«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
