«Who can say?» Maniakes replied. «We spent years in exile, our whole clan. Good thing Likinios sent us away, too, as it worked out; if we had been anywhere Genesios could have reached us, our heads would have gone up on the Milestone. But Tzikas was here in the city at least part of the time, before he went off to the westlands to fight the Makuraners and play his own games.»

«Well, maybe,» Rhegorios said grudgingly. «But if you're right, wouldn't somebody here besides Tzikas know about this whatever-it-is?»

«Well, maybe,» Maniakes said, as grudgingly. «But maybe not, too. A lot of heads went up on the Milestone when Genesios held the throne. A lot of men died other ways, too, murdered or in battle or even in bed. And this thing would have been very secret. Not many people would have known about it in the first place, or we would have heard of it years ago.»

«There's another explanation, you know,» Rhegorios said: «How can you know about something that's not there?»

The guards and the parasol-bearers and Maniakes and even Rhegorios kept on going over the area again and again. Maniakes began to think his cousin was right. He shrugged. If that was so, it was so. Knowing it rather than merely hoping it would be a relief-One of the guards, a big blond Haloga who wore his hair in a braid halfway down his back, called to Maniakes: «Lord, here the ground feels funny under my feet.»

«Funny, Hafgrim?» The Avtokrator came over and stomped where the guardsman was standing. «It doesn't feel funny to me.» Hafgrim snorted. «One of me would make two of you, lord.»

That wasn't true, but it wasn't so far wrong, either. The Haloga went on, «I say it feels funny. I know what I know.» He folded his arms across his broad chest, defying Maniakes to disbelieve him. With nothing better found—with nothing else found at all– Maniakes was willing to grasp at straws. «All right, to you it feels funny,» he said agreeably. «Let's break out the spades and mattocks and find out why.»

The guards set to work with a will. The parasol-bearers stood around watching. Maniakes didn't say anything about that, but he suspected several of those parasol-bearers would suffer accidents– accidents not too disabling, he hoped—around the palace in the near future.

He also suspected the diggers would find nothing more than that Hafgrim's weight had made damp ground shift under his feet. That made him all the more surprised when, after penetrating no deeper than a foot and a half, the diggers' tools thumped against wood. «What did I say, lord?» Hafgrim said triumphantly.

«What did I say, cousin of mine?» Maniakes said triumphantly.

Rhegorios, for once, said nothing.

«It is a trapdoor, lord,» the Haloga guardsman said after he and his companions had cleared more of it. «It is a trapdoor—and what would a trapdoor have under it?»

«A tunnel,» Maniakes breathed, even before one of the guards dug the tip of a spade under the door and levered it up. «By the good god, a tunnel.»

«Now, who would have wanted to dig a tunnel under the wall?» Rhegorios said. No possible doubt where the tunnel went: it sloped almost straight down, to dive beneath the ditch around the outer wall, and was heavily shored with timbers on all four sides.

An answer leapt into Maniakes' mind: «Likinios. It has to be Likinios. It would have been just like him to build a bolt-hole– the man could see around corners on a straight line. And Tzikas could easily have known about it.» Maniakes shivered. «Good thing it came up so near the wall, where all our weapons would bear on it. Otherwise, Tzikas would have had the Kubratoi dig it open right away.»

He should have done it anyhow,» Rhegorios said. «Getting the enemy inside the city would have been a dagger stabbing at our heart.»

«When it comes to scheming, there's nobody to match Tzikas,»

Maniakes answered. «But when it comes to fighting, he's always been on the cautious side. We've seen that before. Me, now, I think you're right, cousin of mine. If that had been me out there, I'd have tried to break in no matter what kind of losses I took doing it. But I'm Tzikas' opposite. I can't plot the way he does, but I'll stick my neck out when mere's a battle going on.»

«Yes, and you've almost had a sword come down on it a time or two, too,» Rhegorios said, which would have made Maniakes angry had he not known it was true. In musing tones, the Sevastos went on, «I wonder why Likinios never got to use the hole he made for himself.»

«I wonder if we'll ever know,» Maniakes said. «I have my doubts about that. We were just saying how most of the people who served Likinios are dead. Genesios made sure they were dead after he took over.» He blinked. «Kameas was around, though, and he's still here.» He snapped his fingers. «By the good god, I wonder if he's known about this tunnel all along. Have to ask him when we get back to the palaces.»

«What do we do about it in the meantime?» Rhegorios asked, pointing down into the black mouth of the tunnel.

«Fill it up,» Maniakes said at once. «It's more dangerous to us than it's ever likely to be useful.»

Rhegorios plucked at his beard while he thought that over. After a few seconds, he nodded. «Good,» he said.

«A tunnel, your Majesty?» Kameas' eyes grew round. The soft flesh under his beardless chin wobbled as he drew back in surprise. «No.» He sketched Phos' sun-sign above his heart. «I never heard of such a thing. But then, you must remember, Likinios Avtokrator was always one to hold what he knew as close as he could.»

«That's so,» Maniakes said. Rhegorios looked to him for the agreement: the Sevastos had never known Likinios himself. The Avtokrator continued, «If the secret was so good even you didn't know it, esteemed sir, why didn't Likinios use it when he saw Genesios was going to overthrow him?»

«That, your Majesty, I may perhaps be able to answer,» Kameas replied. «Throughout Genesios' rebellion, Likinios never took him seriously enough. He would call him 'commander of a hundred,' as if to say no one with such small responsibility could hope to cast down the Avtokrator of the Videssians.»

«He must not have realized how much the army on the Astris hated him, there at the end,» Maniakes said. «And everyone else, there at the end,» the vestiarios agreed. «The guards at the Silver Gate opened it to let Genesios' soldiers into Videssos the city. Nothing, they said, could be worse than Likinios.» His eyes were far away, looking back across the years. «Soon enough, Genesios let them—let all of us—know they were mistaken.»

«Likinios was clever,» Maniakes said. «He had to have been clever, or he wouldn't have ruled the Empire for twenty years, he wouldn't have convinced a man as able as my father that he had no chance for the throne, and he wouldn't have used the war to restore Sharbaraz to the Makuraner throne to gain so much. But he was clever about things, about ideas, not so much about people and feelings. In the end, that cost him.»

«We used to say, your Majesty—we of his court, I mean—that he thought like a eunuch,» Kameas said. «It was neither compliment nor condemnation. But he seemed somewhat separated from most of mankind, as we are, and divorced from the passions roiling mankind as well.»

«I suspect my father would agree with you,» Maniakes answered. «I doubt he ever would have said so while Likinios was alive, though.»

«The trouble with what Likinios did was that it needed him on the throne to keep it working,» Rhegorios observed. «Once we had Genesios instead, it fell apart faster and worse than it would have if it were simpler.» He turned toward Maniakes with that impudent look on his face. «I'm glad you're nice and simple, cousin of mine your Majesty.»

«I'll simple you,» Maniakes said. He and his cousin both laughed. The Avtokrator suddenly sobered. «Do you know, all at once I think I begin to understand Tzikas.»