He sighed again. Phostis, his eldest, his heir—his cuckoo's egg? He'd never known for sure whether Dara had conceived by him or by Anthimos. whom he'd overthrown. The boy's— no, young man's now—looks were no help, for he looked like Dara. Krispos' doubts had always made it hard for him to warm up to the child he'd named for his own father.

And now ... Now he wondered if he'd been so nearly intolerable as he was growing into manhood. He didn't think so, but who does, looking back on his own youth? Of course, his own younger years were full of poverty and hunger and fear and backbreaking work. He'd spared Phostis all that, but he wondered if his son was the better for it.

He probably was. There were those in Videssos the city who praised the hard, simple life the Empire's peasants led. who even put into verse the virtues that life imbued into those peasants. Krispos thought they were full of the manure they'd surely never touched with their own daintily manicured fingers.

Barsymes said, "The young Majesty will yet make you proud." Fondness touched his usually cool voice. Since he could have no children of his own, he doted on the ones he'd helped raise from infancy.

"I hope you're right," Krispos said. He worried still. Was Phostis as he was because of Anthimos' blood coming through? The man Krispos had supplanted in Dara's bed and then in the palaces had had a sort of hectic brilliance to him, but applied it chiefly in pursuit of pleasure. Whenever Phostis did something extravagantly foolish, Krispos worried about his paternity.

Was Phostis really spoiled from growing up soft? Or, asked the cold, suspicious part of Krispos that never quite slept and that had helped keep him on the throne for more than two decades, was he just getting tired of watching his father rule vigorously? Did he want to take the Empire of Videssos into his own young hands?

Krispos looked up at Barsymes. "If a man can't rely on his own son, esteemed sir, upon whom can he rely? Present company excepted, of course."