It must happen now, Phiron thought, pacing the marble chamber. Things have gone too far for him to turn back; it is open treason. Either he takes the throne, or dies trying.
And we alongside him.
The room was warm with the heat of lamps and a wide-mouthed brazier stacked with charcoal. Phiron had been pacing up and down within it for the turn of a water-clock, the hobnails on his sandals doing little good to the mosaic of the floor. Periodically he broke off his wandering to stare off the balcony again, resting his big-knuckled fists on the balustrade. They built with pale, honey-coloured stone here. It made Sinon look warm in the flitting scraps of winter sunshine that came and went. Sandstone, he supposed, the colour of the beach at Hal Goshen in summer. Phiron had not seen a Macht city built out of the dark Harukush granite for going on five years. His home had been Sinon and the Sea. He had learned the high Kefren speech which was spoken at the Great King’s court, and in the stews of the docklands he cursed and bragged in common Asurian, the tongue that carried a man across the civilized world. His friends were sea-captains and merchants and brothel-keepers and lost soldiers like himself. He had been a man of note once, a centurion to whom his peers deferred. Once, he had led ten centons through the hinterland of Machran, and they had been employed by no one. He had meant to take a city for himself, no less, and become one of the great folk of his world. That had ended in defeat and exile.
And so here he was; a conduit between two worlds. For once in his life, he mused, he truly had been in the right place at the right time. And now the months of intrigue and furtive meetings and go-betweens were over.
The tall double doors of the room swung open on hinges of oiled brass. Two household slaves stood there in sable and yellow robes, heads bowed so that their top-knots fell forward. They were Juthan, as were so many of the personal slaves of the Kefren. Grey-skinned, with yellow eyes and blue-black hair, each was broader than the brawniest of Macht warriors, but shorter by the span of three hands. Phiron knew the stories of the Juthan rebellions. Meek though these pair might look, their people were among the most stubborn fighters of the Kufr, and had risen up against the Empire again and again. After their last, abortive uprising, half their population had been exiled to the far east of the world, to Yue and Irgun, where they toiled in the mines of the Adranos Mountains. That was a generation ago. He wondered if the Juthan had the heart to play at this latest adventure.
All this passed through his mind in a second. Phiron was a tall man, whose father had been from the Inner Mountains of the Harukush. He had taken his father’s pale eyes, but his mother’s dark colouring. He wore the scarlet mercenary cloak as a nobleman ought, draped over his left arm. Beneath it, the black shadow of Antimone’s Gift armoured his torso, giving back none of the light from the wall-sconces and the brazier.
Two more figures glided into the room, and behind them the Juthan attendants closed the double doors with a soft boom. Phiron bowed deeply, speaking in Kefren as correct as he could contrive. “My lord,” he said. “I am honoured. Lady, I hope I see you well.” He straightened, heart beating faster despite himself. Face to face at last.
The foremost figure towered over Phiron, topping him by the length of a man’s forearm. It had a large, equine face, with human features, but the shape and size and colouring of these were like nothing any human ever possessed. The eyes were leaf-shaped, with long, amber lashes. The iris was a pale violet with no discernable pupil.
The nose was long, narrow, aquiline, the mouth below it small, turning down at the corners. The whole face seemed elongated, with an immensely high forehead from which the rufous hair had been braided back in knots topped with gold beads. The figure’s skin was a pale gold, enhanced by the light of the lamps. This darkened around the eye-sockets and about the nostrils, and in the hollow of the temples became a pale blue.
“Phiron,” the thing said, and it had a voice of which any actor would be envious, deep as the peal of a bronze bell. “And so we meet.”
This was Arkamenes, High Prince of the Asurian Empire, brother to the Great King himself. This was a Kefre, the high race of Kuf. This was one of the rulers of the world.
Behind Arkamenes was a smaller shape, with feminine curves emphasised by a close-fitting robe of lapis lazuli. Slender as a willow, this creature was veiled, only the eyes to be seen, and these were a warm brown, brown as mountain wine. The lashes about them were black, and had been drawn out with some cosmetic.
Arkamenes saw Phiron’s quick, interrogative glance and smiled. “The lady Tiryn is as close as a wife to me. We may speak without fear.”