Isaac’s bushy eyebrows flew toward his hairline. “You would deal with those—those aftermen?” Opisthanthropoi , was a word in no Greek lexicon; the folk of New Constantinople had coined it to describe people on the River who came from a time many centuries later than their own.
“God and the saints know I have no love for them,” Alexios said. Aftermen were generally weak in faith, which made them unreliable, and strong in arcane gadg-etry, which made them dangerous. Alexios sighed once more. “But they are on Bornu’s other flank. If they work with us, the pagans will fall like ripe wheat at harvesttime.”
“Let us make sure that we reap the full benefit thereof, though, not the men of Shytown,” Isaac warned.
176
Harry TUrtledove
TWO THIEVES
177
At last Alexios found something to amuse him. “Brother of mine, I was Basileus of the Romans for thirty-seven years. In all that time, did anyone ever out-trick me?”
Isaac did not answer. Alexios knew he had no answer. He’d stood off rebels from among his own people, Turks and Patzinaks and Normans; he’d even funneled through his Empire the western barbarians who called themselves Crusaders, and taken for the Rhomaioi most of the territory they’d won from the Seljuks in Anatolia. Maybe someone along the endless River was more cunning than he, but he had his doubts.
As if picking that boastful thought from his mind, Isaac said, “Do be cautious nonetheless. Shytown’s Basileus is not a fool.”
“Another truth. He does not style himself Emperor, though. While he is no Frank, he uses one of their titles—he calls himself Mayor.”
“I wonder why?” Isaac mused.
“Who knows why the aftermen do as they do?” Alexios answered. “Their customs are even stranger than the Franks’, and you know what it means for me to say that.” No Franks lay anywhere close along the River, for which Alexios thanked God. Unwashed, ignorant, stinking, brutal savages—who happened to be inhumanly good at slaughtering anyone who got in their way. The Emperor rubbed his naked chin. “Where was I? Oh, yes, the customs of Shytown’s aftermen. Do you know they didn’t pick their Mayor by his courage or birth or anything sensible? No, they had all the people who wanted the job make speeches, and then chose by a show of hands from men and women both. ‘Democracy,’ they call it. It’s idiocy, if you ask me.”
“Demokratia.” Isaac spat in the dirt. In the Greek the
two Komnenoi spoke, the word meant “mob rule.” As Alexios said, it seemed a daft way to run a state, but Shytown flourished. Isaac added, “Do you really have to go there yourself?”
“Whom do you propose I send?” Alexios retorted. “The only other two men I might trust for the job are you and Michael Palaiologos. If I pull Michael out of Bornu town, Musa will surely divine what I aim to do. And. you, brother of mine, make a better soldier than an ambassador. Meaning no disrespect, but in a dicker the Mayor would eat you up and pick his teeth with your bones.”
Since that was true, Isaac could only give his brother a reproachful stare. He said, “How do you even propose to get to Shytown? You let Idris Alooma go, so the Muslim blacks will know trouble lies ahead for them. And Musa ar-Rahman is no fool either. He will be looking for you to try to stab him in the back like that. Were I he, I’d have rafts in the water day and night. Do you want to be fished out and tortured, then given time to heal and tortured again for years on end?”
“Do I want that? Of course not. But I have to get to Shytown, and I don’t think I could pass myself off as a proper subject of Musa’s to sneak across his domain.” Alexios laughed. So did Isaac, but he sounded more dutiful than amused. Black men of Musa ar-Rahman’s tribe made up about two thirds of the people of Bornu. Most of the rest were short, golden-skinned, flat-featured, and narrow-eyed. Alexios’s chance of successfully impersonating a member of either group was effectively none.