by Kearney Paul
‘Be still, you little fool,’ a deep voice said. ‘Mistress, he is awake.’
‘Open your eyes.’ A woman’s voice.
He saw a blur of white in dark, and eyes above it, bright as shards of window-glass catching the moons.
‘You are among friends, boy. My name is Roshana, and I will not let any more harm come to you. Nod if you understand.’
He recognised the perfect Kefren of the Court, smelled perfume tinting the night air, and nodded. Her fingers fumbled at the back of his head. They were cool, and the light of Anande the Patient glittered on her painted nails. The gag came off, leaving a sourness in his mouth.
‘My name is Kurun,’ he said doggedly, forcing down the pain, determined to make himself known. He would not die nameless.
‘You must make no noise – do you understand me? Not a sound, if you wish to live. Be brave for me now, Kurun.’ The cool fingers traced a line down his cheek for a moment, and then she had turned away.
Kurun raised his head slightly, and saw the jowled underside of a broad, hairless face, dark as walnut. ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered.
The arms crushed him closer, and a dull grunt of agony left him.
‘No noise,’ the deep voice above him said. ‘You make another sound, and I will break your neck.’
Kurun went limp, fighting the pain, the dark swirl of confusion. He could smell damp earth, and growing things. They were in the gardens, padding quickly and silently from shadow to deeper shadow, while above them, pale Anande shone down in a sky spattered full of stars. He blinked his eyes clear and tried to focus.
They halted, and there was a tense, frozen time of waiting. They were in among the trees, crouched like assassins. In addition to the ebony giant who held him and the komis-wearing lady, Kurun identified a hufsa girl, plainly clad as if for journeying, and a thin Kefre with a face as bonily angular as that of a mantis. Both bore packs too large for their frames.
Then another joined them. A masked Kefre who bore a naked scimitar. He dropped his komis to reveal a long, fine-boned face. He kissed the lady through her own veil. ‘It’s done, sister.’
She was looking at the sword, and the fine black line along the blade. ‘He took the money?’
‘He refused it. I offered him Bokosan steel instead.’
‘Rakhsar!’
‘Do you think this a game, Roshana? The way is clear, now. My contact waits by the kitchen platform. We must hurry.’
‘You have blood on your clothes.’
‘It doesn’t signify, not at night.’ The jewel bright eyes surveyed them all with the dispassion of a snake overlooking a nest of mice. ‘I see you brought him.’
‘I said I would.’
Kurun dropped his gaze as the Kefre stared at him. ‘Ushau, do not let him make so much as a squeak.’
‘Those are mistress’s orders,’ the deep voice rumbled above Kurun’s head.
‘Good. Now follow me, all of you, as quick and quiet as you can.’
They dashed across a space open and bright under the moonlight, and before them the buildings of the palace reared up like some sheer-sided mountain, decked here and there with yellow-burning flammifers. Kurun fought down a roll of agony that brought his gorge rising. He shut his eyes, pressed his forehead against the hot chest of the giant who bore him.
‘Stand here. Stay clear of the walls,’ Rakhsar snapped. ‘Saryam, mind your cloak – if it catches in the pulleys you’ll jam us in the shaft.’
They were standing on one of the platforms connecting the palace to the kitchens below. Rakhsar tugged on the communication rope, and at once there was a jerk. The thick wood trembled under their feet, and they began to descend.
Into darkness. Rakhsar up-ended the illuminating torch in its sconce and the last of its sparks winked out as they bounced off his bloody sword. The air popped in Kurun’s ears; they were descending very fast. Then there was a dull boom, and the platform was still, staggering them with its sudden halt.
‘My prince,’ a familiar voice said.
‘Auroc – nicely done. Now point us right for the undercity.’
Kurun stared open-mouthed in shock, and found shock staring back at him. Auroc’s face was bruised and swollen, but wholly familiar; the first familiar thing he had seen since leaving the kitchens.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the kitchen-master, the words a sob, gargled out of the giant’s grip.
‘I thought they killed you,’ Auroc said, disbelieving.
‘They damn near did,’ Rakhsar said. ‘Auroc, lead on. We are short on time.’
Auroc dragged his gaze from Kurun’s tearstained face. ‘Yes, of course. Follow me, my prince. I will take you to the Silima. From there, you follow the road all the way down.’
There was a time that followed when Kurun’s head bobbed on Ushau’s chest and his tears came hot and free. But the thought that had occurred to him could not be pushed aside.
The Silima? It did not seem right. It was akin to a burglar leaving a house through the front door. The Silima was the main thoroughfare of the undercity, and it was guarded night and day.
‘Auroc,’ he said thickly. ‘Master, the Silima cannot be taken. We cannot travel it and stay hidden. There are better ways.’
‘Be quiet,’ Auroc said quickly. He was sweating. And to Rakhsar, ‘Lord, the Silima is the quickest way out of the ziggurat. You will be on the streets within the hour.’
Kurun felt fear as cold as water down his back. ‘Master, I do not think –’
Auroc struck him across the face.
Kurun swallowed that pain along with the rest. He had to point out the mistake. Auroc was wrong. He wanted to save him from his error. At last he said to Rakhsar, ‘Lord, this is not right. My master is guiding you awry.’
Rakhsar brought up the keen point of the scimitar and levelled it easily at Auroc’s throat. ‘Is that so?’ He studied the kitchen-master for a long, brittle moment.
‘Kouros questioned you, didn’t he?’
‘Lord, I was interrogated due to a misunderstanding – this whelp here left his post and spied on the King in the gardens. I was held responsible. That’s all, I swear it!’
‘Even I have heard of the Silima,’ Roshana said. She dropped her komis and stepped closer to Auroc. ‘And if I have heard of it, then it is no secret.’
‘It is the fastest way down to the streets,’ Auroc persisted. He wiped his brow. ‘It is a busy thoroughfare, yes, but all the easier to lose yourselves in.’
‘Auroc,’ Kurun whispered. He was weeping. ‘I meant no harm to you.’ His voice rose. ‘Masters, I know a better way.’
‘Shut your mouth –’ Auroc raged, and cocked his fist.
‘You will not strike him again,’ Roshana told the kitchen-master evenly. She turned to Kurun. Those beautiful eyes were hard as sunlight on snow. ‘Are you sure of this?’
‘Lady, you can kill me if I am wrong. But I know that you cannot leave the ziggurat by the Silima – there are guards at every junction. Folk of your caste are never seen there – you cannot go unnoticed, not all the way to the bottom. Auroc is sending you wrong.’
‘Is that it, my friend?’ Rakhsar asked softly. The scimitar-point never wavered. ‘Did Kouros dig the truth out of you?’
‘My – my prince,’ Auroc stammered, ‘I am your faithful servant.’
‘I bought you – that is as far as your faith goes. Now tell me, Auroc, what have you told Kouros of our excursion?’
Auroc looked as lost as a landed fish. No words came. Rakhsar nodded grimly. ‘You see, Roshana, why I trust no-one? As long as loyalty can be bought by the deepest purse, Kouros will always outbid us.’
Auroc finally collected himself. He glared down upon Kurun, in despair and sudden fury. ‘You stupid little fool. I was trying to help you. You would have risen under me, Kurun. We would have served under the sun together. Now you have killed us both.’
‘Not him. Me,’ Rakhsar said, and he thrust the scimitar into the kitchen-m
aster’s throat.
The tall Kefre stood there, eyes wide, hands flapping like wounded birds. His knees began to bend but the sword-blade held him upright. Blood gurgled out of his neck, the rent in his flesh widening around the steel of the scimitar. Then he sank, still upright, and slowly slid off the blade to collapse like a boneless heap of rags on the ground. Under him, the black pool opened out like the quickened blossoming of a flower.
Rakhsar stepped back from it to save his shoes. He wiped clean his blade on the kitchen-master’s robe, then turned to Kurun with a face like an ivory mask. ‘You had better be right, boy, or I will make an end of you less neat than this.’
Kurun’s tongue seemed frozen to the roof of his mouth. He squirmed, but the giant Ushau held him fast. Roshana was still looking at him, something desperate in her face now.
‘Kurun,’ she said gently. ‘Now you must tell us where to go.’
THEY TROD THE narrow corridors of the slave-city, mazing their way through the intestines of the ziggurat. They drew stares wherever they went; it was impossible to disguise the high-born nature of Rakhsar and Roshana. It was in their eyes, in their clothes, in the very way they walked. Resourceful though the twins might be, they had no real experience of life below the summit, and took it as no more than their due when the lesser inhabitants of the undercity drew back to let them pass, staring open-mouthed.
Kurun was in the lead, still clasped in the arms of the ebony giant. He muttered directions to Ushau, picked a convoluted path towards the less inhabited regions of the undercity. In doing so, he steered close to the cliff of his knowledge of the place, taking the company down little-used tunnels and passageways. As they descended, so they began to hear through the very stone the rhythmic thump of the waterwheels far below, upon which thousands toiled to water the gardens of the Great King. The sound was like the ceaseless beat of some enormous heart.
Here, the denizens of the dark ways were even more wary than those above, darting into shadows and side-alleys as the company passed. Rakhsar had drawn his sword again, and his eyes gleamed with a light of their own. His sister took his free hand, and the twins proceeded thus while the two other servants brought up the rear, bent under travel-bags, and as wide-eyed as owls in the hot deepening darkness.
‘Here,’ Kurun said at last. He squeezed shut his eyes a second, fighting a wash of nausea. He felt wetness on the backs of his thighs, and dared not speculate on it.
They were in a wider space, an arched passageway so low that Ushau’s head scraped the ceiling. Beyond there was more light, torches burning, a heat slightly less heavy, and the sense of moving air. There was noise also, the rattle of iron wheel-rims on stone, the braying of mules, and the clink of masonry. Many voices rose and fell, not the sea-rush of an aimless crowd, but the purposeful give and take of people at work.
‘This is the stone-cutters’ valley,’ Kurun said. ‘We are at the level of the streets now. If we go through here, there is a gateway which is always open in daylight, and then we are outside.’
‘It must be near dawn by now,’ Rakhsar said, wiping his face.
‘They will sound the chime when the sun rises,’ Kurun told him tiredly. ‘That’s when the shift changes. That would be the best time to try for the outside.’
He was fading away. The torchlight seemed to be circling a loom of widening shadow. His face was gripped by strong fingers, and shaken.
‘Stay with us, boy. When we stand under the sun, you can sleep all you want.’
‘He is bleeding, master,’ Ushau said.
‘Set him down.’ Roshana’s voice, quick and sharp.
Kurun was laid down on the stone. They opened his legs and peeled the soaked chiton from his thighs. He cried out, but the scream was smothered by Ushau’s huge palm, and the other held him down while Rakhsar and Roshana examined him. Rakhsar’s upper lip peeled back from his teeth. ‘Bel in his heaven, what a mess.’
‘Maidek,’ Roshana said, ‘Can you do something?’
The skull-lean Kefre knelt beside them. He looked Kurun’s injuries over with some interest, like a man at a market-stall.
‘They closed the wound with fire, mistress, but missed part of it. I would bind the boy’s legs together for now. He will need to be sewn up, but I cannot do that here. I need –’
A brass clang rattled through the air, as though some titan had dropped a metal pot out of the sky. Rakhsar stood up. ‘Your butchery can wait, Maidek,’ he said. ‘That’ll be the chime the boy spoke of. Ushau, clamp him tight.’
The light grew, grey and cool across the massive chamber ahead. It revealed gangs of hufsan, who were now straightening from their labour upon orderly rows of squared stone, heaps of rubble. A swarm of talk rose. Suddenly the place seemed crowded, as more apron-clad hufsan trooped in from outside, and from stairways and ramps leading down from the dark bulk of the ziggurat above. The tall gateway loomed beyond, brightening moment by moment. There was an inrush of cooler air that brought the dust of the stoneworkers with it to grit their teeth, and something else. The mingled stinks of the world beyond, the promiscuous perfume of the city itself.
‘The boy was right,’ Roshana said. ‘That is the light of the dawn.’
‘Up. Move,’ Rakhsar snapped. ‘Follow me.’
He had sheathed his sword, but kept his hand on the hilt as they trailed through the work-gangs, gathering rock-dust, the sweat and toil of the slave-city pressing in on them with the milling crowds of workers. The fresh, cool air of the city beyond drew them on, filling their lungs. Rakhsar uttered a strangled laugh as they stepped out of the ziggurat, into the morning cacophony that was Ashur, and looked around themselves like an island of idle fools in a sea of busy people.
‘I smell grilled frog,’ Rakhsar said to his sister, grinning. The sweat lay like pearl beads on his forehead. ‘What say you we treat ourselves to one, and then find a place to lay our heads for a while?’
He strode off, and the rest trailed after him like the tail of a kite. Ushau looked down on Kurun and tapped a knuckle against the boy’s chest.
‘You are a good little fellow,’ he said. Then he held Kurun close, and followed his master, and they were lost in the coursing torrent of faces, bodies, flapping feet and waving hands that was the Imperial City, while behind them the ziggurats were lit up, level by level, by the burgeoning light of the dawn.
SIX
FRIENDS IN ODD PLACES
ASHURNAN FELT THE palanquin move under him, with the stately pace of the elephant that bore it. He drew back the fine weave of the curtains to look up the road ahead, and once again his fist clenched involuntarily as he took in the line of wagons, pack-animals, cavalry and marching men that stretched to the bright, dust-hazed horizon.
Dust in his beard. Dust in his shoes. Dust in the very food he ate. Asuria itself was impregnating every part of him; his own country, the heart of empire, the place his ancestors had walked and ruled for years beyond count.
His father Anurman, whom some named the Great, had deigned to speak to him of the empire once. One did not rule it, any more than a mariner dictated every movement of a ship at sea. One steered it. And sometimes, it took patience to get it back on course when the waves were in your teeth.
I am older now than my father was when he died, Ashurnan thought. I have ruled longer than he did. I have fought fewer wars, but those in which I have taken part have been greater than any he ever saw. Does that make me a better king than my father, or a lesser?
Once again, his thoughts travelled back down the dusty pasangs of the Royal Road, to his capital.
Where are you now, Rakhsar? In some highland castle, fomenting rebellion? Or down in the marshes, peering into some peasant’s fire? No – that is not your style.
Again, his fist clenched and unclenched.
I should have given him a command, taken him with me. He has an energy Kouros lacks, and courage.
But that was his heart talking. He had been as generous with his own brother, and Kunaksa had
been the result.
It has always been Kouros, he thought. I cannot stand against both the Macht and Orsana. I have not the strength.
But he found himself smiling, despite the gloom of his ruminations. It had been a long time since he had been part of an army on the march. There was no denying that it brought back good memories as well as bad, a tincture of youth.
One war at a time, he thought.
AT LONG LAST, the Great King himself had set forth from Ashur on campaign, with the first contingent of the Imperial Levy, and the bulk of the Household. This was but a tithe of the force that would eventually form up on the far side of the Magron Mountains, but still it choked every road leading west for dozens of pasangs. Ten thousand Honai, five thousand Arakosan cavalry who had crossed the Oskus only the week before. Twenty thousand of the local levy, small farmers called up to the banners of the King, the year’s second harvest thickening in the fields behind them, their wives and sons left to gather it in as best they might.
And that was just the beginning. To the rear of these fighting men marched another army. Teamsters, smiths, leatherworkers, carpenters, herdsmen, slaves by the thousand, and an amorphous gaggle of wives and children who could not bear to be parted from their menfolk. These were nearly as numerous as the clanking columns who bore spear and shield, and every night since leaving Ashur they had straggled into camp hours after the vanguard of the army, spent and dust-painted, but ready to attend to the needs of those who had been called upon to bear arms, to fight the Great King’s war for them.
And that still did not include the Great King’s own entourage. In his youth, Ashurnan had been stubborn, proud and fit enough to travel almost as lightly as one of his junior generals; a half dozen mule-carts carried everything he needed to live in comfort in the field. But he was old now, and his sense of what befitted a king’s campaigning had changed. Two hundred wagons carried his personal tents, his furniture, his carpets, his stores of food and drink, his favourite concubines (Orsana had picked them for him, and he had not argued the matter).
