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admitted a cool breeze from off the Cattle Crossing. "Are you feeling well?"
he repeated, his voice sharper this time. Like army camps, cities were
breeding grounds for illnesses of all sorts. Videssos the city had the finest
sorcerous healers in the world and needed them.
Instead of answering him in words, Niphone yawned, covering her mouth with her
hand. "I don't know what's come over me," she said. "Lately I want to go to
bed as soon as the sun goes down and then sleep till noon. There's more to
life than a mattress or so I would have thought till now."
She certainly hadn't had much interest in matters of the mattress other than
sleeping; Maniakes had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from saying something
sardonic. The last time he had made love to her, she had complained his
caresses made her breasts sore, though he didn't think he was doing anything
different from the way he had stroked her since the day they became both man
and wife and Emperor and Empress.
With that sarcastic retort still sizzling inside him, he wondered if he could
find a discreet way to bring Rotrude to the imperial capital. She had never
grumbled about his technique, except for a couple of months when . . .
"By the good god!" Maniakes said softly. He pointed a forefinger at Niphone,
as if she were the key bit of evidence in a case he had to decide. And so, in
a way, she was. Still quietly, he asked, "Could it be you're carrying a
child?"
The way she gaped at him said the idea hadn't crossed her mind till now. "I
don't know," she said, which annoyed him a little; a precise man himself, he
preferred precise people around him. But, even if she didn't keep mental track
of things as well as she might, she was not a fool. She started counting on
her fingers. By the time she was done, an internal glow lit her face more
brightly than the lamps could. "Why, I think I am!" she exclaimed. "My courses
should have come ten days ago."
Maniakes hadn't noticed their failure, either, for which he reproached
himself. He got up from the table and wrapped his arms around Niphone. "I
won't pester you about eating any more," he said, "not for a while. I know
you'll be doing the best you can."
A shadow crossed his wife's face, so fast he could hardly be sure he saw it.
But he was. Niphone knew how he knew; she knew about Rotrude, and about
Atalarikhos. He hadn't spoken of them himself, on the assumption that what he
had done before he married her was his business. But she had mentioned them a
couple of times, casually, in passing. He didn't know whether Kourikos had
told her himself or mentioned them to his wife, who passed the news to
Niphone. However it had happened, he was less than overjoyed about it.
By what seemed a distinct effort of will, Niphone made her features smooth and
serene. She said, "I shall pray to the lord with the great and good mind that
I give you a son and heir."
"May it be so," Maniakes said, and then, musingly, "In Makuran, I think; the
wizards have ways to tell whether a child yet unborn will be a boy or a girl.
If our Videssian mages can't do as well, I'll be surprised and disappointed."
He chuckled. "The wizards won't want to disappoint the Avtokrator."
"Not after living through Genesios' reign, they won't," Niphone said, more
spiritedly than she usually spoke. "Anyone who got on his wrong side went up
on the Milestone without ever getting the chance to make amends." She
shuddered; everyone in Videssos the city had memories of horror from the
half-dozen years just past.
"I am not the sort of man, nor that sort of Avtokrator," Maniakes replied with
a touch of injured pride. Then he laughed again. "Of course, if they don't
fully realize that, and strive especially hard to please, me, I won't be
altogether unhappy."
Niphone smiled. After a moment, the smile reached her eyes as well as her
lips. That gladdened Maniakes. He didn't want her thinking about Rotrude . . .
even if he had been doing the same thing himself.
He raised his wine cup in salute. "To our child!" he said loudly, and drank.
After that toast, Niphone's smile showed more than polite happiness. She
lifted her own cup, murmured Phos' creed, and spat on the floor in rejection
of Skotos. "To our child," she echoed, and drank with Maniakes.
He didn't recall her having been so pious before he had to sail for Kalavria.
He wondered if he had failed to notice before something an assotted young man
might well do or if her stay in the convent dedicated to the holy Phostina had
brought out that side of her character. As far as he was concerned, the way
you lived made a better proof of piety than ostentatious displays, but he knew
not everyone in the Empire agreed. Videssians, he sometimes thought, got drunk
on theology as easily as on wine.
So what? he thought. Trying to change the nature of the Empire was the fastest
way he could imagine to make a whole host of rebels spring up against him. And
if Niphone had found happiness in a close embrace of Phos, that was her
concern. She had certainly embraced him, too even if he had found more joy in
the arms of another or she would not be pregnant now.
"To our child!" he said again. If it proved a son, he would be overjoyed; if a
daughter, he would give her all the affection he could . . . and try again as
soon as the midwife gave him leave.
"Octopus in hot vinegar!" Triphylles exclaimed when a eunuch servitor brought
in the supper Maniakes had ordered to celebrate his ambassador's return from
Kubrat. "How kind of you to remember, your Majesty."
"After your weeks in the hinterlands and then in the plainsmen's country,
eminent sir, I thought you would like something to remind you that you'd
returned to civilization," Maniakes answered. He nodded to himself, pleased he
had remembered to address Triphylles by the higher honorific he had promised
him for going to Kubrat. Amazing what men would do for a change of title.
"Your Majesty, you know not what truth you speak." Triphylles ate octopus with
every appearance of rapture. "Remind me to kidnap your cook although, after
some little while of elderly mutton without garlic, I doubt my palate is at
its most discriminating right now."
Since his own mouth was full, Maniakes did not have to reply. He ate his
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