away from Sharbaraz' throne until he could turn around without causing a scandal—a bigger scandal than I've caused already, he thought, amused by the contrast between ritual and substance.
The beautiful eunuch fell in beside him. They walked out of the throne room together, neither of them saying a word. Once they were in the hallway, though, the eunuch turned blazing eyes on Abivard. «How dare you defy the King of Kings?» he demanded, his voice beautiful no more but cracking with rage.
«How dare I?» Abivard echoed. «I didn't dare leave my family behind in his clutches, that's how.» No doubt every word he said would go straight back to Sharbaraz, but he got the idea that words would go back to Sharbaraz whether he said anything or not. If he didn't, the eunuch would invent something.
«He should have given you over to the torturers,» the eunuch hissed. «He should have given you over to the torturers when first you came here.»
«He needs me,» Abivard answered. The beautiful eunuch recoiled, almost physically sickened at the idea that the King of Kings could need anyone. Abivard went on, «He needs me in particular. You can't pick just anyone and order him to go out and win your battles for you. Oh, you could, but you wouldn't care for the results. If people can win battles for you, giving them to the torturers is wasteful.»
«Do not puff yourself up like a pig's bladder at me,» the eunuch snarled. «All your pretensions are empty and vain, foolish and insane. You shall pay for your presumption; if not now, then in due course.»
Abivard did not answer, on the off chance that keeping quiet would prevent the beautiful eunuch from growing more angry at him still. He was even gladder than he had been while facing down Sharbaraz that he'd managed to pry his family out of the palace. If the eunuch was any indication, the servitors to the King of Kings distrusted and feared him even more than Sharbaraz did.
And for what? The only thing he could think of was that he'd been too successful at doing Sharbaraz' bidding. If the King of Kings was lord over all the realm of Makuran, could he afford such successful servants? Evidently he didn't think so.
«I hope you lose,» the beautiful eunuch said. «No matter how you boast, Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, is rash in putting his faith in you. The God grant that the Videssians bewilder you, befuddle you, and beat you.»
«An interesting prayer,» Abivard answered. «Should the God grant it, I expect Maniakes would be here a few days later to burn Mashiz around your ears. Shall I tell Sharbaraz you wished for that?»
The eunuch glared again. They had come to hallways Abivard knew. In a moment they rounded a last corner and came up to the guarded door behind which Abivard had passed the winter. At the beautiful eunuch's brusque gesture, the guardsmen opened the door. Abivard went in. The door slammed shut.
Roshnani pounced on him. «Well?» she demanded.
«I was summoned before the King of Kings,» he told her.
«And?»
«There's more to the world than this suite of rooms,» Abivard told her. She hugged him. Their children squealed.
V
In early spring even the parched country between Mashiz and the westernmost tributaries of the Tib bore a thin carpet of green that put Abivard in mind of the hair on top of a balding man's head: you could see the bare land beneath, as you could see the bald man's scalp, and you knew it would soon prevail over the temporary covering.
For the first few farsangs out of the capital, though, such fine distinctions were the last thing on Abivard's mind, or his principal wife's, or those of their children. Breaming fresh air, seeing the horizon farther than a wall away—those were treasures beside which the riches in the storerooms of the King of Kings were pebbles and lumps of brass by comparison.
And happy as they were to escape their confinement, Pashang, their driver, was more joyful yet. They had been confined in genteel captivity: mewed up, certainly, but in comfort and with plenty to eat. Pashang had gone straight to the dungeons under the palace.
«The God only knows how far they go, lord,» he told Abivard as the wagon rattled along. «They're getting bigger all the time, too, for Sharbaraz has gangs of Videssian prisoners driving new tunnels through the rock. He uses 'em hard; when one dies, he just throws in another one. I was lucky they didn't put me in one of those gangs, or somebody else would be driving you now.»
«We took a lot of Videssian prisoners,» Abivard said in a troubled voice. «I'd hoped they were put to better use than that.»
Pashang shook his head. «Didn't look so to me, lord. Some of those poor buggers, they'd been down underground so long, they were pale as ghosts, and even the torchlight hurt their eyes. Some of 'em, they didn't even know Maniakes was Avtokrator in Videssos; they were trying to figure out what year of Genesios' reign they were in.»
«That's… alarming to think about,» Abivard said. «I'm glad you're all right, Pashang; I'm sorry I couldn't protect you as I would have liked.»
«What could you do, when you were in trouble yourself?» the driver answered. «It could have been worse for me, too. I know that. They just held me in a cell and didn't try to work me to death, till they finally let me out.» He glanced down at his hands. «First time in more years'n I can remember I don't have calluses from the reins. I'll blister, I suppose, then get 'em back.»
Abivard set a hand on his shoulder. «I'm glad you'll have the chance.»
The soldiers who had accompanied him to the capital now accompanied him away from it. Their fate had been milder than his and far milder than Pashang's. They'd been quartered apart from the rest of the troops in Mashiz, as if they carried some loath-some and contagious illness, and they'd been subjected to endless interrogations designed to prove that either they or Abivard was disloyal to the King of Kings. After that failed, they'd been left almost as severely alone as Abivard had.
One of them rode up to him as he was walking back to the wagon from a call of nature. The trooper said, «Lord, if we weren't angry at Sharbaraz before we got into Mashiz, we are now, by the God.»
He pretended he hadn't heard. For all he knew, the trooper was an agent of the King of Kings, trying to entrap him into a statement Sharbaraz could construe as treasonous. Abivard hated to think that way, but everything that had happened to him since he had been recalled from Vaspurakan warned him that he'd better.
When he came to Erekhatti, one of the westernmost of the Thousand Cities, he got his next jolt the sort of men Sharbaraz expected him to forge into an army with which to vanquish Maniakes. The city governor assembled the garrison for his inspection. «They are bold men,» the fellow declared. «They will fight like lions.»
What they looked like to Abivard was a crowd of tavern toughs or, at best, tavern bouncers: men who would probably be fierce enough facing foes smaller, weaker, and worse armed than themselves but who could be relied on to panic and flee under any serious attack. Though almost all of them wore iron pots on their heads, a good quarter were armed with nothing more lethal than stout truncheons.
Abivard pointed those men out to the city governor. «They may be fine for keeping order here inside the walls, but they won't be enough if we're fighting real soldiers—and we will be.»
«We have spears stored somewhere, I think,» the governor said doubtfully. After a moment he added, «Lord, garrison troops were never intended to go into battle outside the city walls, you know.»
So much for fighting like lions, Abivard thought. «If you know where those spears are, dig them up,» he commanded. «These soldiers will do better with them than without.»
«Aye, lord, just as you desire, so shall it be done,» the governor of Erekhatti promised. When Abivard was ready to move out the next morning with the garrison in tow, the spears had not appeared. He decided to wait till afternoon. There was still no sign of the spears. Angrily, he marched out of Erekhatti. The governor said, «I pray to the God I did not distress you.»
