The Dance of Time

"Well!" Antonina said briskly. "It'll all be settled tomorrow, at the council session. In the meantime—"

She turned to Timothy. "Please continue the work. Ignore this grumbler. The sooner you can get that finished, the sooner I can talk to my husband again."

* * *

"And that's another thing!" Ousanas grumbled, as they headed toward the Ta'akha Maryam. "It's just a waste. You can't say anything either secret or personal—not with that sort of broadcast radio—and it won't work anyway, once the monsoon comes with its thunderstorms. So I've been told, at least."

Antonina glanced at the sun, now at its mid-day altitude, as if gauging the season. "We're still some months from the southwest monsoon, you know. Plenty of time."

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Framed

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Chapter 9

Constantinople

"You'd be putty in your father's hands," Theodora sneered.

"Which one? Belisarius or Justinian?"

"Either—no, both, since they're obviously conspiring with each other."

The dark eyes of the Empress Regent moved away from Photius and Tahmina to glare at a guard standing nearby. So far as Photius could determine, the poor man's only offense was that he happened to be in her line of sight.

Perhaps he also bore a vague resemblance to Belisarius. He was tall, at least, and had brown eyes.

Angrily, Theodora slapped the heavily-decorated armrest of her throne. "Bad enough that he's exposing my husband to danger! But he's also giving away half my empire!"

She shifted the glare back to Photius. "Excuse me. Your empire."

The correction was, quite obviously, a formality. The apology was not even that, given the tone in which she'd spoken the words.

"You hate to travel," Photius pointed out, reasonably. "And since you're actually running my empire"—here he bestowed a cherubic smile on his official adoptive mother—"you can't afford to leave the capital anyway."

"I detest that smile," Theodora hissed. "Insincere as a crocodile's. How did you get to be so devious, already? You're only eleven years old."

Photius was tempted to reply: from studying you, Mother. Wisely, he refrained.

If she were in a better mood, actually, Theodora would take it as a compliment. But, she wasn't. She was in as foul a mood as she ever got, short of summoning the executioners.

Photius and his wife Tahmina had once, giggling, develop their own method for categorizing Theodora's temper. First, they divided it into four seasons:

Placid. The most pleasant season, albeit usually brief.

Sour. A very long season. More or less the normal climate.

Sullen. Not as long as sour season. Not quite.

Fury. Fortunately, the shortest season of all. Very exciting while it lasted, though.

Then, they ranked each season in terms of its degree of intensity, from alpha to epsilon.

Photius gauged this one as a Sullen Epsilon.

Well... Not quite. Call it a Sullen Delta.

In short, caution was called for here. On the other hand, there was still some room for further prodding and pushing. Done gingerly.

"I like to travel myself," he piped cheerfully. "So I'm the logical one to send on a grand tour to visit our allies in the war. And it's not as if you really need me here."

He did not add: or want me here, either. That would be unwise. True, Theodora had all the maternal instincts of a brick. But she liked to pretend otherwise, for reasons Photius had never been able to fathom.

Tahmina said it was because, if she didn't, it would give rise to rumors that she'd been spawned by Satan. That might be true, although Photius was skeptical. After all, plenty of people already thought the Empress Regent had been sired by the devil.

Photius didn't, himself. Maybe one of Hell's underlings, but not Satan himself.

Theodora was back to glaring at the guard. No, a different one. His offense...

Hard to say. He resembled neither Belisarius nor Justinian. Except for being a man, which, in Theodora's current humor, was probably enough.

"Fine!" she snapped. "You can go. If nothing else, it'll keep Antonina from nattering at me every day once the radio starts working. By now, months since she left, she'll be wallowing in guilt and whining and whimpering about how much she misses her boy. God knows why. Devious little wretch."

She swiveled the dark-eyed glare onto Tahmina, sitting next to Photius. "You too. Or else once the cunning little bastard gets to Ethiopia he'll start nattering at me over the radio about how much he misses his wife. God knows why. It's not as if he's old enough yet to have a proper use for a wife."

Yet a third guard received the favor of her glare. "You can celebrate your sixteenth birthday in Axum. I'll send the gifts along with you."

Tahmina smiled sweetly and bowed her head. "Thank you, Mother."

"I'm not your mother. You don't fool me. You're as bad as he is. No child of mine would be so sneaky. Now go."

* * *