Head down, striding along in her usual brisk and long-legged style, Irene tightened her lips. The upcoming session, she thought, would be difficult.
The young empress doted on Kungas, so much was obvious. Knowing the history of Shakuntala and Kungas' relationship, Irene did not find the girl's attitude odd. Kushans were Malwa vassals, and Kungas had been the man assigned as Shakuntala's guard and captor after the Malwa had conquered her father's empire of Andhra. He had saved her from rape, at the sack of Amaravati. Had held her safe, until Belisarius and Rao rescued her-and had then, learning the secret of that rescue, held his tongue and kept the secret from his Malwa masters. In the end, he and his men had thrown off their loyalty to Malwa and smuggled Shakuntala to south India. Since then, they had saved her life more than once from Malwa assassination teams.
The fact remained, he was nothing more than a semibarbarian warlord. Not even literate, by all accounts.
Irene was not looking forward to the upcoming session.She would have to steer a delicate course between offending the empress and Paying no attention to anything but her thoughts, Irene swept into a junction with another corridor and crashed into an unseen obstacle.
For a moment, she almost lost her footing. Only a desperate hand, reaching out to clutch the object into which she had hurtled, kept her from an undignified landing on her backside.
Startled, she looked up and found herself gazing into the statue of a steppe warrior. Into the face of the statue, more precisely. A bronze and rigid mask, apparently part of a single casting. Stiff, still, unmoving. Extremely well done, she noted, all the way down to the lifelike armor and horsehair topknot.
But the artistry of the piece did not leave her mollified.
"What idiot left a statue in the middle of a corridor?" she hissed angrily. Then, after a brief second scrutiny: "Ugly damned thing, too."
The statue moved. Its lips, at least. Irene was so startled she actually jumped.
"Horses think I'm pretty," said the statue, in heavily accented but understandable Greek. "Why else do they give me such playful nips?"
Irene gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth. She stepped back a pace or two. "You'rereal!"
The statue gazed down at its body. "So I am told by my scholarly friend Dadaji," the thing rasped. "But I am not a student of philosophy, myself, so I can't vouch for it."
For all that she was startled, Irene's quick mind had not deserted her. "You must be Kungas," she stated. "You fit Belisarius' description."
At first, Irene thought she was several inches taller than he. But closer examination revealed that Kungas was not more than an inch below her own height. It was just that the man was so stocky, in a thick-chested and muscular fashion, that he looked shorter than he actually was. Beyond that, his whole body-especially his face-looked as if it were made of metal, or polished wood, rather than flesh. She did not think she had ever seen a human being in her life who seemed so utterly-hard.
His features were typically Kushan. Asiatic, steppe features: yellowish complexion, flat nose, eyes which seemed slanted due to the fold in the corners, a tight-lipped mouth. His beard was a wispy goatee, and the mustache adorning his upper lip was no more than a thin line of hair. Most of his scalp was shaved, except for a clot of coarse black hair gathered into a topknot.
Kungas returned Irene's scrutiny with one of his own. His next words startled her almost as much as the collision.
"You have beautiful eyes," he announced. "Very intelligent. And so I am puzzled."
Irene frowned. "Puzzled by what?"
"Why are you wearing such a stupid costume?" he asked, gesturing to the heavy Roman robes. "Inthis climate?"
Kungas' lips seemed to twitch. Irene thought that might be a smile. She wasn't sure.
"I grant you," he continued, "many of the Indian customs are ridiculous. But the women are quite sensible when it comes to their clothing. You would do much better to wear a sari, and leave your midriff bare."
Irene grinned. "I'm a diplomat," she explained. "Got to maintain my ambassadorial dignity. Especially since I'm a woman. Everybody looks at these absurd robes instead of me. So all they see is the Roman Empire, rather than the foreignfemale."
"Ah." Kungas nodded. "Good thinking."
"You must be on your way to the audience chamber yourself," said Irene. She cocked her head to the side. "The empress will be delighted to see you. She has missed you, I think. Although she says nothing."
Now, finally, Kungas did smile. "She never does. Lest people see the uncertain girl, instead of the ruler of Andhra."
He made a slight bow. "Envoy from Rome, I must give my report to the empress. May I escort you to the audience chamber?"
Irene bowed in return, and nodded graciously. Side by side, she and Kungas headed toward the great double doors at the end of the corridor.
From the corner of her eye, Irene studied Kungas. She was a bit fascinated by the way he moved. Silently, and surely-more like a cat than a thick, stocky man. But, mostly, she was fascinated by Kungas himself. Such a thick, hard, rigid statue, he seemed. But she had not missed the warm humor lurking inside the bronze casting, nor the intelligence.
Then, turning her eyes to the front, she gave her head a little shake.
You're the envoy from Rome, she reminded herself. For a moment, her fingers plucked at her heavy robes.So just forget it, woman. Besides, the man can't even read.
"How long does Rao think it will take Venandakatra to bring up the siege guns?" asked Shakuntala. The empress, seated on a plush cushion, leaned forward from her lotus position. Her brow was wrinkled, as if she were a schoolgirl straining to understand a lesson.
Irene was not fooled by Shakuntala's resemblance to a young student.That is one very worried monarch, she thought, watching from her vantage point against the east wall of the small audience chamber.
Irene's translator leaned over, whispering, but she stilled him with a gesture. Her Hindi had improved well enough that she was able to follow the discussion. Irene had an aptitude for languages-that skill was a necessity for a spymaster in Rome's polyglot empire-and she had been tutored by Belisarius before leaving Constantinople. In the months since her arrival at Suppara, she had been immersed in Hindi.And Marathi. As was true of most Indian monarchs, Shakuntala used Hindi as the court language, but Irene had begun learning the common tongue of Majarashtra as well.
"How long?" repeated the empress.
Seated easily in his own lotus position, Kungas shrugged. "It is difficult to say, Your Majesty. Many factors are involved. The siege guns were at Bharakuccha. Venandakatra has thus been forced to haul them across the Great Country. Very difficult terrain, as you know, through which to move huge war engines. And Rao has been harassing the Malwa column with his mountain fighters."
"Can he stop them?" demanded Shakuntala. "Before they can bring the guns to Deogiri?"
Kungas shook his head. As with all the man's gestures, the movement was slight-but emphatic, for all that.
"Not a chance, Your Majesty. He can slow it down, but he does not have the forces to stop it. Venandakatra has reinforced the column's escort with every spare military unit at his disposal. He cannot reduce Deogiri without those guns-andwith them, he cannot fail. Any one of those cannons is big enough to shatter Deogiri's walls, and he has six of them."
Shakuntala winced. For a moment, Kungas' face seemed to soften. Just a tiny bit.
"There is this much, Your Majesty," he added. "The Vile One has been forced to end the punitive raids in the countryside. He cannot spare the men. Every cavalry troop he has, beyond the ones investing Deogiri, are assigned to guard the column bringing the cannons."