«For now it suits me,» Abivard said, «but I want an audience with the King of Kings as soon as may be.»
Bowing, the eunuch said, «I shall convey your request to those better able than I to make certain it is granted.»
Abivard had no trouble translating that for himself. He might gain an audience with Sharbaraz tomorrow, or he might have to wait till next spring. No way to guess which-not yet.
«Please let me or another of the servitors know whatever you may be lacking or what may conduce toward your pleasure,» the eunuch said. «Rest assured that if it be within our power, it shall be yours.»
Abivard paused thoughtfully. No one had spoken to him like that last winter. Maybe he hadn't been summoned back here in disgrace, after all. Then again, maybe he had. He did his best to find out: «I would like to see my sister Denak, principal wife to the King of Kings as soon as I can, to thank her for her help.» Let the eunuch make of that what he would.
Whatever he made of it he concealed, saying as he had before, «I shall take your words to those better able to deal with them than I.»
One of the guardsmen in front of the door opened it and gestured for Abivard and his family to go through and enter the suite of rooms set aside for them. Full of misgivings, he went in. The door closed. The rooms had carpets and pillows different from the ones that had been in the suite of the winter before. Other than that, was there any difference from that year to this?
The latch clicked. Abivard opened the door. He stepped out into the corridor. The guards who'd been standing watch when he had gone into the chamber were gone, but the ones who'd taken their place looked enough like them to be their cousins.
He took a couple of steps down the hall. One of the guards came after him; the fellow's mail shirt jingled as he walked. Abivard kept on going. The soldier came after him but did not call him back or try to stop him. It was exactly as the eunuch had said it would be. That left Abivard disconcerted; he wasn't used to having promises from Sharbaraz or his servitors kept.
After a while he turned and asked the guard, «Why are you following me?»
«Because I have orders to follow you,» the fellow answered at once. «Don't want you winding up in any mischief, lord, and I don't want you getting lost here, either.»
«I can see how I might get lost,» Abivard admitted; one palace hallway looked much like another one. «But what sort of mischief am I liable to get into?»
«Don't ask me, lord-I've no idea,» the guardsman said with a grin. «I figure anybody can if he tries, though.»
«You sound like a man with children,» Abivard said, and the guard laughed and nodded. Seeing the people set to keep an eye on him as ordinary human beings was strange for Abivard.
And then, around a corner, came one who would never have children but who had assuredly gotten Abivard into mischief: the beautiful eunuch who'd escorted him first to his sister and then to Sharbaraz.
He gave Abivard a look of cold indifference. That was one of the friendlier looks Abivard had received from him. Abivard said, «You might thank me.»
«Thank you?» The eunuch's voice put Abivard in mind of silver bells. «Whatever for?»
«Because the Videssians didn't burn Mashiz down around your perfect, shell-like ears, for starters,» Abivard said.
The beautiful eunuch's skin was swarthy, like that of most Makuraners, but translucent even so; Abivard could watch the tips of those ears turn red. «Had you brought Maniakes' head hither or even sent it on pickled in salt, you might have done something worthy of gratitude,» the eunuch said. «As things are, however, I give you-this-as token of my esteem.» He turned his back and walked away.
Staring after him, the guard let out a soft whistle. «You put Yeliif's back up-literally, looks like.»
«Yeliif?» But Abivard realized who the fellow had to mean. «Is that what his name is? I never knew till now.»
«You never knew?» Now the guardsman stared at him. «You made an enemy of Yeliif without knowing what you were doing? Well, the God only knows what you could have managed if you'd really set your mind to it.»
«I didn't make him an enemy,» Abivard protested. «He made himself an enemy. I never laid eyes on him till the King of Kings summoned me here last winter. If I never lay eyes on him again, I won't be sorry.»
«Can't blame you there,» the guardsman said, but he dropped his voice as he did it. «Not a drop of human kindness in dear Yeliif, from all I've seen. They say losing their balls makes eunuchs mean. I don't know if that's what bothers him, but mean he is. And it might not matter whether you set eyes on him again or not. Sooner or later you're going to have to eat some of the food that goes into your room there.»
«What?» Abivard said, his wits working more slowly than they should, and then, a moment later, «Oh. Now, that's a cheerful thought.»
He didn't think the beautiful eunuch would poison him. Had Yeliif wanted to do that, he could have managed it easily the winter before. Then Sharbaraz probably would have given him anything this side of his stones back for doing the job. Abivard didn't think he was as deeply disgraced now as he had been then. Now the King of Kings might be annoyed rather than relieved at his sudden and untimely demise.
Or, on the other hand, Sharbaraz might not. You never could tell with the King of Kings. Sometimes he was brilliant, sometimes foolish, sometimes both at once-and sorting the one out from the other was never easy. That made living under him… interesting.
Someone knocked on the door to the suite in which Abivard and his family were quartered. The winter before that would have produced surprise and alarm, for it was not time for the servants to bring in a meal, being about halfway between luncheon and dinner. Now, though, people visited at odd hours; sometimes Abivard almost managed to convince himself he was a guest, not a prisoner.
He could, for instance, bar the door on the inside. He'd done so the first several days after he'd arrived in Mashiz. After that, though, he gave it up. If Sharbaraz wanted to kill him badly enough to send assassins in after him, he'd presumably send assassins with both the wit and the tools to break down the door. And so, of late, Abivard had left it unbarred. As yet, he also remained unmurdered.
He doubted Sharbaraz would send out a particularly polite assassin, and so he opened the door at the knock with no special qualms. When he discovered Yeliif standing in the hallway, he wondered if he'd made a mistake. But the eunuch was armed with nothing but his tongue-which, while poisonous, was not deadly in and of itself. «For reasons beyond my comprehension and far beyond your desserts,» he told Abivard, «you are summoned before Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.»
«I'm coming,» Abivard answered, turning to wave quickly to Roshnani. As he closed the door after himself, he asked, «So what are these reasons far beyond your desserts or my comprehension?»
The beautiful eunuch started to answer, stopped, and favored him with a glare every bit as toxic as his usual speech. Without a word, he led Abivard through the maze of hallways toward the throne room.
This time, Abivard not being isolated as if suffering from a deadly and infectious disease, the journey took far less time than it had when he'd finally been summoned into Sharbaraz' presence the winter before. At the entrance to the throne room Yeliif broke his silence, saying, «Dare I hope you remember the required procedure from your last appearance here?»
«Yes, thank you very much, Mother, you may dare,» Abivard answered sweetly. If Yeliif was going to hate him no matter what he did, he had no great incentive to stay civil.
Yeliif turned and, back quiveringly straight, stalked down the aisle toward the distant throne on which Sharbaraz sat. Not many nobles attended the King of Kings this day. Those who were there, as best Abivard could guess from their faces, were not anticipating the spectacle of a bloodbath, as the courtiers and nobles emphatically had been the last time Abivard had come before his sovereign.