When he'd left Videssos the city, Maniakes had been content– had been more than content, if less eager than Lysia—to leave behind reports of and from the imperial capital. Now that he moved toward the city once more, he hungered for news about it. Was he rushing back toward a town already fallen to the foe? What would he do if that turned out to be so? He did not want such macabre imaginings loose in his mind, but felt reluctant to dismiss them. If they stayed, he might come up with answers for them.

He'd been concentrating on how to go about attacking Mashiz when the messengers brought word first of the Kubratoi invasion of Videssos and then of Abivard's joining forces with the nomads. He'd seen no messengers since. Had the Makuraners captured them before they ever got to him? If they had, they would know more than he about what was going on at the heart of the Empire. Or had his own people—Phos! his own family—not sent out more men, either because they were too pressed or because they could not? Anxiety on account of his ignorance ate at him.

One day when the army was a little more than halfway across the Land of the Thousand Cities, Rhegorios rode up next to him and asked, «If you were the Makuraner commander and you knew we were leaving this country, what would you do to make things hard for us?»

«What the enemy is doing, more or less,» the Avtokrator answered, «skirmishes and floods and anything else that would slow us up.»

Rhegorios nodded, but then went on, «That's true, but it's not what I meant, or not all of what I meant, anyhow. What's he going to do with the men he doesn't have skirmishing with us now?»

«Ah, I see what you're saying.» Maniakes' thick eyebrows came down together in a frown. When you asked the question as Rhegorios had, you also indicated the answer: «He's going to put them where they'll do the best job of blocking us: down by Qostabash and maybe in the hill country where the Tutub rises.»

His cousin nodded. «That's what I thought, too. I was hoping you would tell me this heat has melted the brains right out of my head. How are we going to get through them if they do that?»

As long as we and they are on the floodplain, it won't matter so much, because we'll be able to outmaneuver them. Up in those hills, though—» Maniakes broke off. «I'm going to have to think about that.»

«Always happy to hand you something to take your mind off your worries,» Rhegorios said, so blithely that Maniakes had only a little trouble fighting down the urge to punch him in the face.

Maniakes did think about what Rhegorios had suggested. The more he thought, the less he liked it. He went to check with Ypsilantes, who had such maps of the Land of the Thousand Cities as the Videssians had been able to put together, along with others dating back to an invasion several centuries before. After studying the maps for a while, he took counsel with Rhegorios, Ypsilantes, and Immodios.

He pointed to his cousin. «This is your fault, you know. It's what you get for complicating my life—no, not my life, all our lives.»

«Thank you,» Rhegorios said, which was not the answer Maniakes had been looking for but not one to surprise him, either.

To Ypsilantes and Immodios, Maniakes said, «His Highness the Sevastos there—the one with the tongue hinged at both ends—made me realize we ought to get to the hill country between the headwaters of the Tutub and those of the Xeremos as fast as we can.» He explained why, then went on, «Unless I'm dead wrong, going back by way of Qostabash isn't the best route, either.»

«Then why have we been doing it?» Immodios asked. «Going back by way of Qostabash, I mean.»

Maniakes tapped two parchment maps, one new, one old. «As near as I can tell, the answer is, force of habit. Here, look: the trade route down to Lyssaion runs through Qostabash nowadays.» He ran his finger along the red squiggle of ink showing the route. Then he traced it on the other map, the old one. «It's been running through Qostabash for a long time. But just because the trade route runs through Qostabash, that doesn't mean we have to go that way ourselves.»

He traced another path with his finger, this one running well east of the town that was the southern gate to the Land of the Thousand Cities. «If we take this route, we save ourselves a day or two of travel—and, with luck, we don't have so many enemies waiting for us at the other end of it.»

Immodios frowned. He had a face made for frowning, with tight, almost cramped features. «I don't follow all of that, your Majesty. Yes, we reach the hill country faster by your route, which is to the good. But what's to keep the Makuraners from shifting forces from Qostabash—if they have them there—to the east to try to block us? That would eat up the time we save.»

«What's to keep them from doing it?» The smile Maniakes wore was broad but felt a little unnatural, as if he were trying too hard to be Rhegorios. «You are.»

«Me?» Immodios looked splendidly surprised; no wonder, Maniakes thought, his cousin had so much fun in life.

«You,» the Avtokrator said. «You're going to take a regiment, maybe a regiment and a half, of soldiers and you're going to ride to Qostabash as if you had the whole Videssian army with you. Burn the fields as you go, set out lots of fires at night, make as big a nuisance of yourself as you can.» «If you want a nuisance, you should send me,» Rhegorios said.

«Hush,» Maniakes told him. «You're a nuisance by yourself; for this job, I want someone who takes a little more professional approach.» He turned back to Immodios. «Your task is to keep the Makuraners too busy noticing you to pay any attention to the rest of us as we slide south. Have you got that?»

«I think I have, your Majesty.» Immodios pointed to one of the imperial banners, gold sunburst on sky blue, that floated not far away. «Let me have my fair share and more of those, so anyone who sees my detachment will think you're with it.»

«All right,» Maniakes said, fighting down misgivings. He wondered whether he shouldn't have given Rhegorios the assignment after all. If Immodios failed and the banners were captured, Videssos would be embarrassed. And if Immodios decided that bearing imperial banners gave him the right to other imperial pretensions, Videssos would be worse than embarrassed: the Empire would have a new civil war on its hands.

But Immodios was right to ask for the banners, given the role the Avtokrator had set him to play. And if Maniakes had said no, he might well have set resentment afire in a heart free of it till then. The business of ruling was never simple, and got more complicated the harder you looked at it.

Brave with banners, Immodios' detachment rode off, intent on convincing the Makuraner infantry commanders that it was the whole Videssian army. The large majority of that army, meanwhile, abandoned their journey toward Qostabash and swung south, into a region of the Land of the Thousand Cities they had never visited before.

That the region was new did not mean it was remarkable. Cities still squatted on hillocks made from millennia of rubble. Canals still crisscrossed fields of wheat and barley and beans and garden patches green with growing onions and lettuces and melons. Those absurd little boats still plied the canals. Mosquitoes and gnats still swarmed, thick as heavy rain.

Maniakes had hoped to glide through all but unnoticed. Since he was leading an army of several thousand mounted men, that hope, he admitted to himself if to no one else, was unrealistic. Getting through the untouched country cleanly and with as little fighting as he could—that he had a better chance of doing.

Scouts reported messengers pelting off to the east. Some they caught, some they could not. Those who escaped were no doubt taking word of his arrival to those in the best position to do something about it. He wondered if they would be believed. He hoped they wouldn't, not when Immodios was ostentatiously pretending to be what his army really was.