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Then Maniakes drank. The wine, golden in a silver cup, slid down his throat
smooth as if it were sunlight itself.
"Well," Rhegorios said indignantly, walking into the little dining hall where
his kinsfolk waited. "Shows the importance have around here, when people
start
I
drinking without me."
Maniakes pointed to the extra cup Kameas had left behind. "We don't have a
long start on you, cousin of mine not like the one Abivard got on us when he
moved against the city while we were sailing to Lyssaion. If you apply
yourself, I expect you can catch up."
"Apply myself to wine?" Rhegorios raised an eyebrow. "Now there's a shocking
notion." He used the dipper to fill the cup.
"I'm not shocked at it." Symvatios said. Rhegorios winced, rhetorically
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betrayed by his own father. After a perfectly timed pause, Symvatios went on,
"I daresay you get it from me."
The elder Maniakes said, "It's a gift that runs in the family, I expect.
Father certainly had it." Symvatios nodded at that. The elder Maniakes went
on, "He had so much of it, sometimes he needed two or three tries before he
could make it through a door."
"He was right when it mattered, though," Symvatios said. "When he did his
drinking, it was when he didn't have to do anything else." He paused again.
"Well, most of the time, anyhow."
"You're scandalizing your children, you know, the two of you," Rhegorios told
his father and uncle. "Maniakes and I don't remember Grandfather all that
well, so if you tell us he was an old soak, we'll believe you."
"What else will you believe if we tell it to you?" Symvatios asked. "Will you
believe we're as wise and clever as we say?"
"Of course not," Rhegorios replied at once. "We do know you."
Both Maniakai, father and son, laughed. So did Symvatios. Kameas brought in a
tray full of little squid sauteed in olive oil, vinegar, and garlic. They went
well with the wine. Before too long, the jar was empty. The vestiarios fetched
in another of the same vintage. For a little while, Maniakes managed to enjoy
the company of his kin enough to take his mind off what Lysia was going
through in the Red Room.
But time stretched. If Maniakes didn't intend to emulate his grandfather or
the account of his grandfather his father and uncle gave he had to keep from
drinking himself blind. And if he slowed his drinking so as to keep his wits
about him, those wits kept returning to his wife.
Lysia had begun her labor around midmorning. The sun was sinking toward late
autumn's early setting when Zoile strode into the little dining hall and
thrust a blanket-wrapped bundle at Maniakes. "Your Majesty, you have a
daughter," the midwife announced.
Maniakes stared down at the baby, who was staring up at him. Their eyes met
for a moment before those of the tiny girl wandered away. She was a dusky red
color, and her head wasn't quite me right shape. Maniakes had learned all that
was normal enough. He asked the question uppermost in his mind: "Is Lysia all
right?"
"She seems very well." If Zoile disapproved of his having married his cousin,
she didn't show it. Since Maniakes had the strong impressions she was as frank
as a
Haloga, he took that for a good omen. The midwife went on, "She has been
through this business a time or two, you know."
"Three, now," Maniakes corrected absently. "May I see her?" When it came to
matters of the Red Room, even the Avtokrator of the Videssians asked the
midwife's leave.
Zoile nodded. "Go ahead. She'll be hungry, you know, and tired. I think Kameas
has already gone to get her something." She pointed toward the baby Maniakes
was still holding. "What will you name her, your Majesty?"
"Savellia," Maniakes said; he and Lysia had chosen the name not far into her
pregnancy.
"That's pretty," Zoile said, as quick and sharp in approval as in everything
else.
"It's the Videssian form of a Vaspurakaner name, isn't it?"
"That's right." The elder Maniakes spoke for his son, whose command of the
language of his ancestors was sketchy. "The original is Zabel."
"Forgive me, your highness, but I like it better in Videssian disguise," Zoile
said no, she wasn't one to hide her opinions about anything.
Maniakes carried Savellia down the hall to the Red Room. The baby wiggled in
the surprisingly strong, purposeless way newborns have. If he stepped too
hard, it would startle his daughter, and she would try to throw her arms and
legs wide, though the blanket in which she was wrapped kept her from managing
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it. Frustrated, she started to cry, a high, thin, piercing wail designed to
make new parents do whatever they could to stop it.
She was still crying when Maniakes walked into the Red Room with her. "Here,
give her to me," Lysia said indignantly, stretching out her arms but not
rising from the bed on which she lay. She looked as exhausted as if she'd just
fought in a great battle, as indeed she had. She didn't sound altogether
rational, and probably wasn't. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]