No one but Sharbaraz's guards stood closer than about five paces from the throne. The eunuch halted there. Like a well-trained horse, Abivard halted, too. The eunuch unobtrusively tapped him on the arm. He prostrated himself before the monarch of Makuran.
The carpet had stopped a few paces before. The stone to which Abivard pressed his forehead was worn smooth and shiny. He wondered how many prostrations had been performed just there over the centuries. He also noticed a thin, tiny seam that separated the stone on which he crouched from the one just ahead, and tried without any luck to figure out what it might mean.
"Rise, brother-in-law of mine, and advance to receive my favor," Sharbaraz said.
Abivard got to his feet and walked up to the throne. The guards stood aside to let him pass, but did not leave off watching him. Sharbaraz also rose, took two steps toward him, embraced him, and offered him a cheek to kiss, suggesting the two of them differed only slightly in rank. Tiny murmurs ran through the throne room as the courtiers, used to reading such subtle signs, drew their own conclusions. Denak beamed proudly.
"I have come to Mashiz in obedience to your command, Majesty," Abivard said, hoping Sharbaraz would give him some clue as to why he had been summoned.
But the King of Kings merely said, "That is as it should be. We have much to discuss, you and I, of great import to the realm." Again Abivard's ear caught those little ripples of whispering, this time, he thought, with an excited undertone to them. The assembled grandees knew what Sharbaraz was talking about, even if Abivard didn't. But, he thought proudly, the King of Kings wanted to confer with him, not with them.
After that formal greeting, Sharbaraz gave him back into the keeping of the eunuch, who led him into a little chamber of such perfect elegance that he guessed it had to be a waiting room for the King of Kings. A servant brought in roasted pistachios, little cakes savory with almond paste, and a wine sweet as honey, smooth as silk, and warming as the sun on a fine spring day.
Abivard refreshed himself, then piled some cushions high and leaned back against them to await his sovereign. Sure enough, Sharbaraz came in after a little while, Denak a pace behind him. When Abivard rose and began another prostration, Sharbaraz waved him to a halt. "You've finished the ceremony," he said. "Now we do business."
"May I see my niece first, Majesty?" Abivard asked.
"I'll go fetch her," Denak said, and hurried away.
"I have someone else I want you to meet, but I'll introduce him to you presently," Sharbaraz said. He took a pistachio, cracked the thin shell between thumb and forefinger, and popped the nut into his mouth.
Denak came back. She pressed a tiny bundle into Abivard's arms and smiled when he automatically held the baby so as to support her head. "That's right, you have a son of your own," she said, as if reminding herself. Was that jealousy in her voice? Maybe a little, he judged. She went on, "Hard to remember I'm an aunt, just as you're an uncle."
"She's a pretty baby," he said, looking down at Jarireh. Not only was she pretty, she was, for the moment, being quiet; that, as he had learned, was a virtue of considerable magnitude. "I'm trying to decide which of you she favors."
"She looks like a baby," Denak said, as if that explained everything. Sharbaraz impatiently shifted from foot to foot. "I thought you were eager to hear why I summoned you across the length and breadth of the realm."
"I am, Majesty. It's only-" Abivard held up Jarireh. "May I use your daughter as my excuse?"
"You'd have trouble finding a better one," Sharbaraz said with a laugh. "But hear me all the same: Likinios Avtokrator is dead."
Ice ran through Abivard. "How did it happen?" he whispered. "Are you on decent terms with Hosios his son, or does the war begin now?"
"Hosios is dead, too, as Tanshar foretold," Sharbaraz said. Abivard could only gape at the King of Kings, who went on, "Hear the tale, as it came to me with the beginning of spring. You know Likinios Avtokrator was a pinchpenny; we saw that when we were in Serrhes. And you know also that the Empire of Videssos was at war with the nomads of Kubrat, up north and east of Videssos the city."
Abivard held his niece out to the King of Kings to show how confused he was.
"What you say is true, Majesty, but what has one of these things to do with the other?"
"As it turns out, everything," Sharbaraz answered. "Likinios won a string of victories against the Kubratoi last year and hoped to ruin them for good and all, maybe even conquer them altogether. He didn't care to pull his army back into his own country and have to start over again this spring, so he ordered them to winter north of the Istros River, out on the edge of the steppe, and to support themselves by foraging. That way he wouldn't have to pay for feeding them through the winter, you see. He was already behind with their silver; no, I take it back, Videssians pay-or, in his case, don't pay-in gold."
"By the God," Abivard said softly. He tried to imagine a Makuraner army ordered to winter north of the Degird. Troops would, to put it mildly, not be happy about that. He had to ask the next question: "What happened then?"
"Just what you'd expect," Sharbaraz answered. "I can see that in your eyes. Aye, they mutinied, killed a couple of generals-"
"Not the Maniakai, I hope," Abivard exclaimed, and then remembered whom he had interrupted. "Forgive me, Majesty."
"It's all right," the King of Kings said. "This news is enough to make anyone jumpy. No, the Maniakai, father and son, had nothing to do with it. When they got back to Videssos, Likinios named the elder one governor of some island on the edge of nowhere and sent the younger there, too, to command the garrison. It was supposed to be a reward for a job well done, but I think the Avtokrator was just putting someone who might be a rival out of the way. Now, where was I with the main story?"
"The mutiny," Abivard and Denak said together.
"Ah, that's right. Likinios' army rebelled, as I say, killed some high-ranking officers, and named a fellow called Genesios as Avtokrator. The God only knows why; he was nothing more than a cavalry captain, a commander of a hundred. But they made some red boots, put 'em on him, and marched for Videssos the city."
"With that kind of leader against him, you'd think Likinios would have won easily," Abivard said.
"If they fought wars on parchment, you'd be right," Sharbaraz said, "but as soon as Likinios had a rival, any sort of rival, everyone stopped paying attention to him. This wasn't the first time he'd fallen behind with soldiers' pay, and everybody just got sick of him. He ordered troops out against Genesios. They left Videssos the city, sure enough, but then they went over to the rebel. That city could stand siege forever, I think, but the men at the gates opened them for Genesios' soldiers."
"Likinios should have fled," Abivard said. "He must have known you'd have received him well here, just for what he did for us in Serrhes."
"None of the sailors would take him and his sons across the little strait to the westlands," Sharbaraz said; the words tolled like doom through the little private chamber. Abivard picked up a pistachio, then put it back in its silver bowl-he had lost his appetite. The King of Kings went on, "In the end, he tried to get across in a boat he and his sons would row themselves. Too late: Genesios' men were already in the city. They caught him."
"And killed him, and Hosios, as you already told me," Abivard said.
"They did worse than that," Denak said; she had heard this tale of horror before. "They slew each of Likinios' sons before his eyes, Hosios his eldest last of all, and then they slew Likinios, too, a little bit at a time." She shuddered. "Filthy." Maybe because she had just had a baby herself, she seemed to find the idea of slaying anyone's child, particularly in front of him, especially dreadful.