«May I see, lord?» Bozorg asked. Abivard passed him the altered letter. He studied it even longer than the Makuraner marshal had done. When he was finally finished, he looked not to Maniakes but to Bagdasares. «This is very fine work,» he said, admiration in his voice.

Bagdasares bowed. «Your servant.»

«You must tell me how you achieved such a perfect match of the script between the original and that which was written afterward,» the Makuraner mage said. «I do not slight my own skill, but I am far from certain I could do the like.»

«I'd be delighted,» Bagdasares said, preening; he was never shy about receiving praise. «The method employs—»

Maniakes coughed. Bagdasares checked himself. Had he not checked himself, Maniakes might have trodden on his toes. The Avtokrator said, «It might be better if the details remain private.» That seemed a politer way of putting it than, If our magic is better than theirs, let's keep it that way, since we've been at war with them for the last ten years or so.

Abivard coughed in turn. That worried Maniakes. If the Makuraner marshal insisted that his wizard learn Bagdasares' document-altering technique, Maniakes would have an awkward time gainsaying him. But Abivard contented himself with remarking, «We have our secrets, too, which we would be well advised not to let you Videssians learn.»

«Fair enough,» Maniakes said. Abivard was dead right in that, and the Empire of Videssos had almost died because Sharbaraz had kept his alliance with the Kubratoi secret so long.

Bagdasares said, «The document does meet with full approval. then?»

«Oh, yes,» Abivard answered. «It will serve in every particular.»

Bozorg said, «It is the best forgery I have ever seen.» Bagdasares preened again. The Makuraner mage went on, «It will make me look at new techniques, it truly will, for nothing with which I am now familiar could produce such a fine linkage between two documents. The joining of new parchment to old is also quite good, but that I know I can equal.»

Bagdasares bristled, offended at the notion any other mage was sure he could equal him at anything. Maniakes hid a smile. When he'd first met Bagdasares at the start of the uprising against Genesios, the Vaspurakaner mage had been a journeyman back in Opsikion, and, though proud of his skill, hadn't reckoned it extraordinary.

He'd come a long way since. So had Maniakes. Rising with the Avtokrator had let—had sometimes made—Bagdasares deal with sorceries more elaborate than those he would have seen had he stayed in Opsikion. It had also let him largely discard Alvinos, the Videssian-sounding name he'd been in the habit of using then. Now he truly was a sorcerer as good as any in the world—and ever so aware of it.

Maniakes sobered. Bagdasares' blind spot was easy enough for him to recognize. What of his own? He'd noted his habit of moving too soon and too hard in the direction he wanted to go. But if he didn't spot his own weaknesses, who would tell him about them? He was the Avtokrator, after all. And how could he hope to notice his own blind spots if he was blind to them?

Lost in that unprofitable reverie, he realized he'd missed something Abivard had said. «I'm sorry?»

«You were thinking hard about something there,» Abivard remarked with a smile. «I could tell. What I said was, I want to see the expression on Romezan's face when he looks at this letter.»

«That will be interesting,» Maniakes agreed. «The other thing that will be… interesting is the expressions on the faces of all the other officers you've added to the list.» His attention suddenly sharpened. «Did you put Tzikas' name there, by any chance?»

«Tzikas' name is on your list, your Majesty, and the God knows he's on my list, but he'd never, ever be on Sharbaraz's list, so I left him off,» Abivard said, real regret in his voice. «Sharbaraz trusts him, remember.»

«You could tell that story as a joke in every tavern in the Empire of Videssos, and you'd get a laugh every time,» Maniakes said. «I'll tell you this: the notion of anyone trusting Tzikas is pretty funny to me.»

«And to me,» Abivard said. «But, in some strange ways, it does make sense. As I said before, Sharbaraz is the one person in the whole world Tzikas can't hope to overthrow. Anyone below Sharbaraz—me, for instance—certainly. But not the King of Kings. Besides, Tzikas knew, or claimed he knew, something that would have given us a better chance to take Videssos the city.»

«He did know something,» Maniakes said. «I can even tell you what it was.» He did, finishing, «It doesn't matter that you know, because the tunnel is filled in by now.»

«It does sound like Likinios to have made such a thing.» Abivard said. «If Likinios had ever told me about it, I would have used it against you—and then, with Tzikas no longer useful to me…» He smiled again, this time as cynically as any Videssian might have done.

«What we ought to do next,» Maniakes said, «is get Romezan over here as fast as may be. One of the things we don't know is how many copies of that letter Sharbaraz sent to him. If the authentic version falls into his lap before he's seen this one…»

«Life gets difficult,» Abivard said. «All those years ago, when Sharbaraz and I came into Videssos, I wondered if we were going into exile. If Romezan sees the authentic letter, I know perfectly well I am.» His face clouded. «And my children are all on the far side of the Cattle Crossing.»

«We'll attend to it,» Maniakes said.

Isokasios rose from his prostration and said, «Your Majesty, Romezan won't come to this side of the Cattle Crossing. I asked him every way I could think of, and he flat-out won't do it.»

Maniakes stared at his messenger in dismay. «What do you mean, he won't do it? Did he tell you why? Is it that he doesn't trust us?»

«Your Majesty, that's exactly what it is,» Isokasios answered. «He said that, as far as he was concerned, we were just a pack of sneaky, oily Videssians trying to separate the Makuraner field army from its generals. Said he didn't like the chances of his coming back to Across in one piece, and so he'd stay where he was.»

«To the ice with him!» Maniakes exclaimed. «I'm not the one who mistreats envoys from the other side—that's Sharbaraz.»

Abivard coughed. «Your Majesty, what I've seen since we came into the Empire of Videssos is that there are two kinds of Makuraners. Some of us, like me—and like Roshnani more than me– have grown fond enough of your ways to ape some of them. The rest of us, though, keep all our old ideas, and cling to them harder than ever so we don't have to look at anything different. Romezan is in the second bunch. He's smoother about it than a lot of the other officers who think that way, but he is one.»

«He would be,» Maniakes said, a complaint against the way the world worked, a complaint against the way the world had worked against him since he'd had the Avtokrator's crown set on his head.

«What do we do now?» Rhegorios asked.

Abivard said, «I will go back over to the western side of the Cattle Crossing and tell him that he needs to come here with me.»

«That's—one idea,» Maniakes said. Romezan did not want to come to Videssos the city, for fear of what the Videssians might do to him and Abivard. Maniakes was less than keen on Abivard's return to the Makuraner field army, for fear of what he might do with it. He'd finally succeeded in splitting Abivard from Sharbaraz– or rather, Sharbaraz had done it for him—and he neither wanted the breach repaired nor for Abivard to go off on his own rather than acting in concert with him.

He found no way to say any of that without offending Abivard, which was the last thing he wanted to do. He wondered if he could find any polite way to use Roshnani as a hostage against the Makuraner marshal's return. While he was casting about for one, Rhegorios said, «If Romezan will come here, I'll go there. That should convince them we're serious about this business.»