"No doubt he is, your Majesty," the elder Maniakes agreed politely. "However wicked those qualities are in most walks of life, though, they often come in very handy in war."
Two days later Smerdis' men broke down the eastern bank of one of the larger canals that stitched together the Land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssian engineers quickly repaired the breach and ended the flood, but that did nothing to deal with the furlongs of black, smelly mud the waters left in their wake.
"Now we see if they earn their silver," Abivard declared.
The engineers earned not only Makuraner silver but also Videssian gold. They used the same planks that had paved the pontoon bridge over the Tutub to lay down a roadway that let the army advance through the flooded zone and up to the canal. They also recovered the planks-except for a few that had been trampled deep into the mud-so they could use them again in either bridge or roadway.
"Now I understand," Sharbaraz said as the engineers matter-of-factly went about bridging the canal. "They let the Videssian army go wherever it wants to. You can't just make a flood or build field fortifications and think you're safe from the imperials: they'll be inside your tent before you even know they're around."
"They are good," Abivard admitted grudgingly. "I haven't had a lot to do with them, but just watching them go about their business, seeing them talking and gambling around campfires of evenings, makes them seem more like ordinary men than they ever did before. Our tales always make Videssians out to be either wicked or ferocious or underhanded or-I don't know what all, but none of it good. And they're just… people. It's very strange."
"You take any one man from anywhere and he's apt to be a pretty good fellow," Abivard said. "Even a Khamorth will probably love his children-"
"Or his sheep," Abivard put in.
The rightful King of Kings snorted. "It's rude to interrupt your sovereign when he's waxing philosophical. I don't do it much; maybe it comes from being around Videssians, since they're finer logic-choppers than anyone else. As I was saying, your plainsman will love his children, he won't beat his wife more than she deserves, and he'll care for his horses as well as any groom in Makuran. Put him in the company of a couple of hundred of his clansmates and let him overrun a Makuraner village, though, and he'll do things that will give you nightmares for years afterward."
"But we have a lot more than a couple of hundred Videssians here, and they're still behaving well," Abivard said. "That's what surprises me."
"Part of that, I suppose, is that they're aligned with us: if they act like a pack of demons, they'll make the people here hate them and us both, and so hurt our cause," Sharbaraz said. "And they're more like us than the Khamorth are. When they aren't soldiering, they're farmers or millers or artisans. They don't destroy canals for the fun of watching other farmers starve."
Abivard plucked at his beard. "That makes sense, Majesty. Maybe you should-what did you call it? — wax philosophic more often."
"No, thank you," Sharbaraz answered. "There's also one other thing I didn't tell you: I asked the elder Maniakes to make sure his priests stuck to their own and didn't go about trying to get honest Makuraners to worship their false god. The blue-robes who follow Phos are better organized than our servants of the God, and they go after converts like flies diving into honey."
"They have been quiet," Abivard said. "I didn't realize this isn't the way they usually behave."
"It isn't," Sharbaraz assured him. "They're as certain of the truth of their Phos as we are about the God. And since they think they have the only true god, they're sure anyone who doesn't worship him-or who doesn't worship him the right way-will spend eternity in ice, just as we know misbelievers vanish into the Void and are gone forever. They think they have a duty to get people to worship as they do. Getting Maniakes to muzzle them hasn't been easy."
"Why not?" Abivard asked, puzzled. "If a noble gives an order, those who serve under him had better obey."
Sharbaraz laughed raucously. Abivard looked offended. The rightful King of Kings said, "Brother-in-law of mine, you're not used to dealing with Videssians. From all I've seen, from all I've heard, those blue-robed priests are so drunk with their god, they don't care to take orders from any mere noble. Even the Avtokrator sometimes has trouble getting them to do his bidding."
"We don't do things so untidily in Makuran," Abivard said. "Northerwesterner though I am, I know that much. If the Mobedhan-mobhed ever presumed to displease the King of Kings in any way-"
"— there'd be a new Mobedhan-mobhed inside the hour," Sharbaraz finished for him. "After all, the King of Kings is the sovereign. No one has any business displeasing him." He laughed again, this time at himself. "I've been nothing but displeased since the throne came-or should have come-into my hands. When it's truly mine at last, that won't happen any more."
His voice held great certainty. At first, that pleased Abivard: Sharbaraz needed confidence that he would be restored. Then Abivard wondered if the rightful King of Kings simply meant he would refuse to listen to anything distasteful once he ruled in Mashiz. That worried him. Even a King of Kings might need to be reminded from time to time of how the world worked.
Something had changed. Abivard knew it as soon as he climbed up into the wagon Roshnani and Denak shared, even before he set eyes on his wife. The serving woman who bowed to him said not a word out of the ordinary, but her voice had a timbre to it he hadn't heard before.
"My husband," Roshnani said as he stepped into her small cubicle. Again, the words were everyday but the tone was not. Then she added, "Close the curtain. It helps keep out some of the mosquitoes that plague this land." That sounded like her.
Abivard obeyed. As he did, he studied Roshnani. She looked-like herself, if a little more tired than usual. He scratched his head, wondering if his imagination was running away with him. "Is anything wrong?" he asked as she tilted her face up for a kiss.
"Wrong? Whatever makes you think that?" She laughed at him, then went on, "Unless I'm very much mistaken, though, I am going to have a baby."
"I'm glad everything's all ri-" Abivard said before what Roshnani had told him got from his ears to his mind. His mouth fell open. When he shut it again, he said, "How did that happen?"
If Roshnani had laughed before, now she chortled, great ringing peals of mirth that left her hiccuping when she finally brought herself back under control.
"Unless I'm very much mistaken," she said, deliberately echoing herself, "it happened in the usual way. We've been wed for going on two years now. I was beginning to wonder if I was barren."
Abivard's fingers twisted in a sign to turn aside words of evil omen. "The God prevent it," he said. Then he blinked. "The God has prevented it, hasn't he?"
"Yes, she has," Roshnani said. They both smiled; when a man and a woman talked about the God in back-to-back sentences, the effect could be odd on the ear. Roshnani went on, "May I give you a son."
"May it be so." Abivard sobered. "I wish my father were here, so I could set his first grandchild in his arms. If that child were heir to Vek Rud domain, all the better." He thought of something else, lowered his voice. "I might even wish it weren't Father's first grandchild. Have you told Denak you're with child?"
Roshnani nodded. "I told her this morning; this is the first day I've been sure enough to speak to anyone. She hugged me. I understand what you mean, though: how wonderful it would be if a first grandchild were also heir to the throne of the King of Kings."