With the garrison overcome, the Videssians threw open the gates and let people stream out of the city and down toward the floodplain. After a while, they would probably come back and start rebuilding. By then, of course, the rubble left from the sack would raise the artificial hillock on which the city stood another palm's breadth or so, making it that much harder for the next Videssian Avtokrator who campaigned here, ten years from now, or fifty, or five hundred, to take the place.

Well, Maniakes thought, that will be for my successor to worry about, not me. My job is to make sure I have a successor who one day will be in a position to worry about it.

Lysia came up to him when the sack was nearly over. Much as he loved her, he would sooner not have seen her at that moment. He knew what she was going to say. Sure enough, she said it: «I pray the lord with the great and good mind will forgive our soldiers for what they're doing to the women here. War is a filthy business.»

«War is a filthy business,» Maniakes agreed. «This one was forced upon us.»

«I know,» Lysia said; they had this argument whenever one of the Thousand Cities fell. «That doesn't mean we have to make it filthier.»

Maniakes shrugged. «If they'd surrendered instead of trying to fight, they could have all left undisturbed; you know I would have let them do that. But they chose to make a fight of it. Once they did, that changed the rules and what the soldiers expected. Next time—»

«Phos forbid a next time,» Lysia broke in, sketching the sun-circle above her left breast. «I've heard too many stories about all the horrid things the Makuraners did when they took our cities in the westlands; I don't want them telling horrid stories about us.»

«I wish there were no need for them to tell horrid stories about us,» Maniakes answered. «That's not quite the same thing, though. They've made themselves frightful to us. If we make ourselves frightful to them in return, sooner or later they'll get the idea that they can't afford to fight us anymore. That's what I'm after.»

«I know that's what you're after.» Lysia's face stayed troubled. «The good god grant you find it, that's all.»

«What I really want to find,» Maniakes said, «is Abivard's army. Once I beat him, the whole of this country falls into my hands and I can push straight for Mashiz. Taking his capital, by Phos—that would be a revenge worth having.»

Now Lysia did smile, ruefully. «I don't think you've heard a word I've said. I can understand that, I suppose. I can even see that Videssos may be better off on account of what you're doing. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.» She walked off, leaving him scratching his head.

From the hillock where yet another of the Thousand Cities went up in flames behind him, Maniakes peered out over the floodplain. He could see a long way from here, but seeing far was not the same as seeing clearly. Turning to Rhegorios, he said, «Drop me into the ice—» He spat in rejection of Skotos. «—if I know where Abivard and the cursed Makuraner field army are. With what we've been doing hereabouts, I thought they'd surely have come to pay us a visit by now.»

«So would I,» his cousin agreed. «But no sign of them so far. Outside of these worthless little city garrisons, the only Makuraner army we've seen is the one that's been following in our footsteps ever since Qostabash.»

«And they're foot soldiers.» Maniakes stated the obvious. «What they are, in fact, is the same kind of force Abivard used to fight us year before last. They're probably garrison troops themselves, though they've had so much action the past couple of years, they might as well be regular infantry.»

«They're not the worst fighters around,» Rhegorios allowed. «When they were working alongside the boiler boys, they made pretty good fighters.» Now he looked around, too. «Where are the boiler boys?»

«If I could find them, I'd tell you,» Maniakes said. «Since I can't find them, I'm going to talk with someone who can, or at least who may be able to: I'm going to see what Bagdasares can do.»

«Can't hurt,» Rhegorios said. «It may even do some good. Why not?»

«That's why you go see wizards,» Maniakes answered, «to find out why not.»

Dubious recommendations notwithstanding, he did go to consult the mage from Vaspurakan. «You have been in close contact with Abivard for years,» Bagdasares said. «That will help.» He looked thoughtful. «Have you got anything of his we might use as a magical source to find him?»

«I don't think so.» Maniakes suddenly barked laughter. «It almost makes me wish Tzikas were in camp. He's been back and forth between me and Abivard so many times, each of us could use him as a magical source against the other.»

«Contact and affinity are not necessarily one and the same.» Bagdasares observed.

«The only person Tzikas has an affinity for is Tzikas,» Maniakes said. «I should have taken the traitor's head when Abivard gave him back to me. Even if I did get some use out of him, I never slept easy with him around. That's why I said I almost wish he were back, not that I wish he really was. He's with Abivard again, and Abivard is welcome to worry about him or kill him, whichever he pleases.»

«Aye, your Majesty.» Bagdasares ran a hand through his thick, curly beard as he contemplated ways and means. «You have clasped his hand, not so?» Maniakes nodded. The wizard produced a small knife. «Let me have a bit of nail from a finger of your right hand, then. And you have spoken to him, so I shall ask for a few drops of your spittle.» He quickly sketched the sun-sign over his heart. «By the lord with the great and good mind, I shall destroy these by fire when my magic is completed.»

«I'll watch you do it,» Maniakes said. «You I trust with my life, Bagdasares, but you're one of the few. Tzikas came too close to slaying me with sorcery for me to be easy about letting parts of myself, so to speak, get loose where other wizards might lay their hands on them.»

«And right you are to be cautious,» Alvinos Bagdasares agreed. «Now, if I may—»

Maniakes let him cut a bit of fingernail from his right index finger. The Avtokrator spat into a little bowl while Bagdasares bound the nail clipping to one end of a small stick with crimson thread. The mage filled the bowl into which Maniakes had spat with water from a silver ewer. He lifted the little stick with a pair of tongs and let it float in the water.

«Think about Abivard, about wanting to learn in which direction from this place he is,» Bagdasares said.

Obediently, Maniakes held the image of the Makuraner marshal in his mind. Bagdasares, meanwhile, chanted first in Videssian, then in the Vaspurakaner tongue Maniakes spoke only in snatches. Maniakes hoped the Makuraner mages weren't deliberately trying to keep him from learning his opponent's whereabouts. They probably were, just as Bagdasares and the other mages accompanying the Videssian army were doing their best to keep its location from their Makuraner counterparts. Of its own accord, the small stick began to twist in the water, sending small ripples out toward the edge of the bowl. Maniakes kept his eye on the thread tied to the nail clipping. That end of the little stick swung to the east and stayed there. Maniakes scratched his head. «I won't believe Abivard's left the Land of the Thousand Cities.»

«That is what the magic suggests,» Bagdasares said.

«Could the Makuraners have twisted it so that, say, the stick points in exactly the opposite direction to the proper one?» Maniakes asked.

«I suppose it is possible, so I shall investigate,» the wizard replied. «I sensed no such deception, however.»

«If it were done well, you wouldn't, though,» Maniakes said. «The Makuraners needed quite a while to figure out how you twisted that canal back on itself last year, for instance.»