He stiffened. Denak wasn't there, and neither was Sharbaraz, but there sat Tzikas, talking amiably with a Makuraner noble from the Seven Clans. To look at the Videssian renegade, he hadn't a care in the world. His gestured were animated; his face showed nothing but sincerity. Abivard knew, to his cost, how much that sincerity was worth. The noble, though, seemed altogether entranced. Abivard had seen that before, too.

  To his dismay, the servant who led Roshnani and him to their places seated them not far from Tzikas. Brawling in the palace was unseemly, so Abivard ignored the Videssian renegade. He poured wine first for Roshnani, then for himself.

  Sharbaraz came into the hall. Everyone rose and bowed low. The King of Kings entered alone. Sadness smote Abivard. He hoped Denak was not at Sharbaraz' side because little Peroz needed her. He doubted it, though. The King of Kings had given his principal wife more freedom than was customary, but custom pulled even on him. If he wasn't wholehearted about keeping such changes alive, they would perish.

  Roshnani noted Denak's absence, too. "I would have liked to see my sister-in-law without having to go into the women's quarters to do it," she said. She didn't raise her voice but didn't go to any trouble to keep it down, either. A couple of courtiers gave her sidelong looks. She looked back unabashed, which seemed to disconcert them. They muttered back and forth to each other but did not turn their eyes her way again.

  A soup of meatballs and pomegranate seeds started the feast. For amusement Abivard and Roshnani counted the seeds in their bowl; pomegranate seeds were supposed to bring good luck. When they both turned out to have seventeen, they laughed: neither one got to tease the other.

  After the soup came a salad of beets in yogurt enlivened with mint Abivard had never been fond of beets They were far more tolerable here than in most of the dishes where they appeared.

  Rice gorgeously stained and flavored with sour cherries and saffron followed the beets. Accompanying it was mutton cooked with onions and raisins. Roshnani mixed hers together with the rice. Abivard, who preferred to savor flavors separately, didn't.

  The food, as usual in the palace, was splendid. He gave it less attention than was his habit, and he was moderate with his wine, calling for quince and rhubarb sherbets more often than he did for the captured Videssian vintages Sharbaraz served his grandees. He directed more attention to his ears than to his tongue, trying to catch what Tzikas was saying behind his back.

  Tzikas had been saying things behind his back since not long after the Videssian had fled the Avtokrator he had formerly served. He hadn't thought Abivard knew about that—and indeed, Abivard hadn't known about it till almost too late. Now, though, he had to think Abivard would hear him, and that, to Abivard's way of thinking, would have been the best possible reason for him to keep his mouth shut.

  Maybe Tzikas didn't know how to keep his mouth shut Maybe he could no more stop intriguing than he could stop breathing: he might claim to worship the God, but he remained Videssian to the core. Or maybe he just did not really believe Abivard could overhear. Whatever the reason, his tongue rolled on without the least hesitation.

  Abivard could not make out everything he said, but what he caught was plenty:"—my victory over Maniakes by the banks of the Tib—" Tzikas was saying to someone who hadn't been there and couldn't contradict him. He sounded most convincing, but then, he always did.

  When Abivard turned toward Tzikas, Roshnani set a warning hand on his arm. He usually took her warnings more seriously than he did now. Smiling a smile that had little to do with amiability, he said, "When you came to Mashiz, Tzikas, you should have set up shop in the bazaar, not the palace."

  "Oh?" Tzikas said, staring at him as if he'd just crawled out from under a flat stone. "And why is that?" No matter how he aped Makuraner ways, the renegade kept all his Videssian arrogance, remaining convinced that he was and had to be the cleverest man around.

  Smiling, Abivard sank his barb: "Because then you could have sold your lies wholesale instead of doling them out one by one the way you do here."

  Tzikas glowered at him. "I am not the one who handed my subordinate to the enemy," he said.

  "True enough—you don't do things like that," Abivard agreed. "Your subordinates are safe from you. It's your superiors who have to have eyes in the backs of their heads. What would you have done if you had killed Maniakes by magic and made yourself Avtokrator of the Videssians?"

  "Beaten you," Tzikas said. Yes, he had his own full measure and to spare of the overweening pride that singularly failed to endear the imperials to the men of Makuran.

  But when Abivard said "I doubt it," that didn't merely spring from his angry reaction to the renegade's words. However skilled an intriguer Tzikas was, Abivard was convinced he had his measure in the field. Lightly, casually, he went on, "That wasn't what I meant, anyhow."

  "What did you mean?" Now Tzikas sounded ominous, beginning to realize Abivard was scoring off him.

  Abivard scored again: "I meant you'd be bored sitting on the throne with no one in Videssos to betray."

  Tzikas glared at him; that had gotten to the renegade, even though the odds were good that it wasn't true. An intriguer would hardly stop intriguing because he'd schemed his way to the top. He'd sit up there and scheme against all those—and there would surely be some—who'd try to follow him and pull him down. And even if he saw no one who looked dangerous, he would probably destroy a courtier every now and then for the sport of it and to keep rivals wary.

  "If you want me to prove what sort of liar you are, I will meet you when and where you like, with the weapons you like," Tzikas said.

  Abivard beamed at him. "The first generous offer you've made! We've tried to kill each other before; now I can do it properly."

  "It is forbidden," Yeliif said. Abivard and Tzikas both stared in startlement at the beautiful eunuch. Yeliif went on, "Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, has let me know he requires both of you for the enterprise he contemplates beginning next spring."

  "What is this fabled enterprise?" Tzikas demanded. Good, Abivard thought. Yeliif wasn't lying to me—Tzikas doesn't know, either. He would have been offended to the core had Sharbaraz enlightened the Videssian renegade while leaving him in the dark.

  Yeliif sniffed. "When the proper time for you to gain that knowledge comes, rest assured it shall be provided to you. Until such time cherish the fact that you will be preserved alive to acquire the knowledge when the time comes."

  "He certainly doesn't deserve to live to find out," Abivard said.

  "At one time or another a good many have expressed the opinion that you yourself did not merit remaining among the living," the beautiful eunuch replied coldly. Abivard knew full well he had been among the leaders of those expressing that opinion.

  Injustice still stung him. "Some people thought I was too successful, and so I had to be a traitor on account of that. But everyone knows Tzikas is a traitor. He doesn't even bother pretending not to be."

  "So he doesn't," Yeliif said, favoring Tzikas with a glance as icy as any with which he had ever chilled Abivard. "But a known traitor has his uses, provided he is watched at all times. The King of Kings intends to get such use as he can from the renegade."

  Abivard nodded. Where Tzikas was concerned, Sharbaraz had less to worry about than did Maniakes. Tzikas had already tried to steal the Videssian throne. Whatever else he might do, he could not set himself up as King of Kings of Makuran.

  That didn't mean he could not aspire to any number of lesser but still prominent offices in Makuran, such as the one Abivard had. He'd already aspired to that office and done his best to throw Abivard out of it. He'd do the same again if he saw a chance and thought Sharbaraz would look the other way.

  Abivard made a solemn resolution: regardless of whether Sharbaraz intended using Tzikas in this grand scheme of his, whatever it was, he was going to take out the Videssian renegade if he saw even the slightest chance of doing so. He could always apologize to the King of Kings afterward, and had no intention of granting Tzikas the same chance.

  Winter dragged on. The children got to go out into the courtyard now, as they hadn't in years gone by. Even Gulshahr was old enough now to pack snow into a ball and throw it at her brothers. Doing that left her squealing with glee.

  Videssian captives tutored Varaz and Shahin. Abivard's sons took to lessons with the same enthusiasm they would have shown taking poison. He walloped them on the backside and kept them at it.

  "We already know how to speak Videssian," Varaz protested. "Why do we have to know how to make speeches in it?"

  "And all these numbers, too," Shahin added. "It's like they're all pieces of a puzzle, and they're all scrambled up, and the Videssians expect us to be able to put them together as easy as anything." He stuck out his lower tip. "It's not fair." That was the worst condemnation he could give to anything not to his liking.

  "Being able to count past ten without having to take off your shoes won't kill you," Abivard said. He rounded on Varaz. "You'll be dealing with Videssians your whole life, most likely. Knowing how to impress them when you talk won't do you any lasting harm."

  "When you first went into Videssos, did you know how to speak the language there?" Varaz asked.

  "Not so you'd notice," Abivard answered. "But remember, I grew up in the far Northwest, and I never expected to go into Videssos at all, except maybe as a soldier in an invading army." He folded his arms across his chest. "You'll keep on with your lessons," he declared as firmly as Sharbaraz promulgating a decree. The King of Kings could make the whole of Makuran heed him. Abivard's authority was less than that but did extend to his two boys.

  They studied more than mathematics and rhetoric. They rode ponies, shot bows suited to their strength, and began to learn swordplay. They would acquire a Videssian veneer—Abivard was convinced it would prove useful—but beneath it would have the accomplishments of a proper Makuraner noble.

  "The more different things you know how to do, the better off you'll be," Abivard told them.

  The man that thought called to mind, unfortunately, was Tzikas. The Videssian renegade knew not only his own tongue but that of Makuran as well. He could tell convincing stories in either one. He was a talented soldier to boot. If he'd been only a little luckier, he would have been Avtokrator of the Videssians or perhaps commander of the Makuraner field army. No one had ever come closer to meeting both of those seemingly incompatible goals.

  He was missing one thing, though. Abivard wasn't sure it had a name. Steadfastness was as close as he could come, that or integrity. Neither word felt quite right. Without the quality, though, Tzikas' manifold talents brought him less than they might have otherwise.

  Yeliif said the same thing a different way a few days later. "He is a Videssian," the beautiful eunuch intoned, as if to say that alone irremediably spoiled Tzikas.

  Abivard eyed Yeliif with speculation of a sort different from that which he usually gave the eunuch. In the matter of Tzikas, for once, they shared an interest. "I'd be happier if we never had to speak of him again," Abivard said, an oblique message but not so oblique that the beautiful eunuch couldn't follow up on it if he so desired.

  Yeliif also looked thoughtful. If the notion of being on the same side as Abivard pleased him, he didn't let his face know about it. After a little while he said, "Didn't you tell me Tzikas has wavered back and forth between the God and the false faith of Phos?"

  "I did. He has," Abivard answered. "In the next world he will surely fall into the Void and be forgotten. I wish he would be forgotten here and now, too."

  "I wonder," Yeliif said in musing tones, "yes, I wonder what the Mobedhan Mobedh would say on hearing that Tzikas has wavered between the true faith and the false."

  "That is an... intriguing question," Abivard answered after a moment's pause to weigh just how intriguing it was. "Sharbaraz has forbidden the two of us to quarrel, but if the chief servant of the God comes to him with a complaint that Tzikas is an apostate, he may have to listen."

  "So he may," Yeliif agreed. "On the other hand, he may not. Dhegmussa is his servant in all things. But a man who will not notice his servants is less than perfectly wise."

  Not a word passed Abivard's lips. For all he knew, the beautiful eunuch was playing a game different from the one that showed on the surface of his words. He might be hoping to get Abivard to call the King of Kings a fool and then report what Abivard had said to Sharbaraz. Abivard did think the King of Kings a fool, but he himself was not so foolish as to say so where any potential foe could hear him.

  But Yeliif's idea was far from the worst he'd ever heard. Maybe Dhegmussa wouldn't be able to do anything; the Mobedhan Mobedh was far more the creature of the King of Kings than the Videssians' ecumenical patriarch was the Avtokrator's creature. Apostasy, though, was nothing to take lightly. And making Tzikas sweat was nearly as good as making him suffer.

  "I'll talk with Dhegmussa," Abivard said. Something glinted in Yeliif's black, black eyes. Was it approval? Abivard hadn't seen it there often enough to be sure he recognized it.

  The shrine in which Dhegmussa, chief servant of the God, performed his duties was the most splendid of its kind in all Makuran. That said, it was nowhere near so fine as several of the temples to Phos Abivard had seen in Videssian provincial towns and not worth mentioning in the same breath as the High Temple in Videssos the city. The Makuraners said, The God lives in your heart, not on the wall.

  Dhegmussa lived in a small home next to the shrine, a home like that which a moderately successful shoemaker might have inhabited: whitewashed mud bricks forming an unimpressive facade but a fair amount of comfort inside.

  "You honor me, marshal of Makuran," the Mobedhan Mobedh said, leading Abivard along a dim, gloomy hall at the end of which light from the courtyard shone. When they got there, Dhegmussa waved a regretful hand. "You must imagine how it looks in spring and summer, all green and full of sweet-smelling, bright-colored flowers. This brown, dreary mess is not what it should be."

  "Of course not," Abivard said soothingly. Dhegmussa guided him across the court to a room heated by a couple of charcoal braziers. A servant brought wine and sweet cakes. Abivard studied the Mobedhan Mobedh as they refreshed themselves. Dhegmussa was about sixty, with a closely trimmed gray beard and a loud voice that suggested he was a trifle deaf.

  He waited till Abivard had eaten and drunk, then left off the polite small talk and asked, "How may I serve you, marshal of Makuran?'

  "We have a problem, holy one, with a man who, while claiming to worship the God, abandoned in time of danger the faith he had professed, only to return to it when that seemed safer than the worship for which he had given it up," Abivard answered.

  "This sounds dolorous indeed," Dhegmussa said. "A man who blows whichever way the winds of expediency take him is not one to hold a position of trust nor one who has any great hope of escaping the Void once his life on earth is done."

  "I have feared as much myself, holy one," Abivard said, calling up a sadness he did not truly feel.

  They went back and forth a while longer. The servant brought more cakes, more wine. At last the Mobedhan Mobedh put the question he had studiously avoided up till then: "Who is this man for whose spiritual well-being you so justly fear?"

  "I speak of Tzikas, the Videssian renegade," Abivard said, a reply that could not have surprised Dhegmussa in the least by then. "Can any man who dons and doffs religions as if they were caftans possibly be a reliable servant to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase?"

  "It seems difficult," Dhegmussa said, and then said no more for a time.

  When he remained silent, Abivard pressed the matter: "Can a man who chooses whether to swear by the God or by false Phos by who is listening to him at any given moment be believed when he swears by either one?"

  "It seems difficult," Dhegmussa said again.

  That was as far as he would go on his own. Abivard prodded him to go further: "Would you want such a man close to the King of Kings? He might corrupt him with his own heedlessness, or, on the other hand, failing to corrupt the King of Kings, he might be moved to violence against him."

  "Fraortish eldest of all, prevent it," the Mobedhan Mobedh said, his fingers twisting in a sign to avert the evil omen. Abivard imitated the gesture. But then, to his disappointment, Dhegmussa went on: "But surely the King of Kings is aware of the risks entailed in having this Videssian close by him."

  "There are risks, holy one, and then there are risks," Abivard said. "You do know, of course, that Tzikas once tried to murder the Videssian Avtokrator by magic." One of the advantages of telling the truth was the casual ease with which he could bring out such horrors.

  Dhegmussa suffered a coughing fit. When he could finally speak again, he said, "I had heard such a thing, yes, but discounted it as a scurrilous rumor put about by his enemies." He looked sidelong at Abivard, who was certainly no friend to Tzikas.

  "It certainly is scurrilous," Abivard agreed cheerfully, "but rumor it is not I was the one who received him in Across after he fled in a rowboat over the strait called the Cattle Crossing after his conjuration couldn't kill Maniakes. If he'd stayed in Videssos the city another hour, Maniakes' men would have had him." And that would have made life simpler for both the Avtokrator and me, Abivard thought. Ever since he'd rescued Sharbaraz from Nalgis Crag stronghold, though, it had become more and more obvious that his life, whatever else it might hold, would not contain much simplicity.

  "You swear this to me?" Dhegmussa asked

  "By the God and the Prophets Four," Abivard declared, raising first the thumb and then the fingers of his left hand.

  Still Dhegmussa hesitated. Abivard wanted to kick him to see if direct stimulation would make his wits work faster. The only reason he could conceive for Sharbaraz' having named this man Mobedhan Mobedh was the assurance of having an amiable nonentity in the position. So long as everything went well, having a nonentity in an important place held advantages, chief among them that he was not likely to be dangerous to the King of Kings. But sometimes a man who would not or could not act was more dangerous than one who could and would.