Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 by Harry Turtledove

it,” Goudeles replied, chuckling at his naïveté. “Surely as Phos’ sun rises in the east, one of the leisured gentlemen of the harbor is in his pay.”
    More sophisticated than the Gaul at governors’ wiles, Gorgidas had reasoned that out for himself, but he was not displeased to have it confirmed. This Sivas’ main function was to watch the plains for the Empire. If he kept them as closely surveyed as he did his own city, Videssos was well served.
    Methodios Sivas was a surprisingly young man, not far past thirty. His outsized nose gave him an air of engaging homeliness, and he was boisterous enough to fit his frontier surroundings. He pounded Arigh on the back, shouting, “Arghun’s son, is it? Will you make me put sentries at the wells again?”
    Arigh giggled, a startling sound from him. “No need. I’ll be good.”
    “You’d better.” Making sure each of his guests had a full wine cup, Sivas explained, “When this demon’s sprig came through here on his way to the city, he threw a handful of frogs into every well in town.”
    Lankinos Skylitzes looked shocked and then guffawed; Goudeles, Viridovix, and Gorgidas were mystified. “Don’t you see?” Sivas said, and then answered himself, “No, of course you don’t. Why should you? You don’t deal with the barbarians every day—sometimes I forget it’s me on the edge of nowhere, not the rest of the Empire. Here’s the long and short of it, then: all Khamorth are deathly afraid of frogs. They wouldn’t drink our water for three days!”
    “Hee, hee!” Arigh said, laughing afresh at the memory of his practical joke. “That’s not all, and you know it. They had to pay a Videssian to hunt down all the little beasts, and then sacrifice a black lamb over each well to drive away the pollution. And your priest of Phos tried to stop
that
, quacking about heathen rites. It was glorious.”
    “It was ghastly,” Sivas retorted. “One clan packed up an easy fivethousand goldpieces’ worth of skins and went back to the steppe with ’em. The merchants howled for months.”
    “Frogs, is it?” Gorgidas said, scribbling a note on a scrap of parchment. The
hypepoptes
noticed and asked him why. Rather hesitantly, he explained about his history. Sivas surprised him with a thoughtful nod and several intelligent questions; sharp wits hid beneath his rough exterior.
    The governor had other interests hardly to be expected from a frontiersman. Though his residence, with its thick walls, slit windows, and iron-banded oak doors, could double as a fortress, the garden that bloomed in the courtyard was a riot of colors. Mallows and roses bloomed in neat rows. So did yellow and lavender adder’s-tongues, which told Gorgidas of Sivas’ skill. The low plants, their leaves mottled green and brown, belonged in moist forests or on the mountainside, not here at the edge of the steppe.
    As was only natural, Sivas, isolated from events in the capital, was eager to hear the news the embassy brought with it. He exclaimed in satisfaction when he learned how Thorisin Gavras had regained control of the sea from the rebel forces led by Baanes Onomagoulos and Elissaios Bouraphos. “Damn the traitors anyway,” he said. “I’ve been sending messages with every ship that sailed for the capital for the last two months; they must have sunk them all. That’s too long, with Avshar running loose.”
    “Are you sure it’s himself?” Viridovix asked. The name of the wizard-prince was enough to distract him from his flirtation with one of the
hypepotes’
serving girls. A bachelor, Sivas had several comely women in his employ, even if their mixed blood made them too stocky to conform to the Videssian ideal of beauty.
    He did not seem put out by the Celt’s trifling. Viridovix had obviously intrigued him from the moment he set eyes on him; men of the Gaul’s stature and coloring were rare among the peoples the Videssians knew, and his musical accent was altogether strange.
    Now