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slushy bit of ground. Somebody grabbed his elbow to keep him from falling.
"Thanks," he gasped.
"Any time," his benefactor said. "Here, why don't you stay and see if you
can't catch somebody, too? It'd make a man's day, or a lady's even more." The
fellow winked at him. "And they do say anything can happen on Midwinter's
Day."
Because they said that, if babies born about the time of the autumnal equinox
didn't happen to look a great deal like their mothers' husbands, few people
raised eyebrows. One day of license a year helped keep you to the straight and
narrow the rest of the time.
The next few people in the queue sailed over the bonfires without difficulty.
Then a woman leapt short and almost landed in the flames. Maniakes ran forward
to drag her away. "Niphone!" he exclaimed. "What were you doing, jumping
there?"
"The same thing you were," his wife answered, defiantly lifting her chin.
"Making sure I start the new year without the bad luck piled up from the old
one."
Maniakes exhaled through his nose, trying to hold on to patience. "I put you
in the litter so you wouldn't tire yourself out walking or go into labor
sooner than you should, and you go and run and jump?"
"Yes, I do, and what are you going to do about it?" Niphone said. "This is
Midwinter's Day, when everyone does as he or she pleases."
Faced by open mutiny, Maniakes did the only thing he could: he cut his losses.
"Now that you have jumped, will you please get back into the litter so we can
go on to the Amphitheater?'
"Of course, your Majesty." Niphone demurely cast her eyes down to the cobbles
of the plaza of Palamas. "I obey you in all things." She walked back toward
the bearers and other guardsmen, leaving him staring after her. I obey you in
all things, his mind translated, except when I don't feel like it.
When the parasol-bearers emerged through the Avtokrator's private entrance,
waves of cheers and clapping rolled down on Maniakes like surf from a stormy
sea. He raised a hand to acknowledge them, knowing they weren't for him in
particular but in anticipation of the mime show that now would soon begin.
He took his seat at the center of the long spine that ran down the middle of
the Amphitheater's floor. Most days, the enormous structure was used for horse
races; the spine defined the inner margin of the course. Today, though
Today Maniakes said, "People of Videssos " and the crowd quieted at once. A
magic, not of sorcery but of architecture, let everyone in the Amphitheater
hear his voice when he spoke from that one spot. "People of Videssos," he
repeated, and then went on, "May Phos be with you may Phos be with us all
through the coming year. As the sun rises higher in the sky from this day
forward, so may the fortunes of the Empire of Videssos rise from the low
estate in which they now find themselves."
"So may it be!" the multitude cried with one voice. Maniakes thought the top
of his head would come off. Not only could everyone in the Amphitheater hear
him when he spoke from that one spot, as long as he stayed there all the noise
in the great tureen of a building poured right down on him.
He gestured to Agathios, who sat not far away. The ecumenical patriarch led
the tens of thousands of spectators in Phos' creed. Again the noise of the
response dinned in the Avtokrator's ears.
Maniakes said, "To sweeten the year to come, I give you the mime troupes of
Videssos the city!"
Applause rocked him once more. He sat down, leaned back in the throne set on
the spine for him, and prepared to enjoy the mimes as best he could and to
endure what he could not enjoy. Everything save Phos himself was fair game on
Midwinter's Day; an Avtokrator who could not take what the mimes dished out
lost favor with the fickle populace of the city.
Leaning over to Agathios, Maniakes asked, "Did Genesios let himself be
lampooned here?"
"He did, your Majesty," the patriarch answered. "The one year he tried to
check the mime troupes, the people rioted and his guardsmen looked likely to
go over to them instead of keeping them in check. After that, he sat quiet and
did his best to pretend nothing was happening."
"What a pity," Maniakes said. "I was hoping he would give me a precedent for
massacring any troupe that didn't strike my fancy." Agathios stared at him,
then decided he was joking and started to laugh.
Maniakes was joking after a fashion. But worries about offending the
Avtokrator went out the window on Midwinter's Day along with everything else.
Mime troupes were supposed to mock the man who held the throne and he was
supposed to take it in good part, no matter how much he wanted to set his
guardsmen on the impudent actors.
Out came the first troupe. Most of them were dressed up as extravagant
caricatures of Makuraner boiler boys, though they weren't mounted. One fellow,
though, wore an even more exaggerated likeness of the imperial regalia
Maniakes had on. The troupe's act was of the utmost simplicity: the boiler
boys chased the fellow playing Maniakes around and around the racetrack. The
crowd thought that was very funny. Had he been sitting up near the top of the
Amphitheater, with no concerns past his own belly and perhaps his family,
Maniakes might have found it funny, too. As it was, he smiled and clapped his
hands and did his best to hold his temper.
He had a long morning ahead of him. One troupe had him and Parsmanios out
looking for Tatoules, and finding a horse apple instead. Another had made a
huge parchment map of the Empire of Videssos it must have cost them a good
many goldpieces and proceeded to tear it in half and burn up the part that
held the westlands. Still another had him running from first the Kubratoi and
then the Makuraners, and the two sets of Videssos' foes colliding with each
other and getting into a brawl.
Maniakes really did clap over that one. Then he realized that, if the Kubratoi
and Makuraners really did meet, they would of necessity do so over the corpse
of the Empire. He wondered if the mimes or the audience fully understood that.
He hoped not.
At last the show ended. Maniakes rose and led the audience in a cheer for the
performers who had entertained them and embarrassed him. He hadn't been the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
