Kings of Morning

FOUR

There was a comfort in the coolness of the stone. Kurun pressed himself into the corner of the cell farthest from the door, curled up like a woodlouse. The floor was sheened with condensation, for it was colder than the air. Kurun wiped his palm across it and tried to use the accumulated moisture to wash himself, to wipe the filth away, but the blood, and other matter, was a caking, slimed mess from his buttocks to his knees. He gave up, pressed his forehead to the kindly stone, and emptied his mind. There was nothing more to think of. If he lived or died it meant nothing now, to himself or to anyone else.

A rattle in the lock brought him upright in a spasm of terror all the same. His feet scrabbled on the floor as he tried to push himself farther into the corner of the cell. Now the stone was his enemy, unyielding, spurning his flesh.

The door swung open, lamplight blinding him. He held up a hand like a man staring into the sun.

‘Can you walk?’

He nodded, crawled up the wall, his fingers hunting for gaps in the blocks. Then his legs left him, and he hit the floor with a slap.

‘Bel’s blood. Banon, you made this mess; go pick it up. We don’t have all night — I’m expected back at the gardens.’

A bulk that blocked out the light. A familiar smell. Kurun came alive, punching and scratching like a frightened cat.

‘Be still, you little bitch.’ A massive fist clouted him on the side of the head, sending lights shooting through his mind, filling his ears with a high-pitched hiss. He was picked up and tucked under one arm by the tall Honai.

‘Bring him — and make sure you clean out that cell after. This is not the undercity.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kurun was carried into torchlight, head down, like a rabbit brought home for the pot. He saw sandaled feet tramping, wisps of straw on stone. He retched, but there was nothing left to come up. He clenched his eyes shut, wondering what death would be like. It could not be worse than what they had done to him already.

‘Strap him in, and then get back to your post. And Banon, clean yourself up, for pity’s sake. He’s slobbered all over you.’

‘It was worth it, chief.’

Kurun was in some kind of chair. His wrists were buckled to the arms with leather straps. Then his legs were pulled apart. He tried to fight, but the pain was too much. He was strapped at the ankles and knees, his thighs held apart. He opened his swollen eyes.

A small, windowless room, much like the cell he had left. A tall, magnificently dressed Kefre watched him. He knew the face, but the smothering panic blotted out anything else. Sandalwood perhaps, the fragrance dim as a broken spark outside his heart’s thunder.

There was a table by the far wall, and an old hufsan was busy at it, spitting on a stone. Then Kurun heard the steady rhythmic scrape of a knife being sharpened, the rasp of steel on stone which was intimate to him after all his years in the kitchens.

‘Lord, no, please. Kill me if you want. But not that.’ The tears fell from his eyes in silver ribbons.

The Honai said nothing. He seemed preoccupied. He was reading a scrap of parchment. He grunted.

‘Your friend Auroc has disowned you, boy. Says you are quite the little troublemaker.’

‘Auroc? No — Lord, no. I beg you.’

For the first time the Honai’s bright, violet eyes met his own. ‘You have spirit, slave. For a kitchen scullion to spy upon the Great King and his family! I hope you were well paid.’

‘No-one paid me. I was stupid. I did not think.’

‘Maybe.’

The door opened. In came a massive, black-haired Kefre with a heavy face. His eyes were dark with anger. At once, the Honai went to one knee, then straightened. Deference sat deep-planted on the Honai’s countenance. And fear.

‘My Lord Kouros. This is the boy.’

The dark Kefre loomed over Kurun, ignoring the greeting. ‘Did you get anything out of him?’

‘Nothing of use. He holds to his story.’ A pause. ‘My prince, I think it may be the truth.’

‘I am not a spy!’ Kurun screamed.

Kouros knelt until his face was level with Kurun’s. He held out a hand. Without a word, the elderly hufsan in the corner came forward and set the knife within it. Kouros felt the edge, his gaze never leaving Kurun’s face.

‘Was it my brother?’ he asked, softly. ‘Was it Prince Rakhsar?’

Kurun’s vision was broken into a spangled mosaic of tears. ‘Lord, I am a kitchen slave,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I am nothing.’

The violet eyes studied him. The Kefren prince exuded anger, like perfume made rank by sweat. The hand which held the knife trembled slightly. There was a smell of burning in the room. The hufsan at the table had uncovered a clay firepot and was blowing the coals within into life.

At last Kouros seemed to relax somewhat. He breathed out.

‘I believe you’re right. The boy is telling the truth,’ he said. ‘I can see it in him.’

The Honai nodded. ‘Youth makes for foolishness. What shall I do with him, my prince?’

Kurun was sobbing with relief, sagging in the leather bonds that imprisoned his limbs. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you, lord.’

Then Kouros leaned close, a flash of movement startlingly swift in so bulky a form. He grasped at Kurun’s soft flesh, and the knife sawed a second, then slid cleanly through. A jet of blood, black and shining, spattered Kouros’s face. Kurun shrieked.

At once the hufsan scuttled forward, holding a skewer of iron whose tip glowed yellow. He thrust it between Kurun’s legs and worked the point back and forth, as though he were smearing plaster into a crevice. A sickening smoke rose. Kurun screamed and strained in the chair until the straps were bloody and the sinews in his neck stood out like wires.

Kouros studied his handiwork. The Honai handed him a linen towel and he wiped his face.

‘He’s a pretty one, all right. Just the sort Rakhsar would like.’ Then he smiled, and set a hand on the Honai’s breastplate. ‘No — the lady Roshana. Have him sent to her. Let her know the whole way of it. She has a heart of corn, a soft spot for waifs and strays. This will let her know what I do to her brother’s spies.’

‘Even when they are not spies at all. A capital notion, sir,’ Dyarnes said, face impassive.

The grin on Kouros’s face sat uneasily. It did not seem to suit his features. ‘A clean cut, Dyarnes?’

‘Very clean, my Lord. I could not have done better.’

‘The Great King’s son must never shrink from using the knife when he deems it necessary. I never shall. Have him sent to my half-sister’s apartments just as he is.’

‘Yes lord. It shall be done tonight.’

The uneasy, un-right smile was still on Kouros’s face as he left. Dyarnes stood looking down on Kurun a moment more.

‘Give him something for the pain,’ he said to the hufsan in the corner, his golden face twisted with disgust. And then he swept out of the room without a backward glance.

‘So, you joined a Royal dinner without invitation,’ the old hufsan chuckled. He bent and picked up the bloody piece of meat from the floor and waved it in front of Kurun’s pain-glazed eyes. ‘These are bigger than most, my young friend. Say goodbye to them now. Your life is starting over again tonight. You were very lucky.’

‘Lucky.’ Kurun slurred the word. He had bitten through his own tongue, and his mouth was full of blood.

The hufsan was a bent, brown creature in a dun robe the same colour as his skin, His eyes were bright as a bird’s, and he had the long fingers of a musician, or a scholar.

‘Rinse your mouth out.’ A bowl was placed at Kurun’s mouth. ‘Good. Now spit — over your shoulder.’

The bloody liquid dribbled from Kurun’s mouth. The old hufsan wiped it away with the cloth Kouros had discarded.

‘You are no spy of Rakhsar. I could have told him that.’ He took a mortar from the table and scooped out the contents with one hand. Then he knelt between Kurun’s legs and began gently smearing it over the seared gash there. Kurun came to life again, struggled in the chair, moaned thickly.

‘Hold still. If it’s done right now, you’ll still look pretty down there, and you may even have a cock that works. This was done to you later in life than usual, so you may keep something of your manhood about you. You’ll never need to shave, though.’

He put the mortar away, wiped his hands, humming like a man content with his work, and produced a vial of amber-yellow liquid. He put it to Kurun’s bloody mouth. ‘Don’t waste a drop. This is juice of the poppy, and you’re lucky to get it. I think Dyarnes liked you. And the prince knew it, or he’d have gutted you for the fun of it. Believe me, I’ve seen it. But the black bastard still has some shame about him. He knows a needless killing would get back to his father. Dyarnes still serves two masters.

‘There. Good boy. In a moment or two you’ll feel the pain go, and all the worries of your little life. I’ll unbuckle you then.’ He stroked the boy’s thick black hair.

‘You are alive, and young, my friend. This shall pass, as all things do. It is not the end. Believe me, I know.’

‘Who?’ Kurun gargled.

‘My name is Hiram. I’m from the Harem.’ He giggled. ‘Hiram of the Harem, that’s me. They dragged me out of my bed to make sure you wouldn’t bleed to death. Yours aren’t the first balls I’ve picked up off the floor, believe me.’

‘Kurun shook his head, stared at the door. ‘Who — ’ he repeated.

‘Ah, I see. Well, you have been mixing in elevated company this night, kitchen-boy. The tall Honai was Dyarnes, master of the King’s Bodyguard. And the black-haired, grinning monster who sliced your manhood off was no less than prince Kouros himself, whom most think will one day sit in his father’s chair and rule the empire. He thought you a minion of his brother’s. Or perhaps he didn’t. It hardly matters.’ Hiram grinned, showing yellow teeth as uneven as the gaps in a broken fence.

Kurun sagged in the chair. His eyes dulled. ‘Death,’ he said, a long whisper that tapered into a sob.

Hiram stroked his hair again. ‘Not death, little one. Not tonight. Kouros tried too hard to be cruel. Roshana will see that you are well treated. She has her mother in her. And this will not be the first time Kouros has left something broken at her door. I remember, when they were children, he once strangled her favourite nightingale and set it on her pillow.’ Hiram’s face grew grim, the fine-wrinkled skin tightening about his mouth.

Kurun was sleeping now, breathing deep, his head sunk on his chest. Hiram began to unbuckle him from the chair.

‘From the kitchen to the Court. You are going up in the world, boy. One day you may even think the price was worth paying.’ His face twisted, something like self-mockery flitting across it.

‘One day.’

Across the ziggurats of the city the sunrise poured down, catching the golden plated Fane of Bel and setting it alight in a gleam of yellow flame. Those in the teeming streets below looked up at the sight and touched their foreheads in salute to the sun, to Bel the life-giver.

The world had been given another morning.

Along the Huruma the priests went in procession with their long-handled snuffers, putting out the street-torches and welcoming the dawn with ancient sonorous songs whose words they no longer understood, but whose melodies were woven into the very fabric of Ashur itself.

The traffic was already moving in long lines through every gate in the fabled walls, and in the irrigated fields beyond, farmers walked waist-deep in the last of the night’s mist. The air about them was alive with the croaking of frogs and the white egrets rose like flocks of ghosts from the palm trees.

Even at this early hour, there was a promise of heat behind the moist cool of the air, and shimmers of insects rose out of the damp ground to hang in clouds overhead. Summer was growing, and the season was turning towards the white blinding days of heat and dust that marked the zenith of the year.

Summer was growing, and the snows in the mountains were retreating up into the peaks, widening the passes. The good grass was thickening underfoot and the soil was hardening. This was the beginning of true campaigning weather.

It was the time for the fighting of wars.