Kings of Morning (23 page)

‘I was too young. I do not remember,’ Kouros said, looking down. He did not want to remember.

‘I resolved to go back on my own decision, to raise you all together as a family should be raised. Perhaps I was a fool. I probably was. In any case, your mother kept me to my word. She was first wife, and Ashana was a gentle soul who bowed to her commands.’

‘My mother is a great woman,’ Kouros growled.

‘Yes, she is. She brought me ten thousand Arakosan cavalry. One does not gainsay a woman with a dowry like that.’

‘You insulted her with that other one. You would have supplanted her. You humiliated her!’

‘I was in love,’ the King said quietly. ‘Have you ever been in love, Kouros?’

Kouros bent his head, blinking, his jaw working as though he had a lump of gristle between his teeth. It was a question no-one had ever asked him before, but he knew the answer instantly.

‘No,’ he said, the word choked out of him.

His father watched the workings of his face, his own dark with sadness.

‘Son, you lie.’

Kouros turned away, eyes burning, the rage rising in him, the black desire to choke the life and light out of something, someone, anything.

‘Do not turn your back on me.’ The snap of command.

Ashurnan’s eyes flashed.

‘You will not understand this truth until it is too late, but you will hear it now. Kouros, if you hunt down your brother and sister – if you kill them – then I promise you that you will never know a moment of true peace for the rest of your life. Even throned in glory over all the empire, that remorse will eat at you, and you will grow old and empty with the gnawing of it. Listen to one who knows.’

‘One cannot be a king, and do what one wants – you did tell me that,’ Kouros snarled.

‘What eats at you will one day put a canker into your reign. You are young, Kouros. You do not have to be the man your mother wants.’

‘I am my own man!’

‘We are none of us our own man. We only try to do what is right and honourable, and in time that honour becomes part of us. Once it is lost, it is gone forever. Hear me in this, son.’

Kouros faced his father, the blackness rising in him, that familiar sweetness. It would be so easy to bring up the iron brim of his helmet and swing it at the old man’s head. He knew he had the strength in him for that one blow, and one blow was all it would take.

But instead he strangled the impulse, as he daily murdered so many others. He leaned close and kissed his father on the cheek.

‘Do you think I have it in me to be a good man?’ he asked, child-like, unable to hold in the question.

‘You are a better man than Rakhsar.’

And that was all he was given.

He bowed deeply, his heavy face impassive, and left the Great King’s tent without ceremony. The Honai straightened as he passed them. Beyond them, the immense encampment hummed and steamed and smoked to the far horizon. He felt that the blackness in his soul could have eaten it all and asked for more.

Mot’s Blight is in me, he thought. It must be done. My mother is right. The old man is too soft for the days ahead.

He called his guards to him, and then stalked off to his own complex of tents, where he would find something suitable to defile.

M
Y
D
EAREST
S
ON,

I write in some haste and with my own hand and I will add no polish to my words, but know they come to you with all your mother’s love. If the seal upon this letter is broken, you must hold the messenger to account. If it is not, and it has reached you before the two moons rise on the month of Granash, then you may reward him.

Kouros looked at the sweating, filthy, horse-smelling
hufsan
courier who had brought this letter, along with a bucket of others as a blind.

‘What is your name?’

The
hufsan
was light-boned as a girl, and he looked as though he had not slept in days. His brown skin had a greyish tint.

‘Jervas of Hamadan, my prince.’

‘You have done well. Eleven days from Ashur to Carchanis – it must be something of a record.’

‘Thank you, my prince. I killed nineteen horses –’

‘You stopped at Ab Mirza, as we had arranged?’

‘Yes, lord. The second letter is hidden in the rim of the scroll bucket. The seal is intact, I swear it.’

‘Excellent. Now leave me, Jervas of Hamadan. My chamberlain will see to your needs. Remain close at hand. There will be a return journey soon.’

The
hufsan
sagged a little. ‘Thank you, my prince.’ He withdrew, taking the acrid stink of horse-sweat with him.

Kouros began to read again, but was distracted. ‘Anarish!’

The chamberlain tucked aside the tent flap and bowed.

‘Get that girl out of here. Her snivelling is making my head hurt.’

The naked, weeping girl was led away, red, bloody stripes livid upon her skin. Kouros’s face closed, as it always did when he was deciphering his mother’s code. He knew it off by heart, but still had to mouth the words aloud as he rearranged them, and occasionally he had to count upon his fingers down the alphabet.

Rumour outruns horses, they say, and I am certain as I write that Darios has failed to hold the passes of the Korash. If that is so, your father will take the opportunity to remove him. He has had his suspicions about Darios for many months now.

That leaves our position weakened. You must make sure of Dyarnes if you can, and if not, then Marok, his second in command. I know Marok’s wife, or one of them, and he is well pleased with his gifts. But you must not approach him directly. It is enough to hold him in play.

I shall hold the capital. It has turned out well. The nonentity, Borsanes, whom your father left in command, has acceded to all my wishes. We now have Arakosans we can trust within the walls, and more are on their way to Hamadan as we speak.

Not a word of the war – the real war. Orsana lived in a bubble that was rarely pricked by events beyond her own private horizon.

Rakhsar must be found. As long as he is at large, there is a danger – you know this. I have agents out all over Pleninash, but as yet there is no firm word of him. He has estates near Arimya, and I have sent some people there also, though I doubt he would be so foolish as to visit the place. You must sound out the senior officers of the levies. Rakhsar may be in touch with some of them. In any case, he will be active and on the move – it is not in him to sit still, nor to choose discretion over a gaudy gesture. Trust our Arakosans – they are your people and will not betray any son of mine. Use them to help you track your brother down.

Our Arakosans
. They were hers and hers alone. Kouros did not deceive himself otherwise. She had agents watching him as surely as she had them out looking for his brother.

He put the letter aside. It hurt his head to decode it, to have his mother’s voice in his ears from a thousand pasangs away.

She charges me high rent for the nine months she bore me, he thought with bitter humour.

The second letter he found after a few minutes scrabbling around the interior rim of the despatch-bucket. Under the leather lining it lay, still sealed with cheap tavern wax, the intaglio design the same as that he wore on his signet ring. He smiled as he looked upon it, and then peered out the flap of the tent’s private chamber.

‘Anarish, no-one enters until I say otherwise.’

The chamberlain did not so much as blink. ‘As you wish, lord.’

No code here, and a handwriting as florid and graceless as Orsana’s was minute and spiderish.

Brother!

Give you joy, I am still alive and still able to put it in a tavern girl when I have a mind to. I write from a town named Orimya, west of Carchanis. From what I hear you are encamped on the western bank of the Bekai River, two or three day’s ride to the east. I rejoice to find you so close, but am alarmed to find myself square in the path of such a juggernaut as the Great King’s army. I trust that when the inevitable collision occurs you will not do anything so absurd as fight. There are common soldiers enough for that.

I approach my news the long way round – my apologies. I have tracked our quarry down at last. There is an estate north of here near the city of Arimya which our friend appears to own, though he will never have seen it. I set people to watch the place weeks ago, just in care, and these associates tell me he is there now. It appears he has lost all sense. Or perhaps he merely tired of life below the ziggurat. In any case, I will be in position within two days, and soon your worries will have a stopper on them. You may even wish to join me yourself – the house is but two hard day’s ride from the encampment of the army. In any case, I will remain at the place to await further instructions once the principals are secured. I know you wish to see them yourself before any final decisions are made.

Wish me Mot’s luck, brother. I feel him drawing early upon the world this year. They say he shadows the advance of the Macht, and his darkness is upon their faces.

A last point. The courier who bears this note is a worthy fellow, who had to cast over half of eastern Pleninash to track me down. I have sounded him out, and my nose tells me his affections are worth winning. He is a born horseman, with discretion and good sense. Such qualities should be recognised. You should use him to send me your reply. His former employer has no further claim on his loyalties, by the way.

K

There it was. Rakhsar had been run to ground at last.

Kouros sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down the tent feverishly. There was not space enough for his joy; he swept out of the place, startling the chamberlain, drawing surprised jolts from the guards.

The darkness outside, barely a darkness at all. The world fairly blazed with light. Both moons were up and Firghe was almost full. Between them the stars swept in a gleaming horse-tail of diamond. And below, the campfires of the army stretched for as far as the eye could see, as great as a city, a crop of lights sown upon the sleeping earth and now in full flower.

I am the better man, Kouros thought. He told me so, and it is true. And Rakhsar will know it too before he dies. And Roshana –

Roshana will feel me in her flesh. She will know my strength. I will bring her pleasure in the pain. I will own her. I will collar her. She will kneel naked at my feet and beg for my touch before I am done with her.

‘Anarish!’ he roared, all aglow, the breath filling his lungs like wine. ‘Send the courier to me. And have the horses saddled and packed for a journey. Dismiss the night’s guards and send me the morning shift. Be quick, Anarish!’

The black light within his soul was in full flower, cackling and dancing with glee.

THIRTEEN

T
HE
G
ARDEN IN THE
N
IGHT

T
HEY HAD FOUND
the house shut up, neglected but not quite derelict. The gardens were overgrown with a kind of shabby loveliness: rose-bushes run wild, vines covering an outdoor terrace and making of it a shaded bower. The orchard was heavy with unpicked fruit, and more lay at the feet of the trees, worm-eaten apples and pears and pomegranates, like the mouldering skulls of a forgotten battlefield.

But there was water in the well, and the key which Rakhsar carried fitted the lock, though it would not turn. Finally it was Ushau’s brute strength that smashed open the door, and as they trooped inside, swallows swooped past their heads, screaming madly, and there were wands and bars of light stabbing down through the holed roof, making brilliant sunlit shapes all about their feet.

Just inside the door was a beautiful mosaic-covered fountain, dry as sand. Behind it, two staircases led up to the outflung wings of the house, the steps littered with leaves, as gapped and broken as a beggar’s mouth.