Chapter 82: The Second Dawn

The farmhouse smelled of sheep dung and woodsmoke, and Leo had never in his life been so grateful for either. Andreas banked the fire with a practiced hand, then set a pot of watered wine to warm while Theophano stood with her back to the plaster wall, her riding cloak still crusted with the salt of the sea gate. She had not sat. She had not drunk. She watched the old soldier as a hawk watches a field mouse it has not yet decided to eat.

"Basil will have men at every gate by now," Andreas said, not turning from the hearth. "He keeps lists the way other men keep mistresses. Quietly, and with great attention."

"You know him," Leo said. It was not a question.

"I served under his command for eleven years, in the Anatolikon theme, before they brought me here to rot at a desk." Andreas ladled wine into three clay cups and pushed two across the table. "I was a tourmarches. I commanded three hundred horse at the Battle of Hadath. Then I wrote a letter to a strategos that Basil did not care to read, and I found myself counting grain sacks at Blachernae. That was nine years ago. He has not forgotten me. But he has not killed me either."

"Which is why you owe him a debt," Theophano said. "Or why he thinks you do."

Andreas looked at her then, and something in his weathered face shifted. "The empress has a soldier's eyes. I had heard the rumors. They are insufficient."

Leo set the bundle on the table between them. He did not unwrap it. The firelight played across the linen, and for a moment he could almost see the shape beneath—the iron band, the rough settings where jewels had long since been pried loose by barbarian hands, the weight of an empire that had been too heavy for every man who had ever worn it. Nikephoros had worn it and died in a chapel with his skull split open. Phokas the Elder had worn it and died blind in a monastery. Constantine Porphyrogennetos had worn it and spent his life a puppet of his own generals.

"The crown of Constantine the Great," Andreas said quietly. "I saw it once, when I was a boy. My father took me to the Hippodrome for the triumph of Romanos Lekapenos. It was on the emperor's head then. The old emperor. The one who took the throne from a child and then gave it back to another child." He shook his head slowly. "It has passed through more hands than a whore's coin."

"And now it has passed through mine," Leo said.

"You mean to keep it."

"I mean to decide what it is for."

Theophano moved then, stepping away from the wall, and the firelight caught the line of her jaw and the hollows beneath her eyes. She had ridden through the night with her hair unbound and her face unwashed, and she was still the most dangerous person in the room. "We have until the second bell of the morning," she said. "Tzimiskes will have sealed the land walls by then. He will have sent riders to the themes. He will have begun the business of pretending that he is the rightful emperor and that the man he murdered was a usurper and a tyrant."

"Was he?" Andreas asked.

"Which one?"

"Either. Both."

Leo wrapped his fingers around the warm clay cup. The wine was sour and thin, but it steadied his hands. "Nikephoros Phokas was a soldier who took the throne because the empire needed a soldier. He gave the poor relief from their taxes. He took Crete and Cilicia back from the Saracens. He was a monk in a general's body, and he trusted no one, and that is why he died." He took a sip. "Tzimiskes is a soldier who took the throne because he wanted it. He will be a better emperor than Nikephoros, because he understands that men need more than bread and order. They need to believe that the man on the throne deserves to be there."

"And you?" Theophano's voice was very soft. "What do you believe?"

Leo set the cup down. "I believe that the crown is a symbol, and symbols are only as powerful as the story that surrounds them. Nikephoros let the story be written by his enemies. Tzimiskes will let it be written by his eunuchs and his generals. But the man who holds the crown, the man who can say where it came from and why—" He stopped. "That man writes the story himself."

Andreas grunted. "And you think that man is you."

"I think that man could be anyone. But I am the one who is here."

Theophano laughed, a short, sharp sound that held no warmth. "You are a scribe. A cipher. A clerk with ink on his fingers and a talent for staying alive. You are not a general. You are not a noble. You are not even a soldier."

"No," Leo agreed. "I am the man who wrote the treaty that ended the war in the east. I am the man who broke the cipher of the Saracen fleet and gave Nikephoros the ships he needed to take Crete. I am the man who stood in the shadows of the chapel and watched John Tzimiskes cut down an emperor, and I am the man who walked out of that chapel with the crown in my hands and a lie on my tongue." He leaned forward. "The throne is not for soldiers, Theophano. It is for men who understand what thrones are for."

Andreas had gone very still. "And what are they for?"

"Order," Leo said. "The empire is a body, and the emperor is the heart. But the heart does not think. The heart does not plan. The heart does not write the law or count the grain or know which gate commander is owed a favor and which one is owed a knife. The men who do those things—the parakoimomenoi, the logothetes, the scribes—they are the mind. And Basil has been the mind of this empire for forty years. It is time someone else took his place."

The silence stretched. Somewhere in the darkness outside, a dog barked, and then another, and then a third—a chain of sound that moved across the hills like a signal.

Andreas stood up. "That is either a shepherd or a scout," he said. "Either way, we have less time than I thought." He crossed to a chest in the corner and opened it, drawing out a rolled parchment sealed with wax. "This is a writ of safe passage through the Thracian gates, signed by the parakoimomenos himself. It is eight years old, but the seals are genuine and the gate commanders have changed less than you might think. It will get you to Adrianople."

"And then?"

"And then you must decide what you are." He held the scroll out to Leo. "The man who delivers the crown to Tzimiskes and begs forgiveness. Or the man who raises a standard against him."

Leo took the scroll. It was heavy in his hand, heavier than the crown had been. "There is a third way."

"There always is."

He turned to Theophano. "Your husband's decree. The one Nikephoros signed in the days before his death. Do you still have it?"

She touched her breast, where the parchment lay hidden beneath her gown. "I have it."

"Then we do not go to Adrianople. We go to the army. The men who marched with Tzimiskes to the gates of the city are the same men who marched with Nikephoros to the walls of Tarsus. They loved him. They will not love the man who killed him in a chapel at dawn."

Andreas shook his head slowly. "You mean to divide the army."

"I mean to give them a choice," Leo said. "The crown, or the killer. The man who wrote the law, or the man who broke it."

Theophano's eyes gleamed in the firelight. "And who will carry the crown to them?"

Leo looked at the bundle on the table. Then he looked at her. "The empress," he said. "And the scribe who knows the cipher of every general in the east."

The door rattled. Andreas was on his feet in an instant, a short sword in his hand, and Leo heard the sound of hooves in the yard, and a voice calling out in the darkness—a voice he knew.

"Leo Anatolius!" the voice called. "By order of the Emperor John Tzimiskes, you are commanded to surrender the crown and the empress, and to present yourself for judgment!"

Theophano's hand found Leo's wrist. Her fingers were cold.

"Basil's men?" she whispered.

"No," Leo said. He knew that voice. He had heard it in the chancery, in the cisterns, in the chapel where an emperor had died. "That is Symeon. The parakoimomenos's own secretary. Which means Basil is not hunting us."

He picked up the bundle and pressed it into Theophano's hands.

"Basil is offering us a choice," he said. "And I intend to take it."

He opened the door.