«I think that was worth a try, your Majesty,» the officer in charge of the gate said. «We're no worse off now than we were before.»

«That's true.» Maniakes remembered throwing away his crown and the rest of the imperial regalia to escape the Kubratoi when they'd ambushed him in that treaty ceremony. «Aye,» he said, half to himself, «I've had worse from the nomads. This time, Moundioukh didn't cost me anything but my dignity.»

«I kept hoping it wasn't true,» Maniakes said, looking out from a tower thrusting up from the inner wall.

«Well, it bloody well is true,» Rhegorios answered. He was looking in the same direction. «You're not going to try and tell me the Kubratoi could build those all on their lonesome, are you?»

Those were siege engines, some of them stone– and dart-throwers, other the skeletal beginnings of towers to overtop the outer wall. On the timber frames, the Kubratoi would soon add raw hides to make the towers harder to burn. If they could bring them up to the wall, they'd be able to put men on the walkway. If they did that, anything could happen.

«You're right, of course—they couldn't,» Maniakes said unhappily. «Abivard, Skotos curse him to the ice—» He turned his head and performed the ritual expectoration. «—did sneak one of his engineers, or maybe more than one, over the Cattle Crossing. Those are Makuraner-style engines, or else I'm a wolf with a purple pelt.»

«Nothing would surprise me, not anymore,» his cousin said. «The only worse thing would be having to try handstrokes with all those heavy-armored Makuraners.»

«That mail is better for horseback,» Maniakes said.

«I know,» Rhegorios replied. «But it's not so heavy they can't use it afoot, either, and I wouldn't want to be in their way if they tried.»

«Well, neither would I,» the Avtokrator admitted. «The key to making sure that doesn't happen is keeping them on… the far side of the Cattle Crossing.» He scowled, angry at himself. «I almost said, keeping them on their own side of the Cattle Crossing. It's not theirs. It's ours. I aim to get it back, too.»

«Sounds fine to me,» Rhegorios said. «How do you propose to do that?»

«Which? Keep them on that side of the Cattle Crossing or get the westlands back?»

«Whichever you'd rather tell me about. You're the Avtokrator, after all.» Rhegorios gave him a saucy grin.

«And you're incorrigible,» Maniakes retorted. «We've got dromons prowling up and down the coast, north and east from the city. Whenever they find any of the Kubrati monoxyla, they burn them or sink them. The trouble is, they don't find that many. The cursed things are too fornicating easy to hide. We're doing what we can. I console myself with that.»

«Something,» his cousin agreed. «Maybe not much, but something. How about getting the westlands back?»

«How about that?» Maniakes said, deadpan, and then made as if not to go on. When Rhegorios was somewhere between lese majesty and physical assault, the Avtokrator, chuckling, deigned to continue: «Once this siege fails, I don't think they'll be able to mount another one for a long time. That gives the choice of what to do next back to me. How does another trip to the Land of the Thousand Cities sound? Better that Sharbaraz should worry about his capital than that we worry about ours.»

«That's the truth.» Rhegorios sent him a respectful look. «You really do have it figured out, don't you?»

Maniakes coughed, spluttered, and finally laughed out loud. «I know what I'd like to do, yes. How much I'm going to be able to do is another question, and a harder one, worse luck.»

Rhegorios looked thoughtful. «Maybe we ought to use our ships against the Kubratoi the way we did three years ago: land troops behind their army and catch 'em between hammer and anvil.»

«Maybe,» Maniakes said. «I've thought about it. The trouble is, Etzilios is looking for it this time. The dromon captains report that he's got squads posted along the coast every mile or so, to bring him word if we do land. We wouldn't catch him by surprise, the way we did then. And the likeliest thing for him to do would be trying to storm the city as soon as he heard we'd pulled out some of the garrison.»

«That makes unfortunately too much sense,» Rhegorios said. «You're quite sharp when you get logical, you know. You should have been a theologian.»

«No, thank you,» Maniakes said at once. «I've had so much double from the theologians, I wouldn't want to inflict another one on the world. Besides, I'd be an indifferent theologian at best, and I'm vain enough to think I make something better than an indifferent Avtokrator.»

«I'd say so,» Rhegorios agreed. «Of course, if I said anything else, I'd get to find out how the weather is up at Prista this time of year.» He was joking; he didn't expect to be sent into exile across the Videssian Sea. The joke, though, illustrated the problem Maniakes had in getting straight answers from his subjects, no matter how much he needed them.

And some of the answers he got from his subjects he didn't like far other reasons. As he was riding back to the palace quarter from the walls, a fellow in a dirty tunic shouted to him, «This is your fault, curse you! If you hadn't married your cousin, Phos wouldn't be punishing all of Videssos and letting Skotos loose here for your sins!»

Some of the Avtokrator's guardsmen tried to seize the heckler, but he escaped them. Once away from Middle Street, he lost himself in the maze of lanes and alleys that made up most of the city's roads. The guards came back looking angry and disappointed.

«Don't worry about it,» Maniakes said resignedly. «Skotos will have his way with that fellow. I hope he enjoys ice, because he's going to see an eternity of it.»

He hoped that, by making light of the incident, he would persuade the guards it wasn't worth mentioning. Otherwise, they would gossip about it with the serving women, and from them it would get back to Lysia. He was also glad Rhegorios had stayed back at the wall and hadn't heard the heckler. Predicting that such troubles would be long-lasting, his cousin had proved himself a better prophet than Maniakes. The Avtokrator didn't stay at the imperial residence long. Likarios, his son by Niphone and the heir to the throne, asked him seriously, «Papa, when they're bigger, will my little brothers throw me out of the palaces?»

«By the good god, no!» Maniakes exclaimed, sketching the sun-circle over his heart. «Who's been filling your head with nonsense?» Likarios didn't give a direct answer; he'd very quickly learned to be circumspect. «It was just something I heard.»

«Well, it's something you can forget,» Maniakes told him. His son nodded, apparently satisfied. Maniakes wished he were satisfied himself. Though Likarios was his heir, the temptation remained to disinherit the boy and place the succession in the line of his sons by Lysia.

She had never urged that course on him. Had she done so, he would have worried she was out for her own advantage first and the Empire's only afterward. But that did not keep the idea from cropping up on its own.

He went out to the seawall to escape it. A dromon glided over the water of the Cattle Crossing. The sight, though, was far less reassuring than it had been when the Makuraners were encamped in Across before. Monoxyla crept out at night and made nuisances of themselves, just as mice did even in homes where cats prowled. Then a different image occurred to him. Two or three times, in barns and stables, he'd seen snakes with their coils wrapped around rats or other smaller animals. The rats would wiggle and kick and sometimes even work a limb free for a little while, but in the end that wouldn't matter. They'd be squeezed from so many directions, they ended up dead in spite of all their thrashing.

He wished that picture hadn't come to mind. In it, the Empire of Videssos was rat, not snake.