Thyatis smiled, remembering her own- brothers. “That just meant he loved you.”
“Maybe.” The Princess yawned. “Can I see your sword?”
Thyatis nodded and sat down next to the Princess. She had carried the blade with her into the palace, strapped to her back under the heavy robes. Now it gleamed in the lantern light as she slid it slowly out of the silk-lined sheath. The metal shimmered, the watery surface seemingly filled with glowing light. Shirin traced the patterns with her fingers, but she did not touch the surface of the blade. She fingered the leather hilt, her fingertips tracing the grooves worn by Thyatis’ hand.
“It’s sleeping,” Shirin said, “and warm. Have you killed many men?”
Thyatis returned the blade to its sheath and tugged the leather strap over the hilt to hold it snug. She turned to the Princess, her gray eyes distant and shadowed.
“I’ve killed men,” she said simply. “I take no joy in it.”
Shirin hugged a pillow beaded with tiny pearls to her chest, peering over the top at the Roman woman. Thyatis felt a tingle in her arms and stomach when she met the Princess’s eyes. They seemed bottomless, a liquid brown, swimming with vulnerability.
“Are you going to kill my husband?”
Jusuf hissed in alarm and began to rise from the floor. Thyatis waved him back down.
“Shirin,” she said, “my lord, the Emperor of the West, sent me into Persia to prepare the way for his army. Your husband and my nation are at war. I am beholden to do everything I can to help win this war for my lord. But…”-she paused-“I am not here to murder your husband.”
“What will you do, then?” Shirin’s voice was even, though Thyatis thought there was a tremor of fear or panic hiding behind it.
The Roman woman shrugged her shoulders at Jusuf. “He’s the one who wanted to come see you.”
Jusuf levered himself off of the floor and knelt by Shirin, holding her hand. “Little bug, I know you love the King of Kings, but the stories I’ve heard made me fear for you. I came here, and, yes, Thyatis, I came because of Shirin, not because of your mission, because I thought you might need help.”
Shirin stared at her uncle and took her hand back. “My husband has not been well since Maria died.” Her hand crept to her face, “He thinks that he is ugly now, scarred and disfigured by the fire.”
Thyatis shook her head in puzzlement, saying: “I don’t understand. What fire? Who was Maria?”
Jusuf sighed and sat back down. He looked up at Shirin, but she saw only her own fears.
“Maria was the first wife of Chrosoes,” he began, “the daughter of the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, Maurice.“
“A Roman!” Thyatis said slowly, remembering Galen’s words in his tent at Tauris. “How…” Jusuf glared at her and she shut up. “Please,” he said, “let me tell the story. ”When Chrosoes was a very young man, younger than you, his father-the great king Hormazd-was murdered by one of his generals, Bahram. Chrosoes himself was set up as a puppet king for this warlord, but in time he escaped from Ctesiphon and fled into the north. He would have died in the wilderness, even with the help of his good friend, the Eastern lord Shahr-Baraz, but he had the good luck to stumble upon a camp of the Khazars.
“My brother was the leader of that band of men and took Chrosoes in. When he learned who the boy was, he decided that he would help him. Chrosoes and Baraz traveled with us for a winter and we took them, Sahul and I, to Constantinople. Sahul thought that Chrosoes would find safety in the court of the Emperor Maurice.
“At first, we told no one who the Persian boy was, but Sahul gained a private audience with the Emperor’s son, the Prince Theodosius, and convinced him that with the Empire’s aid, a grateful Chrosoes could be restored to the Persian throne. The Prince convinced his father, who became good friends with Chrosoes, and together, they overthrew Bahram.”
Jusuf stopped and shook his head in sorrow. “That was a good time. We rode with Chrosoes and Sahul stood at his side when Bahram was killed in the battle outside of Dastagird. That was when Chrosoes met Shirin, in the tents of our people. The boy had already agreed to marry Maurice’s daughter Maria to seal the peace between the two empires, but anyone could see that he loved Shirin from the moment he saw her.”
The Princess’s hand crept out of the covers and Jusuf took it in his own.
“And there was peace,” he continued, “until Maurice and all of his children were murdered by the usurper Phocas. That turned Maria against the Empire, I think, to hear that her father and mother and all of her brothers and sisters had been hewn down and their heads paraded in the streets of the capital before cheering crowds. Even when Heraclius overthrew Phocas her mind did not change.“
“It is true,” Shirin said, her voice muffled by the quilts, “she urged my husband to war upon the Empire and restore the true Emperor to the throne. She had great influence over the King of Kings.”
“True Emperor?” Thyatis was careful to seem puzzled.
“Her son, Kavadh-Siroes,” Shirin said, “is the only remaining male descendant of the Emperor Maurice.” Thyatis’ eyes widened.
“He has always held me first in his heart,” Shirin mused, her voice sad, “but Maria bore him a son first and was very brave, coming with him to live in a foreign land like she did. She was a strong woman.”
“What happened? A fire in the palace?”
Shirin shrugged, her face a mask. “No one knows, save Chrosoes and the dark one. The Queen was furious with the lord General Baraz for not having smashed the Eastern Empire in the first year of this war. She struck upon some stratagem with the connivance of the black priest. There was a fire and the River Palace was destroyed. Chrosoes tried to pull her from the flames but it was too late. He bears the scars to this day… my poor husband.”
Jusuf smoothed her hair back over her ear and stood up.
“It is very late,” he said. “We should all sleep.”
“Oh,” Shirin said, “you must be tired from your journey. Please, there are couches in the other chamber. You will not be disturbed.”
– The Princess rose, shedding quilts and pillows. She yawned, stretching her lithe body, and bowed to Thyatis. Jusuf gathered her into his arms and held her close for a long time. Shirin put her head on his chest. Thyatis slipped out of the room into the garden. The air was soft and filled with a heady scent of blooms. The moon rode low in the western sky, but the silver light fell among the trees like dew. It was very peaceful.
The glassed-in doors of the sitting room closed with a click and Thyatis felt Jusuf step into the garden. She turned around and said, “You niece is very lovely, both inside and out.”
“Yes.” Jusuf sighed. “We all wished her nothing but happiness.”
“Why did Sahul break his treaty with the King of Kings?”
Jusuf shook his head. “I don’t know. Shirin always wrote to him regularly, he must have divined something from her letters. Last year he began speaking seriously with the embassies of the Eastern Empire. They gave him many presents, but he spent all of the money on armor and weapons. He feared something, but he never said what. Dahvos and I were very surprised when he declared that he would go to war against his son-in-law.”
Thyatis put her hand on Jusuf’s shoulder, feeling him start in surprise at the touch.
“My friend,” she whispered, “when the time comes, we’ll get her out.”
Jusuf looked down at his feet. It was hard to tell in the darkness if he was blushing, but Thyatis was sure that he was.
Two little brown-skinned children ran past, giggling, their white tunics in disarray and splotched with grass stains. Thyatis smiled, her face shadowed by the broad-brimmed straw hat she wore to keep from burning her nose in the fierce sun. Around her a warm winter day had settled upon the gardens at the center of the Palace of the Swans like a comforting blanket. She sipped from a tall, cut-crystal glass filled with lemon juice in water. It was sweet and tart at the same time, delighting her tongue. She sat in a wooden chair at the edge of the grassy sward outside of the domed building that held Shirin’s private quarters. The Princesses’s children were playing with Anagathios and Nikos.