«What I told your man.» Of necessity, Maniakes kept his Makuraner simple. «I invite you to come to Videssos the city. I will give hostages, if you want hostages. What I want is to end the war between Makuran and Videssos. I think I see a way to do that.»

«Tell me here and now.» Abivard spoke more simply, responding to Maniakes' rusty use of his language.

«I have something you must see. It is in the city.» Maniakes waved back over the Cattle Crossing to the imperial capital, the city Abivard had been unable to enter by force of arms. «Will you come?»

«I will come,» Abivard declared. «Shall I swim to your ship, or will you send a boat?» He made as if to pull the caftan off over his head, as if expecting to have to swim.

«Get a boat in the water,» Maniakes hissed to Thrax, who relayed the command to the sailors. To Abivard, Maniakes spoke in some surprise: «No hostages, marshal of Makuran? I will give them.»

«No hostages.» Abivard laughed. «If you make away with me, you have to deal with Romezan. I do not think you want the wild boar of Makuran rampaging through what you call the westlands.» Maniakes waved to him across the strip of water between them, a gesture of respect: he and Abivard had made the identical calculation.

The boat grated up onto the beach. Abivard, after a few words to his men, got into it. One of the sailors pushed it back into the sea. The men rowed to the Renewal with remarkable celerity, as if delighted to get away from all the Makuraners by the seaside.

Maniakes did not blame them for that. He helped them and the man they had come to fetch clamber back up into the Renewal.

Maniakes studied the Makuraner marshal. Abivard was not far from his own age, perhaps a few years younger, with a long, thoughtful face, bushy eyebrows and liquid dark eyes, a nose straighter than Maniakes' but hardly less formidable, and a black beard into which the first strands of silver were working. Bowing to Maniakes, he said, «I would have treated the city differently if I had come into it without an invitation.» He spoke Videssian now, using it more fluently than Maniakes did Makuraner.

The Avtokrator shrugged. «And the city would have treated you differently, too.»

«That is also probably true,» Abivard replied with an easy insouciance Maniakes had to admire. «But since I am not entering Videssos the city as a conqueror, why exactly am I entering it?»

«I can tell you that, if you like,» Maniakes said. «I'd sooner show you, though. Can you wait? It's not far.» He gestured over the water of the Cattle Crossing toward the imperial city, now visibly closer than it had been from the shore of the strait. He had not brought Sharbaraz's letter with him, lest a chance wave splash up over it and blur the evidence he needed to persuade Abivard.

«I have placed myself in your hands,» the Makuraner general said. «I shall wait and see whatever it is. If I do not accept it. I rely on you to return me to my soldiers once more. You have fought hard against the armies of Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, but you have for the most part shown yourself honorable.»

«For which I thank you,» Maniakes said. «I've thought the same of you, by the bye. Had we started on the same side, I think we might have been friends.»

«This thought has also crossed my mind,» Abivard said, «but the God—» He dropped back into Makuraner to name his deity. «—chose my sovereign as he willed, not as I might have willed. Being only a mortal, I accept the God's commands.»

«Your sovereign certainly knows you're only a mortal.» Maniakes remarked. Abivard sent him a curious look. He pretended not to notice it. He did not need to pretend for long, for the Renewal came up to the little harbor in the palace quarter. Men stood on the quays to catch the ropes the sailors threw to them and to make the dromon fast to the pier.

Abivard watched the process with interest. «They know their business,» he observed.

«They'd better,» Maniakes answered. He waited till the gangplank led from ship to pier, then strode up it, waving for Abivard to follow. «Come, eminent sir,» he said, granting Abivard the highest rank of Videssian nobility. «Have a look at what you could not take.»

Abivard did, with lively curiosity that grew livelier as they pressed into the palace quarter toward the imperial residence. «So this is what I could not see,» he said when they turned a corner and a building hid the sea from sight. «Till now, I gained more detail On things I gazed at from afar. This, though, this is new to me.»

Waiting at the residence stood Rhegorios, Symvatios, and the elder Maniakes. Abivard bowed to all three of them. The elder Maniakes held out his hand, saying, «Good to see you again when we're not trying to kill each other.»

Abivard accepted the handclasp. «Indeed. Were it not for the army you once commanded, Sharbaraz would not be King of Kings today.»

«He is King of Kings today, though, worse luck,» the elder Maniakes growled. «But whether he'll be King of Kings tomorrow…» His voice trailed away.

Abivard's face went stiff, masklike. «If you have summoned me here to seek to make me rebel against Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, please take me back over the Cattle Crossing now. I will not betray my sovereign.»

«No?» Maniakes led the Makuraner into the residence. Kameas came up to them, carrying a silver tray. Abivard looked at the vestiarios without curiosity; the Makuraner court used eunuchs, too. Considering the way the Makuraners so often mewed up their women, that was anything but surprising. Maniakes took the parchment off the tray and handed it to Abivard. «No?» he repeated. «Not even after this?»

Watching Abivard read it through, he could tell exactly when the Makuraner marshal came to the passage ordering his own elimination. Abivard did not shout or bellow or grow visibly angry. His face just set more firmly into nonrevelation. When he was through, he looked up at Maniakes. «How did you come by this?»

«Luck,» the Avtokrator answered. «Nothing but luck. One of our raiding parties happened to run into the messenger before he got to Across.»

«Before I do anything about it,» Abivard said, «I will want proof it is genuine, you know.»

Maniakes nodded. «I thought you would say as much. You leave as little to chance as you can—I've seen that fighting you. I don't suppose you'll trust my wizards: I wouldn't, in your place. If you want to bring a Makuraner mage over here to test the truth, you may do so.»

«That you make the offer goes a long way toward telling me this letter is genuine.» Abivard let out a long sigh. «It doesn't surprise me. Sharbaraz has come close to taking my head before, as you may or may not have heard. But I will know for certain before I decide what to do next. One of my two chief mages is a Makuraner. The other is of Videssian blood.»

«I knew that—or thought as much, anyhow,» Maniakes broke in. «If it weren't so, the Voimios strap conjuration we used last year would have confused you longer than it did.»

«Bad enough as things were.» Abivard shook his head. «Ride into a canal, head for the other side, and come back out where you started—as I say, bad. But does the truce hold for Panteles, too?»

«Aye, it does,» Maniakes answered. «He'll have to stay with you always, though. If he ever comes back into the Empire when he's not under your protection, his head goes up on the Milestone.»

«I agree,» Abivard said. «I would say the same if you had a Makuraner traitor in your midst, as Videssians have been known to do.»

«Speaking of traitors, how's Tzikas these days?» Rhegorios asked.

«Alive,» Abivard said. «Unfortunately. Sharbaraz thinks well of him, since he can't possibly aim to set his fundament on the throne of Mashiz.»

«That may matter less in the way you look at the world than it did a little while ago,» Maniakes observed.