‘We’ll make a grand entrance together.’
The palace of the Kings was so old as to make the count of decades and centuries into an irrelevance. The only structure in the world which predated it was said to be the Fane of Bel itself. The Great Kings of Asuria had made it their seat for as long as their kingships had existed; it was said, in fact, that the kitchen levels of the ziggurat had been the original palace, but had been relegated to humbler usage as the structure was reworked and added to by Asur’s descendants. Some irreverent scholars maintained that the kings continually added to the palace ziggurat in order to overtop that of the High Priests, but if so, they had not succeeded. The twin hills of Ashur stared at each other across the teeming plain of the great city like two titans sprung from the same womb. The palace itself was as large as some cities — no-one had ever counted the rooms with any accuracy, but there were thousands — and enclosed a wide open space in which were planted the Imperial Gardens. These were as big as half a dozen farms, a landscape to themselves, with rivers and woods and pastures and herds of animals, flocks of birds, shoals of fishes. The Asurians believed that a beautiful garden partook of divinity. It was pleasing in the eyes of Bel, a reflection of heaven itself.
At this time of year, the Great King did not always dine in the echoing chambers of the palace, but as the whim took him, he would eat under the sky amid the trees his forbears had planted. On this evening, a silk canopy had been erected in the garden and plain wooden benches and trestles had been placed upon the grass, within sight of a glittering river whose waters were pumped up from the bowels of the ziggurat by a legion of blind slaves. Lanterns were hung by the hundred in the trees about the spot, and as the evening darkened it seemed that a host of golden flickering stars had been ensnared and set to shine throughout the woods.
The King himself sat apart on a black wooden throne, as was his wont, and the only other mark of his station was a diadem of black silk bound about his temples. A steady stream of fast-moving barefoot slaves bore the food to the tables, watched over by a tall, cadaverous Kefre who bore a silver-shod staff of ebony. The guests came one by one up to the black throne and went to their knees before the Great King before he bade them rise with a wave of his hand, and a smile for those he liked best.
Men had been known to pay massive fortunes for the chance to kneel thus, and catch the eye of the ruler of the world. His smile, or the absence of it, had blessed or blighted lives.
The diners were then ushered to their place at the tables by discreet pages, sons of the nobility who were brought to court to serve their king and act as surety for their families’ loyalty. Informal as the outdoor setting might seem, there was a rigid hierarchy to the place-settings, and no amount of coin in the empire could move a diner any closer to the Great King’s plate than the High Chamberlain decreed.
Back in the trees, unobtrusive but ever-present, the King’s Honai leaned on their spears and watched the diners intently. Others stood closer-to with strung bows in their hands, whilst their commander, Dyarnes, stood behind the black throne in full armour, the clasp of a Royal Companion shining on his corded forearm. Asuria’s Kings had met their end in many places, and the palace, even the tranquil gardens, had seen its fair share of treachery and bloodshed down through the centuries. It was the way the world worked, and no man who wore the diadem ever forgot it.
There were children in the trees also, laughing and chasing one another while the Honai watched on. They flashed in and out of the last light of the sun, as carefree as birds, while their elders lined up to do obeisance to the man who had fathered them. The children were all scions of Ashurnan, their mothers a host of concubines from every satrapy in the empire. They were all brothers and sisters, but did not know it.
Kurun watched them from behind a tree, these golden, beautiful children, so much taller than him, so carefree. They baffled him. There was no purpose to the way they chased one another through the darkening gardens, flitting like fireflies about the lanterns. What were they at — what purpose did it serve?
He shrank into deeper shadow as a hulking Honai strode by, the lanternlight setting his armour aflame with reflections and smeared shadows. Kurun could see the shine of his eyes in the dark. It was the sign of the highest castes, like the golden skin and the hawk nose. He could not begin to imagine what all ten thousand of these creatures must look like arrayed for war — it defeated the imagination.
He began to shrink back the way he had come, fear rising up now to strangle curiosity. He was naked, having left his fine white chiton behind in the palace, his brown skin a better match for the twilit woodland. He had been told to stay by the kitchen platforms, but the haughtiness of the palace staff had been too much for him, and the beauty of the evening had enticed him outside.
‘You must be as dumb as a stone, as still as a vase, when you are up there,’ Fat Borr had told him, his face shining with earnestness. ‘A slave in the world above has no feelings, no needs, no loves and no fears.’
And yet, Kurun was also a boy — one who would soon be a man — and there was in him a spirit which neither his life nor his intellect had yet tamed entirely. He had left his station, knowing it would be hours yet before they began to return the dishes and platters for the descent to the kitchens. He had walked the corridors of the palace as though he belonged to them. He was just one more striped chiton scurrying along the marble, and his anonymity had emboldened him further. The man’s caution had given way to the boy’s curiosity.
Until he had found himself under the open sky, and for the first time in his memory, had looked up at the stars.
They had dizzied him, smote him open-mouthed with their beauty, their myriads, swirling in half-guessed shapes and foaming breakers, as though splashed across the black vault of the night sky by the hand of God Himself.
And against them, the darker shadow of the great cedars and cypresses of the gardens. Kurun had never in his life before seen trees in such numbers, planted in grass, no order to them it seemed — they were not lined in avenues, or placed in pots. They were real, massive, fragrant with resin, alive with the wind. He touched them with something approaching reverence, running his hands down the ancient bark.
Kurun looked back. The King’s feast went on amid the trees like some magical pageant. There was music now, someone softly strumming an instrument Kurun knew nothing of, singing a song he had never heard. But the melody of it wrenched at his young heart. Tears rose in his eyes. This, then, was heaven — this was how the gods lived. And he could even see the far figure of the Great King himself, seated on his black throne with his white komis thrown low about his beard and smiling — smiling!
He would have so much to tell when he went back down to the kitchens. He would have such a story. It swelled up in his breast, and the tears rose higher in his eyes for the beauty of it all.
The blow caught him entirely by surprise.
He found himself blind, lying on the ground with grass in his mouth, the taste of blood. No true realisation of what had happened, just a vague impression of something large, a white explosion in his mind. His head was dragged up by the hair, and then released to crack down on the roots of a tree.
‘Greasy little bastard. Better tell the captain. And Farnak, warn the others. He’s just a slave, but you never know.’
‘He has the mark. A nice little arse, too.’
‘I’ll save some for you. Now go.’
Kurun choked as a huge hand took him by the throat and lifted him up. He could see nothing through his tear-drowned eyes but the bright distant spangle of the distant lanterns in the trees. The music played on. He could hear children laughing.
Another blow, which broke open his lips against his teeth.
‘Who are you and what is your purpose here?’
He blinked, eyes clearing at last, rational thought fighting through the bewilderment and rising terror in his heart. ‘Nothing,’ he croaked. ‘I do nothing.’ The question had been asked in good Kefren, the language of the court, but Kurun knew enough of it to reply in kind.
‘A naked little hufsan, hiding in the trees. What are you, some kind of wood nymph?’ The fingers on his throat loosened. He was released, to collapse, gasping, on the grass in the dark. Above him two violet lights blinked. He could smell leather, sweat, the metallic tang of bronze. One of the Honai.
‘I’m from the kitchens,’ he stammered. He clasped one hand about the tree root below him as though seeking strength from the scales of the gnarled wood. ‘I meant no harm, master.’
‘What in Mot’s Blight is a kitchen slave doing here in the gardens? You need a better story, boy.’ A hand ran over him, almost a caress. The fingers glided over his buttocks. The Honai chuckled. ‘Not a single scar. You have
