Harry Turtledove: The Thousand Cities

If Yeliif hadn't been born smiling that knowing, superior smile, he'd spent a lot of time practicing it, perhaps in front of a mirror of polished silver. «All will be made clear to you in due course,» he said, and would say no more. Abivard felt like booting him in the backside as they walked down the corridor.

Tzikas had indeed been bidden to the audience: he stood waiting at the rear of the throne room. Someone-very likely Yeliif-had taken the sensible precaution of posting some palace guards back there. Their dour expressions were as well schooled as Yeliif's smile.

Abivard glared at Tzikas but, with the guards there, did no more. Tzikas glared back. Yeliif said, «The two of you shall accompany me to the throne together and prostrate yourselves before the King of Kings at the same time. No lapses shall be tolerated, if I make myself clear.»

Without waiting to find out whether he did, he started down the aisle on the long walk toward the throne on which Sharbaraz sat. Abivard stayed by his right side; Tzikas quickly found a place on his left. It was as if each of them was using the eunuch to shield himself from the other. Under different circumstances the idea might have been funny.

A pair of men stood to one side of the throne of the King of Kings. Abivard presumed they were the mysterious Tus and Piran. Yeliif explained nothing. Abivard had expected no more. Then, at the appropriate moment, the beautiful eunuch stepped away, leaving Abivard and Tzikas side by side before the King of Kings.

They prostrated themselves, acknowledging their insignificance in comparison to their sovereign. Out of the corner of his eye Abivard watched Tzikas, but he had already known that the ritual was almost the same among Videssians as among the folk of Makuran. The two men waited together, foreheads touching the polished marble floor, for Sharbaraz to give them leave to rise.

At last he did. «We are not pleased with the two of you,» he said when Abivard and Tzikas had regained their feet. Abivard already knew that from the length of time the King of Kings had required them to stay on their bellies. Sharbaraz went on, «By persisting in your headstrong feud, you have endangered the plan we have long been maturing, a plan which, to work to its fullest extent, requires the service of both of you.»

«Majesty, if we knew what this plan was, we would be able to serve you better,» Abivard answered. He was sick to death of Sharbaraz' notorious plan. Sharbaraz was full of big talk that usually ended up amounting to nothing-except trouble for Abivard.

When Sharbaraz spoke again, his words did not seem immediately to the point: «Abivard son of Godarz, brother-in-law of mine, you will remember how our father, Peroz King of Kings, departed this world for the company of the God?»

He hadn't publicly acknowledged Abivard as his brother-in-law for a long time. Abivard noted that as he answered, «Aye, Majesty I do: battling bravely against the Khamorth out on the Pardrayan' steppe.» Only the blind chance of his own horse's stepping in a hole and breaking a leg at the start of its charge had kept him out of the overwhelming disaster that had befallen the Makuraner army moments afterward.

«What you say is true but incomplete,» Sharbaraz told him. «How did it happen that our father, Peroz King of Kings, saw the need to campaign against the Khamorth out on the steppe?»

«They were raiding us, Majesty, as you will no doubt remember,» Abivard said. «Your father wanted to punish them as they deserved.» He would not speak ill of the dead. Had Peroz flung out his net of scouts more widely, the plainsmen might not have trapped him and his host.

Sharbaraz nodded. «And why were they raiding us at that particular time?» he asked with the air of a schoolmaster leading a student through a difficult lesson step by step. Abivard had trouble figuring out what to make of that.

The answer, though, was plain enough: «Because the Videssians paid them gold to raid us.» He glared at Tzikas.

«Not my idea.» The Videssian renegade held up a hand, denying any responsibility. «Likinios Avtokrator sent the gold out where he thought it would do the most good.»

«Likinios Avtokrator, whom we knew, was devious enough to have devised such a scheme for harming his foes without risking his own men or the land then held by the Empire of Videssos,» Sharbaraz said. Abivard nodded; Likinios had lived up to all the Makuraner tales about calculating, cold-blooded Videssians. The King of Kings went on, «We have endeavored to learn even from our foes. Thus the ambassadors we sent forth two years ago just now returned to us: Tus and Piran.»

«Ambassadors to whom, Majesty?» Abivard asked. At last he could put the question to someone who might answer it.

But Sharbaraz did not answer it directly. Instead, he turned to the men now back from their two-year embassy and said, «Whose agreement did you bring back with you?»

Tus and Piran spoke together, denying Abivard the chance to figure out who was who: «Majesty, we brought back the agreement of Etzilios, khagan of Kubrat, Videssos' northern neighbor.»

«By the God,» Abivard murmured. He'd had that notion years before but hadn't thought it really could be done. If Sharbaraz had done it…

Tzikas' right hand started to shape Phos' sun-sign, then checked itself. The renegade murmured, «By the God,» too. Abivard for once was not disgusted at his hypocrisy. He was too busy staring at Sharbaraz King of Kings. For once he'd been wrong about his sovereign.

Sharbaraz said, «Aye, two years ago I sent them forth. They had to traverse the mountains and valleys of Erzerum without revealing their mission to the petty princes there who might have betrayed us to Videssos. They had to travel over the Pardrayan steppe all around the Videssian Sea, giving the Videssian outpost on the northern shore there a wide berth. They could not sail over the Videssian Sea to Kubrat, for we have no ships capable of such a journey.» He nodded to Abivard. «We now more fully appreciate your remarks on the subject.»

One of the ambassadors-the taller and older of the two-said, «We shall have ships. The Kubratoi hollow out great tree trunks and mount masts and sails on them. With these single-trunk ships they have raided the Videssian coast again and again, doing no small damage to our common foe.»

«Piran has the right of it,» Sharbaraz said, letting Abivard learn who was who. «Brother-in-law of mine, when the campaigning season begins this coming spring, you shall lead a great host of the men of Makuran through the Videssian westlands to Across, where all our previous efforts were halted. Under Etzilios, the Kubratoi shall come down and besiege the city by land. And-»

«And-» Abivard committed the enormity of interrupting the King of Kings, «-and their one-trunk ships will ferry over our men and the siege gear to force a breach in the wall and capture the enemy's capital.»

«Just so.» Sharbaraz was so pleased with himself, he overlooked the interruption.

Abivard bowed low. «Majesty,» he said with more sincerity in his voice than he had used in complimenting the King of Kings for some years, «this is a splendid conception. You honor me by letting me help bring it to reality.»

«Just so,» Sharbaraz said again. Abivard let out a small mental sigh. That the King of Kings had come up with a good idea did not keep him from remaining as full of himself as he'd grown in his years on the throne, even if it did give him better reason than usual for his pride.

«You have given me my role to play, Majesty, and I am proud to play it, as I told you,» Abivard said. He turned toward Tzikas. «You have not said what the Videssian's role is to be or why he should have one.» If the God was kind, he might yet be rid of Tzikas.