But the patrician said, "Emperor, I'll do that if you command it, but it's a waste of lives on both sides. I can do it for you cheaper, if you'll let me." He spent the next little while explaining how.

My father was not a man greatly given to laughter, but he laughed then, loud and long. "By the Virgin, Theodore, I should have left you in command against the Bulgars, not those blockheads who called themselves generals. How many men will you need, do you suppose?"

"A troop's worth, to make sure the soldiers don't mob me before I can harangue 'em," Theodore answered. Then he turned to me. "If the prince comes with me, too, it will make the offer look better."

I very much wanted to go; if I could do anything to keep my uncles from stealing my rightful place in the succession, I would. But I looked for my father to hesitate: if Theodore betrayed him and handed me over to Herakleios, Tiberius, and the soldiers they led, that would greatly aid their cause and hurt his.

He, however, nodded and replied at once: "Yes, take him." Not until years later, when the throne was mine, did I realize he dared not let any doubt he might have had show. That could have put doubt in Theodore's mind as well, which was the last thing my father wanted. The best way to keep your subjects from doubting you is to look sure, regardless of whether you are.

Theodore of Koloneia was like my family and unlike most other men I have known in that he made up his mind quickly and wasted no time in acting upon whatever he decided. By the time the sun reached its high point in the sky, he, I, and the troop of excubitores he had asked for had left the palace and were on the way to the Forum of Constantine, the plaza commemorating the founder of the imperial city, the Emperor who, like a thirteenth Apostle, made the Roman Empire Christian.

Even before then, Theodore had sent runners to every quarter of Constantinople, calling on the soldiers of the Anatolian military districts to assemble at the Forum to hear him and me. "That could get sticky, Prince, if your uncles the junior Emperors- the former junior Emperors, I should say- show up there, too," he told me. "But I don't think they will. I think they'll suspect a trap, and so stay away."