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Abivard felt like booting him in the backside as they walked down the
corridor.
Tzikas had indeed been bidden to the audience: he stood waiting at the rear of
the throne room. Someone very likely Yeliif had taken the sensible precaution
of posting some palace guards back there. Their dour expressions were as well
schooled as Yeliif's smile.
Abivard glared at Tzikas but, with the guards there, did no more. Tzikas
glared back. Yeliif said, "The two of you shall accompany me to the throne
together and prostrate yourselves before the King of Kings at the same time.
No lapses shall be tolerated, if I make myself clear."
Without waiting to find out whether he did, he started down the aisle on the
long walk toward the throne on which Sharbaraz sat. Abivard stayed by his
right side;
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Tzikas quickly found a place on his left. It was as if each of them was using
the eunuch to shield himself from the other. Under different circumstances the
idea might have been funny.
A pair of men stood to one side of the throne of the King of Kings. Abivard
presumed they were the mysterious Tus and Piran. Yeliif explained nothing.
Abivard had expected no more. Then, at the appropriate moment, the beautiful
eunuch stepped away, leaving Abivard and Tzikas side by side before the King
of Kings.
They prostrated themselves, acknowledging their insignificance in comparison
to
their sovereign. Out of the corner of his eye Abivard watched Tzikas, but he
had already known that the ritual was almost the same among Videssians as
among the folk of Makuran. The two men waited together, foreheads touching the
polished marble floor, for Sharbaraz to give them leave to rise.
At last he did. "We are not pleased with the two of you," he said when Abivard
and Tzikas had regained their feet. Abivard already knew that from the length
of time the King of Kings had required them to stay on their bellies.
Sharbaraz went on, "By persisting in your headstrong feud, you have endangered
the plan we have long been maturing, a plan which, to work to its fullest
extent, requires the service of both of you."
"Majesty, if we knew what this plan was, we would be able to serve you
better,"
Abivard answered. He was sick to death of Sharbaraz' notorious plan. Sharbaraz
was full of big talk that usually ended up amounting to nothing except trouble
for
Abivard.
When Sharbaraz spoke again, his words did not seem immediately to the point:
"Abivard son of Godarz, brother-in-law of mine, you will remember how our
father, Peroz King of Kings, departed this world for the company of the God?"
He hadn't publicly acknowledged Abivard as his brother-in-law for a long time.
Abivard noted that as he answered, "Aye, Majesty I do: battling bravely
against the
Khamorth out on the Pardrayan' steppe." Only the blind chance of his own
horse's stepping in a hole and breaking a leg at the start of its charge had
kept him out of the overwhelming disaster that had befallen the Makuraner army
moments afterward.
"What you say is true but incomplete," Sharbaraz told him. "How did it happen
that our father, Peroz King of Kings, saw the need to campaign against the
Khamorth out on the steppe?"
"They were raiding us, Majesty, as you will no doubt remember," Abivard said.
"Your father wanted to punish them as they deserved." He would not speak ill
of the dead. Had Peroz flung out his net of scouts more widely, the plainsmen
might not have trapped him and his host.
Sharbaraz nodded. "And why were they raiding us at that particular time?" he
asked with the air of a schoolmaster leading a student through a difficult
lesson step by step. Abivard had trouble figuring out what to make of that.
The answer, though, was plain enough: "Because the Videssians paid them gold
to raid us." He glared at Tzikas.
"Not my idea." The Videssian renegade held up a hand, denying any
responsibility. "Likinios Avtokrator sent the gold out where he thought it
would do the most good."
"Likinios Avtokrator, whom we knew, was devious enough to have devised such a
scheme for harming his foes without risking his own men or the land then held
by the Empire of Videssos," Sharbaraz said. Abivard nodded; Likinios had lived
up to all the Makuraner tales about calculating, cold-blooded Videssians. The
King of Kings went on, "We have endeavored to learn even from our foes. Thus
the ambassadors we sent forth two years ago just now returned to us: Tus and
Piran."
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"Ambassadors to whom, Majesty?" Abivard asked. At last he could put the
question to someone who might answer it.
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