Shadowplay

8

An Unremarkable Man

When Onyena was ordered to serve her sister Surazetn at the birth she

became angry, and cried out that she would find some way to have

vengeance on Sveros the Twilight, so when the three brothers were

being born from Surazem's blessed womb Onyena stole some of

the old god's essence. She went away in secret and used the seed

of Sveros to make three children of her own,

but she raised them to hate their father and all he made.

— from The Begi

AT TIMES LIKE THIS, when Pinimmon Vash had to look directly into his master's pale, awful eyes, it was hard to remember that Autarch Sulepis had to be at least partly human. "All will be done, Golden One," Vash assured him, praying silently to be dismissed and released. Sometimes just being near his young ruler made him feel queasy. "All will be done just as you say."

"Swiftly, old man. She has tried to escape me." The autarch's gaze slid upward until he seemed to be staring intently at something invisible to anyone else. "Besides, the gods… the gods are restless to be born."

Confused by this strange remark, Vash hesitated. Was it something that needed to be understood and answered, or was he at last free to scurry away on his errand? He might be the paramount minister of mighty Xis, the old courtier reflected with some bitterness, and thus in theory more powerful

than most kings, but he had no more real authority than a child. Null, being a minister who must jump to serve the autarch's every whim was much better than being a. former minister: the vulture shrines atop the Orchard Palace's roofs were piled high with the bones of former ministers. "Yes, the gods, of course," Vash said at last, with no idea of what he was agreeing to. "The gods must be born, it goes without…"

"Then let it be done now. Or heaven itself will weep." Despite his harsh words, Sulepis began to laugh in a most inappropriate way.

Even as Vash hurried so swiftly from the bath chamber that he almost tripped over his own exquisite silk robes, he found himself hoping that one of the eunuchs shaving the autarch's long, oiled limbs had accidentally tick¬led him. It would be disturbing to think the man with life-and-death power over oneself and virtually every other human being on the continent had just giggled like a madman for no reason.

Partly human, Vash reminded himself. He must be at least partly human. Even if the autarch's father Parnad had also been a living god, the autarch's mother must surely have been a mortal woman, since she had come to the Seclusion as the gift of a foreign king. But whatever was mixed in with the heritage of godlike (although now fairly inarguably dead) Parnad, few mor¬tal traits had made their way down to the son. The young autarch was as bright-eyed, remorseless, and inscrutable as his family's heraldic falcon. Sulepis was also full of inexplicable, seemingly mad ideas, as proved by this latest strange whim-the errand on which Vash now bustled toward the guard barracks.

As he left the guarded fastness of the Mandrake Court and hurried through the cavernous ministerial audience chamber at the heart of the Pomegranate Court, lesser folk scattered from his path like pigeons, as frightened of his anger as he was terrified of the autarch's. Pinimmon Vash reminded himself he should conduct a full sacrifice to Nushash and the other gods soon. After all, he was a very fortunate man-not just to have risen so high in the world, but also to have survived so many years of the father's autarchy and this first year of the son's: at least nine of Parnad's other high ministers had been put to death just in the short months of Sulepis' reign. In fact, should Vash need an example of how lucky he was compared to some, he only had to think about the man he was going to see, Hijam Marukh, the new captain of the Leopard guards-or more to the point, think about Marukh's predecessor, the peasant-soldier Jeddin.

Even Pinimmon Vash, no stranger to torture and execution, had been

disturbed by the agonies visited upon the former Leopard captain. The autarch had ordered the entertainment conducted in the famous Lepthian library, so he could read while keeping an eye on the proceedings. Vash had watched with well-hidden terror as the living god danced his gold finger¬stalls in the air in rhythm with Jeddin's shrieks, as though enjoying a charm¬ing performance. Many nights Vash still saw the terrible sights in his dreams, and the memory of the captain's agonized screaming haunted his waking mind as well. Near the end of the prisoner's suffering, Sulepis had even called for real musicians to play a careful, improvised accompaniment to his horrendous cries. At points, Sulepis had even sung along.

Vash had seen almost everything in his more than twenty years of serv¬ice, but he had never seen anything like the young autarch.

But how could an ordinary man judge whether or not a god was mad?

"This makes no sense," said Hijam Marukh.

"You are foolish to say so," Vash hissed at him.

The officer known as Stoneheart allowed only a lifted eyebrow to ani¬mate his otherwise inexpressive face, but Vash could see that Marukh had realized his error-the kind that in Xis could swiftly prove fatal. Recently promoted to kiliarch, or captain, the Leopards' squat, muscular new master had survived countless major battles and deadly skirmishes, but he was not quite so used to the dangers of the Xixian court, where it was assumed that every public word and most private ones would be overheard by someone, and that one of those listeners likely either wanted or needed you dead. Marukh might have been cut, stabbed, and scorched so many times that his dark skin was covered in white stripes like a camp mongrel's, might have earned his famous nickname by passing unmoved through the worst car¬nage of war, but this was not the battlefield. In the Orchard Palace no man's death came at in him from the front or in plain sight.

"Of course," Hijam Stoneheart said now slowly and clearly for the ben¬efit of listening ears, "the Golden One must have his contest if he wills it so. But I am just a soldier and I don't understand such things. Explain to me, Vash. What good is there in having my men fight with each other? Al¬ready several are badly wounded and will need weeks of healing."

Vash took a breath. Nobody was obviously eavesdropping, but that meant nothing. "First of all, the Golden One is much wiser than we are, so perhaps we are not clever enough to understand his reasons-all we can know is that they must be good. Second, I must point out to you that it

isn't your men, the Leopards, who are fighting for the honor of the autarch's special mission, Marukh. It is the White Hounds, and although they are valuable fighters they are only barbarians."

Vash had no more idea than the captain of why Sulepis had demanded a contest of strength among his famous troop of White Hounds, foreign mercenaries whose fathers and grandfathers had come to Xand from the northern continent, but as Vash knew better than almost anyone, sometimes gods-on-earth just did things like that. When the autarch had woken from a prophetic dream one morning in the first weeks of his rule and ordered the destruction of all the wild cranes in the land of Xis, it had been Para¬mount Minister Vash who had called the lower ministers to the Pome¬granate Court to make the autarch's wishes known, and hundreds of thousands of the birds had been killed. When another day the autarch de¬clared that every axhead shark in the city's saltwater canals should be caught and dispatched, the streets of the capital stank with rotting shark flesh for months afterward.

Vash forced his attention back to the combat. The abruptness of the autarch's demand had forced them to improvise this arena here in an un¬used audience chamber in the Tamarind Court, since the autarch's miners and ca