Martin said, ‘Sorry. You’re right.’ He glanced at the young man behind him, whose face was glistening with sweat, as if he really did feel the weight of the birds he was carrying. The man remained silent, but frowned slightly, in a manner that seemed to advise caution more than it expressed disapproval. Kavus was not a popular ruler, but the throne itself still commanded respect; only the most experienced generals and learned sages were entitled to question the king’s plans, and then only with the utmost tact and diplomacy. A commoner giggling derisively was beyond the pale, and Martin wasn’t interested in spending the next hour rotting in a dungeon.
They deposited the cages near the others; some of the newly arrived birds fluttered their wings and rose briefly from their perches, as if to protest their treatment. Martin caught himself wondering what they were ‘used to’ – how often they hunted with Shahin and the king, how often they were caged – as if such questions had answers.
Shahin addressed his workers. ‘We’ve brought forty-eight of the king’s finest eagles, as he commanded. Now watch me carefully; this is what you must do next.’
Shahin squatted down and opened one of the cages, reached in and touched the foot of the hooded bird with his leather-clad fist. It moved obligingly onto his hand and let him carry it slowly out of the cage. He walked over to the rim of the pavilion and squatted again to bring the bird close to the ground, then with his other hand he lifted up the rope that was lying coiled near one of the rods. Four strands of rope were anchored to the platform, and between those fixed ends it had been knotted and woven into an elaborate harness. Shahin slipped the harness over the bird, stroking it behind the head to calm it. Then he lowered and tilted his hand, encouraging the bird to step off. The bird took a few steps across the surface, then felt the harness grow taut. It fluttered its wings a few times, irritated by this strange new impediment, then became still, resigned to the vagaries of its fate.
Shahin turned to face them. ‘Don’t stand there idly; follow my example. The king will be here soon!’
Javeed threw himself into the task and Martin left him to it, working separately in order to get the job done quickly but staying close by. Javeed had already grown confident with the birds, in spite of their daunting size, and every time Martin glanced at him he looked focused and assured. Did it matter that real falconry took years of training and that these birds were following a script that simply forbade them from turning feral and scratching someone’s face off? Javeed wasn’t doing any of this in order to go hunting with tribesmen in Kyrgyzstan. The game-tasks still took patience and persistence and, even weightless, the birds demanded fine motor control from their handlers to stop them getting skittish. Martin resolved to stop fretting; Javeed wasn’t in danger of forgetting the stubbornness of flesh-and-blood creatures, the sharpness of real talons, the recalcitrance of the animate world. He shouldn’t start confusing Javeed’s situation with the Proxy’s; it was not his son who would soon be confined to Zendegi.
Shahin and his helpers worked faster than the newcomers; their ‘experience’ made that plausible enough, though it occurred to Martin that at another level it was down to the fact that the birds didn’t need to waste time trying to bluff these non-humans into taking them seriously. In any case, their speed was welcome; Martin had tethered just five birds – three less than an equal share – when Shahin called out to everyone to move aside. The birds were all in place, and the king was approaching.
The royal party arrived on horseback, with the king accompanied by flag-bearers, guards and courtiers. Kavus himself wore a jewelled crown and carried a mace encrusted with rubies; Martin suffered a momentary Liberace flashback.
The riff-raff stayed clear as the king inspected the pavilion and its tethered birds; three advisers walked behind him, offering obsequious praise after every royal remark.
‘I see that the clouds betray a favourable motion of the air,’ Kavus opined. ‘What could be more auspicious?’
‘Lord of the World, your wisdom is greater than that of all your ancestors combined.’
Though lines like that weren’t too far from Ferdowsi, everyone was hamming it up; Martin saw that Javeed was smiling in disbelief at these pompous gits, notwithstanding his earlier dousing of Martin’s own display of disrespect.
‘Would you trust this man to design an aircraft?’ Martin whispered.
‘No way.’
Martin patted his empty money-belt. ‘And I forgot to buy us parachutes.’
Javeed said, ‘If you get scared, just give it the thumbs-down.’
‘Okay.’
One of the king’s advisers approached Shahin and spoke to him quietly.
Shahin passed the news on to his staff. ‘The king has called for my service, and I am to bring the two lightest of my apprentices.’ Javeed was a shoo-in, obviously, but Martin was preordained to be a passenger too, which might have explained why his three competitors were all tall and solidly built. He didn’t even need to point out that he’d lost ten kilos in real life since his icon was snapped.
Kavus seated himself on his royal throne and a flunky closed the tent flap so His Majesty wouldn’t have to watch the staff carrying on untidily around him. Martin and Javeed followed Shahin onto the pavilion, where they set about priming the aircraft’s engines: hooking pieces of rabbit meat onto spikes that protruded from the forty-eight rods, just out of reach of the tethered eagles. Javeed was too short to reach the spikes himself, so his job was to carry the pail of meat and hand chunks to the two adults. The birds, still blinded, did not react to the meat, but at the sound of approaching footsteps some of them chafed against their constraints, tugging on the ropes in random directions as if to signal their annoyance to their captors.
When the preparations were complete, Shahin spoke with the adviser, who approached the royal enclosure.
‘Lord of the World, Jewel of Persia, your good fortune brings justice and happiness to all your people.’
Kavus emerged from his tent and gazed up into the sky. ‘No human before me, however great their birth and station, has dared attempt this feat; none after will have the courage to repeat it.’ He looked down and stretched out his arms towards the gathered observers. ‘The glory of this day will be burnt into your memories, as the image of the sun sears your vision.’ They bowed their heads in agreement, then began retreating to a safe distance.
The adviser remained on the platform; now he signalled to Shahin to proceed. Shahin directed Martin and Javeed to two different starting points, separated by a third of the platform’s circumference, then took up a position himself equidistant from both of them.
Kavus thumped the shaft of his mace against the wicker floor and cried out, ‘Now I join the angels!’
They began unhooding the eagles.
The first bird whose sight Martin restored paced the floor irritably for a few seconds, then feinted towards his hand as if to bite it, but once it noticed the meat dangling above its head it flapped its wings and rose into the air as far as the harness would allow it.
When the ropes grew taut, though, it seemed to grasp the nature of its situation perfectly, because it gave up struggling and returned to the floor. It knew it couldn’t reach the meat; there was nothing to be done but wait for the humans’ next bizarre, capricious action.
Alarmed, Martin looked to Shahin. His bird was on the floor too, but he was encouraging it with a series of nods and grunts; perhaps these were signals used in hunting. After a few seconds, Shahin’s bird heeded the cues and flew up towards the lure.
Martin turned to see what Javeed was doing; he was already mimicking Shahin. Martin felt weirdly self-conscious; the noises were embarrassing enough coming from Shahin, and his own attempts would surely sound sillier: all this, in the presence of royalty. But the Lord of the World would be even less pleased if his precious sky-pavilion toppled over on the grass, unbalanced by one tardy peasant.