The Dance of Time

"We'll just have to hope for the best. If necessary, we can send the final message in the morning. For now, send the following. Exactly as I give it you, understand? Great Lady Sati will be receiving it also, and she mustn't be able to understand what it means."

The operator's nod was nervous, but not the terrified gesture it had been hours earlier. As time had passed, the man had come to conclude that while the new self-proclaimed emperor was a scary man-the tall Rajput and the evil-looking old eunuch, even worse-he was not as scary as Nanda Lal had been.

Not even close. The truth was that the radio operator had no more love for the old dynasty than anybody. Certainly not for their stinking priests and torturers.

The buzzing was brief.

"Here's all there is, General," Calopodius said apologetically. "I thought there'd be more. And what there is doesn't make much sense."

Belisarius looked at the message.

AGREE IN PRINCIPLE STOP RETURN OF PEDDLER EMERALD MAY BE DELAYED

STOP

He needed a moment himself, to decipher it. "Very clever. Sanga must have found that peddler, after all."

"What peddler?" demanded Justinian. "And what kind of peddler has an emerald to begin with?"

"A very happy peddler-although I imagine his joy vanished once Sanga caught him."

Belisarius handed the message back to Calopodius. "Years ago, when I fled India, I finally shook off Sanga and his men at Ajmer. I traded my horses for three camels and all the water and supplies I needed to cross the desert. To clinch the deal, I gave the peddler one of the emeralds that had been part of Skandagupta's bribe and told him there'd be another one for him if he deliver a message in Bharakuccha to a Captain Jason, commanding a vessel named the Argo."

Maurice already knew the story, so he simply smiled. Calopodius and Justinian laughed aloud.

"That peddler must have thought I was crazy, giving him an emerald for camels. But it did the trick. Sanga and his men followed the horse tracks-I'd nicked one of the hooves to make it distinctive-and by the time they could have run down the peddler and realized what happened, I was well into the Thar. No way to catch me then."

He looked at Calopodius. "How much longer before the window closes?"

The blind young officer shrugged. "There's really no way to predict it, General. It may never close at all."

"Well enough, even if it does. It'll take me half the night anyway to get the men ready to leave. By morning, we'll know."

"Get some sleep, woman," Ousanas said gruffly. "There's nothing you can do here on the docks, anyway. The fleet will be ready to sail at dawn, be sure of it."

"Ready to row, you should say."

"Don't remind me!" In the dim lighting thrown off by the lanterns along the docks, Ousanas' dark features were hard to make out. But the scowl on his face was ferocious enough to be quite evident.

"Your husband! It's his fault. If he was clever enough to manipulate everyone to this ridiculous state of affairs, why didn't he time it properly? Two or three more months and we'd be in monsoon season. Sail all the way, lolling in comfort and drinking wine."

"He's only mortal," replied Antonina, smiling despite herself. Even though she wouldn't be working an oar, she was not looking forward to the voyage to Bharakuccha any more than Ousanas was. It would be long and slow and… hot.

"I hope the Hindus are right," grumbled Ousanas. "For this idiot stunt, Belisarius deserves to come into his next life as a lizard. Perched on a rock in the desert in the middle of garam, so he can fry-instead of us."

Hands on hips, his gaze swept back and forth across the row of Axumite galleys. Even in the near-darkness, every one of them was a beehive of activity as the Ethiopian sailors and marines made ready for the voyage. What Antonina couldn't see, she could hear.

"They don't seem to be complaining as much as I expected," she said.

"That's because of my awesome new title. In the olden days, when I was but the modest keeper of the fly whisks, I'd have had a mutiny on my hands. Be swinging from a gibbet, by now. Disemboweled, too. My entrails dangling just inches above the water, so the Axumite marines could bet on the sharks competing for them."

Antonina couldn't help but laugh. When he was in the mood, Ousanas did histrionic gloom as well as he did anything else. If he'd been alive in the days of Cassandra, probably no one would remember her at all.

"Stop exaggerating. They'd only have beaten you to a senseless pulp and placed bets on the alley dogs."

Ousanas' grin flashed in the night. A moment later, more seriously, he added: "They're not really disgruntled at all, in truth. Yes, the voyage to Bharakuccha at this time of year will be a miserable business. We'll be lucky if we have the sails up more than a few hours every other day. Row, row, row and sweat buckets while we do it. But…"

He took a long, slow breath. "But there is Bharakuccha for them, at the end. The same city where Eon left us, and whose harbor they destroyed in their vengeance. This time, with its gates opening wide."

Antonina felt a pang of grief. She remembered that harbor very well herself. She had been sitting next to Eon when he died, reading to him from the Bible.

"Best of all, it'll be garrison duty. In one of the world's largest and busiest seaports. Dens of vice and iniquity on every street. No more fighting, dying and bleeding. Let the Hindu heathens fight it out amongst themselves, from now on. For Axum, the war is over-and what remains are the pickings."

The grin flashed again. "Great pickings, too. There are even more merchant coffers in Bharakuccha than taverns and brothels. Just skimming the tolls-even the light ones we'll maintain-will make Axum rich. Richer still, I should say."

He basked in that happy thought, for a moment. Then the scowl came back.

"And will you get some sleep, woman? You'll need to be wide awake and alert tomorrow morning."

"Whatever for? I'm not pulling an oar." Half-righteously and half-apologetically, she added: "I'm too small. It'd be silly."

"Who cares about that? I remind you that it will be your responsibility-not mine!-to oversee the transfer of your emperor son and his sahrdaran wife aboard ship. Especially her. God only knows what absurd contrivance the Persians will come up with, for the purpose. But I'm sure it'll involve elephants."

Antonina didn't quite scamper from the docks. Not quite.

"You're certain?"

"Yes," replied Jaimal. Udai nodded his agreement.

Sanga's lieutenant traced a line on the map. "We can follow the rivers, most of the way, east of the Aravalli mountains. Basically, it's the same route we took years ago, when we tried to catch up with Belisarius by sea. That time, it took us almost three weeks. But we had tired horses, after that long chase, where this time we'll be starting with fresh ones. And… well…"

Sanga smiled thinly. "Yes, I know. Last time, I wasn't really driving the matter, since I knew it was hopeless anyway."

He straightened up from the map. "Well enough. Be out of the city as soon as possible. Try to make it in two weeks. But don't be foolish!" He held up an admonishing finger. "Better to use half the day-most of it, if need be-to make sure you've got the best horses in Bharakuccha. You'll make up the difference within five days."