“That is a pity,” said Vash. “However, I feel certain that the gifts we bring him will cheer him somewhat.” He hadn’t spoke the Hierosoline tongue of the north in a long time, and was pleased to discover its subtleties hadn’t entirely escaped him. He beckoned forward one of the sweating bearer slaves, then swept away the top of the man’s basket. “See the generosity of Xis.”
The handful of soldiers leaned forward in their saddles and their eyes grew round as they saw the gold and gems that filled the basket.
“That… this is most impressive,” the gate-herald said. “But we must still ask our king for his permission…”
The autarch himself suddenly stepped forward, making the carpet slaves scurry to get another length of cloth-of-gold in front of him before his sandaled foot touched bare ground (which would reputedly cause the world itself to totter and collapse). The horses of the Jellonian soldiers shied away as though Sulepis was a kind of creature they had never seen before—as in fact he was, Vash thought: he was beginning to think the world had never seen anything quite like his master.
“Please say one thing to these men of Jellon for us, Paramount Minister,” Sulepis said in Hierosoline. His voice seemed pitched softly, but it carried a long distance. “Remind them that even a benevolent king has limits. We have a warship full of long guns just outside the harbor, and several more will arrive by tonight.” Sulepis smiled at the Jellonians and folded his arms across his breast, his golden armor clinking gently. “We come in peace, yes, but we would hate to see the spark of suspicion start a fire that would be hard to put out.”
It was quickly decided that one of the soldiers should ride back to the palace to inform Hesper and the court that the autarch was coming.
The palace of Gremos Pitra was perched on a clifftop above the harbor, but in the years of peace the steep, narrow old path leading to it had been rebuilt into a series of wide, gentle switchbacks. Even Vash, old and sore as he was, did not find it too agonizing to climb from the harbor to the palace gates, but he still could not understand why so much time was being spent in such an odd exercise.
The gates swung open as they approached and the full panoply of Hesper’s power appeared, guards on every parapet and a hundred more on either side of the entrance. The autarch walked serenely past them as though they were his own loyal subjects, looking neither to the left nor the right and walking in a measured but not overly slow pace so that the carpet slaves had to scurry to stay ahead of him. The procession crossed a formal courtyard rapidly filling with Jellonian courtiers and servants, those in back standing on tiptoe or trampling the hedges in their determination to get a view of the infamous Mad Autarch of Xis.
Many of the Jellonian troops filed into the great hall behind the parade of basket-hauling slaves, so that the autarch’s party was hemmed in on all sides by armed soldiers wearing ceremonial green tabards bearing the blue rooster and golden rings of Hesper’s Jaelian clan. The king’s tall, canopied chair stood at the far end of the high-ceilinged room, surrounded by dozens of courtiers gaping at the new arrivals, too fascinated even to whisper among themselves. Vash squinted—it was a long room—trying to make out the small figure slumped in the huge covered chair, which looked more like a sack of clothes to be washed than a man. As the herald had suggested the king of Jellon looked old and ill, his skin pale, his eyes blue-ringed and sunken. He was dressed all in white, which had the unfortunate effect of making him appear to be a corpse wrapped in its burial shroud.
Sulepis strode toward him, the carpet slaves hurrying to prepare the way, and then stopped a few yards from the steps leading up to the chair. Vash thought his master might become angry at being forced to stand beneath a less powerful monarch, but if he was, the autarch showed no sign of it. The Jellonian guards fidgeted nervously with their weapons, but their ruler held up a shaking hand.
“So,” Hesper said hoarsely, “the much feared Emperor of the South. You are younger than I supposed, sir. What do you want?”
“I am told you are not well,” Sulepis said in a simple and matter-of-fact tone. “It is kind of you to rouse yourself to meet me.”
“Kind?” Hesper straightened up a little. “You threatened me with your warships if I would not see you. Do not be absurd.” His voice, which should have been forceful, had been robbed by his weakness of all but petulance. Still, Vash could see that he had once been a formidable man.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Sulepis. “Perhaps we should put away our masks. I did not come only to give you gifts—although they are very fine gifts indeed.” He waved his golden fingers toward the slaves, who still held their baskets high on their shoulders, as though the floor of the throne room were too dirty a place to set such down valuable objects. “But also to tell you that I am displeased with you.”
“Displeased with me?” Hesper shook his head irritably. Vash could not stop looking at the man. The king of Jellon was not even sixty years old—much younger than Pinimmon Vash himself—but looked like he had lived a hundred years or more, and hard years at that. “Am I a child that I should care about such things? I am displeased that you disturb my rest. Say your piece and be gone.”
“You promised me something, Hesper.” The autarch spoke with the stern but loving tone of a disappointed father. “You had something I wanted—something I specifically asked you to acquire for me—but you sold it to someone else instead.”
The courtiers began to murmur. Even without knowing what his master intended, Vash guessed they would have much more to wonder about before too long.
“What are you babbling about?” Hesper demanded, but he had the look of a guilty man caught in a lie.
“But you see,” Sulepis said, “I have obtained it despite you.” He clapped his hands and his guards pushed King Olin forward. The courtiers murmured more loudly, but it was clear most of them did not recognize the ruler of the March Kingdoms.
“What… what… ? ” Hesper stuttered. “What foolishness is this… ?”
“I think the one who promises something to me and then does not keep his bargain is the foolish one,” Sulepis said calmly. “I told you I wanted Olin of Southmarch. I gave you gold to show my goodwill. You kept my gold, Hesper, and then you sold Olin to Ludis of Hierosol. That is not the way to make me look kindly on you.”
Vash was beginning to feel truly frightened. Hesper might be old and ill, and Sulepis might have warships outside the harbor, but at the moment the Xixians were surrounded by armed enemies and the harbor was a mile away. Why was Sulepis provoking a confrontation? Had he taken the idea of his own godhood too seriously? Did he honestly think that the Jellonians would not dare to touch him, let alone hack him to pieces where he stood? Perhaps the autarch believed that these northerners were like his own people, bred with a hundred generations of reverence for their god-king.
“Well, King Olin?” Sulepis certainly appeared as comfortable as if he stood in his own throne room surrounded by worshipful subjects and his own Leopard guards. “Have you nothing to say to your betrayer now that you stand before him at last? This is the man who took you from your family and sold you like the merest beast.”
Olin looked from Sulepis to Hesper, then cast his eyes down again. “I have nothing to say. I am a prisoner. I am not here of my own will.”
Hesper tried to stand but could not, and subsided gasping into the huge chair. He pointed at the autarch. “Do you think to humiliate me in front of my own subjects? You may rule a million blacks, but here in Jellon you are nothing but a fool dressed like a golden peacock. You pushed yourself upon me. You are no guest and I owe you no safety.” He tried to say something else, but a long spasm of coughing prevented him. When he could again speak, his voice rasped like a loose cart wheel. “I do not know whether to ransom you or simply do away with you.”