"Your Majesty, uh, husband of mine for the moment-remember, you limp," Denak said. "Forget that and you may yet give the game away."
Sharbaraz bowed. "Lady, you are right," he said, though Denak's semblance was anything but ladylike. "I shall remember." He snatched up Pradtak's stick from where it lay on the floor and gave a convincing impression of a man with a bad ankle. "And now-away."
Sharbaraz made sure to close the newly installed bar outside Pradtak's bedchamber. Abivard nodded approvingly: now that the bedchamber was in effect the outer portion of the women's quarters, no dihqan would leave it open, lest the women somehow depart without his knowledge.
"Where now?" Sharbaraz asked in a low voice as the bar thudded home.
"The stables," Abivard answered, just as quietly. "Here, walk beside me and make as if you're leading me and not the other way round. Tanshar, Denak, you come behind: You're our retainers, after all."
Pradtak's household accepted the escaping fugitives as what they seemed. Once reminded, Sharbaraz kept up his limp quite well. He gave friendly greetings to Pradtak's kinsfolk and retainers; if he didn't address any of them by name, that was no flaw in a brief conversation-and he made sure all the conversations were brief.
At the stables, though, one of the grooms seeing to Abivard's horses looked up in surprise. "You seldom come here without bow and spear for the chase, lord," he said. "You are riding to hunt, not so?"
Abivard froze, cursing himself for a fool. All that careful planning, to be undone by a moment's carelessness! But Sharbaraz said calmly, "No, we're for the village of Gayy, east of here. Lord Abivard was asking about the qanat network there because it stretches so far from the Hyuja River, and he was hoping to do the same along the Vek Rud. My thought was that showing him would be easier than talking at him. What say you?"
"Me? The groom looked startled, then grinned. "Lord, of making qanats I know nothing, so I have little to say." He looked to Abivard. "You'll want your animal and your councilor's resaddled, then?"
"Yes, and we'll take the packhorses, as well," Abivard answered, vastly relieved Sharbaraz's wits were quicker than his own, and also vastly impressed at Sharbaraz's intimate knowledge of Pradtak's domain. He went on, "I may want to spend the night at, uh, Gayy and look over the qanats some more in the morning."
"The town has a sarai, lord," the groom said in mild reproof. Abivard folded his arms across his chest. The groom looked an appeal to the man he thought to be Pradtak.
"However it pleases him," Sharbaraz said, just as Pradtak would have. Abivard had all he could do to keep from laughing.
The groom nodded in resignation and turned to Denak. "You'll be one of the gentlemen who rode in at night a ways back. I'm sorry, sir, but I've not seen you much since, and I've forgotten which of those horses was yours." He pointed down to three stalls at the end of the stable.
Before Denak could answer-or panic and not answer-Sharbaraz came to the rescue again. "It was the bay gelding with the scar on his flank, not so?"
"Yes, lord," Denak said in her sorcerously assumed man's voice.
The groom sent Sharbaraz a glance full of admiration. "Lord, no one will ever say you haven't an eye for horses." Sharbaraz made the image of Pradtak preen.
The horse that had belonged to Smerdis' man snorted a little when Denak mounted it. So did Pradtak's horse when Sharbaraz climbed aboard. The horses knew, even if men were fooled. Sharbaraz easily calmed his animal. Denak had more trouble; the only riding she had done since she became a woman was on her wedding journey to Nalgis Crag stronghold. But she managed, and the four riders started down the steep, winding trail to the bottom of Nalgis Crag.
"By the God, I think we've done it," Abivard breathed as the flat ground drew near. He called ahead to Sharbaraz, who as Pradtak was leading the procession.
"Lord, uh, your Majesty, how did you come to know so much about the village of Gayy and its qanats? I'd not wager an arket that the real Pradtak could say as much of them."
"My father set me to studying the realm and its domains before my beard first sprouted, so I would come to know Makuran before I ruled it," Sharbaraz answered. His chuckle had more than a little edge to it. "I got to know Nalgis Crag domain, or its stronghold, better than I cared to."
"My father was right," Abivard said. "You will make a fine King of Kings for Makuran."
"Your father-he would be Godarz of Vek Rud domain?" Sharbaraz said, and answered himself: "Yes, of course, for you are Denak's brother. Godarz perished on the steppe with the rest of the host?"
"He did, your Majesty, with my brother and three half brothers."
Sharbaraz shook his head. "A victory in Pardraya would have been glorious. A loss like the one we suffered… better the campaign had never begun. But with a choice of strike or wait, my father always preferred to strike."
His horse reached the flat land then. He kicked the animal up into a fast, ground-eating trot. His companions imitated him: The farther from Nalgis Crag stronghold they got, the safer they would be.
Abivard said, "The confusion should be lovely back at the stronghold. When Pradtak wakes up in your shape, he'll insist he's himself, and the guards will just laugh at him. They'll say he's gone off to Gayy. And even when he does get his own appearance back, they'll think that's a trick, as you said."
"The only real problem will be that I won't return to the women's quarters," Denak said. "And the folk at the stronghold won't truly notice I'm missing for some time. Who pays any real attention to women, anyhow?" Her voice was deep and strange now, but the same old bitterness rode it.
Sharbaraz said, "Lady, a blind man would note your bravery, on a battlefield where no man would ever be likely to find himself. Do not make yourself less than you are, I pray you."
"How can I make myself less than nothing?" she said. When Abivard protested that, she turned her head away and would not speak further. He did not press her, but wondered what had passed at Nalgis Crag stronghold to make her hate herself so. His left hand, the one not holding the reins, curled into a fist. If he had thought Pradtak was abusing her, he would have served her husband as she had the guard who disgraced himself by helping to confine the rightful King of Kings.
The pale winter sun scurried toward the horizon. The weather, though cold, stayed clear. When the riders came to an almond grove not far from the edge of Pradtak's irrigated land, Abivard said, "Let's camp here. We'll have fuel for a fine fire."
When no one argued with him, he reined in, tethered his horse, and began scouring the ground for fallen branches and twigs. Sharbaraz joined him, saying "The God grant we don't have to damage the trees themselves. We should be able to glean enough to keep them intact."
Behind the two young men, Denak said to Tanshar, "Take your seeming off me this instant."
"My lady, truly I would sooner wait," Tanshar answered hesitantly. "Our safety might still ride on your keeping the guardsman's face."
"I would rather die than keep it." Denak began to cry again. Tanshar's magic transmuted her sobs into the deep moaning of a man in anguish.
Abivard dumped a load of wood on the ground and dug in a pocket of his belt pouch for flint and steel. Tanshar sent him a look of appeal and asked, "Lord, what is your will? Shall I remove the enchantment?"
"If my sister hates it so, perhaps you had better," Abivard answered. "Why she should hate it-"
"She has reason, I assure you." Sharbaraz dropped more twigs and branches on top of the load Abivard had gathered.
His support, instead of cheering Denak, only made her cry harder than ever. Abivard looked up from the slow business of getting a fire going and nodded to Tanshar. The fortune-teller took out the crystal disk he had used to give Denak the appearance of Sharbaraz's guard. Again he suspended it in the air between them. This time his chant was different from before. Where the disk had briefly glowed, now it seemed to suck up darkness from the gathering night. When that darkness left it, Denak was herself again.