«But—» Abivard began.

His sister waved him to silence. «Sharbaraz dreams large,» she said. «He always has—I give him that much. Now he's dreamed large enough to catch you up in his webs again, the way he did when the crown of the King of Kings was new on his head. But I'm not part of his dreams anymore, not in any real way.» She pointed to Peroz, who was beginning to yawn in Abivard's arms. «Sometimes I think he's a dream and, if I go to bed and then wake up, he'll be gone.» She shrugged. «I don't even know why Sharbaraz summoned me that one night.»

Ksorane set down the mirror and said, «Lady, he feared your brother and wanted a better bond with him if he could forge one.» Denak and Abivard both stared at her in surprise. The only previous time she'd spoken without being spoken to had been to keep them from touching each other. As if to pretend she hadn't done anything at all, she went back to ornamenting her eyelids.

Denak shrugged again. «Maybe she's right,» she told Abivard, still as if Ksorane weren't there listening. «But whether she is or isn't, it doesn't matter as far as my going to Videssos the city. Peroz is part of Sharbaraz' dreams, but I'm not. I'll stay here in Mashiz.» She was utterly matter-of-fact about it, as if foretelling the yield from a plot of land near Vek Rud stronghold. Somehow that made the prediction worse, not better.

Abivard rocked his nephew in his arms. The baby's eyes slid shut. His mouth made little sucking noises. Ksorane came up to take him and return him to his mother. «Wait a bit,» Abivard told her. «Let him get a little more deeply asleep so he won't start howling when I hand him to you.»

«You know something about children,» Ksorane said.

«I'd be a poor excuse for a father if I didn't,» he answered. Then he wondered how much Sharbaraz King of Kings knew about children. Not much, he suspected, and that saddened him Some things, he thought, should not be left to servants.

After a while he did hand the baby to Ksorane, who returned it to Denak. Neither transfer disturbed little Peroz in the least. Looking down at him, Denak said, «I wonder what dreams he'll have, many years from now, up there on the throne of the King of Kings, and who will follow them and try to make them real for him.»

«Yes,» Abivard said. But what he was wondering was whether Peroz would ever sit on the throne of the King of Kings. So many babies died no matter how hard their parents struggled to keep them alive. And even if Peroz lived to grow up, his father had for a time lost the throne through disaster and treachery. Who could say now that the same would not befall the babe? No one, as Abivard knew only too well. One thing he had seen was that life did not come with a promise that it would run smoothly.

By the standards with which Abivard had become familiar while living in Vek Rud domain, Mashiz enjoyed a mild winter. It was chilly, but even the winds off the Dilbat Mountains were nothing like the ones that blew around Vek Rud stronghold. Those seemed to take a running start on the Pardrayan steppe and to blow right through a man because going around him was too much trouble.

They got mild days in Mashiz, as opposed to the endless, bone-numbing chill of the far Northwest. Every so often the wind would shift and blow off the land of the Thousand Cities. Whenever it did that for two days running, Abivard began to think spring had arrived at last. He could taste how eager he was for good weather that wasn't just a tease of the sort a dancing girl would give to a soldier who lusted after her but whom she wanted to annoy rather than bed.

As the sun swung northward from its low point in the sky, the mild days gradually came more often. But every time Abivard's hopes began to rise with the sap in the trees, a new storm would claw its way over the mountains and freeze those hopes once more.

Abivard did send messages both to the field army, ordering it to ready to move out when the weather permitted, and to Turan, ordering him to prepare to defend the land of the Thousand Cities with foot soldiers from the city garrisons alone. He did not go into more detail than that in his message. In peacetime the Thousand Cities had a flourishing trade with Videssos. That news of what he intended might reach the Avtokrator struck him as far from impossible.

Varaz knew what Sharbaraz intended. He had even less patience than Abivard, being wild to leave the foothills for the flatlands to the east, the flatlands that were the gateway to Videssos. «You need to wait,» his father told him. «Leaving too soon doesn't get us anywhere—or not soon enough, anyhow.»

«I'm sick of waiting!» Varaz burst out, a sentiment with which Abivard had more than a little sympathy. «I've spent the last three winters waiting here in the palace. I want to get out, to get away. I want to go to the places where things will happen.»

Pretty soon, Abivard thought, Varaz would be old enough to make things happen rather than just watching them happen. He was taller than his mother now. Before long, his beard would begin to grow and he would make the discovery every generation finds astounding: that mankind includes womankind and is much more interesting on account of it.

Abivard hadn't cared for being cooped up three winters running, either, even if conditions had improved from one winter to the next. He had borne it more easily than had his son, though. But Varaz was going to escape from Mashiz, to return first to the land of the Thousand Cities, then to Across, and then, if the God was willing, to enter Videssos the city.

«Count yourself lucky,» Abivard told his elder son. «Your cousin Jarireh may never leave the palace till the day she marries.»

«She's a girl, though,» Varaz said. Had Roshnani heard the tone in which he said it, she probably would have boxed his ears. He went on, «Besides, her baby brother's going to be King of Kings.»

«That won't help her get out and see the world—or at least I don't think it will,» Abivard said. «It will make picking someone for her to marry harder than it would be, though.»

«Marriage—so what?» Varaz said, nothing but scorn in his voice—he remained on the childish side of the great divide. «Your family picks someone for you, the two of you go before the servant of the God, and that's it. That's how it works most of the time, anyhow.»

«Are you making an exception for your mother and me?» Abivard asked dryly.

«Well, yes, but the two of you are different,» Varaz said. «Mother goes out and does things, almost as if she were a man; she doesn't stay in the women's quarters all the time. And you let her.»

«No,» Abivard said. «I don't 'let' her. I'm glad she does. In a number of ways she's more clever than I am. I'm only lucky in that I'm clever enough to see she is more clever.»

«I don't follow that,» Varaz said. He quickly held up a hand. «I probably wouldn't follow it in Videssian, either, no matter how logical it's supposed to be, so don't bother trying.»

Thus forestalled, Abivard threw his hands in the air. Varaz escaped from his presence and went dashing down a palace hallway. Watching him, Abivard sighed. No, waiting was never easy.

But even Sharbaraz had been forced to wait for his ambassadors to return. In another sense he'd had to wait more than a dozen years after the Empire of Videssos had fallen into civil strife to be able to assail its capital with any hope of success. In still another sense Makuran as a whole had been waiting centuries for this opportunity to come around.

Abivard snapped his fingers. Lands didn't wait—people did. And, like his son, he was very tired of waiting.

Pashang clucked to the horses and flicked the reins. The wagon rattled away from Mashiz. Abivard rode beside it on a fine black gelding, the gift of Sharbaraz King of Kings. Romezan rode another that might have been a different foal of the same mare.