greetings and beg to attend you as soon as they have made a suitable selection for your approval.’
‘They rode in ahead of their trains two days ago, to be with their mistresses,’ Orsana said with a smile. ‘That delay will cost them. Go on, Nurakz.’
‘The Prince Kouros, your son, desires an audience at once. My lady, he waits at the door.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, lady.’
‘Send in my son, and then clear the chamber. And Nurakz, draw up a letter of credit on the House of Arkanesh, and have it ready here before noon.’
‘Yes, lady. For how much?’
Orsana stared at him. Nurakz went white, bowed his head, and withdrew.
‘Charys, you will stay, of course,’ Orsana said as the concubines within the chamber rose like a cloud of butterflies taking flight.
The tall eunuch bowed. He had a face like that of a totem fashioned out of white clay and left in the rain. Although he had the eyes of the high caste, his features were broad and strong as a soldier’s. He was bald save for a topknot of hair dyed cornflower blue and gathered up with a silver ring. A scar ran like an errant worm down one side of his neck, and his pale, hairless hands looked strong enough to strangle a camel.
The doors of hollow bronze clanged wide, and Kouros strode into the room in a billow of linen that was as blue as his mother’s robes. The doorkeepers hauled shut their charges behind him with rather more care.
‘It is to be done, mother; he’s going. Ashurnan will take the field. He leaves within the week.’ Kouros began biting his nails.
Orsana did not seem surprised. She nodded wisely, but within she was genuinely startled.
‘Merach,’ she said.
‘Yes. He talked to him all evening. I tried to have an ear on it, but failed. Rakhsar — ’
‘Rakhsar?’
‘He knew no more than I. I made sure of it. He has made this decision on his own, mother.’
Orsana raised one eyebrow, plucked at her robe. Chalk dust fell from her face in minute avalanches.
‘You must go with him, then. And our plans must be brought forward. That is all. This is no great disaster, Kouros.’
Her son was gnawing his thumbnail, stripping back the horn to bring blood. ‘Darios assured me it would be of no moment, this — this invasion.’
‘I do not think he lied. I think only he has been overtaken by events. Darios is a loyal agent.’ Orsana stirred, moved up the divan and sipped at her wine. ‘Son, you must remember that some happenings have no author — they simply happen. There is not always a conspiracy afoot.’
‘Yes — yes, of course — don’t preach, mother. I am not a fool. I know these things — I have ears and eyes everywhere.’
Everywhere I bade you plant them, she thought. She was torn between love and exasperation. The lot of all mothers.
‘We have some warning, at least. How sure are you of Dyarnes?’
Kouros looked away, savaging another finger.
‘It is hard to tempt a man who can go no higher. Commanding the Honai is the summit of his ambition.’
‘Then you must threaten him with the loss of it,’ Orsana said sharply, a hornet-sting emerging from the honeyed voice.
Kouros collapsed onto a tall cushion. ‘I know, I know. Dyarnes must be handled more carefully. He is of the old nobility. If he thinks we compromise his honour, we will lose him utterly.’
Orsana smiled. ‘Well put. We also know he despises Rakhsar — ’
‘I am not sure he does not despise me as well, Mother.’
‘He is of the Asurian tribe. They despise everyone from beyond the Oskus, and always have. Play on his pride, and on his command. What about his second?’
Kouros brightened. ‘Ah, Marok. He is ambitious, and he has enough of the Magron blood in him to make him insecure. A great horseman — no-one can ride a Niseian like him. And he loves women.’
‘Then I do not need to draw the picture for you any further. A gift of two beauties, one four legged, one two-breasted. That will start the thing. A gift from the prince cannot be refused, and gives him a sense of debt.’
‘I do not need some kind of tutorial, mother. I have known Marok and Dyarnes since I was a boy.’
‘As they have known you. They must be certain that the boy is no more, that a king stands in his place.’
Kouros shifted uneasily in the depths of the cushion, plucking at his blue robe as though it had offended him.
‘Then you must give me more money. My father thinks it is good for a prince to rub along on a pittance; it imbues character, he says.’
Orsana raised one eyebrow. ‘Very well. I am having a draft drawn up today on the Arkanesh House. You shall have some of that. But do not make too big a splash with it, Kouros. You must not draw your father’s attention.’ Then she all but chuckled at the idea of Kouros splashing money around. Her son looked at her sourly.
‘When have I ever — ’
‘Yes, yes — that virtue not even I ever had to instil in you. No-one could ever accuse my son of being a spendthrift.’ She smiled at him with something approaching affection. ‘I remember when you were a child. No-one could part you from your toys, even when they were worn ragged. You used to sit alone in the gardens and play with armies of toy soldiers, and give them all names.’
‘You kept me from all others,’ Kouros said, quietly. ‘Even the slaves.’
‘You were the eldest son, the heir,’ she retorted. ‘There was no-one else worthy for you to associate with. I never let any of them forget who you were — never.’
‘I suppose you didn’t.’ Kouros’s face slumped in a kind of sadness, but only for a moment. It clenched again almost instantly into its lines of habitual anger. He thrashed his way out of the cushion and kicked it across the smooth marble of the floor.
‘When I am King, they will queue before my throne to befriend me,’ he said. ‘They will kneel, every one of them, and beg for my favour. Mother, I want Rakhsar to kneel before me ere he dies.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Kouros.’
His face spasmed, then he drew himself up. ‘No — of course — you’re right.’ He turned away. ‘I must go. Thank you — thank you, mother.’
‘Have you no kiss for me?’
‘Yes — yes, all right.’ He leaned over her like a blue thundercloud and let his lips touch her chalk-hued cheek. She touched his face. ‘You are not as other men, Kouros. You must be larger than that.’
‘I know. I have always known.’ He turned, one fist knotted in his robe, then halted. ‘And Roshana. Must she also — ’
‘Roshana must share her brother’s fate. You know this. Were she to marry some high noble, that man would be in a position to make a claim for the throne, however specious. We have been over this, Kouros.’
He nodded. ‘Goodbye, mother.’
‘Call on me this evening. We shall have more to discuss.’
His shoulders slumped. ‘Yes, mother,’ he said, and walked away looking somehow defeated, a shambling mountain.
It was not far, as a raven might fly, from the Queen’s seat at the heart of the harem to Roshana’s apartments. Even on foot, a swift-striding man might cover the space in under an hour, if the Honai were to give him free passage. But it was a great distance in terms of palace politics. One might almost say it was insurmountable.
The twins who were the issue of Ashurnan’s first love were generously housed in a tall, free-standing complex several stories high, whose balustrades were formed by the living limbs of gashran trees, native to the sheerest slopes of the eastern Magron. Here, they sprouted from gaps in the massive stone blocks of the structure, and they had been trained over centuries of wiring and pruning to make of their growth an adjunct to
