Videssian captives tutored Varaz and Shahin. Abivard's sons took to lessons with the same enthusiasm they would have shown taking poison. He walloped them on the backside and kept them at it.

«We already know how to speak Videssian,» Varaz protested. «Why do we have to know how to make speeches in it?»

«And all these numbers, too,» Shahin added. «It's like they're all pieces of a puzzle, and they're all scrambled up, and the Videssians expect us to be able to put them together as easy as anything.» He stuck out his lower tip. «It's not fair.» That was the worst condemnation he could give to anything not to his liking.

«Being able to count past ten without having to take off your shoes won't kill you,» Abivard said. He rounded on Varaz. «You'll be dealing with Videssians your whole life, most likely. Knowing how to impress them when you talk won't do you any lasting harm.»

«When you first went into Videssos, did you know how to speak the language there?» Varaz asked.

«Not so you'd notice,» Abivard answered. «But remember, I grew up in the far Northwest, and I never expected to go into Videssos at all, except maybe as a soldier in an invading army.» He folded his arms across his chest. «You'll keep on with your lessons,» he declared as firmly as Sharbaraz promulgating a decree. The King of Kings could make the whole of Makuran heed him. Abivard's authority was less than that but did extend to his two boys.

They studied more than mathematics and rhetoric. They rode ponies, shot bows suited to their strength, and began to learn swordplay. They would acquire a Videssian veneer—Abivard was convinced it would prove useful—but beneath it would have the accomplishments of a proper Makuraner noble.

«The more different things you know how to do, the better off you'll be,» Abivard told them.

The man that thought called to mind, unfortunately, was Tzikas. The Videssian renegade knew not only his own tongue but that of Makuran as well. He could tell convincing stories in either one. He was a talented soldier to boot. If he'd been only a little luckier, he would have been Avtokrator of the Videssians or perhaps commander of the Makuraner field army. No one had ever come closer to meeting both of those seemingly incompatible goals.

He was missing one thing, though. Abivard wasn't sure it had a name. Steadfastness was as close as he could come, that or integrity. Neither word felt quite right. Without the quality, though, Tzikas' manifold talents brought him less than they might have otherwise.

Yeliif said the same thing a different way a few days later. «He is a Videssian,» the beautiful eunuch intoned, as if to say that alone irremediably spoiled Tzikas.

Abivard eyed Yeliif with speculation of a sort different from that which he usually gave the eunuch. In the matter of Tzikas, for once, they shared an interest. «I'd be happier if we never had to speak of him again,» Abivard said, an oblique message but not so oblique that the beautiful eunuch couldn't follow up on it if he so desired.

Yeliif also looked thoughtful. If the notion of being on the same side as Abivard pleased him, he didn't let his face know about it. After a little while he said, «Didn't you tell me Tzikas has wavered back and forth between the God and the false faith of Phos?»

«I did. He has,» Abivard answered. «In the next world he will surely fall into the Void and be forgotten. I wish he would be forgotten here and now, too.»

«I wonder,» Yeliif said in musing tones, «yes, I wonder what the Mobedhan Mobedh would say on hearing that Tzikas has wavered between the true faith and the false.»

«That is an… intriguing question,» Abivard answered after a moment's pause to weigh just how intriguing it was. «Sharbaraz has forbidden the two of us to quarrel, but if the chief servant of the God comes to him with a complaint that Tzikas is an apostate, he may have to listen.»

«So he may,» Yeliif agreed. «On the other hand, he may not. Dhegmussa is his servant in all things. But a man who will not notice his servants is less than perfectly wise.»

Not a word passed Abivard's lips. For all he knew, the beautiful eunuch was playing a game different from the one that showed on the surface of his words. He might be hoping to get Abivard to call the King of Kings a fool and then report what Abivard had said to Sharbaraz. Abivard did think the King of Kings a fool, but he himself was not so foolish as to say so where any potential foe could hear him.

But Yeliif's idea was far from the worst he'd ever heard. Maybe Dhegmussa wouldn't be able to do anything; the Mobedhan Mobedh was far more the creature of the King of Kings than the Videssians' ecumenical patriarch was the Avtokrator's creature. Apostasy, though, was nothing to take lightly. And making Tzikas sweat was nearly as good as making him suffer.

«I'll talk with Dhegmussa,» Abivard said. Something glinted in Yeliif's black, black eyes. Was it approval? Abivard hadn't seen it there often enough to be sure he recognized it.

The shrine in which Dhegmussa, chief servant of the God, performed his duties was the most splendid of its kind in all Makuran. That said, it was nowhere near so fine as several of the temples to Phos Abivard had seen in Videssian provincial towns and not worth mentioning in the same breath as the High Temple in Videssos the city. The Makuraners said, The God lives in your heart, not on the wall.

Dhegmussa lived in a small home next to the shrine, a home like that which a moderately successful shoemaker might have inhabited: whitewashed mud bricks forming an unimpressive facade but a fair amount of comfort inside.

«You honor me, marshal of Makuran,» the Mobedhan Mobedh said, leading Abivard along a dim, gloomy hall at the end of which light from the courtyard shone. When they got there, Dhegmussa waved a regretful hand. «You must imagine how it looks in spring and summer, all green and full of sweet-smelling, bright-colored flowers. This brown, dreary mess is not what it should be.»

«Of course not,» Abivard said soothingly. Dhegmussa guided him across the court to a room heated by a couple of charcoal braziers. A servant brought wine and sweet cakes. Abivard studied the Mobedhan Mobedh as they refreshed themselves. Dhegmussa was about sixty, with a closely trimmed gray beard and a loud voice that suggested he was a trifle deaf.

He waited till Abivard had eaten and drunk, then left off the polite small talk and asked, «How may I serve you, marshal of Makuran?'

«We have a problem, holy one, with a man who, while claiming to worship the God, abandoned in time of danger the faith he had professed, only to return to it when that seemed safer than the worship for which he had given it up,» Abivard answered.

«This sounds dolorous indeed,» Dhegmussa said. «A man who blows whichever way the winds of expediency take him is not one to hold a position of trust nor one who has any great hope of escaping the Void once his life on earth is done.»

«I have feared as much myself, holy one,» Abivard said, calling up a sadness he did not truly feel.

They went back and forth a while longer. The servant brought more cakes, more wine. At last the Mobedhan Mobedh put the question he had studiously avoided up till then: «Who is this man for whose spiritual well-being you so justly fear?»

«I speak of Tzikas, the Videssian renegade,» Abivard said, a reply that could not have surprised Dhegmussa in the least by then. «Can any man who dons and doffs religions as if they were caftans possibly be a reliable servant to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase?»

«It seems difficult,» Dhegmussa said, and then said no more for a time.

When he remained silent, Abivard pressed the matter: «Can a man who chooses whether to swear by the God or by false Phos by who is listening to him at any given moment be believed when he swears by either one?»