Two of the tables were empty. At another, a stout Babylonian banker held a heated discussion in frantic whispers with a lean man who looked like a Kossian cutthroat. At another, three Parthian cameleers sat with arms about one another's necks, singing a song with a wailing tune.
A black-browed soldier in the short white jacket, white pantaloons, and golden necklet of the Median battalion of the Immortals, his costume wine-stained and his bulbous white felt hat awry, had another table to himself. Thence, over his winecup, he glowered to right and left as if seeking a quarrel.
The remaining table was occupied by a plump young Persian and a heavily painted strumpet. The man, with rouged cheeks, waxed mustaches, and a golden chain around his neck, sat with his arm about the giggling woman. He alternately sipped wine and nuzzled his companion, whispering in her ear and tickling her with his beard.
"There is our man," murmured Myron, squeezing past the other table. "Hail, noble Tithraustes!"
The Persian looked up, blinking and moving his eyebrows as if he had trouble in focusing. "Who are you?"
"I am your old tutor, Myron Perseôs by name—Myron the Milesian."
"Oh? Well. Great pleasure. Great pleasure. Sit down."
"Thank you. This is the noble lady Zarina. Your slaves need your help."
The Persian, who had gone back to nuzzling the whore, looked around. "Help? Thank you, my master, but I need no help. Doing fine by myself." He hiccupped.
"No, sir, it is we who need your help. You can assist us. Now do you understand?"
"Who are you?"
"Zeus, Apollon, and Demeter!" muttered Myron. He took a draft of wine and addressed the Persian anew. "I am your old tutor Myron. You remember him, do you not?"
"Aye. Whatever befell him?"
"Nothing befell him; here he is. Well then, I require your help."
"I told you, I need no help," said Tithraustes, fingering the emerald in the lobe of his left ear.
Zarina whispered loudly over Myron's shoulder: "Knock the lout senseless, and we will drag him outside and revive him."
"Go away and mind your business," said the whore, "or I will scratch your eyes out."
"Try it, hussy!" said Zarina. "I will pull off that wig of yours."
"Mistress Zarina," said Myron, "do me the favor of sitting at that empty table. Order something. This may take time. Now," said Myron to Tithraustes, "Your Highness is a true Persian gentleman, are you not?"
"Does any scum deny it?" growled Tithraustes.
"Right. Now, that means that you have a keen sense of honor, does it not?"
"Plague! Any ninny knows that."
"Then, when your old tutor appeals to you for help, honor compels you to help him. Is that not so?"
Tithraustes pondered this for an instant, then said: "And who are you?"
Myron closed his eyes and passed a hand across his forehead. "Sometimes, by Earth and the gods, I wonder." Then his manner changed. From intensely serious he became boisterously jovial. He laughed loudly and clapped Tithraustes on the shoulder.
"Look, son," he said, "do you know what I can get you?"
"Nay; what?"
"I can lead you to a woman whose cleft runs crosswise"—he made slicing motions—"instead of up and down. Are you game?"
"Am I?" Tithraustes fumbled in his purse and slapped a small coin on the table. "Lead on!"
Myron rose and started for the door. The whore spat a curse after him. A hand caught his cloak and turned him half around. It was the sullen Median soldier.
"Did you say aught to me?" snarled the Mede.
"No, general, your slave did not," said Myron. "It is my misfortune that I do not know you. No doubt the man beside you said something."
The Mede turned to stare into the empty air beside him. He was still staring when Myron and his companions passed out of the wineshop, leaving Hutrara and the hussy to quarrel over the money on the table.
A few blocks towards the palaces, Tithraustes stared at the Greek and cried: "Why, Master Myron! Fry my balls if it be not good old Myron! Whence came you?"
"Well, thank all the gods and goddesses!" said Myron. "I am in desperate need... ,"
Myron followed Tithraustes up the broad reversing stairway on the western side of the platform. The first faint light appeared in the east, revealing the outlines of the Mount of Mercy towering jaggedly above the palaces.
"Hasten!" breathed Zarina. "Dawn comes on apace."
At the top, a sentry challenged, bringing his partisan to port. This was a broad-bladed polearm, a clumsy weapon meant more for impressing the Great King's subjects than for serious fighting.
Tithraustes conversed in murmurs with the guard. Then he led his companions into the huge Gate of All Nations, flanked by limestone bulls twenty feet high.
"Sit and wait," he said, indicating a bench along the wall.
The bastard prince disappeared, while the sentry watched them, leaning on his partisan. The torchlight flickered ocherously on the gilding of the winged disk of Auramazda, above which rose the crowned and bearded head and upper body of the Lord of Light.
They sat while Zarina gnawed her knuckles. "If he keeps us waiting much longer," she murmured, "I shall scream, king or no king."
Myron said: "Hurrying a king, my dear Zarina, is like trying to contain the wind in a goatskin."
"You can be patient. It is not your son."
"I have none, alas. But I will do my poor best for yours."
"Try to have Bessas sent on an expedition to some safe, peaceful land."
"Do you know of any?" said Myron dryly. "Even the royal realm of Parsa has proved less safe than lying in bed."
Somewhere in the maze of palaces, the king's pet lion, Rustam, gave a moaning roar. The light was stronger when Tithraustes reappeared.
"Come this way," he said.
Leaving Zarina's slave in the gate, Tithraustes led them out the rear, where stood a pair of winged, human-headed bulls of stone. Two guards trailed after them. The soldiers' leathern bow cases, gay with glued-on bits of colored leather, bumped against their hips.
A pair of palace servants stood yawning by a basin on a pedestal. They washed the hands of Myron and Zarina and put long loose white robes upon them.
The petitioners climbed the stairs on the northern side of the audience hall, where sculptured soldiers of the Immortals, noblemen, and delegations bearing tribute from all over the Empire marched in stony files in low relief along the retaining walls. Then before the party rose the portico of the great Apadana, begun by Darius and completed by Xerxes. Slender columns, soaring sixty-five feet into the air, upheld the roof. The capitals of these columns took the form of the forequarters of kneeling beasts—bulls and horned lions—in pairs, back to back.
Within the audience hall rose a shadowy forest of pillars with similar capitals. The light of torches and cressets glimmered redly on the bronzen horns and the golden eyes of the sculptured beasts; it gleamed on the gilded arms and armor of motionless guards.
Beyond this forest of columns, at the southern end of the hall, stood a golden chair of pretense on a dais. Above it, supported on golden pillars, rose a jeweled canopy, glimmering with gems of many hues. Here the petitioners waited again, while a slave lit the tall golden incense burners flanking the throne.
At last Aspamitres, the chief eunuch, entered. He smote the pave with his staff and cried:
"Silence! Bow down before the Awful Royal Glory!"
Myron, Zarina, and the bastard prince sank to their knees and touched their foreheads to the floor. Zarina's jewelry clanked as she knelt. A tramp of feet, a swish of garments, and a heavy smell of perfume told of the king's arrival. The voice of the king said: "Rise!"