Kingdom River

magnate's glass-windowed garden. The expense that must be…

What was that wonderful line from a poem or acted-play? – translated from the Beautiful Language in one of the Empire's copybooks, though it had seemed perfectly at home in book-English: 'Is it not passing brave to be a king, and ride in triumph through Persepolis?'

Passing brave – as long as there were flowers thrown, not stones, not crossbow quarrels. And those, important flowers in this province, little messengers that no hard feelings remained over the dead at This'll Do.

Once out of the market square, Ed Pell wished to speak privately. Margaret, not Sam, regretted there wasn't time – reducing Pell slightly, as intended, and pleasing Major Chavez and his officers, also as intended.

… The caravan of welcome turned away at last by the dock gates, Sam and the others rode out on echoing tarred planking over shallow gray Gulf-water flecked with small shards of floating ice. A beamy fishing schooner lay waiting one dock-finger over, and they dismounted and led their horses to it.

A large two-masted boat, painted a near-midnight color, the Cormorant's name was painted along its bow, the last letter becoming a black eye over a black beak. As they led their horses to the ramp, a gull, silver-white with dark wing tips, sailed by and shit neatly as it went.

An elderly man with a large nose and red woolen cap appeared above them at the rail, turned his head, and called hoarsely, 'Cap – it's the big cheese!'

'You watch your fucking mouth!' Margaret called up to him, and the old sailor smiled down, toothless, and blew her a kiss.

CHAPTER 14

The Lily Chamber of Large Audience was a single great room – a room and a wooden building, all of itself. The chamber, quite lovely, was painted in lily colors of white and gold, and had a wide hearth on each of its four sides. The huge logs that burned beneath those brick chimneys had been wheeled and dragged five hundred Warm-time miles from the mountains of Map-Arizona. And still, it seemed to Toghrul Khan, gave less heat in commencing winter than the fat little metal stove in any yurt.

The room was cold enough to keep cut meat sound… but the four fires did give warmth to the chamber's painted ivories and golds, and so an impression of comfort.

The odors of much of the audience – sweat, smeared sheep fat, and mare's-milk fartings – made an unpleasant counterpoint.

The audience subject for today – traditionally a Please-and-Thank-You, with wishes that Blue Sky turn trouble away – was not, however, lightning, grazing land, floodwater, or sheep scrapie, the tribesmen's traditional concerns. The subject today was salary… payment… wages.

There had been, over the past few years, more and more interest by the fighting men in money – as opposed to gifts of flocks, horse herds, honors. Razumov had noticed it early, and warned it would increase. 'A penalty of civilization, lord, and reward of conquest. The old ways now being seen as 'old ways.''

Sadly true – and having to be dealt with by such audiences as this, in which little bags of silver coin, minted in Map-Oakland, were handed out to officers whose only interest should be in service to their lord. There was no question how the old Khan, his father, would have dealt with these more and more frequent requests for currency. He would have picked an officer past his prime, and ordered silver spikes driven into his skull, as a lesson on the perils of greed.

It was in the midst of distribution – a rank of rewarded men bowing over their clutched little bags of metal before him, while he smiled and smiled (the watching crowd hissing in approval) – that Toghrul became aware of a disturbance at the doors.

Two men had pushed in past the guards, then immediately had fallen to their hands and knees and begun the long crawl down the center aisle toward his cushioned dais. An excess of debasement, and a very bad sign.

The rank of officers glanced behind them at the crawlers, bowed once more, and got out of the way.

No more hissing approvals. Only silence.

Toghrul waited while the two fools came toward him, baby fashion, crawling more slowly the closer they came. Watching them, copybook Achilles-and-the-Tortoise occurred to him.

He waited, then beckoned them on to finally rest before him, still on hands and knees. They'd come dirty from long riding. He knew one – a minor officer of supply, with Ikbal Crusan's tuman. The other was just a soldier.

'Great, Great Lord – ' The officer of supply.

Serious trouble, if it required two 'greats' as introduction. Toghrul sat silent. His father would have approved.

'Map-Fort Stockton… O Khan, live forever.' The sweating officer was Kipchak, the steppe still in his face.

Toghrul waited.

'The… the North Map-Mexicans have come up and destroyed it, lord!'

Ah, a fact at last, though likely faulty. Murmurs in the Lily Chamber.

'And with what forces did they accomplish this?'

More groveling. Both men had their faces on the carpet. 'It seemed… three or four thousand riders, lord. Heavy and Light. They came from southeast, in the dark before morning.'

Listening, a flush – an absolute flush of pleasure, of amusement – rose in Toghrul so he couldn't help smiling, then chuckling at such a surprise, a blow struck as clever as one of his own! An interesting event, and at last an interesting enemy. The joys of complications arising…

'So, I'm to understand that this Captain-General, this Small-Sam Monroe, seeing us striking to the south – west of the border Bend – has taken the opportunity to strike north at us from east of it!'

Silence from the grovelers… well, a little nod from the officer. A nod into the carpet.

'And the place is destroyed?'

'Yes, lord.' The Nodder. 'Burned and destroyed and all the men killed.'

'Only the men?'

'I believe only the men, lord – the seven or eight hundred left behind as guards, herdsmen, and storekeepers.' A pause. 'I believe the women and children were spared.'

'You believe, or you saw?'

'I saw… a little.'

'And you – soldier – what did you see?'

But the soldier seemed to have seen nothing, and only burrowed into the carpet, his ass in the air.

'The horses?'

The Nodder murmured, 'Gone, lord.'

'Almost two thousand – four herds of fine horses gone, taken? Driven away?'

A nod. There were strands of drool on the carpet.

'But you weren't killed… and you were mounted?'

A nod, but a reluctant nod.

'Why then didn't you send… this one… with the report? Why not, yourself, have followed those clever thieves, made certain of their route of retreat? Then you might have become a wind ghost, cut throats in the night to unsettle them, and so secured at least a little of my honor.'

'I… lord, I didn't think.'

'You didn't? Your head was at fault for not thinking?'

Barely a nod.

'Well then, your head's proved of little use to you. You'll do much better without it.' Toghrul lifted his right hand, made a little spilling motion – and four guardsmen, two from each side of the dais, jumped down on the Nodder like swineherds on a shoat, and bound his hands behind him. They lifted him up, and trotted away with him down the chamber's aisle while the officers, chiefs, and important men of audience fell aside as if the pops were carried there in rot and puss and buboes. The Nodder made no sound, going, seemed almost asleep with terror.

The soldier remained silent on the carpet.