Bridge of the Separator

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When a synod in Videssos the city named Rhavas prelate of Skopentzana, the priest thought he was being sent into exile. Not only that, he thought it an insult to the imperial family, for wasn't his grandmother sister to the grandfather of Maleinos II, Avtokrator of the Videssians? To put it mildly, he didn't want to leave the imperial capital for the city in the far northeast of the Empire of Videssos.

Old Neboulos, the ecumenical patriarch of Videssos, finally had to take him aside and talk sense into him. Gorgeous in a cloth-of-gold robe with Phos' sun picked out in shining blue silk on the left breast, Neboulos sat Rhavas down in the study of the patriarchal residence, close by the High Temple. The patriarch's long, bushy white beard wagged as he poured wine for both of them with his own hand.

"This is not exile," Neboulos insisted. "It is not—I swear it by the lord with the great and good mind. It is opportunity."

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