The Thousand Cities

IV

Mikhran marzban put a hand on Abivard's shoulder. «I should be going with you. You came to my rescue, you promulgated this policy for my benefit, and you, it seems, will have to suffer the consequences alone.»

«No, don't be a fool-stay here,» Abivard told him. «Not only that: keep on doing as we've been doing till Sharbaraz directly orders you to stop. Keep on then, too, if you dare. If the princes rise up against us, we aren't going to be able to conquer Videssos.»

«What-?» Mikhran hesitated but finished the question: «What do you suppose the King of Kings will do to you?»

«That's what I'm going to find out,» Abivard answered. «With luck, he'll shout and fuss and then calm down and let me tell him what we've been doing and why. Without luck-well, I hope I'll have reason to be glad he's married to my sister.»

The marzban nodded, then asked, «Whom will you leave in command of the army here?»

«It has to be Romezan,» Abivard answered regretfully. «He's senior, and he has the prestige among our men from killing Gazrik. I'd give the job to Kardarigan if I could, but I can't.»

«He may have more prestige among us, but the princes won't be happy to see him in charge of our warriors,» Mikhran said.

«I can't do anything about that, either,» Abivard said. «You're in overall command here, remember: over Romezan, over everyone now that I'm not going to be around for a while. Use that power well and the Vaspurakaners won't notice that Romezan leads the army.»

«I'll try,» Mikhran said. «But I wasn't part of this army, so there's no guarantee they'll heed me as they would one of their own.»

«Act so natural about it that they never think to do anything else,» Abivard advised him. «One of the secrets to command is never giving the men you're leading any chance to doubt you have the right. That's not a magic Bogorz knows, or Panteles either, but it's nonetheless real even so.»

«Vshnasp spoke of that kind of magic, too,» Mikhran said, «save that he said that so long as you never seemed to doubt a woman would come to your bed, in the end she would not doubt it, either. I'd sooner not emulate his fate.»

«I don't expect you to seduce Romezan-for which I hope you're relieved,» Abivard said, drawing a wry chuckle from the marzban. «I only want you to keep him under some sort of rein till I return. Is that asking too much?»

«Time will tell,» Mikhran replied in tones that did not drip optimism.

Roshnani, understanding why Abivard had been recalled to Mashiz, shared his worries. Like him, she had no idea whether they would be returning to Vaspurakan. Their children, however, went wild with excitement at the news, and Abivard could hardly blame them. Now, at last, they were going back to Makuran, a land that had assumed all but legendary proportions in their minds. Any why not? They'd heard of it but had hardly any memories of seeing it.

When the King of Kings ordered his general to attend him immediately, he got what he desired. The day after his command reached Shahapivan, Pashang got the wagon in which Abivard and his family traveled rattling westward. With them rode an escort of fourscore heavy cavalry, partly to help clear the road at need and partly to persuade bandits that attacking the wagon would not be the best idea they'd ever had. Past Maragha, the mountains of Vaspurakan began dwindling down toward hills once more and then to a rolling steppe country that was dry and bleak and cool in the winter, dry and bleak and blazing hot in summertime.

«I don't like this land,» Abivard said when they stopped at one of the infrequent streams to water the horses.

«Nor I,» Roshnani agreed. «The first time we went through it, after all-oh, south of here, but the same kind of country-was when we were fleeing the Thousand Cities and hoping the Videssians would give us shelter.»

«You're right,» he exclaimed. «That must be it, for this doesn't look much different from the badlands west of the Dilbat Mountains, the sort of country you'd find between strongholds. And yet the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I didn't know why.»

After a few days of crossing the badlands, days in which the only life they saw outside their own company was a handful of rabbits, a fox, and, high in the sky, a hawk endlessly circling, green glowed on the western horizon, almost as if the sea lay ahead. But Abivard, these past months, had turned his back on the sea. He pointed ahead, asking his children if they knew what the green meant.

Varaz obviously did but looked down on the question as being too easy for him to deign to answer. After a small hesitation Shahin said, «That's the start of the Thousand Cities, isn't it? The land between the rivers, I mean, the, the-» He scowled. He'd forgotten their names.

«The Tutub and the Tib,» Varaz said importantly. Then, all at once, he lost some of that importance. «I'm sorry, Papa, but I've forgotten which one is which.»

«That's the Tutub just ahead,» Abivard answered. «The Tib marks the western boundary of the Thousand Cities.»

Actually, the two rivers were not quite the boundaries of the rich, settled country. The canals that ran out from them were. A couple of the Thousand Cities lay to the east of the Tutub. Where the canals brought their life-giving waters, everything was green and growing, with farmers tending their onions and cucumbers and cress and lettuces and date-palm trees. A few yards beyond the canals the ground lay sere and brown and useless.

Roshnani peered out of the wagon. «Canals always seem so- wasteful,» she said. «All that water on top of the ground and open to the thirsty air. Qanats would be better.»

«You can drive a qanat through rock and carry water underground,» Abivard said. Then he waved a hand. «Not much rock here. When you get right down to it, the Thousand Cities don't have much but mud and water and people-lots of people.»

The wagon and its escort skirted some of the canals on dikes running in the right direction and crossed others on flat, narrow bridges of palm wood. Those were adequate for getting across the irrigation ditches; when they got to the Tutub, something more was needed, for even months away from its spring rising, it remained a formidable river.

It was spanned by a bridge of boats with timbers-real timbers from trees other than date palms-laid across them. Men in row-boats brought the bridge across from the western bank of the Tutub so that Abivard and his companions could cross over it. He knew there were other, similar bridges north and south along the Tutub and along the Tib and on some of their tributaries and some of the chief canals between them. Such crossings were quick to make and easy to maintain.

They were also useful in time of war: if you did not want your foes to cross a stretch of water, all you had to do was make sure the bridge of boats did not extend to the side of the river or canal he held. In the civil war against Smerdis the usurper's henchmen, who controlled most of the Thousand Cities, had greatly hampered Sharbaraz' movements by such means.

The folk who dwelt between the Tutub and the Tib were not of Makuraner blood, though the King of Kings had ruled the Thousand Cities from Mashiz for centuries. The peasants were small and swarthy, with hair so black that it held blue highlights. They wore linen tunics, the women's ankle-length, those of the men reaching down halfway between hip and knee. They would stare at the wagon and its escort of grim-faced fighting men, then shrug and get back to work.

When the wagon stopped at one of the Thousand Cities for the night, Pashang would invariably have to urge the team up a short but steep hill to reach the gate. That puzzled Varaz, who asked, «Why are the towns here always on top of hills? They aren't like that in Videssos. And why aren't there any hills without towns on them? This doesn't look like country where there should be hills. They stick up like warts.»

«If it weren't for the people who live between the Tutub and the Tib, there wouldn't be any hills,» Abivard answered. «The Thousand Cities are old; I don't think any man of Makuran knows just how old. Maybe they don't know here, either. But when Shippurak-this town here-was first built, it was on the same level as the plain all around; the same with all the other cities, too. But what do they use for building here?

Varaz looked around. «Mud brick mostly, it looks like.»

«That's right. It's what they have: lots of mud, no stone to speak of, and only date palms for timber. And mud brick doesn't last. When a house would start crumbling, they'd knock it down and build a new one on top of the rubble. When they'd been throwing rubbish into the street for so long that they had to step up from inside to get out through their doors, they'd do the same thing- knock the place down and rebuild with the new floor a palm's breadth higher, maybe two palm's breadths higher, than the old one. You do that again and again and again and after enough years go by, you have yourself a hill.»

«They're living on top of their own rubbish?» Varaz said. Abivard nodded. His son took another look around, a longer one. «They're living on top of a lot of their own rubbish.» Abivard nodded once more.

The city governor of Shippurak, a lean black-bearded Makuraner named Kharrad, greeted Abivard and his escort with wary effusiveness, for which Abivard blamed him not at all. He was brother-in-law to the King of Kings and the author of great victories against Videssos, and that accounted for the effusiveness. He was also being recalled to Mashiz under circumstances that Kharrad obviously did not know in detail but that just as obviously meant he had fallen out of favor to some degree. But how much? No wonder the city governor was wary.

He served up tender beans and chickpeas and boiled onions and twisted loaves of bread covered with sesame and poppy seeds. He did not act scandalized when Abivard brought Roshnani to the supper, though his own wife did not appear. When he saw that Roshnani would stay, he spoke quietly to one of his secretaries. The man nodded and hurried off. The entertainment after supper was unusually brief: only a couple of singers and harpers. Abivard wondered if a troupe of naked dancing girls had suddenly been excised from the program.

Kharrad said, «It must be strange returning to the court of the King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, after so long away.»

«I look forward to seeing my sister,» Abivard answered. Let the city governor make of that what he would.

«Er-yes,» Kharrad said, and quickly changed the subject. He didn't want to make anything of it, not where Abivard was listening to him.

Kharrad's reception was matched more or less exactly by other local leaders in the Thousand Cities over the next several days. The only real difference Abivard noted was that a couple of the city governors came from the ranks of the folk they controlled, having been born between the Tutub and the Tib. They did not receive Roshnani as if they were doing her a favor but as a matter of course and had their own wives and sometimes even their daughters join the suppers.

«Most of the time,» one of them said after what might have been a cup too many of date wine, «you Makuraners are too stuffy about this. My wife nags me, but what can I do? If I offend her, she nags me. If I offend a man under the eye of the King of Kings, he makes me wish I was never born and maybe hurts my family, too. But you, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, you are not offended. My wife gets to come out and talk like a civilized human being, so she is not offended, either. Everyone is happy. Isn't that the way it ought to be?»

«Of course it is,» Roshnani said. «Women's quarters were a mistake from the beginning. I wish Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, would outlaw them altogether.»

«Yes, by the God!» the city governor's wife exclaimed. «May she plant that idea firmly in his Majesty's mind and heart.»

A little farther down the low table Turan, the commander of the troopers escorting Abivard and his family, choked on his date wine. «Sweeter than I'm used to,» he wheezed, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his caftan.

That was true; Abivard found the sticky stuff cloying, too. He didn't think it was why Turan had swallowed wrong. Some nobles did ape Sharbaraz and himself and give their principal wives more freedom than upper-crust Makuraner women had customarily enjoyed. Others, though, muttered darkly about degeneration. Abivard did not think he would have to guess twice to figure out into which camp the escort commander fell.

They crossed the Tib on a bridge of boats much like the one they'd used to cross the Tutub and enter the land between the rivers. Only a narrow strip of cultivated land ran along the western bank of the Tib. Canals could not reach far there, for the country soon began to slope up toward the Dilbat Mountains in whose foothills sat Mashiz.

Abivard pointed to the city and the smoke rising from it. «That's where we're going,» he said. His children squealed excitedly. To them Mashiz was more nearly a legend than Videssos the city. They'd seen the capital of the Empire of Videssos misted in sea haze on the far side of the Cattle Crossing. Mashiz was new and therefore fascinating.

«That's where we're going,» Roshnani agreed quietly. «How we'll come out again is another matter.»

To enter Mashiz the cavalrymen escorting Abivard and his family donned their armor and decked their horses out in chamfrons and iron-studded blankets, too. They carried the lances that had stayed bundled in the bed of a wagon since they'd crossed the Tutub. It was a fine warlike display, making Abivard seem to be returning to the capital of his homeland in triumph. He wished reality were a better match for appearance.

People stared at the jingling martial procession that hurried through the streets toward the palace of the King of Kings. Some pointed, some cheered, and some loudly wondered what was being celebrated and why. Even when the horsemen shouted out Abivard's name, not everyone knew who he was. So much for fame, he thought with wry amusement.

In the market squares his escort had to slow from a trot to a walk. They fumed, but Abivard took that as a good sign. If so many people were buying and selling things that they crowded the squares, Makuran had to be prosperous.

The palace of the King of Kings was different from its equivalent in Videssos the city, which Abivard had so often watched with longing. The Avtokrator of the Videssians and his court had a good many buildings scattered among lawns and groves. Here in Mashiz, the King of Kings' palace lay all under one roof, with a dark stone wall surrounding it and turning it into a citadel in the heart of the city.

To preserve the out wall's military usefulness, the square around it was bare of buildings for a bowshot. When Smerdis the usurper had held Mashiz, Abivard had fought his way to the palace against soldiers and sorcery. Now, years later, summoned by the man he'd helped place on the throne, he approached with hardly less apprehension.

«Who comes?» called a sentry from above the gates. Oh, he knew, but the forms had to be observed.

«Abivard son of Godarz, returned to Mashiz from Videssos and Vaspurakan at the order of Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.»

«Enter, Abivard son of Godarz, obedient to the command of Sharbaraz King of Kings,» the sentry said. He called to the gate crew. With squeaks from hinges that needed oiling, the gates swung open. Abivard entered the palace.

Almost at once an army of servitors swarmed upon and overwhelmed his little army of warriors. Stablemen and grooms vanquished the riders. They waited impatiently for the cavalrymen to dismount so they could lead the horses off to the stables. Their armored riders accompanied them, reduced to near impotence by having to use their own legs to move from one place to another.

Higher-ranking servants saw to Abivard and Roshnani. A plump eunuch said, «If you will please to come with me, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, yes, with your excellent family, of course. Oh, yes,» he went on, answering a question Abivard had been on the point of asking, «your conveyance and your driver will be attended to: you have the word of Sekandar upon it.» He preened slightly so they would know he was Sekandar.

«How soon will we be able to see the King of Kings?» Abivard asked as the chamberlain led them into the palace itself.

«That is for the puissant Sharbaraz, may his years be many and his realm increase, to judge,» Sekandar answered.

Abivard nodded and kept on following the eunuch but worried down where-he hoped-it did not show. If the King of Kings seldom left the palace and listened to the advice of Sekandar and others like him, how could he have any notion of what was true? Once, Sharbaraz had been a fighting man who led fighting men and took pleasure in their company. Now… Would he even acknowledge who Abivard was?

The apartment in which the eunuch installed Abivard and his family was luxurious past anything he had known in Videssos, and it was luxury of a familiar sort, not the icons and hard furniture of the Empire. Carpets into which his feet sank deep lay on the floor; thick, fat cushions were scattered in the corners of the rooms to support one's back while sitting. They had other uses, too; Varaz grabbed one and clouted Shahin with it. Shahin picked up his own, using it first for defense, then for offense.

«They're used to chairs,» Abivard said. «They won't know how comfortable this can be till they try it for a while.»

Roshnani was speaking to her sons in standard tones of exasperation. «Try not to tear the palace down around our ears quite yet, if you please.» She seamlessly made a shift in subject to reply to her husband: «No, they won't.» As if making a shameful confession, she added, «Nor will I, as a matter of fact. I got to like chairs a good deal. My knee clicks and my back crackles whenever I have to get up from the floor.»

«So Videssos corrupted you, too?» Abivard asked, not quite joking.

«Life in the Empire could be very pleasant,» his wife answered as if defying him to deny it. «Our food is better, but they do more with the rest of life than we do.»

«Hmm,» Abivard said. «My backside starts turning to stone if I sit in a chair too long. I don't know; I think their towns are madhouses myself, far worse than Mashiz or any of the Thousand Cities. They're too fast, too busy, too set on getting ahead even if they have to cheat to do it. Those are all the complaints we've had about Videssians for hundreds of years, and if you ask me, they're all true.»

Roshnani didn't seem to feel like arguing the point. She looked at the chambers in which the palace servitors had established them. «We are going nowhere, fast or slow; the God knows we shan't be busy, and the only way we can get ahead is if the King of Kings should will it.»

«As is true of anyone in Makuran,» Abivard said loudly for the benefit of anyone in Makuran who might be listening. Without seeming to, though, his wife had not only won the argument but pointed out that, palace though this might be for Sharbaraz, for Abivard and his kin it was a prison.

Winter dragged on, one storm following another till it looked as if the world would stay cold and icy forever. With each passing day Abivard came more and more to realize how right Roshnani had been.

He and his family saw only the servants who brought them food, hot water for bathing, and clothes once they had been laundered. He tried to bribe them to carry a note to Turan, the commander of the guard company that had escorted him to Mashiz. They took his money, but he never heard back from the officer. Their apologies sounded sincere but not sincere enough for him to believe them.

But having nothing better to do with his time and no better place to spend his money, he eventually tried getting a note to Denak. His sister never wrote back, either, at least not with a letter that reached his hands. He wondered whether his note or hers had disappeared. His, he suspected. If she knew what Sharbaraz was doing to him, she would make the King of Kings change his ways.

If she could- «Does she still have the influence she did in the early days of her marriage?» Roshnani asked after the Void had swallowed Abivard's letter. «Sharbaraz will have seen-not to put too fine a point on it, will have had-a lot of women in the years between.»

«I know,» Abivard said glumly. «As I knew him-» The past tense hurt but was true. «-as I knew him, I say, he always acknowledged his debts. But after a while any man could grow resentful, I suppose.»

Varaz said, «Why not petition the King of Kings yourself, Father? Any man of Makuran has the right to be heard.»

So, no doubt, his pedagogue had taught him. «What you learned and what is real aren't always the same thing, worse luck,» Abivard answered. «The King of Kings is angry at me. That's why he would not hear my petition.»

«Oh,» Varaz said. «You mean me way Shahin won't listen to me after we've had a fight?»

«You're the one who won't listen to me,» Shahin put in. Having the advantage in age, Varaz took the lofty privilege of ignoring his younger brother. «Is that what you mean, Papa?» he asked.

«Yes, pretty much,» Abivard answered. When you got down to it, the way Sharbaraz was treating him was childish. The idea of the all-powerful King of Kings in the guise of a bad-tempered small boy made him smile. Again, though, he fought shy of mentioning it out loud. You never could tell whose ear might be pressed to a small hole behind one of the tapestries hanging on the wall. If the King of Kings was angry at him, there was no point making things worse by speaking plain and simple truths in the hearing of his servants.

«I don't like this place,» Zarmidukh declared. She was too young to worry about what other people thought when she spoke her mind. She said what she thought, whatever that happened to be. «It's boring.»

«It's not the most exciting place I've ever been,» Abivard said, «but there are worse things than being bored.»

«I don't know of any,» Zarmidukh said darkly. «You're lucky,» Abivard told her. «I do.»

Someone rapped on the door. Abivard looked at Roshnani. It wasn't any of the times the palace servitors usually made an appearance. The knock came again, imperiously-or perhaps he was reading too much into it. «Who can it be?» he said.

With her usual practicality Roshnani answered, «The only way to find out is to open the door.»

«Thank you so much for your help,» he said. She made a face at him. He got up and went over to the door, his feet sinking deep into the thick carpet as he walked. He took hold of the handle and pulled the door open.

A eunuch with hard, suspicious eyes in a face of almost unearthly beauty looked him up and down as if to say he'd taken much too long getting there. «You are Abivard son of Godarz?» The voice was unearthly, too: very pure and clear but not in a register commonly used by either men or women. When Abivard admitted who he was, the eunuch said, «You will come with me at once,» and started down the halls without waiting to see if he followed.

The guards who stood to either side of the doorway did not acknowledge his passing. Not even their eyes shifted as he walked by. Roshnani closed the door. Had she come after him unbidden, the guards would not have seemed as if they were carved from stone.

He did not ask the eunuch where they were going. He didn't think the fellow would tell him and declined to give him the pleasure of refusing. They walked in silence through close to half a farsang's worth of corridors. At last the eunuch stopped. «Go through this doorway,» he said imperiously. «I await you here.»

«Have a pleasant wait,» Abivard said, earning a fresh glare. Pretending he didn't notice it, he opened the door and went in.

«Welcome to Mashiz, brother of mine,» Denak said. She nodded when Abivard closed the door after himself. «That is wise. The fewer people who hear what we say, the better.» Abivard pointed to the maidservant who sat against the wall, idly painting her nails one by one from a pot of red dye and examining them with attention more careful than that she seemed to be giving Denak. «And yet you brought another pair of ears here?» he asked.

Denak assumed an exasperated expression, which brought lines to her face. Abivard hadn't seen much of her after Sharbaraz had taken Mashiz. He knew he'd aged in the intervening decade, but realizing that his sister had also aged came hard. She said, «I am principal wife to the King of Kings. It would be most unseemly for any man to see me alone. Most unseemly.»

«By the God, I'm your brother!» Abivard said angrily.

«And that is how I managed to arrange to see you at all,» Denak answered. «I think it will be all right, or not too bad. Ksorane is about as likely to tell me what Sharbaraz says as the other way around, or so I've found. Isn't that right, dear?» She waved to the girl.

«How could the principal wife to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, be wrong?» Ksorane said. She put another layer of paint on the middle finger of her left hand.

Denak's laugh was as sour as vinegar. «Easily enough, by the God. I've found that out many a time and oft.» If she'd said one word more, Abivard would have bet any amount any man cared to name that the maidservant, trusted or not, would have taken her remark straight to Sharbaraz. Even as things were, he worried. But Denak seemed oblivious, continuing, «As you have now found for yourself-is it not so, brother of mine?»

In spite of Denak's assurances, Abivard found it hard to speak his mind before someone he did not know. Cautiously, he answered, «Sometimes a man far from the field of action does not have everything he needs to judge whether his best interests are being followed.»

Denak laughed again, a little less edgily this time. «You shouldn't be a general, brother of mine; the King of Kings should send you to Videssos the city as ambassador. You'd win from Maniakes with your honeyed words everything our armies haven't managed to take.»

«I've spoken with Maniakes, when he came close to Across in one of the Videssians' cursed dromons,» Abivard said. «I wish the God would drop all of those into the Void. We found no agreement. Nor, it seems, does Sharbaraz King of Kings find agreement with what I did in Vaspurakan. I wish he would summon me and say as much himself, so I might answer.»

«People don't get everything they wish,» Denak answered. «I know all about that, too.» Her hopeless anger tore at Abivard. But then she went on, «This once, though, I got at least part of what I want. When the King of Kings heard you'd ignored his orders about Vaspurakan, he didn't only want to take your head from your shoulders-he wanted to give you over to the torturers.»

As Abivard had learned after he had taken the Videssian westlands for Sharbaraz, the parents and nursemaids of the Empire used the ferocious talents of Makuraner torturers to frighten naughty children into obeying. He bowed very low. «Sister of mine, I am in your debt. My children are young to be fatherless. I should not complain about being unable to see the King of Kings.»

«Of course you should,» Denak said. «After him, you are the most powerful man in Makuran. He has no business to treat you so, no right-»

«He has the right: he is the King of Kings,» Abivard said. «After the King of Kings, no man in Makuran is powerful. I was the most powerful Makuraner outside Makuran, perhaps.» Now his grin came wry. «Once back within it, though… he may do with me as he will.»

«In your mind you have no power next to Sharbaraz,» Denak answered. «Every day courtiers whisper into his ear that you have too much. I can go only so far in making him not listen. He might pay me more heed if-»

If I had a son. Abivard filled in the words his sister would not say. Sharbaraz had several sons by lesser wives, but Denak had given him only girls. If she had a boy, he would become the heir, for she remained Sharbaraz' principal wife. But what were the odds of that? Did he still call her to his bed? Abivard could not ask, but his sister did not sound as if she expected to bear more children.

As if picking that thought from his mind, Denak said, «He treats me with all due honor. As he promised, I am not mewed up in the women's quarters like a hawk dozing with a hood over its eyes. He does remember-everything. But honor alone is not enough for a man and a wife.»

She did speak as if Ksorane weren't there. At last Abivard imitated her, saying, «If Sharbaraz remembers all you did for him-and if he does, I credit him-why, by the God, doesn't he remember what I've done and trust my judgment?»

«I'd think that would be easy for you to see,» Denak told him. «Come what may, I can't steal the throne from him. You can.»

«I helped put him on the throne,» Abivard protested indignantly. «I risked everything I had-I risked everything Vek Rud domain had-to put him on the throne. I don't want it. Till you spoke of it just now, the idea that I would want it never once entered my mind. If it entered his-»

He started to say, He's mad. He didn't, and fear of the maidservant's taking his words to Sharbaraz wasn't what stopped him. For the King of Kings was not mad to fear usurpation. After all, he'd been usurped once already.

«He's wrong.» That was better. Abivard reminded himself that he was speaking with Sharbaraz' wife as well as his own sister. But Denak was his sister, and how much he'd missed her over the years suddenly rose up in him like a choking cloud. «You know me, sister of mine. You know I would never do such a thing.»

Her face crumpled. Tears made her eyes bright. «I knew you,» she said. «I know the brother I knew would be loyal to the rightful King of Kings through… anything.» She held her hands wide apart to show how all-encompassing anything was. But then she went on. «I knew you. It's been so long… Time changes people, brother of mine. I know that, too. I should.»

«It's been so long,» Abivard echoed sadly. «I can't make Sharbaraz' years many; only the God grants years. But since the days of Razmara the Magnificent, who has increased the realm of the King of Kings more than I?»

«No one.» Denak's voice was sad. One of the tears ran down her cheek. «And don't you see, brother of mine, every victory you won, every city you brought under the lion of Makuran, gave him one more reason to distrust you.»

Abivard hadn't seen that, not with such brutal clarity. But it was clear enough-all too clear-when Denak pointed it out to him. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip. «And when I disobeyed him in Vaspurakan-»

Denak nodded. «Now you understand. When you disobeyed him, he thought it the first step of your rebellion.»

«If it was, why did I come here with all my family at his order?» Abivard asked. «Once I did that, shouldn't he have realized he was wrong?»

«So I told him, though not in those words.» One corner of his sister's mouth bent up in a rueful, knowing smile. «So many people tell the King of Kings he is right every moment of every waking hour of every day that when he was already inclined to think so himself, he became… quite convinced of it.»

«I suppose so.» Abivard had noted that trait in Sharbaraz even when he was a hunted rebel against Smerdis. After a decade and more on the throne at Mashiz he might well have come to think of himself as infallible. What Abivard wanted to say was, He's only a man, after all. But of all the things Ksorane could take back to Sharbaraz from his lips, that one might do the most damage.

Denak said, «I have been trying to get him to see you, brother of mine. So far…» She spread her hands again. He knew how much luck she'd had. But he also knew he still kept his head on his shoulder and all his members attached to his body. That was probably his sister's doing.

«Tell the King of Kings I did not mean to anger him,» he said wearily. «Tell him I am loyal-why would I be here otherwise? Tell him in Vaspurakan I was doing what I thought best for the realm, for I was closer to the trouble than he. Tell him-» Tell him to drop into the Void if he's too vain and puffed up with himself to see that on his own. «Tell him once more what you've already told him. The God willing, he will hear.»

«I shall tell him,» Denak said. «I have been telling him. But when everyone else tells him the opposite, when Farrokh-Zad and Tzikas write from Vaspurakan complaining of how mild you were to the priests of Phos-»

«Tzikas wrote from Vaspurakan?» Abivard broke in. «Tzikas wrote that from Vaspurakan? If I see the renegade, the traitor, the wretch again, he is a dead man.» His lips curled in what looked like a smile. «I know just what I'll do if I see him again, the cursed Videssian schemer. I'll send him as a present for Maniakes behind a shield of truce. We'll see how he likes that.» Merely contemplating the idea gave him great satisfaction. Whether he'd ever get the chance to do anything about it was, worse luck, another question altogether.

«I'll pray to the God. May she grant your wish,» Denak said. She got to her feet Abivard rose, too. His sister took him in her arms.

Ksorane, about whom Abivard had almost entirely forgotten, let out a startled squeak. «Highness, to touch a man other than the King of Kings is not permitted.»

«He is my brother, Ksorane,» Denak answered in exasperated tones.

Abivard did not know whether to laugh or cry. He and Denak had criticized Sharbaraz King of Kings almost to, maybe even beyond, the point of lese majesty, and the serving woman had spoken not a word of protest. Indeed, by her manner she might not even have heard. Yet a perfectly innocent embrace drew horrified anger.

«The world is a very strange place,» he said. He went back into the hall. If the eunuch had moved while he had been talking with his sister, it could not have been by more than the breadth of a hair. With a cold, hard nod the fellow led him back through the maze of corridors to the chambers where he and his family were confined.

The guards outside the chamber opened his door. The beautiful eunuch, who had said not a word while guiding him to his private Prison, disappeared with silent steps. The door closed behind Abivard, and everything was just as it had been before Denak had summoned him.

When Sharbaraz King of Kings did not call him, Abivard grew furious at his sister. Rationally, he knew that was not only pointless but stupid. Denak might plead for him, as she had been pleading for him, but that did not mean that Sharbaraz would have to hear. By everything Abivard knew of the King of Kings, he was very good at not hearing.

Winter dragged on. The children at first grew restive at being cooped up in a small place like so many doves in a cote, then resigned themselves to it. That worried Abivard more than anything else he'd seen since Sharbaraz had ordered him to Mashiz. Over and over he asked the guards who kept him and his family from leaving their rooms and the servants who fed them and removed the slop jars and brought fuel what was going on in Vaspurakan and Videssos. He rarely got answers, and the ones he did get formed no coherent pattern. Some people claimed there was fighting; others, that peace prevailed.

«Why don't they just say they don't know?» he demanded of Roshnani after yet another rumor-that Maniakes had slain himself in despair-reached his ears.

«You're asking a lot if you expect people to admit how ignorant they are,» she answered. She had adapted to captivity better than he had. She worked on embroidery with thread borrowed from the servants and seemed to take so much pleasure from it that Abivard was more than once tempted to get her to teach him the stitches.

«I admit how ignorant I am here,» he said. «Otherwise I wouldn't ask so many questions.»

Roshnani loosened the hoop that held a circle of linen taut while she worked on it. She shook her head. «You don't understand. The only reason you're ignorant is that you're shut up here. You can't know what you want to find out. Too many people don't want to find out anything and just repeat what they happen to hear without thinking about it.»

He thought about that, then slowly nodded. «You're probably right,» he admitted. «It doesn't make this easier to bear, though.» In the end he did learn to embroider and concentrated his fury in producing the most hideous dragon he could imagine. He was glad he had only the rudiments of the craft, for if he could have matched Roshnani's skill, he would have given the dragon Sharbaraz' face.

Some of his imaginings along those lines disturbed him. In his mind he formed a picture of his army swarming out of Vaspurakan to rescue him that felt so real, he was shocked and disappointed when no one came battering down the door. As it had a way of doing, hope outran reality.

Among themselves, the servants began to talk of rain rather than snow. Abivard noted that he wasn't feeding the braziers as much charcoal as he had been or sleeping under such great piles of rugs and furs and blankets. Spring was coming. He, on the other hand, had nowhere to go, nothing to do.

«Ask Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, if he will free my family and let them go back to Vek Rud domain,» he told a guard-and whoever might be listening. «If he wants to punish me, that is his privilege, but they have done nothing to deserve his anger.»

Sharbaraz' privilege, though, was whatever he chose to make it. If the message got to him, he took no notice of it.

As one dreary day dragged into the next, Abivard began to understand Tzikas better. Unlike the Videssian renegade, he had done nothing to make his sovereign nervous about his loyalty-so he still believed, at any rate. But Sharbaraz had gotten nervous anyhow, and the results-

«How am I supposed to command another Makuraner army after this?» he whispered to Roshnani in the darkness after their children-and, with luck, any lurking listeners-had gone to bed.

«What would you do, husband of mind, if you got another command?» she asked, even more softly than he had spoken. «Would you go over to the Videssians to pay back the King of Kings for what he's done?»

She had been thinking about Tzikas, too, then. Abivard shook his head. «No. I am loyal to Makuran. I would be loyal to Sharbaraz, if he would let me. But even if I had no grievance against him before, I do now. How could he let me lead troops without being afraid that I would try to take the vengeance I deserve?»

«He has to trust you,» Roshnani said. «In the end I think he will. Did not your wizard see you fighting in the land of the Thousand Cities?»

«Bogorz? Yes, he did. But was he looking into the past or the future? I didn't know then, and I don't know now.»

Bogorz had seen another image, too: Videssians and ships, soldiers disembarking at an unknown place at an equally unknown time. How much that had to do with the rest of his vision, Abivard could not begin to guess. If the wizard had shown him a piece of the future, it was a useless one.

Roshnani sighed. «Not knowing is hard,» she agreed. «The way we're treated here, for instance: by itself, it wouldn't be bad. But since we don't know what will come at the end of it, how can we help but worry?»

«How indeed?» Abivard said. He hadn't told her that Sharbaraz had wanted to take his head-and worse. What point to that? he'd asked himself. Had the King of Kings chosen to do it, Roshnani could not have stopped him, and if he hadn't, Abivard would have made her fret without need. He seldom held things back from her but kept that one to himself without the slightest trace of guilt.

She snuggled against him. Though the night was not so chilly as the nights had been, he was glad of her warmth. He wondered if they would still be in this chamber when nights, no less than days, were sweaty torments and skin did nothing but stick to skin. If they were meant to be, they would, he decided. He could do nothing about it one way or the other. Presently he gave up and fell asleep.

The door to the chamber opened. Abivard's children stared. It wasn't the usual time. Abivard stared, too. He'd been shut up so long, he found a change of routine dangerous in and of itself.

Into the room came the beautiful eunuch who had conducted him to Denak. «Come with me,» he said in his beautiful, sexless voice.

«Are you taking me to see my sister again?» Abivard asked, climbing to his feet. «Come with me,» the eunuch repeated, as if it were none of Abivard's business where he was going till he got there, and perhaps not then, either.

Having no choice, Abivard went with him. As he walked out the door, he reflected that things could hardly be worse. He'd thought that before, too, every now and then. Sometimes he'd been wrong, which was something he would rather not have remembered.

He quickly realized that the eunuch was not leading him down the same halls he had traveled to visit Denak. He asked again where they were going, but only stony silence answered him. Though the eunuch said not a word, hatred bubbled up from him like steam from a boiling pot. Abivard wondered if that was hatred for him in particular or for any man lucky enough to have a beard and all parts complete and in good working order.

Several times they passed other people in the hall: some servants, some nobles. Abivard was tempted to ask them if they knew where he was going and what would happen to him when he got there. The only thing holding him back was a certainty that one way or another the eunuch would pay him back for his temerity.

He hadn't been in the palace for years before the summons had come that had led him to become much more intimately acquainted with one small part of it than he'd ever wanted to be. All the same, the corridors through which he was traveling began to look familiar.

«Are we going to-?» he asked, and then stopped with the question incomplete. The way the eunuch's back stiffened told him plainer than words that he'd get no answer. This once, though, it mattered less than it might have under other circumstances. Sooner or later, regardless of what the eunuch told him, he would know.

Without warning, the hallway turned and opened out into a huge chamber whose roof was supported by rows of columns. Those columns and the long expanse of carpet running straight ahead from the entrance guided the eye to the great throne at the far end of the room. «Advance and be recognized,» the eunuch told Abivard. «I presume you still recall the observances.»

By his tone, he presumed no such thing. Abivard confined himself to one tight nod. «I remember,» he said, and advanced down the carpet toward the throne where Sharbaraz King of Kings sat waiting.

Nobles standing in the shadows stared at him as he strode forward. The walls of the throne room looked different from the way he remembered them. He could not turn his head-not without violating court ritual-but flicked his eyes to the right and the left. Yes, those wall hangings were definitely new. They showed Makuraner triumphs over the armies of Videssos, triumphs where he had commanded the armies of the King of Kings. The irony smote him like a club.

The eunuch stepped aside when the carpet ended. Abivard strode out onto the polished stone beyond the woven wool and prostrated himself before Sharbaraz. He wondered how many thousands of men and women had gone down on their bellies before the King of Kings in the long years since the palace had been built. Enough, certainly, to give a special polish to the patch of stone where their foreheads touched.

Sharbaraz let him stay prostrate longer than he should have. At last, he said, «Rise.»

«I obey, Majesty,» Abivard said, getting to his feet. Now he was permitted to look upon the august personage of the King of Kings. His first thought was, He's gone fat and soft. Sharbaraz had been a lion of a warrior when he and Abivard had campaigned together against Smerdis the usurper. He seemed to have put on a good many more pounds than the intervening time should have made possible.

«We are not well pleased with you, Abivard son of Godarz,» he declared. Even his voice sounded higher and more querulous than it had. His face was pale, as if he never saw the sun. Abivard knew he was pale, too, but he'd been imprisoned; Sharbaraz had no such excuse. Though Abivard hadn't seen himself in a mirror any time lately, he would have bet he didn't carry those dark, pouchy circles under his eyes.

He strangled the scorn welling up in him. No matter how Sharbaraz looked, he remained King of Kings. Whatever he decreed, that would be Abivard's fate. Walk soft, Abivard reminded himself. Walk soft. «I grieve to have displeased you, Majesty,» he said. «I never intended to do that.»

«We are displeased,» Sharbaraz said, as if passing sentence. Perhaps he was doing just that; several of the courtiers let out soft sighs. Abivard wondered if the execution would be performed in the throne room for their edification. The King of Kings went on, «We trusted you to obey our commands pertaining to Vaspurakan, as we expect to be obeyed in all things.»

In the old days as a rebel against Smerdis he hadn't been so free with the royal we. Hearing it from a man with whose humanity and fallibility he was all too intimately acquainted irked Abivard. With a sudden burst of insight he realized that Sharbaraz was trying to overawe him precisely because they had once been intimates: to subsume the remembered man in the present King of Kings. As such ploys often did, it had an effect opposite to the one Sharbaraz had intended.

Abivard said, «I pray your pardon, Majesty. I served Makuran as best I could.»

«The affair appears otherwise to us,» the King of Kings replied. «In disobeying our orders, you damaged the realm and brought both it and us into disrepute.»

«I pray your pardon,» Abivard repeated. He might have known-indeed, he had known-Sharbaraz would say that. Disobedience was a failure no ruler could tolerate, and as he and Roshnani had agreed, being right was in a way worse than being wrong.

But Sharbaraz said, «In our judgment you have now been punished enough for your transgressions. We have summoned you hither to inform you that Makuran once more has need of your services.»

«Majesty?» Abivard had been half expecting-more than half expecting-the King of Kings to order him sent to the headsman or the torturers. If he'd frightened Sharbaraz, he could expect no better fate. Now, though, with courtiers murmuring approval in the background, the King of Kings had… pardoned him? «What do you need of me, Majesty?» Whatever it was, it couldn't be much worse than going off to meet the chopper.

«We begin to see why you had such difficulties in bringing Videssos the city under the lion of Makuran,» Sharbaraz answered. It wasn't an apology-not quite-but it was closer to one than Abivard had ever heard from the King of Kings, who went on, not altogether comfortably, «We also see that Maniakes Avtokrator exemplifies in his person the wicked deviousness our lore so often attributes to the men of Videssos.»

«In what way, Majesty?» Abivard asked in lieu of screaming, By the God, what's he gone and done now? He made himself keep his voice low and calm as he twisted the knife just a little. «As you will remember, I had not had much chance to learn what passes outside Mashiz.» He hadn't had much chance to learn what passed outside the chamber in which Sharbaraz had locked him away, but the King of Kings already knew that.

Sharbaraz said, «Our one weakness is in ships. We have come to realize how serious a weakness it is.» Abivard had realized that the instant he had seen how Videssian dromons kept his army from getting over the Cattle Crossing; he was glad Sharbaraz had been given a similar revelation, no matter how long delayed it was. The King of Kings went on. «Taking a sizable fleet, Maniakes has sailed with it to Lyssaion in the Videssian westlands and there disembarked an expeditionary force.»

«Lyssaion, Majesty?» Abivard frowned, trying to place the town on his mental map of the westlands. At first he had no luck, for he was thinking of the northern coastline, the one on the Videssian Sea and closest to Vaspurakan. Then he said, «Oh, on the southern coast, the one by the Sailor's Sea-the far southwest of the westlands.»

He stiffened. He should have realized that at once-after all, hadn't Bozorg shown him Videssians coming ashore somewhere very like there and then heading up through the mountains? He'd had knowledge of Maniakes' plan for most of a year-and much good that had done him.

«Yes,» Sharbaraz was saying, his words running parallel to Abivard's thoughts. «They landed there, as I told you. And they have been pushing northwest ever since-pushing toward the land of the Thousand Cities.» He paused, then said what was probably the worst thing he could think of: «Pushing toward Mashiz.»

Abivard took that in and blended it with the insight he now had-too late-from Bogorz' scrying. «After Maniakes beat the Kubratoi last year, he was too quiet by half,» he said at last. «I kept expecting him to do something against us, especially when I pulled the field force out of the Videssian westlands to fight in Vaspurakan.» I wouldn't have had to do that but for your order to suppress the worship of Phos-another thing he couldn't tell the King of Kings. «But he never moved. I wondered what he was up to. Now we know.»

«Now we know,» Sharbaraz agreed. «We never took Videssos the city in war, but the Videssians have sacked Mashiz. We do not intend this to happen again.»

Undoubtedly, the King of Kings intended to sound fierce and martial. Undoubtedly, his courtiers would assure him he sounded very fierce and martial, indeed. He's afraid, Abivard realized, and a chill ran through him. He did well enough when the war was far away, but now it's coming here, almost close enough to touch. He's been comfortable too long. He's lost the stomach for that land of fight. He had it once, but it's gone.

Aloud, he repeated, «How may I serve you, Majesty?»

«Take up an army.» Sharbaraz' words were quick and harsh. «Take it up, I say, and rid the realm of the invader. Makuran's honor demands it. The Videssians must be repulsed.» Does Maniakes know he's putting him in fear? Abivard wondered. Or is he striking at our vitals tit for tat, as we have struck at his? Command of the sea lets him pick his spots. «What force have you for me to use against the imperials, Majesty?» he asked-a highly relevant question. Was Sharbaraz sending him forth in the hope he would be defeated and killed? «Take up the garrisons from as many of the Thousand Cities as suits you,» Sharbaraz answered. «With them to hand, you will far outnumber the foe.»

«Yes, Majesty, but-» Contradicting the King of Kings before the whole court would not improve Abivard's standing here. True, if he took up all the garrisons from the Thousand Cities, he would have far more men in the field than Maniakes did. Being able to do anything useful with them was something else again. Almost all of them were foot soldiers. Simply mustering them would take time. Getting them in front of Maniakes' fast-moving horsemen and bringing him to battle would take not only time but great skill- and even greater luck.

Did Sharbaraz understand that? Studying him, Abivard decided he did. It was one of the reasons he was afraid. He'd sent his best troops, his most mobile troops, into Videssos and Vaspurakan and had left himself little with which to resist a counterthrust he hadn't thought Maniakes would be able to make.

«Using the canals between the Tutub and the Tib will also let you delay the enemy and perhaps turn him back altogether,» Sharbaraz said. «We remember well how the usurper whom we will not name put them to good use against us in the struggle for the throne.»

«That is so, Majesty,» Abivard agreed. It was also the first thing the King of Kings had said that made sense. If he could take up the garrisons from the cities between the rivers and put them to work wrecking canals and flooding the countryside, he might get more use from them than he would if he tried to make them fight the Videssians. It still might not net everything Sharbaraz hoped for; the Videssians were skilled engineers and expert at corduroying roads through unspeakable muck. But it would slow them down, and slowing them was worth doing.

«Also,» Sharbaraz said, «for cavalry to match the horsemen Maniakes brings against us, we give you leave to recall Tzikas from Vaspurakan. His familiarity with the foe will win many Videssians to our side. Further, you may take Hosios Avtokrator with you when you go forth to confront the foe.»

Abivard opened his mouth, then closed it again. Sharbaraz was living in a dream world if he thought any Videssian would abandon Maniakes for his pretender. But then, insulated by the court from reality, in many ways Sharbaraz was living in a dream world.

Tzikas was a different matter. Unlike Sharbaraz' puppet, he did have solid connections within the Videssian army. If he got down to the land of the Thousand Cities soon enough, he might help solidify whatever force Abivard had managed to piece together from the local garrisons. Abivard suspected that Sharbaraz didn't know he knew what Tzikas had been saying about him; that meant Denak's maidservant was more reliable than Abivard had thought

«Speak!» the King of Kings exclaimed. «What say you?»

«May it please you, Majesty, but I would sooner not have the eminent Tzikas-» Abivard gave the title in Videssian to emphasize the turncoat's foreignness. «-under my command.» About the only thing I'd like less would be the God dropping all Makuran into the Void.

For a wonder, Sharbaraz took the hint. «Perhaps another commander, then,» he said. Abivard had feared he'd insist; he didn't know what he would have done then. Arranged for Tzikas to have an accident, maybe. If any man ever deserved an accident, Tzikas was the one.

«Perhaps so, Majesty,» Abivard answered. Curse it, how did you tell the King of Kings he'd made a harebrained suggestion? You couldn't, not if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders. From what he'd seen, the Avtokrator of the Videssians had a similar problem, perhaps in less acute form.

Sharbaraz said, «We are confident you will hold the enemy far away from us and far away from Mashiz, preserving our complete security.»

«The God grant it be so,» Abivard said. «The men of Makuran have beaten the Videssians many times during your glorious reign.» He had led Sharbaraz' troops to a lot of those victories, too. Now the King of Kings suddenly recalled that: he needed one more victory, or maybe more than one. Abivard went on, «I shall do all I can for you and for Makuran. The Videssians, though, I must say, fight with more spirit for Maniakes than they ever did for Genesios.»

«We are confident,» the King of Kings repeated. «Go forth, Abivard son of Godarz: go forth and defeat the foe. Then return in triumph to the bosom of your wife and family.»

Almost, Abivard missed the meaning lurking there. That made the surge of fury all the more ferocious when it came. Sharbaraz was going to hold Roshnani and his children hostage to guarantee he would neither rebel once he had an army under his command again nor go over to the Videssians.

He thinks he is. Abivard said, «Majesty, my wife and children have always taken the field with me, ever since the days when you guested at Vek Rud stronghold.»

The days when you were first a prisoner whom I helped rescue and then a rebel against the King of Kings ruling in Mashiz, he meant. From behind him came the faintest of murmurs: Sharbaraz' courtiers took the point. By the way the countenance of the King of Kings darkened, so did he. He tried to put the best face on it that he could: «We think only for their safety. Here in Mashiz all their needs will be met, and they will be in no danger from vicious marauding Videssians.»

Abivard looked Sharbaraz in the face. That was not quite a discourtesy, or did not have to be, but the way he held Sharbaraz' eyes certainly was. «If you rely on me to protect you and your capital, Majesty, surely you can rely on me to protect my kin.»

The murmur behind him got louder. He wondered how long it had been since someone had defied the King of Kings, no matter how politely, in his own throne room. Generations, probably. By the dazed expression on Sharbaraz' face, it had never happened to him before.

He tried to rally, saying, «Surely we know better than you the proper course in this affair, that which would be most expedient for all Makuran.»

Abivard shrugged. «I have enjoyed the company of my wife and children all through the winter. May it please you, Majesty, I would just as soon return to them in the chambers you so generously granted us.» If I don't take them with me, I won't go out.

«It does not please us,» Sharbaraz answered in a hard voice. «We place the good of the realm ahead of that of any one man.»

«The good of the realm will not be harmed if I take my family with me.» Abivard gave the King of Kings a sidelong look. «I will have one more reason to repel the Videssians if my wife and children are at my side.»

«That is not our view of the matter,» Sharbaraz said.

The murmurs behind Abivard were almost loud enough now for him to make out individual voices and words. People would speak of this scandal for years. «Perhaps, Majesty, you would be better served with a different general in command of these garrison troops,» he said.

«Had we wanted a different general, be sure we should have selected one,» the King of Kings replied. «We are aware we have a great many from among whom we may choose. Rest assured you were not picked at random.»

You're the one who's done best. That was what he meant. Abivard felt like laughing in his face. If he wanted Abivard and no one else, that limited his choices. He couldn't do anything dreadful to Roshnani or the children, not if he expected Abivard to serve him. What better way to get Abivard to do what he said he would not do and go over to Videssos?

How long had it been since the King of Kings had wanted someone to do something but had not gotten his way? By the frustrated glare on Sharbaraz' face, a long time. «Do you presume to disobey our will?» he demanded.

«No, Majesty,» Abivard said. Yes, Majesty-again. «Loose me against the Videssians and I will do everything I can to drive them from the realm. So the King of Kings has ordered; so shall it be. My family will watch as I oppose Maniakes with every fiber of my being.»

And if my family isn't there to watch-well, it doesn't matter then, anyhow, for I won't be there doing the fighting. Abivard smiled at his brother-in-law. No, Sharbaraz was not giving the orders here. How long would he need to realize as much?

He was not stupid. Arrogant, certainly, and stubborn, and long accustomed to having others leap to fulfill his every wish, but not stupid. «It shall be as you say,» he replied at length. «You and your family shall go forth against Maniakes. But as you have set the terms under which you deign to fight, so you have also set for yourself the terms of the fight. We shall look for victory from you, nothing less.»

«If you send forth a general expecting him to fail, you've sent forth the wrong general,» Abivard answered. A nasty chill of worry ran down his back. Again he wondered if Sharbaraz was setting him up to fail so he could justify eliminating him.

No. Abivard could not believe it. The King of Kings needed no such elaborate justifications. Once Abivard was away from his army and in Mashiz, Sharbaraz could have eliminated him whenever he chose.

The King of Kings gestured brusquely. «We dismiss you, Abivard son of Godarz.» It was as abrupt an end to an audience as could be imagined. The hum of talk behind Abivard made him think the courtiers never had imagined anything like it.

He prostrated himself once more, symbolizing the submission he'd subverted. Then he rose and backed away from Sharbaraz' throne until he could turn around without causing a scandal-a bigger scandal than I've caused already, he thought, amused by the contrast between ritual and substance.

The beautiful eunuch fell in beside him. They walked out of the throne room together, neither of them saying a word. Once they were in the hallway, though, the eunuch turned blazing eyes on Abivard. «How dare you defy the King of Kings?» he demanded, his voice beautiful no more but cracking with rage.

«How dare I?» Abivard echoed. «I didn't dare leave my family behind in his clutches, that's how.» No doubt every word he said would go straight back to Sharbaraz, but he got the idea that words would go back to Sharbaraz whether he said anything or not. If he didn't, the eunuch would invent something.

«He should have given you over to the torturers,» the eunuch hissed. «He should have given you over to the torturers when first you came here.»

«He needs me,» Abivard answered. The beautiful eunuch recoiled, almost physically sickened at the idea that the King of Kings could need anyone. Abivard went on, «He needs me in particular. You can't pick just anyone and order him to go out and win your battles for you. Oh, you could, but you wouldn't care for the results. If people can win battles for you, giving them to the torturers is wasteful.»

«Do not puff yourself up like a pig's bladder at me,» the eunuch snarled. «All your pretensions are empty and vain, foolish and insane. You shall pay for your presumption; if not now, then in due course.»

Abivard did not answer, on the off chance that keeping quiet would prevent the beautiful eunuch from growing more angry at him still. He was even gladder than he had been while facing down Sharbaraz that he'd managed to pry his family out of the palace. If the eunuch was any indication, the servitors to the King of Kings distrusted and feared him even more than Sharbaraz did.

And for what? The only thing he could think of was that he'd been too successful at doing Sharbaraz' bidding. If the King of Kings was lord over all the realm of Makuran, could he afford such successful servants? Evidently he didn't think so.

«I hope you lose,» the beautiful eunuch said. «No matter how you boast, Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, is rash in putting his faith in you. The God grant that the Videssians bewilder you, befuddle you, and beat you.»

«An interesting prayer,» Abivard answered. «Should the God grant it, I expect Maniakes would be here a few days later to burn Mashiz around your ears. Shall I tell Sharbaraz you wished for that?»

The eunuch glared again. They had come to hallways Abivard knew. In a moment they rounded a last corner and came up to the guarded door behind which Abivard had passed the winter. At the beautiful eunuch's brusque gesture, the guardsmen opened the door. Abivard went in. The door slammed shut.

Roshnani pounced on him. «Well?» she demanded.

«I was summoned before the King of Kings,» he told her.

«And?»

«There's more to the world than this suite of rooms,» Abivard told her. She hugged him. Their children squealed.