«You will know better than I, your Majesty,» Domnos said. «Will you come see the temple and learn the relief we need?»

«I'll come,» Maniakes said, and followed Domnos across the square.

He had not gone more than a couple of paces before his guardsmen, Videssians and Halogai both, formed a square around him. «No telling who or what all's waiting in mere, your Majesty,» a Videssian guard said, as if defying him to order the warriors to step aside. «Might even be this Tzikas item you're worrying about.» That comment, delivered in the streetwise dialect of Videssos the city, might have been one of Bagdasares' magic words, so effectively did it shut off any argument the Avtokrator might have made. The plain truth was, the guardsman was right. If Tzikas struck, it would have to be from ambush. What more unexpected place to set an ambush than one of Phos' holy temples?

Up the steps and into the exonarthex, Domnos led Maniakes. The priest pointed to a mosaic of a bygone Avtokrator presenting Amorion's temple to Phos as a pious offering. «Do you see, your Majesty?» the priest said. «The infidel Makuraners chiseled out every gold tessera from the costume of Metokhites II.»

«I do see.» Maniakes didn't know how much gold the Makuraners had realized from their chiseling, but they must have thought the results worth the labor.

In the next chamber in from the entrance, the narthex, Domnos sadly pointed out where silver lamps had been torn from the ceiling. «They took the great candelabrum, too,» he said, «thinking its polished brass gold. Even after they found they were wrong, they did not return it.»

«Brass is useful,» Maniakes said. He didn't need to say much to keep the conversation going. Domnos talked enough for any two ordinary people, or possibly three.

Tzikas had not lurked in the exonarthex or narthex. Maniakes' guardsmen preceded their charge into the main worship area. No renegade, no band of bravos, crouched in ambush behind the pews. The guards gave their permission for Maniakes to enter. He was sovereign in the Empire of Videssos, but hardly in his own household.

«You see?» Domnos said again. «Gold, silver, brass, semiprecious gems—all gone.»

«Yes,» Maniakes said. Even before the Makuraners had come, the temple here in Amorion had been a copy of the High Temple in the capital, but a poor man's copy. Despoiled by the invaders, it was, as Domnos had claimed, poorer still.

Maniakes glanced upward toward the dome in the central altar. The mosaic image of Phos in the dome was not perfectly stern in judgment, as it was in Videssos the city; here, he looked more nearly petulant. And the gold tesserae that had surrounded his image were gone, survived only by the rough gray cement in which they had been mounted. That made Phos' image seem even more lifeless than it would have otherwise.

«Aye, they even stripped the dome,» Domnos said, following Maniakes' gaze. With a certain somber satisfaction, he added, «And three of their workmen died in the doing, too; may Skotos freeze their souls forevermore.» He spat on the marble floor in rejection of the dark god.

So did Maniakes. He asked, «How much money do you think you'll need to restore the temple to the way it was?»

Domnos clapped his hand. A less senior priest in a plainer blue robe came running. «The accounts list,» the prelate snapped. His subordinate hurried off, returning shortly with three leaves of parchment held together at one corner by a small iron ring. Domnos took it from him, then presented it to Maniakes with a flourish. «Here you are, your Majesty.»

«Er—thank you,» Maniakes said. He flipped through the document. His alarm grew with every line he read. Domnos had the cost of full repairs calculated down to the last copper, in materials and labor both. The sum at which he'd finally arrived looked reasonable in light of the damage done to the temple—and altogether appalling in light of the damage done to the Empire's finances.

«Well, your Majesty?» Domnos said when Maniakes gave no sign of pulling goldpieces out of his ears.

«Well, holy sir, all I can say right now is that yours isn't the only temple to have suffered, and I'll have to see what other needs we have before I can think of paying you this entire sum.» Maniakes knew he sounded weak. He didn't know what else to say, though. Tzikas hadn't been lurking inside the temple, no, but he'd been ambushed just the same.

Domnos' acquisitive instincts aside, reestablishing Videssian control over Amorion proved easier than Maniakes had expected. Most of the locals who had collaborated with the Makuraner occupiers had fled with them. The ones who were left were loudly repentant. As he had elsewhere, Maniakes forgave more than he punished.

Being a good-sized town, Amorion had had its own small Vaspurakaner community before it fell to the Makuraners, a community with its own discreetly sited temple. That let the Avtokrator send the Videssian locals who had converted to Vaspurakaner usages during the occupation and now refused to abandon them to a place where they could continue to worship in the fashion they had come to find fitting.

«But, your Majesty,» Domnos protested, «the goal is to return them to orthodoxy, as you said, not to confirm them in their error. One Empire, one true faith: it is a law of nature.»

«So it is,» Maniakes said. «As time goes by, holy sir, I think almost all of them will return to orthodoxy. We make that the easier path, the preferred path, just as the Makuraners made the dogma of Vaspur the Firstborn the way to move ahead. You lay under the Makuraner yoke for years; you've been free a few days. Not everything happens at once.»

«I certainly see that, your Majesty,» Domnos said, and stalked off, robe swirling about him.

Rhegorios eyed his retreat with amusement. «Do you know, cousin of mine, I don't think you're one of his favorite people right now.»

«I noticed that, thanks.» Maniakes made a sad clucking sound. «I wouldn't empty the treasury to repair the temple here this instant, and I wouldn't burn heretics without giving them a decent chance to come back to orthodoxy, either. See what a wicked fellow that makes me?»

«Sounds bloody wicked to me,» Rhegorios agreed. «Not giving someone all the money he wants the instant he wants it—why, if that doesn't rank right up there for wickedness with ordering your best general executed, I don't know what does.» He paused, looking thoughtful. «But since you're your own best general, that would complicate the whole business a bit, wouldn't it?»

«Complicate? That's one way to put it, anyhow.» Maniakes sighed. «Here's Amorion back under Videssian rule. I didn't have to fight to get it back, so the town isn't burned or wrecked any worse than it was before I got here. The Makuraners didn't take anybody with them who didn't want to go. And what thanks do I get? I haven't made everything perfect right away, so of course I'm nothing but a tyrant.»

Rhegorios plucked at his beard. «If it's any consolation, cousin your Majesty brother-in-law of mine, I'll bet the people here were grumbling about the Makuraners the same way till the day the boiler boys pulled out.» His voice rose to a high, mocking falsetto: « 'The nerve of that cursed Abivard. To the ice with him, anyway! He has gall, he does, going off to try and conquer Videssos the city when his supply wagons have left such big potholes in our streets.' « He looked and sounded like an indignant chicken.

Maniakes opened his mouth to say something, but he'd already started laughing by then, and almost choked to death. When he could speak, he pointed an accusing forefinger at his cousin: «You, sirrah, are a demon from a plane of being the Sorcerers' Collegium hasn't yet stumbled onto, the reason being that it's too absurd for such calm, careful men to contemplate.»

«Why, thank you, your Majesty!» Rhegorios exclaimed, as if the Avtokrator had just conferred a great compliment upon him. From his point of view, maybe Maniakes had done just that.