Her voice was filled with cold, imperial scorn.
"For what? Mercy? Do you think Skandagupta would have permitted the survival of Ranapur's potentate and his family? Nonsense! They would simply have been taken away and tortured to death. As it was, they died as quickly as possible. Painlessly, from what you described."
The Empress bestowed a quick, approving glance on Valentinian. The cataphract was standing to one side of the little command circle, along with Anastasius and Menander. They had been offered stools, but had politely refused them. Belisarius' bucellarii had their own ingrained customs, drilled into them by their leader Maurice. Casual they might be, in the company of their lord, and ready enough to offer their opinions. But they did not sit, in the presence of their general, when matters of state were being discussed.
Eon shrugged his shoulders, irritably.
"I know that, Shakuntala!" he snapped. "I am not a-" He bit off the hot words, took a quick breath, calmed himself. But when he turned and faced the Empress, his eyes were still hot.
"We Axumites are not as quick to decree executions as you Indians," he growled, "but neither are we bleating lambs."
The two young people exchanged glares, matching royal will to royal will. Belisarius found it very difficult, now, not to smile. Especially when it became obvious the contest was going to be protracted.
He eyed Garmat surreptitiously, and saw that the adviser was waging his own struggle against visible amusement. For a moment, his glance met that of Ousanas. The dawazz, his face invisible to the young royals seated in front of him, grinned hugely.
Eon and Shakuntala had shared the closest of all company, during the weeks since Belisarius and his allies had rescued the Satavahana heir. The very closest.
Belisarius had devised the entire plan. After Raghunath Rao had butchered her mahamimamsa guards in Venandakatra's palace, he had hidden Shakuntala away in a closet in the guest quarters before drawing off pursuit into a chase across India's forests and mountains. The Ethiopians, arriving at the palace with the Romans not two days later, had taken possession of the guest quarters and smuggled Shakuntala into their entourage. She had been disguised as one of Eon's many concubines, and had spent all her time since in his howdah and his pavilion. At night, always, she slept nestled in Eon's arms-lest some Malwa spy manage, against all odds, to peek into the Prince's pavilion.
Belisarius had wondered, idly, whether that close proximity would transform itself into passion. The two people were young, healthy-immensely vigorous, in fact, both of them-and each, in their own way, extremely attractive. It was a situation which, at first glance, seemed to have only one likely outcome.
Reality, he knew from Ousanas and Garmat, had been more complex. There was no question that Eon and Shakuntala felt a genuine-indeed, quite intense-mutual attraction. On the other hand, each had a well developed (if somewhat different) sense of their royal honor. Shakuntala, though she restrained herself from expressing it, obviously detested her position of dependence; Eon, for his part, was even more rigid in refusing to do anything which he thought might take advantage of that dependence.
Then, too, they each had loyalties to others. Before he met Shakuntala, Eon had already developed an attachment to Tarabai, one of the Maratha women whom the Ethiopians had met in Bharakuccha. Until Shakuntala's arrival, it had been Tarabai who spent every night nestled in his arms-and not, unlike Shakuntala, in a platonic manner. Since then, though Shakuntala had often indicated her willingness to look the other way, Eon and Tarabai had remained chaste. Eon, from a sense of royal propriety; Tarabai, from the inevitable timidity of a low-caste woman in the presence of her own Empress.
Eon was thus caught in an exquisite trap: a young and healthy man, surrounded by beautiful women almost every hour of the day and night, living the life of a monk. To say that he was frustrated was to put it mildly.
For her part, Shakuntala was torn in a different way. Garmat and Ousanas were not certain, for the empress spoke of the man only rarely, but they suspected that Shakuntala's feelings for Raghunath Rao went well beyond the admiration of a child for her mentor. She had been in Rao's keeping since the age of seven, and the Maratha chieftain had practically served as her surrogate father-uncle, say better. But-for all the difference in age, Shakuntala was now a woman, and Rao was as attractive as any man in early middle age could possibly be. And since he was not, in actual fact, related to her in any way, there was no real reason for their relationship not to develop into romance.
Except-those rigid, hard, ingrained Indian customs. Especially that bizarre (to Roman and Ethiopian eyes alike) insistence on purity of blood and avoidance of pollution. Shakuntala was of the most ancient lineage, the purest of kshatriya ancestry. Whereas Rao, for all his fame, was nothing but a chieftain-of the Maratha, to boot, a frontier people who could not trace their ancestry beyond two generations.
So she, like Eon, was also trapped between sentiment and honor. It was a different trap, but its jaws were not less steely.
In the end, Belisarius knew, the two youngsters had managed to carve out a relationship which was a bit like that of brother to sister. Very close, very intimate-and much given to quarrel.
The glares, he saw, were not softening. He decided to intervene.
"Explain yourself further, Eon, if you would."
The Prince tore his eyes away from Shakuntala. Looking at Belisarius, the glare faded.
"I am not criticizing your ruthlessness, Belisarius. Quite the opposite, in fact." A quick angry glance at the Empress; then: "I wonder if you were ruthless enough."
Belisarius shrugged. "What should I have done? Tortured them? I would have had to do it myself, you know. Valentinian would have refused. So would Anastasius or Menander. They are cataphracts. Torture is beneath them."
That was not, precisely, correct. Neither Valentinian nor Anastasius was squeamish, in the least, and they had both had occasion, in times past, to subject captured soldiers to methods of interrogation which were referred to by more delicate souls as "rigorous." But the spirit of the statement was true enough. Belisarius was not sure, actually, what Valentinian would have done had he commanded him to torture a family for the amusement of Malwa. It was quite possible that the cataphract would have done so, if in a quick and crude way which would have left the Malwa appetite unsatisfied. But Belisarius had not the slightest doubt that it would be the last service the cataphract would ever do him.
Eon clenched his jaws, waved his hand in a gesture dismissing a preposterous proposal.
But Belisarius did not relent.
"What, then? Those were my choices. My only choices."
Eon sighed. His shoulders slumped.
"I know. I was there. But-" He sighed more deeply. "I'm afraid you may have given our plot away in any event, Belisarius. Or, at least, so offended the Malwa that they will no longer pursue their courtship of you."
Belisarius began to reply, but Ousanas interrupted.
"You are quite wrong, Eon. You misread the Malwa badly."
The dawazz rose lazily and came to stand where he could be seen.
"You were watching Venandakatra, boy. That was your mistake."
His huge grin erupted.
"Natural mistake, of course! Such a comical sight he was, prancing around like a fat hen covered with her own broken eggs! I, myself, found it hard not to savor that delicious spectacle."
Everyone who had been at the scene chuckled. Ousanas continued:
"But still a mistake. You should have watched the Emperor. And-most important-his other advisers. As I did." He grinned down at Belisarius. "The Emperor was paralyzed, of course. By Belisarius' gaze more than the bloodshed. Which is good. For the first time, now, he will fear Belisarius-just as Venandakatra does."