaners had played a major role in Videssian life for centuries, but Videssians seldom admitted or even noticed how large it was.

Bagdasares bowed when Maniakes came into the chamber where he labored. "I have here something I had not thought possible, your Majesty: an ambiguous result on my test of this writing from Tzikas. I do not know whether he was involved in the sorcerous attempt on your life or he was not." He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "It is a puzzlement."

"Show me what you mean by an ambiguous result," Maniakes said.

"Certainly." Bagdasares walked over to the parchment lying on the table. "As the ritual required, I sprinkled it with my mixture of wine and vinegar, then added the spiritual element of the spell and used the hematite. You see for yourself."

See Maniakes did. Most of the drops of the mixture had fallen on the writing, where they had had no effect save to blur it. But one or two had splashed down by the edge of the parchment. After Bagdasares touched his hematite to them, they had begun to glow like the entire document Parsmanios had written.

"It's almost as if Tzikas was in contact with the parchment without having written what purports to be his reply," Bagdasares said. "And yet the message is-or rather was, before it was smeared-addressed directly from him to you."

Suspicion flared in Maniakes. Tzikas was subtle, a master of defense. "I wonder if he took alarm at getting a message from me just after he tried to do me in and had someone else write a reply." He glanced at Bagdasares. "Will my looking at it or touching it do any harm?"

"No, your Majesty," the mage answered.

The Avtokrator stepped up to the makeshift worktable. As Bagdasares had said, the mixture of wine and vinegar had smeared much of the writing on the parchment. (It had also left the scraped sheepskin tangy to the nose.) Maniakes bent to examine those few words he could still make out.

"This isn't Tzikas' hand," he said after a moment. "I've seen his script often enough to recognize it, by the good god. I don't know who wrote this, but he didn't. If he took the note afterward, though-"

"That would account for the positive reaction at the edges of the sheet, where he would have touched it before returning it to your messenger," Bagdasares finished for him. "If that fellow didn't see with his own eyes Tzikas doing the writing, I think we can be confident enough in our evaluation to summon the eminent general to give an accounting of himself."

"We'll find out," Maniakes said. He called Kameas, who arranged to have the messenger return to the imperial residence.

"No, your Majesty, I didn't see him write it," the man said. "He stepped inside for a bit, then came back out. Nobody told me I was supposed to watch him do the writing." He looked anxious.

"It's all right," Maniakes said. "No blame for you." He went out to the guards. "I now require the immediate presence of the eminent Tzikas."

As they had when he had ordered them to fetch Parsmanios, they came to stiff attention. "Busy day around here," one of them observed as they went off to do his bidding. Maniakes let that go with a nod. Bringing in Parsmanios had been easy. If Tzikas didn't feel like coming, he had men loyal to him who might fight. Maniakes scowled and shook his head at the idea of a new round of civil war breaking out in Videssos the city.

He waited. The guardsmen were gone a long time. When they came back, they did not have Tzikas with them. Apprehension on his face, their leader said, "Your Majesty, we've searched everywhere the eminent Tzikas is likely to be, and we spoke with several men who know him. No one has seen him since shortly after he gave your messenger some sort of note."

"I don't fancy the sound of that," Maniakes said. "Go to the guard barracks, rout out the off-duty men, and make a proper search, crying his name through the streets and especially searching all the harbor districts."

"Aye, your Majesty," the guard captain said. "The harbor districts, eh? You fear he may try to flee to the Makuraners in Across?"

"No," Maniakes answered. "I fear he's already done it."

He went back into the imperial residence to report that dispiriting news to his father. The elder Maniakes made a sour face. "These things happen," he said. "He's no fool. The note must have put his wind up, and as soon as he gave it to you, he lit out for parts unknown-or parts known too well. What will you do now?"

"See how much Parsmanios will admit, then get him tonsured and send him into exile," the Avtokrator said. He again thought of giving his brother over to the torturers and again couldn't make himself do it. He doubted whether Parsmanios would have had the same compunctions about him.

Parsmanios scowled at him when he walked into the chamber where his brother was being held under guard. "Come to gloat, have you?" the younger man said bitterly.

"No, just to let you know your comrade Tzikas has run off to the Makuraners," Maniakes answered. "I wonder if he'll get a better bargain from them than he would have from me. I wouldn't have sent him to the chopper, not when I was leaving you alive: no justice to that. You could have gone off to Prista together."

"How wonderful," Parsmanios said. "How generous."

Maniakes wondered if his brother was trying to provoke him to take his head instead of exiling him. He ignored that, asking "So he was your comrade?"

"If you already know, why bother asking?" Parsmanios replied.

"Who was the wizard?" Maniakes persisted. "Who hired him?"

"I don't know his name," Parsmanios answered. "Bring on the needles and the red-hot pincers if you like, but I never heard it. Tzikas and I met him in an old house not far from the Forum of the Ox. I don't think the house was his. I think he just-infested it. Tzikas got him. He'd known him, I guess, but said having me there would help make the magic stronger. Maybe it did, but it still wasn't strong enough, worse luck for me."

Even if true, none of that was very informative. No doubt that was deliberate on Parsmanios' part. Keeping his voice as light as he could, Maniakes asked, "What did the wizard look like?"

His brother said, "A man. Maybe your age, maybe a little older. Not fat, not thin. Kind of a long nose. He spoke like someone with an education, but a mage would, wouldn't he?"

"I suppose so," Maniakes answered absently. He knew considerable relief that the sorcerer Tzikas had found was not the horrible old man Genesios had employed. That old man had almost slain him across half the breadth of the Empire. Maniakes would have been happiest if he stayed lost forever. Against any ordinary mage, Bagdasares and the wizards of the Sorcerers' Collegium were protection aplenty.

Parsmanios said, "If you ever pluck my wife and son out of the provinces, don't blame them for anything I've done."

"You're in no position to ask favors, brother of mine," Maniakes said. Parsmanios stared at him, stared through him. He softened his words a little: "I wouldn't do anything to them because of you. As you say, they had nothing to do with your stupidity."

"I'm not the one who was stupid," Parsmanios answered-he had his own measure of the clan's stubbornness. "So many women all through the Empire would drop their drawers if you lifted a finger, and you had to go and wallow in filth instead. Even if I failed, Skotos waits for you."