“Until then.” Marcus and Gaius Philippus echoed him with a singular lack of enthusiasm.

  Unlike the rambling Videssian palace complex, the court at Mashiz was housed in a single building. The great stone blocks from which it was built looked as if they had been ripped from the mountains’ heart. Studying the smoothly weathered outwalls, Marcus guessed the palace had been a citadel before Mashiz was a city.

  Once inside the outwalls, a couple of Yezda from Rhadzat’s squad peeled off to lead the Romans’ horses to the stables. Knowing the care the Yezda lavished on their own beasts, Scaurus was sure his would get fine treatment from them. It did nothing to ease his mind. Being away from their mounts would only make flight harder for the Romans.

  Rhadzat conducted the tribune and senior centurion to the palace entrance, where a steward eyed him and them with distaste. The servitor was of Makuraner blood, slim, dark, and elegant, wearing a brocaded caftan and sandals with golden clasps. His haughty air vanished when the Yezda officer explained why they had come. Graceful as a cat, he bowed to the Romans.

  He called into the palace for another servant. When the man arrived, the steward spoke to the Romans in his own tongue. Marcus shrugged and spread his hands. A ghost of the doorman’s sneer returned. “You please to follow him,” he said, his Videssian slow and rusty but clear enough.

  Their guide knew only Makuraner and the Yezda speech. He chattered on, not caring whether they understood, as he led them up a ramp of green marble polished till it reflected the light of the torches that hung in gilded sconces every few feet along the wall. His soft-soled slippers did better on the smooth surface than the Romans’ caligae; he giggled out loud when Gaius Philippus skidded and almost fell.

  The couches in the waiting room were stuffed with down and upholstered in soft suede. The sweetmeats that the palace servitors brought came on silver trays and filled the mouth with delicate perfume. Watching shadows move across the ornate wall hangings, Marcus felt like a fly gently but irresistibly trapped in spider silk.

  The room was in twilight by the time the court official returned to take the Romans away. At the entrance to the throne room he surrendered his charges to another chamberlain, an elderly Makuraner eunuch whose caftan was of almost transparent silk.

  He had some Videssian. “No need for proskynesis when you present yourself before Khagan Wulghash,” he said, sniffing in disapproval at his master’s barbarous informality. “A bow will do. He keeps his grandfather’s ways—as if a lizard-eating nomad’s customs were valid.” Another sniff. “He even allows his primary wife a seat beside him.” A third sniff, louder than the other two.

  Marcus did not pay much attention. The throne room was long and narrow; the tribune felt his shoes sinking into the thick wool of the carpet as he walked toward the distant pair of high ivory seats ahead. Without turning his head too much, he tried to spot Tabari. In the flickering torchlight, one man looked like the next.

  With its moving shadows, the light of the torches did a better job showing up the reliefs on the walls behind the nobility of Yezd. Like the defaced ones on the temple that now belonged to Skotos, they were carved in a florid style that owed nothing to Videssian severity. One was a hunting scene, with some long-forgotten Makuraner king slaying a lion with a sword. The other—Marcus’ eyes went wide as he recognized the regalia of the man shown kneeling before another king on horseback. Only an Avtokrator wore such garb.

  Beside him, Gaius Philippus gave a tiny chuckle. “I wonder what the imperials have to say about that in their histories,” he whispered.

  A herald was coming forward from the thrones as the Romans approached them. He raised their hands above their heads—no easy feat; he was several inches shorter than Gaius Philippus—and cried out in the Makuraner and Yezda tongues. Scaurus caught his own name and the centurion’s.

  Applause washed over the Romans. A couple of Makuraner lords, seeing they were foreigners, cried out “Well done!” in Videssian. The tribune finally spotted Tabari, sitting close to the front. He and the other Makuraners cheered louder and longer than their Yezda counterparts. It was a heady moment, though Marcus wondered how many of the clapping men had led armies into the Empire.

  The herald led them toward the thrones. The khagan sat on the right-hand one, which was higher than the other. Wulghash wore a headdress like those of the Makuraner kings remembered on the throne room walls, a high, conical crown of stiff white felt, with earflaps reaching nearly to his shoulders. A vertical row of gems ran up from edge to peak; a double band of horsehair made a diadem across the khagan’s forehead.

  Marcus sized Wulghash up—he had never wanted to meet the ruler of Yezd, but would not waste what chance had set before him. The khagan was swarthy, about fifty. His thick beard, cut square at the bottom, was salt-and-pepper, with salt gaining. His square features had a hard cast partly offset by tired, intelligent eyes. He was wide shouldered and well made, his middle only beginning to thicken.

  “Careful,” Gaius Philippus said. “He’s not one to mess with.” Scaurus gave a small nod; that fit his view exactly.

  The herald stopped the Romans just past the end of the carpet, at a stone smoothed by thousands of feet over the centuries. They made their bows, to fresh applause. It grew even louder when Wulghash came down to clasp their hands—his own was hard, dry, and callused, more like a soldier’s than a bureaucrat’s—and embrace them.

  “You have saved a valued member of my court, and have my friendship for it,” Wulghash said. His Videssian was polished as any courtier of Thorisin’s. “Allow me to present you to my senior queen, Atossa.” He nodded to the woman on the lower throne.

  Studying Wulghash so, the tribune had hardly noticed her. She was about the khagan’s age and handsome still. She smiled and spoke in the Makuraner tongue. “She apologizes for being unable to thank you in a language you know,” Wulghash translated.

  Marcus returned the first compliment that popped into his mind: “Tell her she is as kind as she is beautiful.” Atossa regally inclined her head. He nodded back, thoughts whirling. Here with a friendly hand on his shoulder stood Videssos’ sworn enemy, the man Avshar named master. If he jerked his dagger from his belt, thrust—

  He did not move. To violate Wulghash’s generosity so was not in him. What point in fighting Avshar if he fell to his methods? That thought brought him closer to understanding Videssos’ dualism than he had ever come.

  A pipe’s clear whistle cut through the court chatter. Everyone brightened. “The feast is ready,” Wulghash explained, “and about time, too.” He handed Atossa down from her throne; she took his arm. The Romans fell in line behind the royal couple.

  The banquet hall, though merely a palace chamber, was nearly as large as the Hall of the Nineteen Couches in Videssos. Torchlight sparkled off the blue crystal and gold and silver foil of the abstract mosaic patterns on the walls. As guests of honor, Scaurus sat at Wulghash’s right while Gaius Philippus was on Atossa’s left.

  The khagan rose to toast them. He drank wine, as did the nobles Marcus had picked as Makurani. Most of the Yezda chieftains preferred their traditional kavass. When a skin of the fermented mares’ milk reached the tribune, he slurped for politeness’ sake and passed it to Wulghash. The khagan wrinkled his fleshy nose and sent it on without drinking.

  “There is also date wine, if you care for it,” he told the Roman. Marcus declined with a shudder. He had sampled the stuff on the journey with Tahmasp. It was so sweet and syrupy as to make the cloying Videssian wine seem pleasantly dry.

  Some of the food was simple nomad fare: wheatcakes, yogurt, and plain roast meat. Again, though, Wulghash liked Makuraner ways better than those of his ancestors. Enjoying grape leaves stuffed with goat and olives, an assortment of roasted songbirds, steamed and sauteed vegetables, and mutton baked in a sauce of mustard, raisins, and wine, Scaurus decided he could not fault the khagan’s taste. And at sizzling rice soup he positively beamed; he had met it in a Makuraner cafe in Videssos that first magic winter night with Alypia Gavra.

  The thought of her made the celebration strange and somehow unreal. After fighting the Yezda for years, what was he doing here making polite small talk with a prince whose people were destroying the land he had taken for his own? And what was Wulghash doing as that prince? He seemed anything but the monster Scaurus had pictured, and no ravening barbarian either. Plainly a capable ruler, he was as much influenced by Makuran’s civilization as the great count Drax was under Videssos’ spell. His presiding over the devastation the Yezda worked posed a riddle the tribune could not solve.

  He got his first clue when a dispatch rider, still sweaty from his travels, brought the khagan a sheaf of messages. Wulghash read rapidly through them, growing angrier with each sheet. He growled out a stream of commands.

  When the messenger interrupted with some objection or question, the khagan clapped an exasperated hand to his forehead. He wrote on the back of one of the dispatches with quick, furious strokes. Then he wet the signet ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand in mustard sauce and stamped a smeary, yellow-brown seal on his orders. Goggling, the messenger saluted, took the parchment, and hurried away.

  Wulghash, still fuming, drained his ivory rhyton at a gulp. He turned to Marcus. “I have days I think all my captains idiots, the way they panic at shadows. They’ve been raiding Erzerum since my grandfather’s time—is it any wonder the hillmen strike back? I know the cure for that, though. Hit them three ways at once so their army breaks into all its little separate groups and they’re nothing much. We’ve already started that; all we have to do is keep on with it. And the heads have started going up into their valleys. They’ll think a long time before they stir out again.”

  “Heads?” the tribune echoed.

  “Killed in battle, prisoners, what does it matter?” Wulghash said with ruthless unconcern. “So long as the Erzrumi recognize most of them, they serve their purpose.”

  The khagan slammed his fist down on the table; Atossa touched his left arm, trying to soothe him. He shook her off. “This is my land,” he proudly declared to Scaurus, “and I intend to pass it on to my son greater than it was when I received it from my father. I have beaten Videssos; shall I let a pack of fourth-rate mountain rats get the better of me?”

  “No,” Marcus said, but he felt a chill of fear. Wulghash’s wish was irreproachable, but the khagan did not care what steps he took to reach it. The man on that path, the tribune thought, walks at the edge of the abyss. To cover his unease, he asked, “Your son?”

  As any father might, Wulghash swelled with pride. “Khobin is a fine lad—no, I cannot call him that now. He has a man’s years on him, and a little son of his own. Where does the time go? He watches the northwest for me, making sure the stinking Arshaum stay on their side of the Degird. There will be trouble with them; the embassy I sent last year won no success.”

  Scaurus concealed the excitement that coursed through him. If the Yezda embassy had failed, perhaps the Videssian mission to the steppe tribes was faring well. He wondered how Viridovix and Gorgidas were and even spared a moment’s thought for Pikridios Goudeles. The pen-pusher was a rogue, but a slick one.

  Only a few drops of wine came from the silver ewer when Wulghash lifted it to refill his drinking-horn. “I need more, Harshad,” he called, absentmindedly still using Videssian. A Yezda at the foot of the table looked up when he heard his name. Seeing him scratch his head, the khagan realized his mistake and repeated the request in his own language.

  Grinning now, Harshad muttered a few words into his beard and moved his fingers in a quick, intricate pattern over the wine jar in front of him. It rose smoothly until it was a couple of feet above the table, then drifted toward Wulghash. Gaius Philippus had been cutting the meat from a pork rib; he looked up just as the jar floated past him. He dropped his knife.

  None of the Yezda or Makuraner nobles took any special notice of the magic. A small smile on his lips, Wulghash said, “A little sorcery, that one.” He pointed at Gaius Philippus’ cup and spoke in a language Marcus almost thought he knew. The cup lifted, glided over to the floating ewer. The wine jar tipped and poured, then straightened as the cup was full. Wulghash gestured again. The cup returned to Gaius Philippus; the wine jar settled to the table. The khagan filled his rhyton the ordinary way.

  Gaius Philippus was staring at his cup as if he expected it to get up and shoot dice with him. “Merely wine,” Wulghash assured him, tasting his own. “Better than what we had, in fact. You are not very familiar with wizardry, are you?”

  “More than I want to be,” the veteran answered. He picked up the cup in both hands and emptied it at a gulp. “That is good. Could you pass me the jar for more?” He managed to laugh when Wulghash lifted the ewer with the same exaggerated care he had given the cup.

  The khagan turned back to Marcus who had done his best not to show surprise at the magic. That best, apparently, was not good enough, for Wulghash said, “How is it sorcery seems so strange to you? You must have seen magecraft enough among the Videssians.” His gaze was suddenly sharp; the tribune remembered he had thought the khagan’s eyes intelligent the moment he saw him. Now they probed at the Roman. “But then, you have an accent I do not know and you talk with your comrade in a tongue I do not recognize—and I know a good many.”

  He saw the Roman’s face turn wary, and said, “I do not mean to frighten you. You are my friends, I have promised you that. By all the gods and prophets, were you the Avtokrator of the Videssians you could leave my table in safety if you had that pledge.” He sounded angry at himself and Scaurus both; more than anything, that made the tribune believe him.

  The khagan went on, “As a friend, though, you make me wonder at you, all the more when magic startles you despite the blade you carry.” This time Marcus could not help jumping. Wulghash’s chuckle was dry as boots scuffing through dead leaves. “Am I a blind man, to miss the moon in the sky? Tell me of yourself, if you will, as one friend does for another.”

  Marcus hesitated, wondering what Wulghash might have heard of Romans from Avshar or from the spies the khagan had to have in Videssos. The story he decided on was a drastically edited version of the truth. Saying nothing of the rest of the legionaries, he gave out that he and Gaius Philippus were from a land beyond the eastern ocean, forced to flee to these strange shores by a quarrel with a chieftain. After serving as mercenaries for Videssos, they had to flee again when Scaurus fell foul of the Emperor—he did not say how. Tahmasp’s caravan, he finished truthfully, had brought them to Mashiz.

  “That scoundrel,” Wulghash said without rancor. “Who knows how much trade tax and customs revenue he cheats me out of every year?” He studied the tribune. “So Gavras outlawed you, did he? With his temper, you should be thankful you’re still breathing.”

  “I know,” Scaurus said, so feelingly the khagan gave that dry chuckle again.

  “You have poor luck with nobles, it appears,” Wulghash remarked. “Why is that?”

  The tribune sensed danger in the question. As he cast about for a safe answer, Gaius Philippus came to his rescue. “Because we have a bad habit—we speak our minds. If one highborn sod’s greedy as a pig at the swill trough or the next is a liverish son of a whore, we say so. Aye, it gets us in trouble, but it beats licking spit.”

  “Liverish, eh? Not bad,” Wulghash said. As Gaius Philippus had intended, he took it to refer to Thorisin. He seemed reassured—the centurion’s raspy voice and blunt features were made for candor.

  The khagan looked musingly from one Roman to the other. “I know nothing of the countries beyond the eastern sea,” he said. “Past Namdalen and the barbarous lands on the southern shore of the Sailors’ Sea, our maps are blank. You could teach me a great deal.” He went on, as his smile exposed strong yellow teeth, “And you were officers with Videssos. No doubt you will be able to tell me quite a lot about your sojourn there as well. Shall I have an apartment prepared for you here in the palace? That would be most convenient; I think we will be spending a good deal of time together over the next couple of weeks.”

  “We would be honored,” Marcus said, and knew he had told Wulghash another lie.

  To the Romans’ dismay, the khagan was good as his word. He was full of questions, yet did not really subject them to a serious interrogation, asking almost as much about their homeland as about Videssos and its armies. Those questions Scaurus answered honestly, after the initial deception about the eastern ocean. Sometimes he and Gaius Philippus disagreed sharply; he came from the urban upper class, while the centurion was a product of farm and legion.

  Wulghash was that rarity, a good listener. His queries always moved arguments along and convinced Scaurus afresh of his brain. His secretary Pushram, who wrote down the Romans’ replies, asked no questions. He made a point of seeming bored about everything outside the khagan’s court. It was a mischievous sort of boredom, for he was a skinny little brown man with outsized ears and amazingly flexible features.

  Well into the second week of the Romans’ presence at court, a servant came by with a tray of eggplant slices cooked in cheese and oregano. Wulghash took one. “That’s excellent,” he exclaimed. “Much better than usual. Here, fellow, give my friends some, too.”

  “Very nice,” Marcus said politely, though in fact he found the eggplant bland and its sauce too sharp. Gaius Philippus, no timeserver, left his slice half-eaten.

  Pushram, however, screwed up his face into a blissful expression. “Most glorious eggplant! Handsome to look upon, delicate on the tongue, full of flavor and of pleasing texture, a comestible to be esteemed for all the multifarious ways it may be prepared, each more delicious than the next. Truly a prince—no, let me say more: a khagan—among vegetables!”