“You are most generous, your majesty.” Argyros bowed his way out. The audience had gone better than he dared wish. He wondered why he was still nervous.
For the banquet, the magistrianos dug out the best robe he had brought. He had several finer ones back in Constantinople, including a really splendid one of thick sea-green samite heavily brocaded with silk thread. For a merchant of moderate means, though, that would have been too much. Plain maroon wool fit the part better.
The reputation of the yperoinos must have preceded it; eager hands helped Argyros remove the jars from the pack-horses. Too eager—”Come back, you!” he shouted at one servitor. “Your king bade me bring ten jars. If my head goes up on the wall for cheating him, I know whose will be there beside it.”
That was plenty to stop the fellow in his tracks, the magistrianos noted: Goarios’s men feared their king, then.
Horns, flutes, and drums played in the banquet hall. The music was brisk, but in the wailing minor key the Persians and other easterners favored. Argyros had heard it many times but never acquired the taste for it.
The servants had not yet set out the tables for the feast. Guests and their ladies stood and chatted, holding winecups. When the chief usher announced Argyros’s name and the other servants carried the jars of superwine into the hall, King Goarios clapped his hands above his head three times. Silence fell at once.
“Here we have the purveyor of a new and potent pleasure,” the king declared, “than which what praise could be higher?” He spoke Persian. By now, Argyros had decided he meant no mockery by it; more courtiers used Persian than Greek here. Goarios beckoned the magistrianos toward him. “Come and receive your promised payment.”
Argyros pushed his way through the crowded hall. He had no trouble keeping the king in sight; they were both taller than most of the people in the hall. Behind him, he heard the first exclamations of amazement as the guests began sampling the yperoinos.
“Two hundred nomismata,” Goarios said when he drew near, and tossed him a leather purse over the heads of the last couple of men between them.
“I thank your majesty,” Argyros said, bowing low when he and Goarios were at last face to face.
“A trifle,” the king said with a languid wave.
A woman stood by his side. Argyros had not got a good look at her before, for the crown of her head was not far above Goarios’s shoulders. Her hair fell in thick black waves to her shoulders. She had bold, swarthy features and flashing dark eyes that glittered with amusement as she smiled saucily at the magistrianos.
“Mirrane, this is Argyros, the wine merchant of whom I told you,” Goarios said. Recognizing her, the magistrianos felt ice form round his heart. He waited woodenly for her to denounce him. She turned her mocking gaze his way again. “I’ve heard of him,” she said, speaking Greek with the throaty accent of her native tongue. “He is, ah, famous for his new products he purveys.” Her attention returned to Goarios. “For what marvel did you reward him so highly?”
“A vintage squeezed, I think, from the thunderstorm,” the king of the Alans replied. “You must try some, my dear.” His hand slid around Mirrane’s waist. She snuggled against him. Together they walked slowly toward the table where Goarios’s servants had set out the y peroinos. Argyros stared after them. He was too self-possessed to show his bafflement by scratching his head, but that was what he felt like doing. It Mirrane had become Goarios’s concubine, she had to have influence over him. Of that the magistrianos had no doubt. Mirrane, Argyros was certain, could influence a marble statue, as long as it was a male one.
Why, then, was she letting him stay free? The only answer that occurred to Argyros was so she could ruin him at a time that better suited her purpose. Yet that made no sense either. Mirrane was skilled enough at intrigue to see that, the longer a foe stayed active, the more dangerous he became. She was not one to waste so perfect a chance to destroy him.
He shrugged imperceptibly. If she was making that kind of mistake, he would do his best to take advantage of it.
After a while, servants began fetching in tables and chairs. Goarios, Mirrane still beside him, took his seat at the head table. That was the signal for the king’s guests to sit down too. Soon all were in their places but the group of Kirghiz, who would not move away from the superwine. One of them was already almost unconscious; two of his comrades had to hold him up. Stewards of ever higher rank came over to remonstrate with the nomads. At last, grudgingly, they went up to sit across the table from Goarios.
Back in the kitchens, Argyros thought, the cooks must have been tearing their hair, waiting for the dinner to start. They quickly made up for lost time. Grunting under the weight, servants hauled in platters on which rested roast kids, lambs, and geese. Others brought tubs of peas and onions, while the sweet smell of the new-baked loaves that also made their appearance filled the hall. What was left of the superwine seemed reserved for Goarios’s table, but jars from the sweet Caucasian vintages in the Alan king’s cellars kept those less privileged happy. Argyros drank sparingly. He kept his eyes on Mirrane, again wondering what game she was playing.
None of his tablemates—minor Alan nobles, most of them, along with a few townsmen rich enough for Goarios to find them worth cultivating—found his staring obtrusive. Desirable though she was, the magistrianos did not think they were watching Mirrane. The Kirghiz were busy making a spectacle of themselves.
Argyros knew the privation steppe nomads endured, and knew how, to make up for it, they could gorge themselves when they got the chance. Reading of the huge feasts Homer described, he sometimes thought the heroes of the Trojan War had the same talent. Maybe the Alans’ ancestors did too, when they were a steppe people, but this generation had lost it. They gaped in astonished wonder as the Kirghiz ate and ate and ate.
The nomads drank too, swilling down yperoinos as if it were the fermented mare’s milk of the plains. The one who had been wobbling before the banquet slid quietly out of his chair and under the table. Another soon followed him. The rest grew boisterous instead. They slammed fists down on the table to emphasize whatever points they thought they were making, shouted louder and louder, and howled songs in their own language. Argyros understood a few words of it; not many other people in the hall did. It sounded dreadful.
Servants cleared away platters, except, after a snarled warning, the ones in front of the Kirghiz. Goarios stood up, held his hands above his head. Silence descended. Eventually the Kirghiz noticed they were roaring in a void. They too subsided, and waited for the king to speak.
“Thank you, my friends, for sharing my bounty tonight,” Goarios said in Persian. He paused for a moment to let those who did not know the tongue have his words interpreted, then resumed: “I know this would not seem like much in the way of riches to one used to the glories of Constantinople or Ctesiphon, but in our own small way we try. “
‘Thistime, being safely inconspicuous, Argyros did scratch his head. Modesty and self-deprecation were not what he had come to expect from the king of the Alans.
Goarios continued, “Still and all, we have learned much from the Romans and from the Persians. Of all the folk under the sun”—here he glanced at Mirrane, who fondly smiled back his way (if Goarios had embraced the creed of Ormazd, Argyros was doubly sure now it was because he had first embraced an eloquent advocate for it)—”they are strongest, and also cleverest. That is no accident; the two qualities go hand in hand.”