Shadowplay

The paramount minister let out a silent sigh of relief. Another hour, at least. “I think it would be a suitable honor to your ancestors, especially...” He paused, determined not to say anything troublesome, but could see no problem. “... Especially your great ancestor Xarpedon, who carried the Falcon all across Xand.”

“Ah, Xarpedon. The greatest of us all—until now.” He looked up as a servant stepped silently through the curtained doorway and stood, head lowered, waiting to be recognized. “Yes?”

“Favored Bazilis is here, Golden One.” “Good! You may step aside, Vash.”

The paramount minister moved through the ring of attendants toward the cabin wall, and wound up standing next to the golden litter of the scotarch, a gilded conveyance only slightly smaller than the autarch’s own. Crippled Prusus peered out of the litter’s window like an anxious hermit crab. Vash nodded to him—a formality only, since everyone knew the scotarch was simpleminded and did not notice such things.

Leaning back against his throne, Sulepis waved for the eunuch to be sent in. Bazilis entered a moment later, grave and immense in his robes; it took him some time and a great deal of rustling of fabric to abase himself at the autarch’s feet.

“O Master of the Great Tent, blessed of Nushash...” he began, but was silenced by the stamp of Sulepis’ sandaled foot.

“Shut your mouth. Where is he? Where is the prisoner?”

“Out...outside, Golden One. I thought you would wish to hear of my...”

The autarch kicked out. The eunuch whimpered and fell back. He crouched and looked up at his master in fear, his hand rising to his face where blood already welled from his lip. “Get him,” the autarch said. “I am waiting for him, you fool, not you.”

“Y-yes, Golden One, of course.” Bazilis backed out of the massive cabin, still on his hands and knees, his brightlyrobed bottom waving in the air.

Sulepis turned to Vash with the slightly prim expression of a tutor. “Out of courtesy to our guest, we will speak Hierosoline in his presence. How is yours, Vash?”

“Good, good, Golden One, although I have not used it much of late...”

“Then this will be an excellent chance for you to practice.” The autarch smiled like a kindly old uncle, although the man he was smiling at was more than three times his age. “After all, you never know when you might be called on to administer a continent where Hierosoline is the chief tongue!”

While Vash pondered what sounded like a bizarre promise of advancement to viceroy of all Eion, the prisoner appeared.

Vash could not help noticing that the man the eunuch and the guards marched into the cabin seemed like another kind of animal entirely in comparison to their master the autarch. Where Sulepis was young and tall and handsome, with golden, close-shaved skin and a high-boned, hawklike face, the northern king was startlingly ordinary, his brownish beard thick and not very well tended, his dark-ringed eyes emphasizing the pallor of his confinement. Only the way he stared back at the autarch betrayed that he was anything other than some petty merchant or craftsman: it was a calm, thoughtful gaze, measured and measuring. The only person Vash had ever seen look so unmoved in the autarch’s presence had been the murderous soldier, Daikonas Vo, but a smile that would never have been on Vo’s face flickered around the northern king’s eyes and lips. The more he thought about it, the more astonished Vash became that Olin’s expression of contemptuous amusement, subtle as it was, hadn’t driven the autarch into one of his sudden rages. Instead, Sulepis laughed.

“There you are! My fellow monarch!” He raised an imperious finger. “Bring a seat for His Majesty.” Two servants scuttled across the great cabin, then hurried back, carrying a chair between them. “I have waited so long to meet you, King Olin. I have heard so much about you, I feel as if I know you already.”

Olin sat down. “How interesting you should say so. I feel very much the same.”

“Oh ho!” The autarch laughed again; he sounded as though he were genuinely enjoying himself. “And what you think you know you do not like, do you? A good joke. We will be friends. In fact, we must be friends! If we insist on formal protocol, our conversations will be so long and so dreary— and we will be having so many conversations in the days ahead. I look forward to it!”

Olin folded his hands carefully on his lap. “So you will not kill me yet?”

“Kill you? Why would I do such a thing? You are a prize, Olin Eddon—worth more than gold or ambergris— worth more than the famed rubies of Sirkot! I have been doing my best to lay hands on you for the longest time!”

“What are you talking about?”

Vash could not help cringing at the northerner’s tone of voice—one simply did not talk to the Golden One that way, not if one wished to keep one’s skin stretched over one’s meat. But instead of calling for Mokori, his favorite strangler, the autarch only chuckled again. “But of course,” he said gleefully. “You could not know. In fact, I wonder if, with all your learning, you will understand even when I explain to you.”

Olin regarded the monarch of all Xand with a combination of interest and growing discomfort. Vash was oddly reassured—he had begun to wonder if his master was truly as mad as he seemed, or if he, Pinimmon Vash, were simply losing perspective, so he was glad to see he was not the only one who found Sulepis puzzling. “It does sound as though you do not intend to kill me today.”

“But I already told you that!” Sulepis feigned astonishment. “You and I have much to do, see, and speak about. First, though, we really must get you cleaned up. Ludis has taken shocking care of you.”

The northern king inclined his head. “May I ask what price you paid for me? Or was I a gift to you from Ludis—a sort of welcome present?”

“Ah, Olin—you do not mind if I call you Olin, do you? You may call me Golden One, or even...yes, you may call me Great Falcon.”

“You are too kind.”

“Ah, we will get along splendidly. You have a sense of humor!” The autarch leaned back in his throne, flicked his hand at the servants. “Take King Olin and let him bathe, then feed him. Give him one of my tasters so that he can dine with a peaceful heart. We will speak again later, Olin— we have much to discuss. Together we will remake the world!”

“You seem very certain that I will agree to help you with this...grand project.” Olin tilted his head, examining his captor; Vash could not help admiring the poor, doomed savage.

“Oh, your agreement is not necessary for my success,” the autarch told him with a sympathetic little frown. “And, sadly, you will not live to see its fruits. But you may rejoice in knowing that you were indispensable—that without you, the world would have remained lost in shadow instead of gaining the salvation of the great light of Nushash—or of Nushasha Sulepis, to be precise, for that is who it will be this time.” Now he favored the foreign king with the lazy smile of a predator too full to eat but not too stuffed to terrify a few lesser animals. “As I said, we will speak later, Olin Eddon—oh, we will speak of many things! We will be something like friends, don’t you think? For a little while, anyway. Now, go enjoy your bath and your supper.”

The man who had kidnapped Qinnitan had only to produce a few parchments from an oilskin envelope— documents with the seal of the autarch himself prominently displayed— and the sailors and soldiers on the great flagship Flame of Nushash scuttled to do his bidding. Just when she wanted life to slow down to the slowest crawl the immense Xixian bureaucracy could provide, everybody around her seemed to be swarming as busily and industriously as ants. The three of them were escorted up the gangplank by soldiers — some, she could not help noticing, in the same Leopard helmet that Jeddin had worn, the architect of her current misery. Why had she not denounced him the moment he had begun his mad talk of loving her? Because she had been flattered? Or because she had pitied him, glimpsing the fretful child she had once known inside the hardmuscled body of the soldier? Whatever the case, he had doomed her with his love as certainly as if he had drawn his dagger across her throat: this trip up the gangplank was only the ending of something that had been inevitable from the first moment of his foolish treachery and her equally foolish silence.

At a murmured aside from their captor Pigeon was taken in hand by one of the Favored. She was about to protest, then realized that although the boy was desperate to stay with her, being separated from her was his best hope.

“Ssshhh,” she said, and then told him an awful lie. “I’ll be back. Everything will be fine. Just go with them and do what they say.”

He was not fooled. As he was led away he wore the shocked, disappointed look of a dog tied to a tree and