Kings of Morning (12 page)

How can you be King?
She had shrieked, and Kouros had felt terror he had not known since childhood. She had whipped the slave, but the blows had been meant for him.

After that it had been a relief to leave the city, to join his father’s army and eat dust day after day, to ache with the constant riding, to sweat like a serf in the daily swordplay his weapons-master insist he practice.

But still, his thoughts were constant – where was Rakhsar? And Roshana.

He had loved Roshana once. She had been kind to him when as children they had occasionally been allowed to play together. Those moments had been like miracles to him.

But her love for her brother curdled his feelings for her, for between Rakhsar and Kouros there had been nothing but black, unalloyed hatred from the first. It was as if they had the instincts of wild dogs, sensing a rival in the pack. It was unreasoning from the beginning, and then as they grew older there had been too many more reasons to ever begin to question it.

But he had wept, in private, over Roshana, for she was one of a handful of people who had shown him kindness without hope of gain, for no other reason than pure decency.

It was why he hungered now to catch and degrade her, to force himself on her in front of her twin, to wipe that knowing sneer off Rakhsar’s face one last time, and then expunge it from the world forever.

Tears rose in his eyes as he pitied himself, remembering the utter loneliness of his childhood. There had been one other in those days, a single other who had shared his world for a time. But his mother had disapproved. Orsana’s disapproval meant mutilation, death, exile. No-one was allowed to come close to her son, who would one day be ruler of the world.

His mother loved him, but that love frightened him, for it was entangled in expectation and ambition and bloody, unyielding determination. She loved him, but if he could not be King, then he did not like to think what that love could do.

There were times when he wished she was... gone.

And he thought of what it would be like to be King, to do as he pleased, and the thought settled his mind, calmed him. He even patted the rancid, foam-flecked neck of his horse as though he cared.

‘Barka,’ he said.

From the huddle of riders a respectful distance behind him, one trotted forward. A Kefre, but low-born, with dark eyes and long hair dyed red as an apple and bound in an oiled queue. He had a sword scabbarded each side of his saddle’s pommel and wore a plain leather corselet studded with bronze. A scar tugged down one corner of his mouth, so it looked like he was leering, but his eyes held no humour.

This was Kouros’s weapons-master; an Arakosan, brought to Ashur fifteen years before by Orsana to teach her son how to be a man. He was also the only person who had ever beaten the young prince, for mistreating a horse. Kouros had gone to his mother at once, and the Arakosan had never laid a hand on him since, but Kouros still remembered the beating. He knew Barka despised him, but he also knew the Arakosan would die for him without thought, because of who his mother was.

‘My prince?’

‘Do we know yet where the imperial tent will be sited tonight?’

‘Yes, lord. The scouts have plotted a site some twenty pasangs ahead, on the outskirts of Kinamish.’

‘And my household?’

Barka pointed below, to where the Imperial road was a long snake of dust, a golden caterpillar inching across the land with black ants crawling within it.

‘Our gear is with the Great King’s caravan, as always, lord.’

Kouros was aching for a bath, some wine, something softer than a saddle to take his bulk. He frowned. The entire army and everyone in it travelled at the pace of the slowest ox-cart in the Great King’s baggage train. And no tent could be pitched before the King’s. It would be many hours yet.

Kouros wiped his face, his palm coming away gritty with dust. Kinamish was a small town with some of the amenities of civilization. It was unnoticeable, unimportant. It was perfect.

A well-mounted man could be there in an hour, if he pushed his horse. The timings had worked well.

‘Let us ride ahead, and make sure the people of Kinamish are ready to receive my father,’ Kouros said lightly.

Barka looked at him. He had an unsettlingly direct gaze that was wholly free of deference. Since Orsana had spoken to him, all those years ago, he had never again ventured to correct the young prince, but Kouros always knew when Barka disapproved of him. He would have rid himself of the scarred Kefre long before, except that he knew – somehow – that Barka could be trusted utterly. The weapons-master might not think much of his prince, but he would never betray him. It was the closest thing to loyalty Kouros had ever experienced. Almost.

‘Very well,’ Barka said. ‘The escort also, my lord?’

‘No.’ No, that might attract attention. Kouros snarled inside at the thought of being patiently taken to task by Dyarnes or another of his father’s veterans. They feared him – all of them – but they still had the casual confidence of old campaigners. And there were things they did not need to know.

‘You and I, Barka – we’ll go alone.’

‘As you wish, lord.’

T
HEY PUSHED THE
horses hard. Kouros’s riding was graceless but effective; he made the animal do what he wanted, and there was never any emotional connection between horse and rider. He had seen his father commiserate with hardened soldiers on the death of a favourite horse, and had been utterly baffled by the sight. These were grown men with blood on their hands, who would have a thieving slave crucified without a moment’s thought, and they wept over a dead animal.

The big Niseians pounded along willingly enough, for they had been travelling at a crawl all morning. Barka sat his as though stuck to it, moving with the rise and fall of the animal, the reins an irrelevance, held lightly in one hand. He talked to his horse in a low voice now and again, crooned to it like it was a child he wanted to reassure.

Baffling.

The last pasangs of the Heart of Empire rolled along under them, the land rising to meet the Magron mountains, which were a huge cloud now on the western horizon, dun-coloured and tipped with white, forests a darker stubble at their knees.

There was no irrigation system in this part of the world, for the moist easterlies struck the mountains and shed their water freely in tumbled thunderheads every spring and winter. The land was a less violent green than the manicured fields of the Oskus valley, and much of it was given over to pasture. They herded cattle here, and goats to clear up after them. The people were the shorter, darker, upland
hufsan
who made up the bulk of the empire’s populations.

Herd boys stopped to stare at the two superbly mounted Kefren who galloped past them, and Barka, with a boyishness quite unlike him, waved at those they passed with a white grin splitting his leathered face.

He is happy, Kouros realised. He is genuinely happy to be galloping along, slathered in sweat, miles from the capital, with only the ground to sleep on and the prospect of some half-seared campfire meat to eat tonight.

To ride a horse, to use a bow, to tell the truth. Those were the ancient tenets of life for the Kefren, still given lip service even in the opulent luxury of Ashur’s palaces. Kouros’s mother never tired of telling him that in Arakosia the nobles still trained their sons how to shoot from the saddle, that a Kefre’s word was counted a contract as good as any scribe’s scrawl.

But Orsana had been in the Harem these thirty years and more. What did she know?

Kouros had been at intrigues since he was a child, recognising his elevated status and working on it, utilising slaves and tutors and bodyguards and their dependence on his favour. No bows or horses, there, and not much of the truth, either. Leverage was what counted; the ability to hold a person’s dismissal or disgrace over their head.

He smiled a curious half-smirk as he rode along.

Nobles had given him their wives for a night to buy his favour, and the more unwilling the woman, the sweeter it had tasted. He loved to be there to give the husband back his wife the next morning, to see the eyes of them both. That moment was better than the sex itself.

‘Kinamish,’ Barka said, pointing, ruining his sordid little daydream.

‘I am not blind,’ he snapped.

‘Lord, we should slow our pace, rest the horses.’

‘We’re nearly there, Barka. They can rest all they like when we reach the town.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ Barka’s high spirits withered. He was again the grim-faced guardian.

T
HEY DISMOUNTED IN
a tawny square of mud-brick buildings. Kinamish was not important enough to need a wall, and this far into the Heart of Empire it would not have occurred to the inhabitants to build one. Asuria had not known the footfall of war for generations, and only the greatest of her cities still maintained defences, more out of tradition than anything else.

There was a tavern, with a vine-shaded loggia. Leaving Barka with the steaming horses, Kouros sat himself there. He dropped his komis from his face and slapped the dust from his clothes with his riding-gauntlets. Slowly, as the local drinkers, farmers and ne’er-do-wells watched, the colours emerged from his garments. Kingfisher blue, imperial purple, and the silver embroidered horse heads of the royal house. The loggia cleared around him, and he smiled again, clicking his fingers for service.

‘Wine, and cold water,’ he said without looking up.

‘At once, my lord.’

He did not seem surprised when he was joined at his table by another traveller, who sat down beside him without ceremony and reached for the communal olive-bowl, wetting his fingers on the oil and then applying it to sunburnt patches on his nose. With the same hand the newcomer dropped the folds of his own komis, and sighed. He was a broad-faced Kefre with a cropped head and eyes as bright as cornflowers. His skin and his clothes were all the colour of the dust that puffed in pale zephyrs around the little square. When the water arrived he drank straight from the jug, and, wiping his mouth, he left on his face a smear of clean skin the colour of new wood.

‘Straight from the well, none better. My thanks to your honour.’

Kouros sipped his wine, grimaced, then swallowed half the cup. ‘Tell me you have news, Kuthra.’

‘I have. Maybe not the type you’d like to hear, but useful nonetheless.’ The dusty Kefre stared at Kouros expectantly, and with a sliver of mockery folded into his smile. ‘You’ve put on weight, brother.’

‘The hazards of palace living.’

‘Ah, of course. It’s been so long I had forgotten. How long has it been, Kouros, since I shared the heights with you?’

Kouros shifted in his chair, though his gaze never left the other’s face, and there was a strange glimmer in his eyes. ‘I am here for information, not to reminisce.’

‘Indulge me. We see each other so rarely, these days.’

Kouros reached into his blue robes and brought forth a doeskin purse, a beautifully made thing which looked to have been chosen with some care. As it settled on the table it clinked heavily. Kuthra did not once look at it, but continued to study Kouros’s face.

At last, Kouros said, ‘It is seventeen years.’

‘Seventeen years! How fast they have flown. Do you remember how we used to meet in the darkest corners of the gardens to lie under the trees and talk of all the great things we would do when we were grown? You would be King and I would be at your side. I would look out for you, and keep the jackals from your back. I wanted nothing more.’

Quietly, Kouros said, ‘Neither did I.’

Deliberately, Kuthra raised his right arm and set it on the table. The folds of his travelling gear fell back to reveal a stump at the wrist, an old wound long seamed shut in a swirl of flesh.

‘Such a pity your mother did not agree.’

The two men looked at one another. Finally they both leaned close in the same second and embraced, burying their faces in each other’s shoulders.

Kouros took Kuthra’s face in his hands. There were tears in his eyes. They brimmed, and spilled over onto his cheeks. ‘It was the price for your life.’

‘I know. She should not have made you watch, though. She knew you would blame yourself for it, when it was her doing alone.’ Kuthra wiped the tears from Kouros’s face with his only hand.

‘She has mellowed since then.’ They both began to laugh. Kuthra thumped the table with his stump. ‘More wine here! Are you all asleep? Landlord, step quick now!’

‘Don’t draw attention to us,’ Kouros hissed urgently. ‘This is risky enough as it is.’

‘We sit face to face once every four or five years, if we are lucky. The rest of the time it is letters and notes and whispers in the dark. Let me drink with my brother Kouros – let us raise our cups together for a little while at least, like normal folk.’

‘If Orsana knew –’

‘Fuck Orsana. She will not live forever.’ Kuthra leaned in and set his hand on Kouros’s. ‘Brother, one day you will be King, and on that day and every other after you will have me by your side, and I will always keep the jackals from your back.’

‘You shall be a prince again, Kuthra.’