Someone knocked on the door to the suite in which Abivard and his family were quartered. The winter before that would have produced surprise and alarm, for it was not time for the servants to bring in a meal, being about halfway between luncheon and dinner. Now, though, people visited at odd hours; sometimes Abivard almost managed to convince himself he was a guest, not a prisoner.
He could, for instance, bar the door on the inside. He'd done so the first several days after he'd arrived in Mashiz. After that, though, he gave it up. If Sharbaraz wanted to kill him badly enough to send assassins in after him, he'd presumably send assassins with both the wit and the tools to break down the door. And so, of late, Abivard had left it unbarred. As yet, he also remained unmurdered.
He doubted Sharbaraz would send out a particularly polite assassin, and so he opened the door at the knock with no special qualms. When he discovered Yeliif standing in the hallway, he wondered if he'd made a mistake. But the eunuch was armed with nothing but his tongue—which, while poisonous, was not deadly in and of itself. «For reasons beyond my comprehension and far beyond your desserts,» he told Abivard, «you are summoned before Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.»
«I'm coming,» Abivard answered, turning to wave quickly to Roshnani. As he closed the door after himself, he asked, «So what are these reasons far beyond your desserts or my comprehension?»
The beautiful eunuch started to answer, stopped, and favored him with a glare every bit as toxic as his usual speech. Without a word, he led Abivard through the maze of hallways toward the throne room.
This time, Abivard not being isolated as if suffering from a deadly and infectious disease, the journey took far less time than it had when he'd finally been summoned into Sharbaraz' presence the winter before. At the entrance to the throne room Yeliif broke his silence, saying, «Dare I hope you remember the required procedure from your last appearance here?»
«Yes, thank you very much, Mother, you may dare,» Abivard answered sweetly. If Yeliif was going to hate him no matter what he did, he had no great incentive to stay civil.
Yeliif turned and, back quiveringly straight, stalked down the aisle toward the distant throne on which Sharbaraz sat. Not many nobles attended the King of Kings this day. Those who were there, as best Abivard could guess from their faces, were not anticipating the spectacle of a bloodbath, as the courtiers and nobles emphatically had been the last time Abivard had come before his sovereign.
Yeliif stepped to one side, out of the direct line of approach. Abivard advanced to the paving slab prescribed for prostration and went to his knees and then to his belly to honor Sharbaraz King of Kings. «Majesty,» he murmured, his breath fogging the shiny marble of the slab.
«Rise, Abivard son of Godarz,» Sharbaraz said. He did not keep Abivard down in a prostration any longer than was customary, as he had in the previous audience. When he spoke again, though, he sounded far from delighted to see his brother-in-law: «We are deeply saddened that you permitted Maniakes and his Videssian bandits not only to inflict grievous damage upon the land of the Thousand Cities but also, having done so, to escape unharmed, seize one of the towns in the Videssian westlands now under our control, and thence flee by sea to Videssos the city.»
He was saddened, was he? Abivard almost said something frank and therefore unforgivable. But Sharbaraz was not going to trap him like that, if such was his aim. Or was he simply blind to mistakes he'd helped make? Would the likes of Yeliif tell him about them? Not likely!
«Majesty, I am also saddened, and I regret my failure,» Abivard said. «I rejoice, however, that through the campaigning season Mashiz had no part of danger and remained altogether safe and secure.»
Sharbaraz squirmed on the throne. He was vain, but he wasn't stupid. He understood what Abivard didn't say; those unspoken words seemed to echo in the throne room. You sent me out to find my own ragtag army. You wanted to hold my family hostage while I did it. And now you complain because I didn't bring you Maniakes weighted down with chains? Be thankful he didn't visit you in spite of everything I did.
Behind Abivard a faint, almost inaudible hum rose. The courtiers and nobles in the audience could catch those inaudible echoes, too, then.
Sharbaraz said, «When we send a commander out against the foe, we expect him to meet our requirements and expectations in every particular.»
«I regret my failure,» Abivard repeated. «Your Majesty may of course visit any punishment he pleases upon me to requite that failure.»
Go ahead. Are you so blind to honor that you'll torment me for failing to do the impossible? More murmurs said the courtiers had again heard what he had meant along with what he had said. The trouble was, the King of Kings might not have. The only subtleties Sharbaraz was liable to look for were those involving danger to him, which he was apt to see regardless of whether it was real. Kings of Kings often died young, but they always aged quickly.
«We shall on this occasion be clement, given the difficulties with which you were confronted on the campaign,» Sharbaraz said. It was as close as he was ever likely to come to admitting he'd been at fault.
«Thank you, Majesty,» Abivard said without the cynicism he'd expected to use. Deciding to take advantage of what seemed to be Sharbaraz' good humor, he went on, «Majesty, will you permit me to ask a question?»
«Ask,» the King of Kings said. «We are your sovereign; we are not obliged to answer.»
«I understand this, Majesty,» Abivard said, bowing. «What I would ask is why, if you were not dissatisfied—not too dissatisfied, perhaps I should say—with the way I carried out the campaign in the land of the Thousand Cities this past summer, did you recall me from my army to Mashiz?»
For a moment Sharbaraz did not look like a ruler who used the royal we as automatically as he breathed but like an ordinary man taken aback by a question he hadn't looked for. At last he said, «This course was urged upon us by those here at court, that we might examine the reasons behind your failure.»
«The chief reason is easy to see,» Abivard answered. «We saw it, you and I, when you sent me out against Maniakes last spring: Videssos has a fleet, and we have not. That gives the Avtokrator a great advantage in choosing when and where to strike and in how he can escape. Had we not already known as much, the year's campaign would have shown it.»
«Had we had a fleet—» Sharbaraz said longingly.
«Had we had a fleet, Majesty,» Abivard interrupted, «I think I should have laid Videssos the city at your feet. Had we had a fleet, I—or Mikhran marzban—could have chased Maniakes after he swooped down on Pityos. Had we had a fleet, he might never have made for Pityos, knowing our warships lay between Pityos and the capital. Had we had a fleet—»
«The folk of Makuran are not sailors, though,» Sharbaraz said—an obvious truth. «Getting them into a ship is as hard as getting the Videssians out of one, as you no doubt will know better than we.»
Abivard's nod was mournful. «Nor do the Videssians leave any ships behind for their fisherfolk to crew for us. They are not fools, the imperials, for they know we would use any ships and sailors against them. Could we but once get soldiers over the Cattle Crossing—» He broke off. He'd sung that song too many times to too many people.
«We have no ships. We are not sailors. Not even our command can make the men of Makuran into what they are not,» Sharbaraz said. Abivard dipped his head in agreement The King of Kings went on. «Somewhere we must find ships.» He spoke as if certain his will could conjure them up, all difficulties notwithstanding.
«Majesty, that would be excellent,» Abivard said. He'd been saying the same thing since the Makuraner armies had reached the coasts of the Videssian westlands. He'd been saying it loudly since the Makuraner armies had reached the Cattle Crossing, with Videssos the city so temptingly displayed what would have been an easy walk away… if men could walk on water, which they couldn't, save in ships. Wanting ships and having them, though, were two different things.
Thinking of ships seemed to make Sharbaraz think of water in other contexts, although he didn't suggest walking on it He said, «We wish you had not loosed the waters of the canals that cross the land of the Thousand Cities, for the damage the flooding did has reduced the tax revenues we shall be able to gather in this year.»
«I regret my failure,» Abivard said for the third time. But that wooden repetition of blame stuck in his craw, and he added, «Had I not arranged to open the canals, Maniakes Avtokrator might now be enjoying those extra tax revenues.»
Behind him one of the assembled courtiers, against all etiquette, laughed for a moment. In the deep, almost smothering quiet of the throne room that brief burst of mirth was all the more startling. Abivard would not have cared to be the man who had so forgotten himself. Everyone near him would know who he was, and Yeliif
