"You'd be putty in your father's hands," Theodora sneered.
"Which one? Belisarius or Justinian?"
"Either—no, both, since they're obviously conspiring with each other."
The dark eyes of the Empress Regent moved away from Photius and Tahmina to glare at a guard standing nearby. So far as Photius could determine, the poor man's only offense was that he happened to be in her line of sight.
Perhaps he also bore a vague resemblance to Belisarius. He was tall, at least, and had brown eyes.
Angrily, Theodora slapped the heavily-decorated armrest of her throne. "Bad enough that he's exposing my husband to danger! But he's also giving away half my empire!"
She shifted the glare back to Photius. "Excuse me. Your empire."
The correction was, quite obviously, a formality. The apology was not even that, given the tone in which she'd spoken the words.
"You hate to travel," Photius pointed out, reasonably. "And since you're actually running my empire"—here he bestowed a cherubic smile on his official adoptive mother—"you can't afford to leave the capital anyway."
"I detest that smile," Theodora hissed. "Insincere as a crocodile's. How did you get to be so devious, already? You're only eleven years old."
Photius was tempted to reply: from studying you, Mother. Wisely, he refrained.
If she were in a better mood, actually, Theodora would take it as a compliment. But, she wasn't. She was in as foul a mood as she ever got, short of summoning the executioners.
Photius and his wife Tahmina had once, giggling, develop their own method for categorizing Theodora's temper. First, they divided it into four seasons:
Placid. The most pleasant season, albeit usually brief.
Sour. A very long season. More or less the normal climate.
Sullen. Not as long as sour season. Not quite.
Fury. Fortunately, the shortest season of all. Very exciting while it lasted, though.
Then, they ranked each season in terms of its degree of intensity, from alpha to epsilon.
Photius gauged this one as a Sullen Epsilon.
Well... Not quite. Call it a Sullen Delta.
In short, caution was called for here. On the other hand, there was still some room for further prodding and pushing. Done gingerly.
"I like to travel myself," he piped cheerfully. "So I'm the logical one to send on a grand tour to visit our allies in the war. And it's not as if you really need me here."
He did not add: orwant me here, either. That would be unwise. True, Theodora had all the maternal instincts of a brick. But she liked to pretend otherwise, for reasons Photius had never been able to fathom.
Tahmina said it was because, if she didn't, it would give rise to rumors that she'd been spawned by Satan. That might be true, although Photius was skeptical. After all, plenty of people already thought the Empress Regent had been sired by the devil.
Photius didn't, himself. Maybe one of Hell's underlings, but not Satan himself.
Theodora was back to glaring at the guard. No, a different one. His offense...
Hard to say. He resembled neither Belisarius nor Justinian. Except for being a man, which, in Theodora's current humor, was probably enough.
"Fine!" she snapped. "You can go. If nothing else, it'll keep Antonina from nattering at me every day once the radio starts working. By now, months since she left, she'll be wallowing in guilt and whining and whimpering about how much she misses her boy. God knows why. Devious little wretch."
She swiveled the dark-eyed glare onto Tahmina, sitting next to Photius. "You too. Or else once the cunning little bastard gets to Ethiopia he'll start nattering at me over the radio about how much he misses his wife. God knows why. It's not as if he's old enough yet to have a proper use for a wife."
Yet a third guard received the favor of her glare. "You can celebrate your sixteenth birthday in Axum. I'll send the gifts along with you."
Tahmina smiled sweetly and bowed her head. "Thank you, Mother."
"I'm not your mother. You don't fool me. You're as bad as he is. No child of mine would be so sneaky. Now go."
Once they reached the corridor outside Theodora's audience chamber, Photius whispered to Tahmina: "Sullen Delta. Close to Epsilon."
"Oh, don't be silly," his wife whispered back, smiling down at him. To Photius' disgruntlement, even though he'd grown a lot over the past year, Tahmina was still taller than he was. "That wasn't any worse than Sullen Gamma. She agreed, didn't she?"
"Well. True."
The announcement was made publicly the next day. Photius wasn't surprised. It was usually hard to wheedle Theodora into anything. But the nice thing was that, if you could, she'd move quickly and decisively thereafter.
The Emperor of Rome will visit our allies in the war with Malwa. All the way to India itself! The Empress will accompany him, sharing the hardships of the journey.
All hail the valiant Photius!
All hail the virtuous Tahmina!
After reading the broadsheet, the captain of the Malwa assassination team tossed it onto the table in the apartments they'd rented. It was all he could do not to crumple it in disgust.
"Three months. Wasted."
His lieutenant, standing at the window, stared out over the Golden Horn. He didn't bother, as he had innumerable times since they'd arrived in Constantinople, shifting his gaze to study the imperial palace complex.
No point in that, now.
The three other members of the team were sitting at the table in the kitchen. The center of the table was taken up by one of the small bombards that Malwa assassination teams generally carried with them. The weapons were basically just simple, very big, one-round shotguns. Small enough that they could be hidden in trunks, even if that made carrying the luggage a back-breaking chore.
All three of them were glowering at it. The captain would insist that they bring the bombard with them, wherever they went. And, naturally, being the plebeians of the team, they'd be the ones who had to tote the wretched thing.
One of the three assassins spoke up. "Perhaps... if we stayed here... Theodora..."
The captain almost snarled at him. "Don't be stupid. Impossible, the precautions she takes. Not even Nanda Lal expects us to have a chance at her."
"She hasn't left the complex once, since we arrived," the lieutenant chimed in, turning away from the window. "Not once, in three months. Even Emperor Skandagupta travels more often than that."
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. A moment later, the captain did the same.
"We had a good chance with the boy," the lieutenant added. "High-spirited as he is. He and his wife both. Now..."
He looked at his superior. "Follow them?"
"Yes. Only thing we can do."
"Not one of us speaks Ge'ez, sir," pointed one of the assassins. "And none of us are black."
Gloomily, the captain shook his head. "Don't belabor the obvious. We'll have to move fast and reach Egypt before they do. Try and do it there, if we can. All of us can pass as Persians among Arabs—or the reverse, if we must."
"We may well have to," cautioned his lieutenant. "The security in Egypt is reportedly ferocious. Organized by Romans, too. It'll be easier in Persia—easier still, in Persian-occupied Sind. The Iranians insist on placing grandees in charge of security, and grandees tend to be sloppy about these things."
"True." The captain stared down at the broadsheet. Then, did crumple it.
"They're not even going to try to run the mines, I don't think," Menander said. He lowered the telescope and offered it to Belisarius.
The general shook his head. "Your eyes are as good as mine. At that distance, for sure. What are you seeing?"
Before answering, Menander came down from the low platform he'd been standing on to observe the distant Malwa naval base. Then, stooped slightly so that his head would be well below the parapet. That brought his face on a level with the general's, since Belisarius was standing in a slight crouch also.
That was something of a new habit, but one that had become well-ingrained. Beginning a few weeks earlier, the Malwa had demonstrated that they, too, could produce rifles good enough for long-range sniping.
"Both ironclads just came out of the bunker. But they steamed north. They're headed away from us."
Belisarius closed his eyes, thinking. "You're probably right. I'd already pretty much come to the conclusion that the Malwa were assuming a defensive posture. From that standpoint, building the ironclads actually makes sense—where it would be a pure waste of resources to build them to attack us here in the Triangle. They'd never get through the mine fields."
Menander frowned, trying to follow the general's logic. "But I still don't see... oh."
"Yes. 'Oh.' You've gotten a better look at those ironclads than anyone—certainly a longer one. Could you defeat them—either one—with the Justinian? Or the Victrix?"
"The Victrix would just be suicide. They've got a couple of big guns in the bows. Eighteen-pounders, I think. They'd blow the Victrix to pieces long before it could get close enough to use the fire cannon."
He paused, for a moment. "As for the Justinian... Maybe. Against one of them, not both. It would depend on a lot of things, including plenty of luck. I'd do better in a night battle, I think."
Belisarius waited, patiently. Excellent young officers like Menander always started off their assessments too optimistically. He preferred to give them time for self-correction, rather than doing it himself.
With Menander, it only took half a minute. He was well-accustomed to Belisarius' habits, by now.
"All right, all right," he said, smiling slightly. "The truth? I might win—against one of them. But it would depend on some blind luck working in our favor. Even with luck, I'm not sure I could do it in the daytime."
Belisarius nodded, almost placidly. "That's how they designed them, Menander. Those ironclads weren't designed to break into the Triangle. They were designed to keep you from breaking out."
He stretched, while still being careful to keep his head out of sight of any snipers. "Look at this way. The Malwa now figure, with those ironclads finished and in service, that they've got the same control over the rivers north of the Triangle that we have of them to the south. That means they're in position to do to us the same thing we did to them last year—cut our supply lines if we attempt any major prolonged offensive. There's no way to supply that kind of massive campaign without using water transport. It just can't be done. Not, at least, with more than fifteen or—at most—twenty thousand men. By the standards of this war, that isn't a powerful enough force to win a pitched battle. Not here in the Punjab, anyway."
He glanced at the wall of the fortifications, as if he could see through it to the Malwa trenches beyond. "I estimate they've got upwards of a hundred thousand men out there. 'Out there' meaning in this immediate vicinity, facing us here in the Triangle. They've probably got another twenty thousand—maybe thirty—facing Kungas at the Khyber Pass, and thirty or forty thousand more held as a reserve in Multan."
"And we've got..."
"By now? Forty thousand in the Triangle itself, with another twenty thousand or so on their way here from the Empire, in a steady trickle. The Persians have about forty thousand troops actively engaged on this front. But most of them are still in the Sind, and even in the best of circumstances Khusrau would have to leave a third of them there to administer the province."
The young officer made a sour face. Belisarius smiled.
"He's an emperor, Menander. Emperors think like emperors, it's just the nature of the beast. And Khusrau has the additional problem that he's bound and determined to keep his new province of Sind under direct imperial control, rather than letting his noblemen run the show. But that means he has to use a lot of soldiers as administrators. Whether he likes it or not—much less whether we like it or not."
Menander's sour expression shaded into a simple scowl. "In short, we're outnumbered at least two-to-one, and that's not going to change."
"Not for the better, that's for sure. The only way it'll change will be for the worse. If the Malwa succeed in crushing Shakuntala's rebellion in the Deccan, that would free up Damodara and his army. Another forty thousand men, and, in terms of quality, undoubtedly the best army in the Malwa empire."
He let that sink in for a few seconds. Then: "It'd be worse than that, actually. The Maratha revolt inspired and triggered off smaller revolts and rebellions all over India. I estimate the Malwa are forced to keep one-half to two-thirds of their army in India proper, just to maintain control of the empire. The truth is this, Menander. So far, we've been able to fight a Malwa empire that could only use one hand against us, instead of two. And the weaker hand, at that, since Damodara's in the Deccan. If they break Shakuntala and Rao and the Marathas, all those smaller rebellions will start fading away quickly. Within a year, we'd be facing another hundred thousand men here in the Punjab—and Damodara could get his forty thousand here within two months. Three, at the outside."
The general shrugged. "Of course, by then we'd be so well-fortified here that I doubt very much if even a Malwa army twice this size could drive us out. But there's no way we could go on the offensive ourselves, either—certainly not with those ironclads controlling the rivers. They'll build a few more, I suspect. Enough to place two ironclads on the Indus and at least one on each of its four main tributaries."
"A war of attrition, in other words." Menander sucked his teeth. "That... stinks."
"Yes, it does. The casualties will become horrendous, once you let enough time pass—and the social and political strain on the kingdoms and empires involved will be just as bad. That's what that monster over there is counting on now, Menander. It thinks, with its iron control over the Malwa Empire, that it can outlast a coalition of allies."
Menander eyed the general. "And what do you think, sir?"
"I think that superhuman genius over there is just a grandiose version of a village idiot."
The young officer's eyes widened, a little. "Village idiot? That seems..."
"Too self-confident on my part?" Belisarius smiled. "You watch, young man. What you're seeing here is what Ousanas would call the fallacy of confusing the shadow for the true thing—the pale, sickly, real world version of the ideal type."
"Huh?"
The general chuckled. "Let me put it this way. Emperors—or superhuman imitations thereof—think in terms like 'iron control,' as if it really meant something. But iron is a metal, not a people. Any good blacksmith can control iron. No emperor who ever lived can really control people. That's because iron, as refractory a substance as it may be, doesn't dispute the matter with the blacksmith."
He looked now, to the southeast. "So, we'll see. Link thinks it can win this waiting game. I think it's the village idiot."
"It's ridiculous," Shakuntala hissed. "Ridiculous!"
Even as young as she was, the black-eyed glare of the Empress of Andhra was hot enough to have sizzled lizards in the desert.
Alas, the assassin squatting before her in a comfortable lotus seemed completely unaffected. So, she turned to other means.
"Summon my executioners!" she snapped. "At once!"
The glare was now turned upon her husband, sitting on a throne next to hers. A slight movement of Rao's forefinger had been enough to stay the courtiers before one of them could do her bidding.
"A moment," he said softly. He turned to face her glare, his expression every bit as calm and composed as the assassin's.
"You are, of course, the ruler of Andhra. And I, merely your consort. But since this matter touches upon my personal honor, I am afraid you will have to defer to my wishes. Either that, or use the executioners on me."
Shakuntala tried to maintain the glare. Hard, that, in the face of her worst fear since reading the letter brought by the assassin.
After five seconds or so, inevitably, she broke. "Rao—please. This is insane. The crudest ruse, on the part of the Malwa."
Rao transferred the calm gaze to the figure squatting on the carpet in the center of the audience chamber. For a moment, India's two best assassins contemplated each other.
"Oh, I think not," Rao murmured, even more softly. "Whatever else, not that."
He rose abruptly to his feet. "Take him to one of the guest chambers. Give him food, drink, whatever he wishes within reason."
Normally, Rao was punctilious about maintaining imperial protocol. Husband or not, wiser and older head or not, Rao was officially the consort and Shakuntala the reigning monarch. But, on occasion, when he felt it necessary, he would exert the informal authority that made him—in reality, if not in theory—the co-ruler of Andhra.
Shakuntala did not attempt to argue the matter. She was bracing herself for the much more substantial issue they would be arguing over as soon as they were in private.
"Clear the room," she commanded. "Dadaji, you stay."
Her eyes quickly scanned the room. Her trusted peshwa was a given. Who else?
The two top military commanders, of course. "Shahji, Kondev, you also."
She was tempted to omit Maloji, on the grounds that he was not one of the generals of the army. Formally speaking, at least. But... he was Rao's closest friend, in addition to being the commander of the Maratha irregulars.
Passing him over would be unwise. Besides, who was to say? Sometimes, Maloji was the voice of caution. He was, in some ways, even more Maratha than Rao—and the Marathas, as a people, were not given to excessive flamboyance on matters of so-called "honor." Quite unlike those mindless Rajputs.
"Maloji."
That was enough, she thought. Rao would not be able to claim she had unbalanced the private council in her favor.
But, to her surprise, he added a name. "I should like Bindusara to remain behind also."
Shakuntala was surprised—and much pleased. She'd considered the Hindu religious leader herself, but had passed him over because she'd thought Rao would resent her bringing spiritual pressure to bear. The sadhu was not a pacifist after the manner of the Jains, but neither was he given to much patience for silly kshatriya notions regarding "honor."
It took a minute or so for the room to clear. As they waited, Shakuntala leaned over and whispered: "I wouldn't have thought you'd want Bindusara."
Rao smiled thinly. "You are the treasure of my soul. But you are also sometimes still very young. You are over your head here, girl. I wanted the sadhu because he is also a philosopher."
Shakuntala hissed, like an angry snake. She had a disquieting feeling, though, that she sounded like an angry young snake.
Certainly, the sound didn't seem to have any effect on Rao's smile. "You never pay enough attention to those lessons. Still! After all my pleading." The smile widened, considerably. The last courtier was passing through the door and there was no one left to see but the inner council.
"Philosophy has form as well as substance, girl. No one can be as good at it as Bindusara unless he is also a master of logic."
Shakuntala began the debate. Her arguments took not much time, since they were simplicity itself.
We have been winning the war by patience. Why should we accept this challenge to a clash of great armies on the open field, where we would be over-matched?
Because one old man challenges another to a duel? Because both of the fools still think they're young?
Nonsense!
When it came his turn, Rao's smile was back in place. Very wide, now, that smile.
"Not so old as all that, I think," he protested mildly. "Neither me nor Rana Sanga. Still, my beloved wife has penetrated to the heart of thing. It is ridiculous for two men, now well past the age of forty—"
"Almost fifty!" Shakuntala snapped.
"—and, perhaps more to the point, both of them now very experienced commanders of armies, not young warriors seeking fame and glory, to suddenly be gripped by a desire to fight a personal duel."
To Shakuntala's dismay, the faces of the three generals had that horrid look on them. That half-dreamy, half-stern expression that men got when their brains oozed out of their skulls and they started babbling like boys again.
"Be a match of legend," murmured Kondev.
The Empress almost screamed from sheer frustration. The day-long single combat that Rao and Rana Sanga had fought once, long ago, was famous all across India. Every mindless warrior in India would drool over the notion of a rematch.
"You were twenty years old, then!"
Rao nodded. "Indeed, we were. But you are not asking the right question, Shakuntala. Have you—ever once—heard me so much as mention any desire for another duel with Sanga? Even in my sleep."
"No," she said, tight-jawed.
"I think not. I can assure you—everyone here—that the thought has not once crossed my mind for at least... oh, fifteen years. More likely, twenty."
He leaned forward a bit, gripping the armrests of the throne in his powerful, out-sized hands. "So why does anyone think that Rana Sangawould think of it, either? Have I aged, and he, not? True, he is a Rajput. But, even for Rajputs, there is a difference between a husband and a father of children and a man still twenty and unattached. A difference not simply in the number of lines on their faces, but in how they think."
Shahji cleared his throat. "He has lost his family, Rao. Perhaps that has driven him to fury."
"But has he lost them?" Rao looked to Dadaji Holkar. Not to his surprise, the empire's peshwa still had one of the letters brought by the Malwa assassin held in his hand. Almost clutched, in fact.
"What do you make of it, Dadaji?"
Holkar's face bore an odd expression. An unlikely combination of deep worry and even deeper exultation. "Oh, it's from my daughters. There are little signs—a couple of things mentioned no one else could have known—"
"Torture," suggested Kondev.
"—that make me certain of it." He glanced at Kondev and shook his head. "Torture seems unlikely. For one thing, although the handwriting is poor—my daughters' education was limited, of course, in the short time I had before they were taken from me—it is not shaky at all. I recognized it quite easily. I can even tell you which portion was written by Dhruva, and which by Lata, from that alone. Could I do so, were the hands holding the pen trembling with pain and fear as well as inexperience? Besides..."
He looked at the door through which the courtiers had left—and, a bit earlier, an assassin. "I do not think that man is a torturer."
"Neither do I," said Rao firmly. "And I believe, at my advanced age"—here, a sly little smile at Shakuntala—"I can tell the difference."
Shakuntala scowled, but said nothing. Rao gestured at Holkar. "Continue, please."
"The letter tells me nothing, naturally, of the girls' location. But it does depict, in far more detail than I would have expected, the comfort of their lives now. And there are so many references to the mysterious 'ladies' to whom they have—this is blindingly obvious—grown very attached."
"You conclude from this?"
Dadaji studied the letter in his hand, for a moment. "I conclude from this that someone—not my daughters, someone else—is sending me a message here. Us, rather, a message."
Rao leaned back in his throne. "So I think, also. You will all remember the message sent to us last year from Dadaji's daughters, with the coin?"
Several heads nodded, Shakuntala's among them.
"And how Irene Macrembolitissa convinced us it was not a trap, but the first step in a complex maneuver by Narses?"
All heads nodded.
Rao pointed to the letter. "I think that is the second step. Inviting us to take a third—or, rather, allow someone else to do so."
That statement was met by frowns of puzzlement on most faces. But, from the corner of her eye, Shakuntala saw Bindusara nodding.
She could sense that she was losing the argument. For a moment, she had to struggle desperately not to collapse into sheer girlish pleading—which would end, inevitably, with her blurting out before the council news she had not yet even given to Rao. Of the new child that was coming.
Suddenly, Rao's large hand reached over and gave her little one a squeeze. "Oh, be still, girl. I can assure you that I have no intention whatsoever of fighting Rana Sanga again."
His smile was simply cheerful now. "Ever again, in fact. And that is precisely why I will accept the challenge."
In the few seconds those two sentences required, Shakuntala swung from despair to elation and back. "You don't need to do this!"
"Of course, I don't. But Rana Sanga does."