And so, when a rider from Abivard came up to the Videssian army, the Avtokrator tensed. But the horseman cried, «Good news twice, your Majesty! The garrison of Amorion joins everyone else in rejecting Sharbaraz. And the soldiers of the garrison captured the second Makuraner rider who went with Tzikas the traitor to let the Pimp of Pimps know his murderous wickedness has been laid bare before the entire world.»

«That is good news,» Maniakes agreed. «What happened to this second rider?»

«Nothing lingering or unusually interesting.» The messenger sounded almost disappointed. «The garrison commander, knowing Abivard's reputation for leniency, questioned him for a time and then took his head. Very simple, very neat.»

Maniakes wasn't used to thinking of the esthetics of executions. «All right,» he answered, faintly bemused. «Did he learn by which roads Tzikas was going, so we can send pursuit down them?»

«Not in all the detail he should have liked, Majesty,» the Makuraner answered. «The two of them had separated some time before. The rider believed Tzikas was traveling south of the Arandos, but knew no more than that.»

«All right,» Maniakes said. It wasn't, but he couldn't do anything about it. He knew too well how little Tzikas could be relied upon once out of sight. Like as not, the renegade had headed north as soon as he thought his departing comrade thought he was going south. He was a connoisseur of deceit, as some men were connoisseurs of wine, and had a fine and discriminating palate for it.

Or, of course, knowing Maniakes knew of his deceitfulness, he might have thought to deceive by doing exactly what he'd said he would do, reckoning the Avtokrator would assume he'd done the opposite. Or… Maniakes shook his head. Once you started floundering in those waters, the bewildering whirlpool would surely drag you under.

Maniakes did move down to Amorion once Abivard's forces and the Makuraner garrison abandoned it. Not only did he intend to place a small garrison of his own there, he also wanted to see the town for the first time since becoming Avtokrator. His previous push up the Arandos toward Amorion had been rudely interrupted by Abivard's capture of the place.

Finding the wall intact was the first surprise. The Makuraners had breached it, after all; otherwise, they never would have taken the city. Afterward, they'd repaired the breaches with new stone, easy to tell from what had been there before because it was so much less weathered. One of the city gates was also new, and arguably stronger than the Videssian work it replaced.

Once inside Amorion, though, Maniakes saw what several years of occupation by hostile masters had done. A good many buildings had been burned or otherwise wrecked in the sack. If any of them had been repaired since, he would have been astonished. And many of the buildings that had survived the Makuraners' entry were simply empty. Maybe the people who had lived in them had fled before the Makuraners stormed in. Maybe they had been expelled afterward, or simply left. Maybe they were dead.

«We're going to have to rebuild,» Maniakes said. «We're going to have to bring in people from parts of the Empire that haven't taken such a beating.»

«We're going to have to find parts of the Empire that haven't taken such a beating,» Rhegorios said, exaggerating only a little.

«There'll always be Vaspurakaners trickling out of their mountains and valleys, too,» Maniakes said. «The Makuraners don't treat them well enough to make them want to stay… and after a while, they start turning into Videssians.»

«Can't imagine what you're talking about,» his cousin said with a chuckle.

Here and there, people did come out and cheer the return of Videssian rule—or at least acknowledge it. «Took you long enough!» an old man shouted, leaning on his stick. «When Tzikas was here, things was pretty good—not perfect, mind you, but pretty good. You'll have to go some to beat him, whatever your name is, and that's a fact.»

«I'll do my best,» Maniakes answered. Riding along next to him, Rhegorios giggled: not the sort of noise one would expect to come from the august throat of a Sevastos. The Avtokrator ignored him.

When he got to what had been the epoptes' palace, he found it in better shape than any other building he'd seen. The servants who trooped out to greet him looked plump and prosperous, where everyone else in the city seemed skinny and shabby and dirty. In answer to Maniakes' question, one of them said, «Why, yes, your Majesty, the Makuraner garrison commander did live here. How did you know?»

«Call it a lucky guess,» Maniakes answered dryly.

Across the central square from the residence, the chief temple to Phos seemed to have taken all the abuse and neglect the residence had avoided. Like a lot of chief temples in provincial towns, it was modeled after the High Temple in Videssos the city. It hadn't been the best of copies before; now, with weeds growing all around, with the stonework of the exterior filthy and streaked with bird droppings, and with every other windowpane bare of glass, it was nearer nightmare vision than imitation.

A blue-robed priest came out of the temple and looked across the square at Maniakes. Recognizing the Avtokrator's raiment, he dashed over the cobblestones toward him, sandals flapping on his feet. When he got close, he threw himself down on the cobblestones in front of Maniakes in a proskynesis so quick and emphatic, he might almost have fallen on his face rather than prostrating himself.

«Mercy, your Majesty!» he cried, his face still pressed down against the paving stones. «Have mercy on your holy temple here, so long tormented by the savage invaders!»

«Rise, holy sir,» Maniakes said. «You are—?»

«I am called Domnos, your Majesty,» the priest replied, «and I have had the honor—and, I assure you, the trial—of being prelate of Amorion these past three years, after the holy Mavrikios gave up this life and passed to Phos' eternal light. It has not been an easy time.»

«Well, I believe that,» Maniakes said. «Tell me, holy Domnos—did you preach Vaspurakaner dogmas when the Makuraners ordered our priests to do that?»

Domnos hung his head. He blushed all the way up to the top of his shaven crown. «Your Majesty, I did,» he whispered. «It was that or suffer terrible torment, and I—I was weak, and obeyed. Punish me as you will.» He straightened, as if eagerly anticipating that punishment.

But Maniakes said, «Let it go. You'll preach a sermon on things you had to do under duress, and then you and your fellow priests will talk to the people who've accepted the Vaspurakaner doctrines as better than our own—I know you'll have some. We won't push them back into orthodoxy all at once. After that, you can go on with life as it was before the invasion.» He knew it wouldn't be that easy. If Domnos didn't know, he'd find out soon enough.

Now Domnos stared at the Avtokrator. He'd asked for mercy. Maniakes had given it to him, a large dose of it, but he didn't seem to want it as much as he'd claimed. «Yes, your Majesty,» he said, rather sulkily.

Maniakes, however, had more important things to worry about than a priest put out of temper. He chose a question touching on the most important of those things: «Has Tzikas, the former commander here, passed through this town in the last few days?»

Domnos' eyes widened. «No, your Majesty.» After a moment, he qualified that: «Not to my knowledge, at any rate. If he came here in secret, I might not know it, though I think I should have heard. But why would he have needed to come in secret?»

«Oh, he'd have had his reasons,» Maniakes answered, his voice drought-dry. He reflected that Amorion under Makuraner rule had been a town wrapped up in wool batting, a town caught in a backwater while the world went on around it. By the look on Domnos' face, he still thought of Tzikas as the stubborn general who had held Abivard away for so long, and he had no reason to think otherwise. Yes, sure enough, the world had passed Amorion by.