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English, too, meaning subtle, complex, and cunning diplomacy. Having worked with you now, Your Majesty, I can see how the word gained that definition.”
“You flatter me.” Alexios’s voice sounded uncommonly like a purr. The thing about flattery, though, was to enjoy it without letting it sway you. “You may tell Hizzonor that he has no mean ability along these lines himself.”
Daley rumbled laughter. “One horse thief knows another,” he said. That made Alexios laugh too, and again friendship nearly flowered. But he saw that Daley’s smile never quite reached the Mayor’s unsettling eyes. The were two of a kind, all right, each trying to manipulate the other.
The Basileus nodded to Hizzonor once more, then backed into the company of his own bodyguard. Trouble would come very soon, he thought, if the men of Shytown didn’t draw back from this grailtown. The agreed-upon boundary was halfway between it and the next one downstream.
Fatigue smote Alexios again, this time irresistibly. Tomorrow would be time enough to worry about borders.
Michael Palaiologos and other dignitaries from New Constantinople watched as Alexios Komnenos became Vice Mayor of Shytown: with Bornu gone, Palaiologos would serve as the Basileus’s envoy to Mayor Daley. Only Isaac Komnenos stayed home for the ceremony, so treachery from Daley could not wipe out all the leaders of the Rhomaioi at once.
Alexios found himself envying his brother. The aftermen might be devious politicians and clever artisans, but they ran boring ceremonies. Hizzonor made a speech that
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went on and on. Alexios tried for a while to follow the English dialect the opisthanthropoi used, but gave up when he concluded Daley wasn’t really saying anything.
The Basileus expected Father Boyle to administer the vice-mayoral oath to him. That gave him pause: some of his subjects considered followers of the Roman pope like Boyle schismatics. But in fact, a man dressed all in black kiltcloth swore him in; through Boyle, Daley introduced him as Judge Corcoran.
“Judge?” Alexios asked. “A secular title?”
“We separate church and state,” Father Boyle answered. Alexios shrugged; that struck him as falling somewhere between incomprehensible and just plain crazy. But how the Shytowners ran their affairs wasn’t his business.
“Raise your right hand,” Judge Corcoran said. Alexios obeyed. The judge gave him the oath: “Do you solemnly swear to carry out the duties of Vice Mayor of Shytown honestly and to the best of your ability, so help you God?”
The duties of Vice Mayor were, in essence, none. The oath did not refer to any point that had set theologians from Constantinople at odds with those from Rome. In its way, it was admirably simple. Alexios said, “I swear.”
Everyone cheered. Like the oath, Mayor Daley’s way of celebrating was simple but effective. “Now let’s get drunk,” Hizzonor boomed. Servants carried in trays with flasks of wine and whiskey.
Since being reborn along the River, Alexios had developed a taste for whiskey. He liked the way it burned going down but warmed when it got to his middle. He sipped from a flask. “When you come to us,” he told Daley, “I’ll show you our way of doing things.” Hizzonor nodded and reached for another whiskey himself.
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When Mayor Daley descended from his boat to the riverbank, he advanced into New Constantinople through a double file of torchbearers. A chorus sang his praises. Pretty girls strewed flowers at his feet. He grinned enormously. “Fancy stuff,” he said when he met Alexios in front of the imperial palace.
“Why not?” Alexios answered agreeably. “You’ve met my brother Isaac, I think—the current holder of the title Kaisar.”
“No hard feelings, I hope,” Daley said, perhaps sincerely—his own former Vice Mayor had been a nonentity, not his brother. But Isaac only smiled and shook his head. Hizzonor beamed. “Good, good.”
“And here is the ecumenical patriarch of New Constantinople, Evstratios Garidas,” Alexios said, pointing to a man in glittering gold kiltcloth. Most priests among the Rhomaioi took the loss of their beards here along the River very hard, but Garidas had always been smooth-chinned—in Constantinople, he’d been a eunuch. Between having his stones for the first time as an adult and the aphrodisiac effects of dreamgum, his chastity took a beating in the days after New Constantinople’s folk were resurrected, but he remained a good and pious man.