«What? Nonsense!» Maniakes exclaimed. He'd grown so used to being an object of derision in Videssos the city that any other role seemed unnatural.

«All right, don't listen to me,» Rhegorios said equably. «You're the Avtokrator; you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. But if you don't pay attention to what's going on around you, you're in a pretty sorry state, wouldn't you say?»

Stung by that, Maniakes did listen harder. A few shouts of «Incest!» and «Vaspurakaner heretic!"—this despite his orthodoxy—did come out of the crowd. He always listened for shouts like that. Because he always listened for them, he always heard them.

Now, though, along with them and, to his amazement, nearly drowning them out, came others: «Maniakes!» «Huzzah for the restorer of the westlands!» «Maniakes, conqueror of Kubrat and Makuran!» «Thou conquerest, Maniakes!» He hadn't heard that last one since his acclamation as Avtokrator. It was shouted during acclamations as a pious hope. Now he'd earned it in truth.

«Maybe I really have convinced them,» he said, as much to himself as to Rhegorios. He'd hoped victory would do that for him—hoped and hoped and hoped. Up till this past campaigning season, he hadn't won enough victories to put the theory to a proper test.

«You're a hero,» Rhegorios said with a grin. «Get used to it.» The grin got wider. «So am I. I like it.»

«There could be worse fates,» Maniakes admitted. «We almost found out about a good many of them, these past few months.»

«Didn't we, though?» Rhegorios said. «But it came right in the end. Why, the mime troupes may even leave you alone this Midwinter's Day.»

Maniakes considered that. He didn't need long. «I don't believe it for a minute,» he said. «The mime troupes don't ever leave anybody alone: that's what they're for. And if you're the Avtokrator, you have to sit on the spine of the Amphitheater and pretend it's funny. On Midwinter's Day, that's what the Avtokrator's for.» After a moment, he added in a wistful, almost hopeful voice, «Maybe they won't bite quite so hard this year, though.» He didn't even believe that, not down deep. Midwinter's Day was still a couple of months away. By then, renewed familiarity would surely have blunted the respect the city mob felt for him now.

Rhegorios said, «Enjoy this while it lasts, anyhow.» By the way he spoke, he didn't think it would last indefinitely, either.

In the crowd, a man held up a little baby in one hand, pointed to it with the other, and shouted, «Maniakes!"—he'd named the boy for the Avtokrator.

«Take him home and get him out of the rain, before he comes down with the croup,» Maniakes called. Several nearby women– including, by the look of things, the infant Maniakes' mother– expressed loud and emphatic agreement with that sentiment.

Agathios the patriarch, who was riding a mule just behind Maniakes and Rhegorios, said, «Today, everyone delights in honoring you, your Majesty.»

«Yes. Today,» Maniakes said. But being honored was better man being despised; he couldn't deny that. Having experienced both, he could compare them.

And he was still despised, here and there. From the margins of the crowd, a priest cried, «Skotos' ice still awaits you for your lewdness and the travesty you have made of the marriage vow.»

Maniakes looked back over his shoulder toward Agathios. «Do you know, most holy sir,» he said in thoughtful tones, «just how badly we need priests to preach against the Vaspurakaner heresy in the towns and villages of the westlands? A passionate fellow like that is really wasted in Videssos the city, wouldn't you say? He would do so much better in a place like, oh, Patrodoton, for instance.»

Agathios was not an astute politician, but he knew what Maniakes had in mind when making a suggestion like that. «I shall do my utmost to find out who that, ah, intrepid spirit is, your Majesty, and to translate him to a sphere where, as you rightly remark, his zeal might be put to good use.»

«Speaking of good use, you'll get that out of the westlands,» Rhegorios murmured to his cousin. «Now that we have them back, you've got a whole raft of new places to dump blue-robes who get on your nerves.»

«If you think that's a joke, cousin of mine, you're wrong,» Maniakes said. «If priests don't care to deal with sinful me in this sinful city, they can—and they will—go off somewhere quiet and out of the way and see how they like that.»

A certain bloodthirsty gleam—or maybe it was just the rain– came into Rhegorios' eyes. «You ought to send the really zealous ones up to Kubrat, to see if they can convert Etzilios and the rest of the nomads. If they do, well and good. If they don't, the lord with the great and good mind will have some new martyrs, and you'll be rid of some old nuisances.»

He'd intended only Maniakes to hear that. But he spoke a little too loudly, so that it also reached Agathios' ears. In tones of reproof, the ecumenical patriarch said, «Your Highness, mock not martyrdom. Think on the tale of the holy Kveldoulphios the Haloga, who laid down his life in the hope that his brave and glorious ending would inspire his people to the worship of the good god.»

«I crave your pardon, most holy sir,» Rhegorios said. Like any other Videssian, he was at bottom pious. Like any other Videssian high in the government, he also thought of the faith as an instrument of policy, holding both views at the same time without either confusion or separation.

Maniakes turned back and said to Agathios, «But the Halogai follow their own gods to this day, and the holy Kveldoulphios lived—what?—several hundred years ago, anyhow. Long before the civil wars that tore us to pieces.»

«Your Majesty is, of course, correct.» The patriarch let out a sigh so mournful, Maniakes wondered if he shed a tear or two along with it. In the rain, he could not tell. Agathios went on, «But he went gloriously to martyrdom of his own free will, rather than being hounded into it by the machinations of others.»

«Very well, most holy sir. I do take the point,» Maniakes said. Patriarchs were, in their way, government functionaries, too. Each one of them, though, had a point beyond which his obligations to Phos took precedence over his obligations to the Avtokrator. Maniakes realized the talk of deliberately creating martyrs had pushed Agathios close to that point.

«Thou conquerest, Maniakes!» «Maniakes, savior of the city!» «Maniakes, savior of the Empire!» Those shouts, and more like them, kept coming from the crowd. They didn't quite swallow up all the other shouts, the ones that had been hurled at Maniakes since the day he married his first cousin, but there were more of them and fewer of the others. If he hadn't won any great love, the Avtokrator had gained respect.

Pacing the floor, Maniakes said, «I hate this.» In the Red Room, Zoile the midwife was with Lysia, and custom binding as manacles kept him from being there. Having lost his first wife in childbed, he knew only too well the dangers Lysia faced.

His father set a hand on his shoulder. «Hard for us men at a time like this,» the elder Maniakes said. «Just don't let your wife ever hear you say so, or you won't hear the last of it. It's the difference between watching a battle and going through one yourself, I suppose.»

«That's probably about right,» Maniakes said. «How many people here were watching from the seawall when our fleet beat the Kubratoi? They could drink wine and point to this and that and say how exciting it all was, but they weren't in any danger.» He paused. «Of course, they would have been if we'd lost the sea fight instead of winning it.»

«Nobody's going to lose any fights, by the good god,» Symvatios said. «Lysia's going to give you another brat to howl around this place so a man can't get a decent night's sleep here.»

«Ha!» The elder Maniakes raised an eyebrow at his brother. «You're more likely to be looking for an indecent night's sleep, anyhow.»