by Kearney Paul
Rakhsar laughed. ‘Not me! If you want stories of the excesses of kings, then there is no need to make them up – just go down to the Court Records and take out a scroll. Our family has a history of excess. We are the lords of Kuf, Roshana. We define excess. If you think that was interesting, let me tell you –’
‘No more. We will be eating soon.’
‘You eat like a bird anyway.’ Rakhsar tapped the cage, a beautiful, golden-wrought affair that was chased with enamels and inlays of lapis lazuli, bloodstone, ruby. The little brown bird inside went silent, and cocked its head to look at him.
‘I think he likes me,’ Rakhsar said with a grin.
‘Leave him be. I’d rather listen to him sing than hear more of your stories.’
Rakhsar leaned back from the cage and reclined on the silk-cushioned couch that they shared. The sun fell on his face, and as the wind moved in the branches of the tall trees above so the shadows came and went, back and forth across his features. His skin answered the passing sunlight, a pale gold, almost translucent, and blue as a bruise in the hollows of his temples and nostrils. His eyes, bright and violet, seemed to catch the waning light and reflect it back at the evening. His long, rufous hair was tied back from his face in a topknot fastened by a silver ring. Gold thread was woven through his robes, and his slippers hung swinging from his toes as he lay back, studying the patterns the cedars made against the sky.
His sister was his twin, as long-limbed and golden-skinned, but more delicate, with darker eyes. And there was less of a hawkish cast to her face, for all that it was the mirror of his. In Rakhsar’s face there was wit, humour, a flashing intelligence and curiosity. In Roshana’s there was a gentleness entirely lacking in her sibling. And she did not have the hint of cruelty that dwelled in her brother’s bright eyes.
‘Cages,’ Rakhsar said. ‘Some are bigger than others, but in the end they all fulfil the same function. At least the bird can expect a long life, so long as he remembers how to sing. You and I, Roshana, our lives hinge on the whims of an old man. At any moment, the Honai could come for us. For me they will come, one day. I know that. I have known it since I was a child and saw the way our father looked upon my brother.’
Roshana said nothing. The truth could not be argued away.
‘In the meantime we spin out our little lives here, like your bird, passing the time as pleasantly as we can, indulging in our petty little intrigues, hoping to catch his favour. Our father.’ He raised a hand and grasped at the air. ‘We might as well reach for the shadows in the sky. He has settled upon Kouros, my reliable elder brother. And even before Kouros is King, I will die, and you – if you are lucky – will be married to some functionary who is owed a favour.’
‘Our father is a good man,’ Roshana said quietly.
‘Yes. He is that most dangerous of things, a good man who is doing what he sees as right. He indulged his own brother, and look what it cost him – Jutha gone, Artaka in endless rebellions, the monsters from across the sea marching towards the Middle Empire under the usurper’s banner. Kouros will not make the same mistake. Father will not let him.’
Rakhsar sat up in a rush of movement, scanning the bushes around them. ‘Did you hear that?’
Roshana sighed. ‘There is no-one here but us, brother. Unless the birds can eavesdrop, we are safe.’
‘Kouros has his spies too, you know. He has begun recruiting a new corps.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘From a spy of my own.’ Rakhsar grinned.
‘You are impossible today, Rakhsar. I will go in. It will be time for the dinner soon, and I should change. There are guests from the west.’
‘Yes, but I doubt they’ll have much of an appetite once father gets through with them.’
‘Why? Rakhsar, what have you heard?
‘What do you care? You have your nightingale to listen to.’
‘Brother, I swear –’
Rakhsar stood up. He paced about the little manicured clearing as the shadows went back and forth across his face, the ancient trees above him creaking in the breeze.
‘What have I heard? I hear everything, Roshana.
‘I have heard that all is not well in the west. The enemy were given battle at the Haneikos river, and our troops were routed. The satrapies of Gansakr and Askanon are wide open to the invaders – all the land between the Haneikos and the Sardask is theirs now, right up to the city of Ashdod.’
Rakhsar paused, eyes gleaming, as bright and hard as shards of glass. ‘There will have to be another levy – a real one this time. And if I know anything, I believe the Great King himself will lead it.’
‘Our father, off to war? But he’s an old man, Rakhsar.’
Rakhsar smiled sourly. ‘He has my brother’s broad shoulders to carry some of the load for him. In any case, the preparations have already begun. They’re moving cattle west to Hamadan. It’s my guess he’ll take the Honai, too. And if they want to cross the Magron before the first snows, then the thing must be got under way very soon.’
Roshana shook her head in disbelief. ‘How many years has it been?’
‘Since Kunaksa? Thirty. A generation, since Ashurnan the Great won his empire and killed his brother. Now he must do it again.’
‘And what of us?’ Roshana’s dark eyes widened. ‘Are we simply to be left here?’
‘That is my point, sister. The Great King leaves his capital. He takes with him his eldest son and heir. Do you really think he will leave me behind? He would be a fool to even consider it. No.’ Rakhsar looked down at his slender fingers. His hands began to clench in and out of one another, as if he were washing them. It was as though he could not bid them to be still.
‘No. This is my time. Kouros will have me killed before they leave for Hamadan, and our father will not interfere. That is the way it will be.’
A low chime carried through the air, a shimmering echo of noise that carried through the gardens like some tremor set off by the sunset.
‘We are called,’ Rakhsar said. ‘Our beloved father bids us dine with him.’
‘Do you really believe all this, brother?’ Roshana asked. She offered Rakhsar her hand and he helped her up from the embroidered couch. He smiled down at her with real affection, but there was still that hard light shining in his eyes.
‘You’ve lost one. Here, let me.’ He knelt before his sister and placed her slim foot within the thin, scarlet leather of the slipper. Then he straightened, and took both her hands in his own.
‘I am certain enough to act on it, and to risk death to avoid death,’ he said in a low voice. ‘For you, it is not the same. You have no stake in this – be married, have children, try to be happy. I will speak no more of these things to you – it is not your concern – but I wanted you to know, Roshana.’
‘You’re leaving,’ she said. ‘But how can you? Rakhsar, they have you watched night and day.’
‘I have the thing in hand.’ He bent and kissed her. ‘I should not have told you, but I wanted to say goodbye. I had to let you know.’
‘Take me with you –’
‘Impossible. Do you know what it would mean? You have never left the city, Roshana. You do not know what the world is like.’
‘Nor do you.’
Rakhsar’s mouth curved in a scimitar sneer. ‘I have a pretty good idea.’
Again, the low chime of the gong, carrying over the birdsong. They heard footsteps on the flags of the path, and turned as one. Into the clearing stepped a small girl, a dark hufsa in the livery of the household.
‘Great ones,’ she stammered, eyes downcast, ‘I am sent to beg you to come to table.’ She went to her knees and then bobbed up again.
‘One of yours?’ Rakhsar asked.
Roshana shook her head. ‘She’s one of Kouros’s slaves, I think.’
Rakhsar strode over to the girl and kicked her in the ribs, sending her sprawling. ‘Get you gone, and tell your master Prince Rakhsar comes when it suits him.’
‘Yes, lord,’ the girl gasped, and hobbled away, holding her side.
‘She did you no harm,’ Roshana said quietly.
‘He sent a hufsa to fetch us, as though we were tenants in his house. While our father lives, Roshana, our blood is as high and royal as that of the mighty Kouros and the bitch-mother who whelped him.’ He offered his arm. ‘Shall we go, sister? Shall we smile and bow and eat and drink with our family?’
Roshana clicked up the latch on the nightingale’s golden cage and swung open the door. Then she took her brother’s arm.
‘We’ll make a grand entrance together.’
THE PALACE OF the Kings was so old as to make the count of decades and centuries into an irrelevance. The only structure in the world which predated it was said to be the Fane of Bel itself. The Great Kings of Asuria had made it their seat for as long as their kingships had existed; it was said, in fact, that the kitchen levels of the ziggurat had been the original palace, but had been relegated to humbler usage as the structure was reworked and added to by Asur’s descendants. Some irreverent scholars maintained that the kings continually added to the palace ziggurat in order to overtop that of the High Priests, but if so, they had not succeeded. The twin hills of Ashur stared at each other across the teeming plain of the great city like two titans sprung from the same womb. The palace itself was as large as some cities – no-one had ever counted the rooms with any accuracy, but there were thousands – and enclosed a wide open space in which were planted the Imperial Gardens. These were as big as half a dozen farms, a landscape to themselves, with rivers and woods and pastures and herds of animals, flocks of birds, shoals of fishes. The Asurians believed that a beautiful garden partook of divinity. It was pleasing in the eyes of Bel, a reflection of heaven itself.
At this time of year, the Great King did not always dine in the echoing chambers of the palace, but as the whim took him, he would eat under the sky amid the trees his forbears had planted. On this evening, a silk canopy had been erected in the garden and plain wooden benches and trestles had been placed upon the grass, within sight of a glittering river whose waters were pumped up from the bowels of the ziggurat by a legion of blind slaves. Lanterns were hung by the hundred in the trees about the spot, and as the evening darkened it seemed that a host of golden flickering stars had been ensnared and set to shine throughout the woods.
The King himself sat apart on a black wooden throne, as was his wont, and the only other mark of his station was a diadem of black silk bound about his temples. A steady stream of fast-moving barefoot slaves bore the food to the tables, watched over by a tall, cadaverous Kefre who bore a silver-shod staff of ebony. The guests came one by one up to the black throne and went to their knees before the Great King before he bade them rise with a wave of his hand, and a smile for those he liked best.
Men had been known to pay massive fortunes for the chance to kneel thus, and catch the eye of the ruler of the world. His smile, or the absence of it, had blessed or blighted lives.
The diners were then ushered to their place at the tables by discreet pages, sons of the nobility who were brought to court to serve their king and act as surety for their families’ loyalty. Informal as the outdoor setting might seem, there was a rigid hierarchy to the place-settings, and no amount of coin in the empire could move a diner any closer to the Great King’s plate than the High Chamberlain decreed.
Back in the trees, unobtrusive but ever-present, the King’s Honai leaned on their spears and watched the diners intently. Others stood closer-to with strung bows in their hands, whilst their commander, Dyarnes, stood behind the black throne in full armour, the clasp of a Royal Companion shining on his corded forearm. Asuria’s Kings had met their end in many places, and the palace, even the tranquil gardens, had seen its fair share of treachery and bloodshed down through the centuries. It was the way the world worked, and no man who wore the diadem ever forgot it.
There were children in the trees also, laughing and chasing one another while the Honai watched on. They flashed in and out of the last light of the sun, as carefree as birds, while their elders lined up to do obeisance to the man who had fathered them. The children were all scions of Ashurnan, their mothers a host of concubines from every satrapy in the empire. They were all brothers and sisters, but did not know it.
KURUN WATCHED THEM from behind a tree, these golden, beautiful children, so much taller than him, so carefree. They baffled him. There was no purpose to the way they chased one another through the darkening gardens, flitting like fireflies about the lanterns. What were they at – what purpose did it serve?
He shrank into deeper shadow as a hulking Honai strode by, the lanternlight setting his armour aflame with reflections and smeared shadows. Kurun could see the shine of his eyes in the dark. It was the sign of the highest castes, like the golden skin and the hawk nose. He could not begin to imagine what all ten thousand of these creatures must look like arrayed for war – it defeated the imagination.
He began to shrink back the way he had come, fear rising up now to strangle curiosity. He was naked, having left his fine white chiton behind in the palace, his brown skin a better match for the twilit woodland. He had been told to stay by the kitchen platforms, but the haughtiness of the palace staff had been too much for him, and the beauty of the evening had enticed him outside.
‘You must be as dumb as a stone, as still as a vase, when you are up there,’ Fat Borr had told him, his face shining with earnestness. ‘A slave in the world above has no feelings, no needs, no loves and no fears.’
And yet, Kurun was also a boy – one who would soon be a man – and there was in him a spirit which neither his life nor his intellect had yet tamed entirely. He had left his station, knowing it would be hours yet before they began to return the dishes and platters for the descent to the kitchens. He had walked the corridors of the palace as though he belonged to them. He was just one more striped chiton scurrying along the marble, and his anonymity had emboldened him further. The man’s caution had given way to the boy’s curiosity.
Until he had found himself under the open sky, and for the first time in his memory, had looked up at the stars.
They had dizzied him, smote him open-mouthed with their beauty, their myriads, swirling in half-guessed shapes and foaming breakers, as though splashed across the black vault of the night sky by the hand of God Himself.
And against them, the darker shadow of the great cedars and cypresses of the gardens. Kurun had never in his life before seen trees in such numbers, planted in grass, no order to them it seemed – they were not lined in avenues, or placed in pots. They were real, massive, fragrant with resin, alive with the wind. He touched them with something approaching reverence, running his hands down the ancient bark.
Kurun looked back. The King’s feast went on amid the trees like some magical pageant. There was music now, someone softly strumming an instrument Kurun knew nothing of, singing a song he had never heard. But the melody of it wrenched at his young heart. Tears rose in his eyes. This, then, was heaven – this was how the gods lived. And he could even see the far figure of the Great King himself, seated on his black throne with his white komis thrown low about his beard and smiling – smiling!
He would have so much to tell when he went back down to the kitchens. He would have such a story. It swelled up in his breast, and the tears rose higher in his eyes for the beauty of it all.
The blow caught him entirely by surprise.
He found himself blind, lying on the ground with grass in his mouth, the taste of blood. No true realisation of what had happened, just a vague impression of something large, a white explosion in his mind. His head was dragged up by the hair, and then released to crack down on the roots of a tree.
‘Greasy little bastard. Better tell the captain. And Farnak, warn the others. He’s just a slave, but you never know.’
‘He has the mark. A nice little arse, too.’
‘I’ll save some for you. Now go.’
Kurun choked as a huge hand took him by the throat and lifted him up. He could see nothing through his tear-drowned eyes but the bright distant spangle of the distant lanterns in the trees. The music played on. He could hear children laughing.
Another blow, which broke open his lips against his teeth.
‘Who are you and what is your purpose here?’
He blinked, eyes clearing at last, rational thought fighting through the bewilderment and rising terror in his heart. ‘Nothing,’ he croaked. ‘I do nothing.’ The question had been asked in good Kefren, the language of the court, but Kurun knew enough of it to reply in kind.
‘A naked little hufsan, hiding in the trees. What are you, some kind of wood nymph?’ The fingers on his throat loosened. He was released, to collapse, gasping, on the grass in the dark. Above him two violet lights blinked. He could smell leather, sweat, the metallic tang of bronze. One of the Honai.
‘I’m from the kitchens,’ he stammered. He clasped one hand about the tree root below him as though seeking strength from the scales of the gnarled wood. ‘I meant no harm, master.’
‘What in Mot’s Blight is a kitchen slave doing here in the gardens? You need a better story, boy.’ A hand ran over him, almost a caress. The fingers glided over his buttocks. The Honai chuckled. ‘Not a single scar. You have the skin of a girl. Who are you here to fuck, hufsan? You tell me true, and you may yet leave here with those pretty little balls still attached.’
‘I – no-one. There is no-one, may Bel hear me. I just – I just wanted to see the trees, the stars.’
A laugh. But then the Honai tensed, and straightened. Kurun looked up to see more massive shapes looming over him, more bright eyes shining in the night. There was a slap of flesh on bronze. ‘My lord!’
‘Easy, Banon. What is it that’s so important you have me dragged from the King’s side?’
‘A spy, lord. I found him lurking in the trees. He claims to be from the kitchens. The other posts have been alerted.’
Perfume in the night, a taut, bracing smell of sandalwood.
