This is the way a bodyguard is constant to his duty: he sleeps only when his charge sleeps, and is unfailingly present from the moment his charge opens his eyes.

Daryoon assured this was so by waking Arslan personally, each and every morning.

The heels of his boots struck soft echoes as he walked through the halls of Ecbatana Palace. High arched windows admitted light from the dawn, and it mingled with the dull orange of the guttering lamps to multiply his shadow, making a dark reflection of his dark figure. At this hour of the morning, these high and lonely corridors were silent.

He stopped before a closed door, unmarked and unremarkable, except for the two guards flanking the threshold. Like him, they were blatantly armed. Each man stood with a relaxed, wide-legged stance, arms clasped at the small of the back. They did not lean against the wall. Discipline in the ranks of the royal guard was such that men who fell asleep on duty were not given the opportunity to repeat the mistake.

Daryoon approved of discipline.

He nodded briefly to the men. This was a courtesy not demanded by Parusian etiquette, as he was a field commander, and they only bodyguards. A soldier posted to the palace garrison was required, from the beginning of his assignment, to accept his own inconsequence as a matter of course. A noble learned young how to let his gaze pass over people of no influence. Daryoon, however, was never quite able to forget that these were armed fighters, capable of independent thought, and on occasion, unexpected violence. So he nodded, and each guard returned the gesture with a slightly deeper nod of their own.

Daryoon walked into the antechamber of the prince's apartments, a reception room of exquisite ornamentation, scrupulously arranged from the tasseled carpets on the floor to the tall, curtained windows. The furniture featured stiff backs and smooth upholstery, the better to display the high quality of wood and fabric to advantage. The cushions looked far too hard to prove comfortable, and the tables too delicate to withstand the weight of a full wineglass. Daryoon did not linger.

Instead, he entered the bedchamber, and immediately had to step over a discarded pair of boots. He kicked them to the corner. A half-dozen books escaped the desk for the divan, whose pillows in turn lay in a semicircular pile on the floor.

Autumn was firmly entrenched among the cliffs of Mount Elvend, but lingered in its descent to the foothills. As the air of Ecbatana clung stubbornly to the warmth of late summer, so the curtains of the heir-prince's bed remained tied back to their posts. Daryoon needed only to stand at the bedside and murmur, "Your Highness."

It might have been midwinter to judge by the pile of blankets on the bed. The figure at its center, anonymously wrapped crimson sheets, did not stir.

Daryoon's voice remained low, but implacable. "Your Highness."

He had just decided that a third repetition would earn the prince an extra cycle of horseback bladework during his morning drills when the bundle decided to stir, and moonlight hair bled over the red sheets.

The kings of the current Parusian dynasty were formed along two disparate patterns. The people of Parus considered this most favorable. The devout pointed to it as a reflection of the two faces of the goddess. The more worldly were simply pleased to have variety in the faces minted on their coins.

Andragoras was a king poured from the prevailing mold, all brown and reddened, with the bulk that guaranteed favorable odds in a fight. But Arslan, like his great-grandfather Berinez, would never be more than lean, even when he reached his final growth. In keeping with the less common pattern, his face and his hair were pale, the first prone to burn, and the second to bleach white under the hard sun of summer.

Arslan attempted to simultaneously disentangle himself from the bedclothes and to mask his yawns. He sat bare-chested in the middle of the bed and stared blearily around the room. He wasn't finding what he was looking for and, from the lines of thought marring his forehead, it was too early to muster adequate concentration.

Daryoon took pity. "On the chair," he said, nodding in the approximate direction.

Arslan's only audible reply was an ungracious grunt. He swung out of bed, bare feet slapping on the marble floor, and padded to the indicated chair. Clothing lay on the seat in a heap, forlorn and wrinkling. He extricated a short-sleeved tunic and pulled it over his head, pausing to free his hair from the collar.

The majority of the men who served the prince would have fetched the tunic themselves, holding it ready for the young heir to slip into. Such servants, to be entirely proper, would have hung it with the remainder of the prince's wardrobe the previous evening. But Daryoon was a soldier, and only grudgingly present in the palace at all. He was distinctly not a valet.

And considering he meant for the prince to be hefting a sword very shortly, he felt it appropriate that the boy, setting his royal titles aside, could manage to dress himself.

"It's rather cold in here." The pale eyes were now sufficiently awake to focus on Daryoon's face, but the voice was still husky with sleep.

"Gets the blood flowing." Then, belatedly, "Your Highness."

Arslan rolled his eyes and wandered out to the balcony. The city below was a garden, each unbarred window billowing a bright film of curtains like a flower unfurling petals. But even from this steep aerie, with dawn barely broken, the morning sun offered only marginal warmth.

Daryoon restrained a grin. Tormenting a just coherent Arslan was a pleasure he hadn't anticipated six months prior, when he'd learned of his reassignment. He hadn't anticipated anything pleasant about serving the heir-prince those six months ago.

He'd been happily encamped on the northern floodplains of the Okusasu River, his horse kicking up great quantities of mud from the March thaw as he wheeled between the regiments of his tenth, bawling orders to his sergeants. The thousand cavalry under his direct command were all returned from their late winter leave. It was time to come back to the training field, to polish away the rust collected during the cold, frozen months.

Daryoon and his best sergeant were enjoying a spirited argument over the soldiers' need for remedial short-range bladework when a young page, indistinguishable from a hundred other boys in a light covering of spring mud, ran up to his mount.

"Lord Daryoon," he gasped. "The grand commander wishes to speak with you, sir."

Daryoon nodded to the boy, and then to his sergeant. The man possessed twice the years of experience of Daryoon himself, and could easily direct the drills without his commander's oversight. Indeed, he was back to work the moment Daryoon turned his mare's head towards the center of the encampment.

As his horse cantered across the soggy fields, Daryoon considered the source of the summons. If Vafuriez had called for him under the mantle of the grand commander, then there was little for Daryoon to ponder. He knew the men under his command, even this early in the fighting season, could easily match any other regiment in the royal army. With a little work, and a little extra sweat, they would again be a true credit to themselves, to King, and to Parus.

And a credit to his own personal leadership. This was a point not lost on an ambitious young officer. Daryoon had both the talent and the connections to aspire to the rank of marsbaan. If effort counted for anything, he would earn the title younger than any ever had.

But there was blood to consider, and blood could call favors that even a grand commander could not order. Vafuriez, the youngest son of a landed family, had chosen to make a name for himself in the army rather than live off his eldest brother's generosity. And when that elder brother sired four sons of his own, Vafuriez encouraged the youngest to follow the same path, to the point of securing the raw young fighter a highly sought commission.

Now, after a decade of hardening experience, that soldier reined up before the largest pavilion, located centrally among the wide-flung training fields, and dismounted. Daryoon ducked his head through the tent flap fully expecting to be back among his men within ten minutes.

He didn't last five before he was pacing the length of his uncle's floor.

A leopard is vicious when cornered and caged.

"This isn't a demotion, Daryoon." Vafuriez, unimpressed by his nephew's display, examined the sheaf of parchment occupying both his desktop and the majority of his attention. The grand commander of the armies of Parus could easily have passed for a bookkeeper, dressed as he was in unadorned ivory linen. Only when he reached for a misfiled page could Daryoon see the glint of fine-gauge mail at his throat.

"It's just the opposite. A great honor. Most men would leap with gratitude at such a charge."

Daryoon gestured aimlessly. "I'm to be grateful for this? A year of trailing behind the heir-prince as he strolls from one gilded room to another?"

"You're to provide an impenetrable barrier between the prince and any who would harm him," Vafuriez said patiently. "And I'm putting you in charge of his training regimen. His Majesty wants him ready for the field by next spring. If you can work wonders with a thousand cavalry, I think you can manage a single heir-prince." He scribbled his signature to the parchment in his hands and laid the sheet aside. "Teach him something that will keep him alive, won't you?"

"If I wanted to tend children, I'd take a wife and produce my own."

Vafuriez set down his pen. "This 'child' is your prince. Misra willing, he will one day be your king." All trace of the nondescript bookkeeper drowned in the ice of his voice. "You will refer to him with the respect he is due."

Daryoon ceased his pacing. "Yes, Commander. My apologies."

"Daryoon, sit," ordered Vafuriez calmly, his hand extended to a chair set at an angle to his desk. Daryoon recognized the quiet seriousness in his voice, the blend of patient father and stern commander, and quietly obeyed, careful to school his energy to stillness.

Vafuriez closed his eyes. "The prince Arslan," he said, "exists in a most unusual, and most unstable position. The king named him as his heir only because there was no other choice." Here he paused to look searchingly at Daryoon's face; Daryoon realized he himself was taking only the shallowest of breaths. To say such things, and to be overheard, was to skirt the edges of treason.

Vafuriez continued. "He hasn't the shield of royal favor that he should. And until he is formally blooded, none of the privileges of his majority. Consider, Daryoon. An heir-prince, with no private guard. No unmonitored coffer. No one sworn to his exclusive service."

"He has lived until now because no one can imagine him a threat," said Daryoon.

Vafuriez nodded.

"Would your lordship consider this a permanent assignment?"

"No. You get him through this next year, and he will be past the most vulnerable point."

Daryoon sighed. "Commander. I acknowledge that there is a need here. But I do not see why I should be the best suited." He stared blindly past the heavy canvas walls of the pavilion. Had he not shown himself to be the most dedicated, the most promising of the King's warriors? Vafuriez knew his ambition, and had supported him up to this point. His element was the battlefield, not the throneroom. "If my performance with my current command has been less than satisfactory, I assure you that the situation can be remedied. This action--" the word gritted through his teeth as would a curse-- "is not necessary."

Vafuriez shook his head. "There's nothing wrong with your command. And you can set aside the false modesty. You're completely aware that your tenth is the finest in this marsbaan, or in any other." He leaned back in his chair. "But if you desire to lead a marsbaan, you must learn there's more required than the ability to execute stratagems."

"Such as?"

Vafuriez's smile was beatific. "Politics."

Thus Daryoon was sent to learn diplomacy from one half his age.

A dull knock sounded at the thick wood of the Prince's door. Despite the striking of the breakfast hour, and even with the presence of the royal guard, Daryoon did not abandon caution. Hand on sword hilt, he examined Arslan's station at the balcony, and noted the prince did not stand in direct line with the door. He opened it left-handed, drawing it towards his body, using it as he would any heavy shield.

The tow-headed boy who entered was no threat. Unless one counted the risk of his tripping over clumsy adolescent feet, and sending the silvered tray in his hands soaring through the air like a perverse, outsized discus.

The boy might have been all of eleven years old. Teeth worried furiously at his lower lip, and his awe-rounded eyes took in every detail of the room. Given his apparent nervousness, unintentional regicide was not out of the question. He was doubtlessly of noble blood to be given the honor of serving the prince. But a son of minor import for Daryoon not to recognize him. Though his memory was worthless for names, he clung to faces. One never knew when it would be necessary to distinguish friend from foe at a moment's notice.

Daryoon held his breath until the awkward tray was safely settled on the waiting table.

"Your breakfast, Your Royal Highness," the boy said.

Arslan responded to the announcement with a nod over his shoulder.

The boy's eyes widened further at this lofty acknowledgment, and he crept out of the front room with the dignity only the publicly lauded can carry off. Daryoon closed the door behind him, but not before hearing footsteps break into a scamper.

He shook his head. He hadn't understood it when he'd first witnessed it half a year ago. He didn't grasp it any better now. All Arslan had to do was spare them a glance, and adoring servants fell at his feet. It wasn't just the boy. Gray-bearded men with thirty years of service, faces like stone before Andragoras himself, would bow a fraction more deeply to his heir. It couldn't be political skill; it was too untutored for that. Misra forbid Arslan should have smiled at this particular boy. The child would have been his forever.

But they already were his, in all truth. It was hardly necessary to go around wasting familiar smiles.

The tray held more elaborate porcelain and silverware than it did food. But though the presentation was elaborate, the food was simple. Daryoon bypassed the refined cutlery for a thick slice of warm, dark bread, and headed for the doorway, chewing absently.

Arslan abandoned the balcony, finger-combing hair doubly tousled by pillows and by the morning breeze. He repatriated his boots from the corner, then picked up a wide belt from the chair serving as an armoire and buckled it on, reaching to the floor for a sheathed sword. Except for the plain, leather-wrapped hilt, it closely resembled the ornate blade he carried when in formal armor. He slid it through the frog on his belt.

He was fourteen, and growing with all expected speed. Breakfast could not fail to tempt for long. He took the heel of the loaf, eating with one hand, and snagged a heavy bunch of grapes with the other as he followed Daryoon out the door.

"You're in a hurry," he said around a mouthful of food. He nodded briefly at the guards' salute.

"Why should we linger?" asked Daryoon. He did not slow his step.

Arslan swallowed the rest of the bread in the manner of starving adolescents, seemingly not pausing to chew. "Do you have someplace else to be? Someone else to bully?"

Daryoon was not gracious when teased; it reminded him of his older brothers. He looked sharply at the young man walking beside him, but Arslan only popped a grape into his mouth and gazed resolutely forward.

He snorted. "Today's bullying hasn't even begun. Your Highness."

Daryoon was smugly satisfied to hear Arslan's faint sigh. He reached over and stole a grape.

Their training yard was not part of the field associated with the main palace garrison where the royal guard drilled. Not that Arslan couldn't learn anything from those soldiers. In a month, maybe two, Daryoon would consider taking him to the garrison, to have him watch, and to learn the maneuvers useful in a formal challenge of honor, or the tricks that would win a dockside brawl. Those soldiers were known among the regular army as the immortal regiment, and came honestly to the accolade.

Though Daryoon hadn't arrived at the palace by choice, his pride demanded that he carry out his orders with the fierce attention to detail he was known for. This left no room for coddling the pride of others. But while he had no qualms about throwing the heir-prince to the dirt, he didn't feel that it needed to be done before his own guards.

He had chosen this courtyard on his second day at the palace. With an unattractive northern prospect towards the backside of the kitchens, and two windowed walls belonging to corridors, it was little utilized, and sufficiently isolated to prevent both undue humiliation and interruption. The ground was sparsely covered with short grass, touched this morning with a sheen of dew. It would vanish into the dry air as the sun climbed the sky, but initially the footing would be unsure. Daryoon immediately reevaluated his primary attack plan to capitalize on the possible advantage.

He unsheathed his sword, taking a moment to sight down the long, continuous curve of blade and hilt. It was a true cavalry weapon, designed for sweeping strikes from horseback, but he'd grown too accustomed to its well-balanced length to abandon it, even when sparring on foot. Handling a broadsword only forced him to overextend, and the compensation ruined his stance.

An unusual amount of clatter carried from the sprawling kitchens to the still air of the yard. Arslan frowned.

"What day is it?"

Satisfied with his survey, Daryoon commenced a series of lunges towards the unthreatening eastern wall. It did not benefit the crumbling plaster. "It's the morning of Her Majesty's birthday."

"Oh, yes," Arslan said. "I knew there was something I wanted to forget."

"Does Your Highness object to birthdays on principle?" He considered the wall, then unleashed a fierce volley of slashing cuts just inches from the surface. Any other enemy would have crumbled; it was fortunate that the wall refrained from doing so. An entire wing of the palace might have followed.

"No, no problem with birthdays. Birthdays are perfectly acceptable. It's the ball accompanying this one that I take issue with."

Daryoon could sympathize. "Wining and dining. And dancing." Something in his voice made the pleasantries sound like tribulations.

Arslan loosed and drew his own single-handed broadsword, making an experimental thrust. With a straight blade, wide at the forte and tapering to a point, it was intended to pierce armor, not hack through. "I was thinking more of the assembled aristocracy," he said, "and the power struggles. And the jockeying for position. And the not so subtle hints as to how I might aid their causes." He slashed at the empty air, decapitating invisible opponents. "And the endless series of daughters."

Daryoon realized that there were advantages to having multiple older brothers. With little chance of inheriting either title or substantial holdings of land, he had never been a favored prospect for marriage, and was therefore left to pursue whatever lovers he favored.

"Unfortunately, Your Highness is not at liberty to run away and join the army."

Arslan perked up immediately, and left off his attack on the hydrangea. "Is that what you did?"

Daryoon shrugged. "More or less."

"Hmm." Arslan looked thoughtful. "But, then, look how it turned out." He smiled. "You still have to attend the ball."

The prince made a good point. The people of the southern plains possessed an abundance of pride, and bred black-haired sons and black-haired horses with equally fierce dispositions. But they were not a people given to opulence. Running from the ceremony of a minor aristocrat's hall had only brought him to the city of kings. Tonight, with every guest set to make a memorable impression, he would be surrounded by more wealth than his father had witnessed in a lifetime.

He turned to the prince. "You do have a gift for Her Majesty." It was not a question.

"Of course," Arslan said. "Not that there were a lot of choices. You try choosing a something suitable for a queen." He windmilled his right arm in wide circles. "A set of bracelets. Gold with peridots." He shrugged, and switched to his left arm. "She often wears green. I asked the jeweler for something elegant."

Daryoon considered this. Then he considered the possible repercussions. "His Majesty might commission jewelry as well," he said.

"Oh, he did," Arslan grinned. Daryoon was unsurprised to learn the prince already knew the details of the king's gift. He made a habit of overhearing the right conversations. "It's some massive necklace dripping with sapphires."

Daryoon snorted. "That's guaranteed draw the attention of the nobles."

Arslan's mouth turned hard. "That will please him."

Daryoon, who kept no women of his own, had never found reason to learn of the intricacies surrounding gold and gemstones. He frowned, and tried to remember his own mother, with her dark hair and milk-pale skin, and what ornaments she'd favored. He could only picture one particular pendant with a single, reddish stone, and the way it had always settled in the hollow of her throat.

"She might wear simpler pieces more often, though," he ventured.

Arslan nodded even before Daryoon finished speaking.

"And that will please me."

Politics, again. Politics, eternally. It was tedious, these continuous, fruitless posturings one was forced to assume just maintain ground, much less to make any uphill progress. Daryoon preferred his aggression unveiled. If another man wanted what you held, he should pick up a sword and wrest it from you, if he had the strength and ability to do so. It saved an enormous amount of time.

And on the matter of wasted time, the prince was standing unguarded in the middle of the yard, still mulling over the coming evening. Stopping to daydream could kill you, whatever the persuasion of battle being fought.

The glare of sun on steel ripped Arslan from his reverie. He narrowly dodged Daryoon's blow, and was forced to scramble backwards to keep his limbs intact. Belatedly, he raised his own sword in cover.

"Your enemies will rarely have the courtesy to call you to guard," said Daryoon.

Arslan blew a strand of hair from his eyes, but kept his mouth shut and both hands firmly wrapped around the hilt.

Words were replaced by the siren cry of metal slicing air and the scuff of boot heels over grass and dirt. Daryoon had the advantage of power and of reach; Arslan had the maneuverability of a double-edged blade and the reflexes of youth. When the prince faltered, Daryoon checked himself, and made Arslan repeat his motions first at quarter, then at half, and only then at full speed. Arslan demonstrated his command of the sequence first alone, and then against Daryoon's counterattack, thus to ingrain the lesson.

Upon his arrival last spring, Daryoon feared he would find a pampered boy who barely knew which end of a sword to hold. On this one point, at least, he had underestimated Andragoras. The king valued military strength far too greatly to see it uncultivated in his heir; no son he claimed would shame him on that front. Arslan needed burnish, not forging.

But while his previous instructors may have been competent, they still, in Daryoon's opinion, hadn't pushed the prince far enough. Not by half.

Daryoon stepped back, considered his student-opponent, and attacked on Arslan's weak left. Arslan responded with a move that should have twisted his ankle, but instead transported him behind Daryoon and placed his sword at his neck.

Daryoon blinked. The point of Arslan's sword continued to hover over his collarbone.

"No swordmaster taught you that footwork. I certainly didn't."

Arslan lowered his arm, and rounded on Daryoon with a grin. "It was the dancing-master, actually."

Daryoon scrubbed a hand over his face. Misra aid him. "It's unacceptable."

"It's effective." The grin was now a smirk.

"Then repeat," Daryoon said, sword descending in a flash barely parried by the prince. Again Arslan executed the traditional footwork with the final unconventional sidestep, but this time Daryoon turned, snagged his blade on Arslan's, and slid to brace on the broadsword's quillons, throwing his full weight behind the thrust. Arslan's adapted stance, coupled with the betraying slick dew underfoot, proved unstable. He ended sprawled on his backside.

"It's unacceptable," Daryoon repeated, circling his fallen opponent. His lowered blade was the only forgiving element of his visage.

Arslan picked himself up, brushing the dirt from himself and from his sword. "It was effective when it was a surprise." He reassumed a classic, two-handed defensive stance. "In the future, I'll only use it when you're not expecting it."

Evidently, the prince had grown in stubbornness, as well. It was likely the result of the company he was keeping.

"Fine," Daryoon said, and whipped his blade up from Arslan's right hip to left shoulder. But Arslan neatly backstepped, slapping Daryoon's blade away with a quick, economical parry, and dove back in for an offensive jab of his own.

This was play. Black knight to white king, the courtyard was a chessboard. Arslan's cries with each point he made struck the walls, and echoed back to tangle with Daryoon's shouts to lock that knee, there, steady that foot, firm the line of your swordarm. It's the only strength to be called on when alone on the practice field. On the plain of battle. On the throne. And for one brief, fragile minute, every piece fell into place, and the thrill of violent movement obliterated thought.

Then Arslan made a mistake. He deflected Daryoon's overhand strike neatly, with one hand on the hilt and the other gripping the dulled ricasso, forcing Daryoon to overbalance by the slightest degree. But through this flicker of opportunity, Arslan did not press. He stepped back, regrouped.

Daryoon cursed at the prince, at the lost moment of perfection, even as he regained his balance. "You failed to follow through!"

"Follow what through?" Arslan was shouting. "There was no opening!"

Daryoon swore again. "Then you make one!" Arslan knew better, Daryoon was sure. He had seen Arslan fight with more speed and fluidity in the weeks and months past. Yet he was so inconsistent!

Daryoon knew how to explain the motions of fighting. He knew how to break it down into comprehensible pieces. But he didn't know how to teach reliability, how to teach the texture of instinct.

He sighed, and reminded himself of patience. "You can not," he said, "take the time to step back. You do not have the stamina. It's not your fault. It will improve. When you are older."

Arslan frowned on the edge of anger, and Daryoon knew he was saying the wrong things.

He stared down at Arslan's bare hand, at the unadorned sword he held, and at the fingers lodged between ridges in the leather-wrapped hilt. He tried to picture the same hand in black gauntlet and gold plate, and the sword gilded with formality, a confection of jewels harboring steel.

It proved too strange an image. He raised his own hand, wanting to make some sort of sign, some gesture with the power to negate what was to come. Not knowing what else to do, he let his hand fall onto Arslan's shoulder, and looked him full in the face, imagining how he would look in the spring. In full battle regalia.

When he was older.

"If I live so long," said Arslan.

"You will," Daryoon promised.

The moment stretched. Arslan was unreadable. When he remembered to be aware of his royalty, he could blank his eyes to silent mirrors. It would serve him well when he became king.

"But for now," Daryoon said, dropping his hand, "back to work."

*

When the sun crawled to the highest curve of the sky and dripped heat on the earth and her inhabitants alike, those who could took to their rooms to find their rest while they could. These included the select few who could garner entrance to the Queen's celebration in the coming night. Their work would come in the cool hours of the evening, and be carried out with expressions schooled into bland masks, and the most acutely select of words. Some had space to claim in the linked buildings that comprised the royal palace. More used claim of blood tie or allegiance to fill the fine homes of the nobles, each a palace in its own right, perched like exotic birds on the highest terraces of the city, well above the tight pack of ragged construction and ragged human life that sprawled to the stone of the city wall.

The grounds of the palace were far from still. Noise and steam rose from the warren of the kitchens. The rhythmic shout of a sergeant, his voice sharp with the clipped accent of the mountains, carried through the flat air from the barracks of the king's regiment. Still, Daryoon fell into sleep easily, even under the glare of the high sun. He had learned the trick of forcing sleep years ago, in the space between night watches, stretched out on his cloak with nothing to lull him but the snores of other soldiers and the perpetual low fear of an ambitious raid. Here, in this safe room, lying on a mattress, he stared at a sunbeam beside his bed and tracked the particles of dust. He thought of knives and words and other things with sharp edges, then closed his eyes.

A brief knock jarred them open. Long shadows had spread over his legs.

"Yes!" he said to the closed door. The knock sounded again, but far fainter, striking another door down the hall.

He rose and dressed, pouring water into a bedside basin to splash his face. It was tepid. Hardly worth the effort. He stared at the surface of the bowl and watched his reflection develop from the dying ripples.

To judge by his pallor, it might have been the end of winter instead of the final days of a long summer. His hair was uniformly dark, not streaked with the amber that came from a summer riding bare-headed through the heat of the plains. Out there with his men, the fineness of his tent and the quality of steel in the making of his arms were the only apparent comforts of his rank. And such details were as easily attributed to the level of his command as to the level of his birth. When he fought in the middle of his cavalry, his gold insignia meant nothing, dulled by dirt and blood.

Here, though, he lived like a courtier. Like a younger son come to serve a lord.

"Enough," he said to the reflection in the bowl, and left the room.

For the second time that day Daryoon walked the pillared paths to the prince's apartments, but the way now held none of the morning's peace. As he entered a wide, fountained court, making for the steps at the far end that led to the heart of the palace, his path was crisscrossed by servants running one errand or another. The sun had grown heavy and red as it fell to the horizon, and the air was thickening with the smell of cooking spices. An irregular breeze from the east carried pockets of foreign incense up from the city. He turned the final corner and sidestepped to dodge a young noble, who dashed past in a blur of copper hair and honey-gold robes.

The guards at the prince's door were not the same men as had stood there in the morning, but the difference did not matter. They still acknowledged Daryoon and let him pass unchallenged.

Arslan stood in the center of the formal front room, dressed in cream and ivory. His valet held a dark green robe at the ready. It was so thoroughly embroidered with gold that it could likely stand without the assistance. He helped the prince shrug into it, and fastened the clasp at the throat.

Arslan looked up as Daryoon walked through the door. He stared.

Daryoon spread his arms and checked himself over. His laces were tied and his buckles buckled; he didn't see where he'd forgotten anything.

He frowned at the prince. "What?"

Arslan shrugged. It made his shoulders glint. "So much for the Black Knight," he said.

Daryoon's pants and undertunic were indeed black, cuffs and collar stiff with silver thread, but his surcoat was wine red, and edged with the same silver. He tugged at the tight cuffs. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with it," Arslan said, head tilting back as the valet tugged a comb through his hair. "I didn't say it was wrong. You just don't look like a shadow." The valet settled the circlet of Arslan's rank onto his head, lifting his hair over the gold. He continued the combing. "For a change," Arslan added.

Daryoon sighed. There wasn't anything wrong with shadows. No one stared at a shadow. In fact, shadows were very good at catching people unawares. And if other people found the black intimidating, then so much the better. But he couldn't explain this to someone who looked as Arslan did.

"I think that will do," said the prince over his shoulder.

The valet withdrew the comb and took a step back. "Of course, Your Highness."

Arslan took a deep breath. "Well!" he said, turning to Daryoon. "Are we ready?"

"Of course, Your Highness," he mimicked.

Arslan struck Daryoon's shoulder, and not gently, on his way out the door.

The crowds grew thicker as they approached the heart of the palace. Stringed instruments hummed in the distance, throwing a net of vapor over the chatter of the guests. Daryoon thought he could feel the chill of the polished stone through the thin soles of his formal boots. Wearing them was as good as going barefoot, and he found it unjust that he should be denied even the small pleasure of stomping to his doom. "I hate this," he grumbled, so low that Arslan apparently didn't hear him.

Or perhaps Daryoon was just being ignored. That was yet another advantage to being a shadow.

There were a hundred ways to arrive at one point from another once inside the walls of the palace. Through the centuries, the kings of Parus had shown restraint in their construction, keeping the long stretches of open court and garden intact. Unbroken space was the greatest of luxuries, an opulent indulgence in the confines of a walled compound. But it made for a challenge to secure. Tonight only one gate was opened, and the guard deliberately stationed along the varied approaches to the great hall to funnel the stream of attendees into the single entrance at the north.

This was a corridor without windows, its walls faced with marble the color of buttermilk that failed to mute the imposition of the underlying stone. The ceiling was vaulted and strung with copper lamps dripping with beads. It was just wide enough for two men to walk abreast. When events demanded Daryoon's presence before the formal court, he preferred to pass through it quickly.

But tonight, yards of artful silk gowns held him in check.

"I hate this," he said, slightly louder this time, into the honey curls of the woman standing in front of him. She inched forward, and he advanced by another minute step.

Arslan stood at his side, but unlike Daryoon, did not fidget. No one else came within five feet of the prince. It was a remarkable margin, given the structure of the hallway.

"You said that already," Arslan noted.

Daryoon glanced sideways at the prince. Arslan did not bother to return the look. "It bears repeating," he said to the composed profile. "This is stifling."

"It's meant to be," Arslan said. He sounded like the tutor with the exceptionally long nose Daryoon had frustrated when he was four years old. "It's so you'll be dazzled by the opulence that awaits you."

"It's so an invading force has to storm the hall single file. They're easier to pick off that way." Daryoon envisioned the honey blond in Turanian armor, and counted the chinks that would admit an arrow.

They shuffled forward, mindful of the woman's trailing hemline. "There's a thought for the palace defense," Arslan mused. "Have a steady stream of balls, and no one will be able to get in."

"Don't," said Daryoon. "I'll desert."

Arslan laughed lightly. "No, you wouldn't."

Daryoon turned to look at him. He even opened his mouth, though he did not know what wanted to say. He never found out. The path cleared, and then they were there.

The main hall of Ecbatana Palace was immense. It needed to be, for Andragoras ruled extensive lands, and there were kinglets and vassals and attendant retinues to be accommodated on ceremonial occasions. In this court, failure to pay the king his due was an oversight swiftly noted, and more swiftly punished. Andragoras' underlings were proportionately attentive.

Stepping into the hall was like falling into a well. The floor was a high-polished field of seamless onyx, studded with inset zircons. At night, with the lamps burning high, it glistened like the starry heavens fallen to earth. No walls, and no pillars broke the illusion; the perimeter was ringed with arches, wide and massively jointed at the base, then climbing upwards in progressively diminutive tiers. Each arch straddled a low flight of steps leading to the walled gardens beyond. The underbelly of the great domed ceiling was a hypnotic swirl of enameled geometrics, snagging at the curious gaze, luring it to search ever higher for an end to the endless knot.

The hall was a study in optical tricks, and served to dazzle and unbalance the petitioners who came seeking justice from the throne. The law dictated accessibility. It did not dictate the terms of justice. Distracted men proved easier to dismiss with their supplications denied.

It also provided a stunning setting for the flower of Parusian society to bloom.

A contingent of six guards flanked the steps descending to the main floor. Outwardly an honor guard, Daryoon knew they were watching for any flagrant displays of weaponry, and had surely confiscated the odd ceremonial blade that some ignorant fool from the hinterlands had attempted to enter with. The rules of propriety required observance. Yet he was also certain they had missed a hundred other concealed daggers. This included the two he himself carried. But complete disarmament was not the point, as it would be impossible to seize every weapon from this crowd of the paranoid and powerful. The guard was a display of force, a warning to any who would initiate violence.

Daryoon did not trust Arslan to the strength of the warning. He held his confidence only in his own skill and preparation.

Voices struck the dome and fragmented in unpredictable patterns, filling the hall with broken noise. The crowd was most dense under the right-hand arches where servants, dressed from neck to toe in black, stood as still as statues, balancing chilled and steaming platters on upturned palms. Very few in attendance stood near the center of the room. At the far end of the hall, a black dais swelled in progressive wide stairs from the floor, and two unequal thrones, black but unstarred, held two unequal figures. A swath of white carpet sliced across the floor. No one walked upon it. No one walked to its end.

Arslan stepped onto the flawless path and lengthened his stride, breaking away from Daryoon. Daryoon let him go, but trailed a few yards behind, keeping his feet to the stone floor.

The carpet traced the angles of the stairs and ended on the highest step, one level below the thrones of Andragoras and Tahimine. Arslan climbed to its end, then sank to one knee, bowing his head, blurring green and ivory against the white background.

There was nothing muted about the king's appearance. Blue and gold and copper-haired, he burned like a bonfire, with the same unpredictable nature possessed by any flame of that scale. At his feet crouched a matched pair of hunting cats, collared and chained, restless with the dumb desire to chase and kill. The first possessed eyes and pelt the color of hot bronze, marked well with black; the other was its negative image in black striped with gold. The ends of the chains met in Andragoras' casual grip.

At his side sat the queen, remote and imprecise in a half-length veil and layered pale silk. Her long neck was hung with sapphires as numerous as raindrops in a thunderstorm. Though she was the ostensible cause for the surrounding celebration, she sat curiously removed from the proceedings on the black island with its untouchable bridge of white, and was more like a portrait than a person: lovely to the eye, but too precious to touch.

The thrones were not so greatly parted that the king could not lay his forearm alongside the queen's, and blanket her hand with his own.

"Your Majesty," said Arslan to the king, though he did not look at him. There was no response. He titled his fair head, and repeated, "Your Majesty," to the queen. Only then did he raise his eyes, though he remained on one knee.

"Arslan," said Tahimine, with distant, proper diction. Daryoon was startled; it was like hearing a porcelain doll talk. Though he had heard the queen speak before, several times, he perpetually forgot the sound of her voice.

By this time a scattering of listeners had drifted close to the dais, predominantly councilors and advisors Daryoon vaguely recognized, who knew just where to stand to overhear the exchange without the risk of drawing the king's notice. Arslan did not look at them. He had been performing for an audience since he set foot in the hall, and did not need to see who listened.

"Your Majesty," he said again to Tahimine, "I wish you joy on your birthday. And I have brought you a small gift, to mark the occasion." He withdrew a small package wrapped in linen from his robe, and extended it to her. "If I may?"

"Of course," she said.

Arslan rose and mounted the final step, suddenly seeming very young and very tall beside the seated queen. Andragoras, his half-lidded gaze on Arslan, shifted in his seat. The movement jangled the length of his cats' chains. He released Tahimine's hand, and let his fingers drift under her veil to touch her jeweled hair.

The queen unwound the present, until three bracelets of green stone set in gold lay on her lap.

"They are lovely, Arslan," she said in her carefully correct voice, and slipped all three over her left hand, where they settled with a faint chime on her wrist. In that moment, and for the first time that Daryoon could remember, he thought she looked real. Like someone's mother, wearing mismatched gifts.

Then Andragoras spoke. "It's a pretty present," he said to Arslan, making it clear he was unimpressed by either the gift or the giver. "But this is the queen's celebration. You do not want to monopolize her time."

Arslan said, "I do not desire that monopoly." The prince made the pronoun a stormcloud, weightless but threatening. It was subtle, yet Daryoon noticed. He saw the king set his jaw, and rub a thumb idly over the chains in his grip.

Then Arslan withdrew to the carpeted top step and sank again to one knee, his chin to his chest. "Your Majesty," he said to the king. He rose, then bowed again, gently. "Your Majesty."

Neither king nor queen spoke as Arslan turned and retraced his steps to the bare stone floor. Perhaps their faces were not as silent as their voices, but Daryoon could not attest to this; he kept his eyes on Arslan, and fell into his wake as he walked towards the guests milling around the black-clad servants.

For the rest of the evening, Daryoon spent considerable energy not looking at the dais. He kept himself occupied tracking Arslan's progress through the hall, and it was enough of a challenge to hold his attention. Lord Gizaret's wife was the first to lead her daughter like an obedient, well-groomed puppy before the prince, who accepted the introduction gracefully and asked the girl to dance. This set the pattern for the evening, and Arslan was barely given a chance to catch his breath before another grand dame delivered a lovely young relation for his consideration.

Privately, Daryoon thought Arslan would have found a litter of puppies more entertaining. The girls all seemed to know the correct steps, but whether it was sheer delight or sheer terror at being in close contact with the prince, their movements were stiff. Daryoon stationed himself at a low, deep windowsill where he would not be called upon for conversation. He watched for the dance step that had brought Arslan's sword to his neck that morning, but did not see it.

Night made her complete and inexorable entrance long before the final guests did. Arriving late was a deliberate play for the attention of the more timely multitude. It had to be. When even the beggars in the streets of the city knew the particulars of the Queen's gala, a petty lordling with a red-inked invitation could hardly fail to note the place and time. But none of the stragglers achieved their desired theatrical entrance, for by the time the lamps were lit the hall was thronged, and view of the arched doorway was blocked by the crush of perfumed bodies.

The current pair of featured musicians, performing on harp and drums, reeled through their finale, then lingered in the polite applause of the dancers before retreating from the hall. The music was taken up again immediately, this time by three pipers on flutes of light wood. Daryoon was not trained in these things, not beyond his personal experience in listening, but in his own admittedly crude judgment these were better musicians than most.

He assumed it was Lord Syvet, member of the king's council and driving force behind most political summits, who was responsible for the selection. Syvet, though a huge, roughly made man, and physically awkward against a fine backdrop, was ironically the greatest of Ecbatana's artistic patrons. Where the many nobles primarily kept their house musicians and artists in the same sense of competition with which they kept their verdant gardens, Syvet had an authentic appreciation for fine music. And no musician would be welcome inside the great hall tonight without the patronage of a suitably ranked lord.

Arslan was not dancing at the moment, but stood on the edge of the floor, rocking on his heels in time with the music. Daryoon seized a goblet of sweet yellow wine from the tray of a passing servant and wove his way towards him. He was a few steps from his goal when a velvet-clad body stumbled against him, forcing him into a dramatic lunge to keep the wine in the glass and not splashed across Arslan's back.

"Thousand pardons," the body said, drifting away.

Daryoon clutched the goblet with rather more strength than the crystal required. He didn't care about the glass; he was trying to keep his hand away from the stiletto strapped invisibly beneath the sleeve of his left forearm.

He made it to Arslan's side without further incident. "Here," he said, and thrust the glass at the prince. "Before you tip over."

Arslan seemed unsurprised at Daryoon's abrupt appearance from nowhere, and accepted the offering. "I'll make a courtier out of you yet," he said, and took a sip. He grimaced. "This tastes like sugar water."

"It's cold," said Daryoon.

"So it is." Arslan drank down the rest. "Thank you."

Daryoon flushed. He was, in his own opinion, absurdly pleased by the small courtesy. It held no significance, beyond that Arslan had spent the evening at his most noble and aloof, and was probably relieved to be in company that did not require the impressive chill of the heir-prince. He struggled a moment, before drawling, "Your servant, Highness."

"Really?" Arslan looked incredulous. "Then I guess that means you can take care of this," he said, and handed Daryoon his empty glass.

"Arslan!" came a bellow, cutting off Daryoon's half-formed retort. "Come here, my boy, and get away from this horde. They're worse than a pack of armed raiders. You too, Daryoon. I need some intelligent conversation. These people can't talk of anything but fashion and gambling."

"Do you hear that?" asked Arslan, even as he smiled graciously to the beckoning Lord Huref, who stood under one of the garden arches. Daryoon wondered how the prince managed to enunciate without moving his lips. "You're invited, too."

"Wonderful," said Daryoon. Huref disappeared into the gardens. Daryoon followed Arslan up the short flight of steps, and deposited the empty glass on the wide banister.

The crisp air of the outside walk was a deliverance from the hothouse of the hall, and here the stars were dignified, sparking from the sky instead of underfoot. The crowds were also significantly thinner, and predominantly clustered around a dark-haired minstrel, who possessed both a lilting tenor and a showy young piper to accompany it. Huref was easily found at the side of the main path, waiting with the elderly Lord Zichos under a fiercely pruned red maple.

"I tried to get to you earlier," he said to Arslan, in a voice louder than was actually required, "but you were always dancing with some woman or another. Not that I blame you; when I was your age, I was the same way, and it hasn't been so many years that I'd forget. No, I can remember midwinter nights spend in this very hall, with half the kingdom crowded around and this one girl..."

Daryoon abandoned Arslan to Huref and his reminiscences, on the grounds that the man owned half of Ecbatana proper and was an important connection for a prince to cultivate. He turned to Zichos. The old man appeared as insubstantial as a gray wraith, but had been a marsbaan when Andragoras first took the throne. Daryoon stifled the urge to salute, and instead settled for a bow.

Zichos smiled faintly. "I'm retired now, and too old for adoration. I only came to hear the latest gossip."

"Then I hope your evening has been profitable," said Daryoon.

He shrugged. "Moderately."

The minstrel launched into ballad that required his piper to execute a series of shrill runs. By unspoken agreement, the four men walked away from the domed swell of the great hall and down a path lit by blue paper lanterns. Huref took the lead, which afforded him the room to use his hands to describe the attributes of the most eligible debutantes from tonight and from evenings past to the prince. Zichos, who relied heavily on an ivory and lacquer cane, walked a few steps behind. Daryoon was satisfied to keep pace with him, and to watch Arslan's pale head nod at the appropriate pauses in Huref's description. There was enough of a breeze to set the leaves rustling overhead.

Zichos looked at Daryoon critically. "I won't ask how you've enjoyed the evening. I remember how little patience you held for formality as a young lieutenant."

Daryoon knew it was not a failing mind that led Zichos to resign his commission. He also gave a brief thought to what his uncle might be saying of him behind his back. "I have gained some small tolerance with age," he said, grudgingly.

As intended, this provoked a chuckle. Then Zichos directed his alert gaze to Arslan, who politely demurred at some criticism of Gizaret's eldest daughter. "And how goes your current command?"

Daryoon examined the young man in front of him, and considered both the question and the old lord himself. He did not want to come across a flatterer, but neither could he diminish Arslan's skill. "His Highness," he finally said, "is an excellent student."

Evidently, Arslan had not been paying full attention to Huref and his assessment of the court's women. He kept walking, but stared over his shoulder. Daryoon assumed the blandest expression he could manage.

Huref was not put off by his distracted audience, and swiftly inserted himself into the other conversation. "Naturally he's an excellent student! I wouldn't expect anything less. Battle instincts run in his blood." He clapped a hand onto Arslan's shoulder. Arslan nearly tripped over a loose stone, and started paying more attention to where he put his feet.

The dry smile again curved Zichos' mouth, but he held his peace.

"Now tell me, Daryoon," Huref continued. "Will you have the prince ready for his first battle, come this spring?"

"He'll be ready, my lord." Daryoon was sure of that. He had never failed an assignment, and had no intention of breaking his record.

"Excellent," crowed Huref. "With the heir-prince blooded, and the king still in his prime, the army will be at its greatest strength in years."

Zichos did not share Huref's tendency to talk of Arslan as if he were not in the vicinity. "I do recommend that Your Highness spill the enemy's blood, instead of your own," he said, leaning forward to speak to him directly. He rubbed a hand along his right thigh. "It has been many years since my own blooding, but I distinctly remember having a problem with that."

Arslan smiled. "I am thankful that you recovered, and were able to learn better."

"So am I," said Zichos.

The path curled like a cat's tail around a stand of fragrant young cedars. Their trunks were wound with night-blooming jasmine, gone wild as nothing else managed to do in this overtended garden. Arslan flicked the yellow blossoms; they dropped at his touch.

He brushed dead petals from his sleeve. "What about you, Daryoon? Did you have to learn better? Or were you perfect from the beginning?"

Daryoon half admired Arslan for asking such a question in front of witnesses, where he couldn't ignore it as he had others he deemed to personal, while the rest of him was confused by the charges. Perfect? He'd been sixteen, older than the prince by two years, for whatever good the extra growing had done for him. His father simply wasn't in the same rush to have him ready. He'd already had enough boys decent in a fight that a casualty or two wouldn't leave him without an heir.

He didn't remember as many details as he thought he should. Except the ice water shock of the noise. He hadn't expected it to be so loud. His horse, more ruled by instinct than her rider, proved true to her training and maneuvered well. Someone managed to slice his guard arm, cutting a hot, red line through the meat of the muscle. Daryoon felt it while mired in his dumb fugue, even as he dug his knee into his horse's ribs and used his sword to tear through the man's throat.

When it was over, his brother, the second born and the most enamored of the flare of combat, wrapped his arm well enough for the ride back into town, and took him to a tavern where only soldiers went to drink. He remembered his brother, in a burst of vocal pride, slapping silver on the cracked counter to buy him wine for his thirst and a whore for his hunger.

"I was perfect, " he said to Arslan's patient face, and waited to be called a liar.

"Of course you were!" said Huref, as if validated in some point he'd struggled long to establish. He again swung his arm around Arslan's shoulder. "And you will be, too. There's certainly no lack of opponents for you to face. Not with those savages stirring in the west."

"The Lusitanians are fighting internal discord," said Arslan, calmly. "Their army does not have a strong central command."

Huref shook his head, frowning with the dramatic gravity of a man faced with a particularly dense child. It made Daryoon bristle. "And that's about all that they lack. They're rabid with religion; all they need is a leader to follow. Then they'll look to us."

"We would be unwise to neglect Turan in our speculation over Lusitania," Daryoon said, less out of conviction than from a need to contradict Huref. And this was the one topic of conversation he could argue with confidence. "Their perennial border skirmishes have shown more organization this season."

Sharply, Zichos said, "I have not heard this."

"Kharlan's marsbaan is stationed along the Tigris," said Daryoon. "He encountered coordinated raids at the last new moon, from the fortress at Ninus to Arbela in the south."

"This does bear watching," Zichos answered. Daryoon imagined he could almost hear the letters the old man was drafting to spread the information.

The sweet chime of plucked strings found them at the end of the garden. The path, having looped back to the edge of the hall, spilled into one of the smaller courtyards, where a young man with dark red hair held audience with a handful of young gentlemen. His throne was the stone ring of a fountain, and his scepter a harp of pale willow. It was strung with bronze wire, in the manner the old country harpers favored. His voice, oddly removed from the music washing from his hands, was more of speech than song.

As the prince stopped to listen, so did Daryoon and the lords. The harper already held his subjects captive with low recountings of battles, wandering through history and myth as if unaware of any distinction between the two. Either scenting the presence of career fighters, or inspired to greater drama by the growing size of his audience, his tale gradually slid further into the dark.

"Plague and famine are barbarians," he said with dismissive irreverence. "Like all barbarians, they are indiscriminate in their taste for souls. They will hunt, and they will take whomever they seek out. They are like men who have worked all their lives at hard labor, growing knotted muscle in their back and shoulders, but who can do nothing original that their fathers and their fathers before them have not done."

One did not require the harp in his hands to see he was not of the nobles he performed for. He was not so well dressed. Though his tunic was elegantly pleated at the shoulder, and his cloak hung in the deep folds that spoke to fine, densely woven thread, both lacked embellishment. Such simplicity could be a sign of humility, as was proper in a patronless musician. Or it could be unabashed arrogance.

"But war," he said, and the harp turned to winter clouds between his hands, bringing wind and ice, "Now, war has a thinner strain of blood. War does not care for the old or the weak. She is a siren, and she demands the strength of youth. War does not need to seek out her men, for they ride with eager passion to her leather-clad arms."

He paused, staring at his own fingers, left hand spread high and right spread low across the wire strings. Daryoon blinked away the chill carried in by the sound of that voice. The bright young men, in defiance of the abruptly cold air, spoke of War's arms and legs and breasts in a way designed to make their companions laugh. Eventually the harper tired of his study of his own fingers, and looked up.

Arslan, who never fidgeted, who was always aware of scrutiny, moved restlessly. He brought himself to life in the dim light. Of course the harper saw him. Of course he stared.

At seventeen, Daryoon had led a scouting troop of twenty light-armed cavalry through Rikura Pass. He did not know fifty Turanian horsemen waited in the cliffs to ambush just such a tender prize. A most curious shiver ran its hand around his neck, raising every hair on his nape, and he wheeled his mount in a tight circle. Consequently, the first arrow loosed by Turan lodged in the shield hung on his pommel and not, as intended, in his back.

As Daryoon looked at the prince, the harper, and the way each looked at the other, the same shiver walked fingers down his spine. He considered turning to leave. He considered staying. He considered the small honed blade resting against his forearm.

"Here, now," said Huref, overloud against the fall of the fountain. "That's enough of that. Play something pleasant."

The harper started, his instrument jerking awkwardly in his arms. "Your pardon, my lord," he said smoothly, "You are, without question, correct. This is a night for celebration." He settled the harp in his lap and strummed idle chords, breaking each one open into its arpeggio. "A night to celebrate nobility. A night to celebrate births." The arpeggios rose in tone, then tumbled down into a melody.

He told of the time of Municher, the Great King who fought the great war to keep Parus from falling to his great uncles, Salm and Tur. Of a warrior named Saim, who so impressed the Great King with the blood and glory that dripped from his blade that he made him a subject-king, and gave him the country of Zabulestan. And how Saim went to the country of his boyhood, to the country he now ruled, and swore to give the Great King the finest tribute he could wring from the land.

Saim took a fair young queen, and told her of his desire for a son. She was a thoughtful queen, and listened well, for within the year she was delivered of a boy.

But this was not a celebrated royal birth. Though the child was fair to the eye, thought he had the long, sturdy limbs of his father and the pale, sky eyes of his mother, his hair was not the hair of a child. It was as white as the hair of the oldest man who has not yet reached his grave.

For seven nights and for seven days, no one dared to tell Saim that his son had been born. Not the queen, who spent the seven days weeping over the child. Not her women, who were so obedient to their mistress that they spend the seven nights, while the queen lay in exhausted half-sleep, weeping in her place. Only the queen's old nurse, far braver than all the rest, dared to go to Saim. "For even as we dread to tell the news, fearing his displeasure," said the old nurse, "It will be far worse for us if he come to these chambers, seeking the news for himself, and discovers we have been keeping secrets."

So the old nurse went to Saim, and told him to rejoice with all his spirit, for he had a son. "And he is fine, so fine in face and in figure," she said, "That no one could mistake him for less than a prince. And still beyond all this--" here her heart beat fearfully, though her voice held steady, so brave was she-- "There is one sign more that he is above all other children."

"Well?" said Saim. "What is it, then?"

"He has hair like the light from the moon, like the snow that caps the mountain peaks even in the heat of summer." Then the old nurse saw fury and thunder grow in Saim's face, and could say no more.

"Do you say his hair is as white as the snow? As the moon? Why do you tell such lies?" he cried. "No child is born with hair age-white. You will take me to him, so I can see the truth for myself."

The words of the story were old, and Daryoon had heard them many times before. But the music that tumbled from under the harper's fingernails was something new. It hunted and captured while the listener was distracted by the story itself. As the harper's voice warmed, it grew dark and sweet, and bright-garbed dancers broke away from the floor of the main hall to gather in the courtyard like hummingbirds scenting nectar. The harper saw them all arrive, each one, and he looked each in the eyes, to give them personal welcome. Except for Arslan. Once he started into his tale, he never looked at Arslan.

For his part, Arslan watched only the unnamed harper. He watched his mouth delineate words. He saw his hands demand response from the strings, and receive it. Daryoon knew this to be so because he watched only the prince.

The harper carefully disclaimed that he, like his listeners, knew that these old stories were just stories, and would never, just as his listeners would never, take them as anything but a lovely distraction. Because the king in this story was about to do what no king he had known, or no king his listeners would ever know, would ever do.

For as soon as Saim saw his white-haired son, as soon as he saw the wet face of his fair queen, he said, "This is no blessing of Misra, but a curse from the Enemy. I will not have it said that Siam of Zabulestan raised the seed of demons. Take him to the desert and leave him there, for I do not want to see him again."

The harper's voice broke in waves. The crowd grew, and Arslan, caught in the undertow, was swept to the edge of the courtyard until his back pressed against the cold, curved marble of a pillar. An elegant girl, dark-haired and diminutive in the way of the Hyrcani tribes, stood on a bench to gaze at the teller of the tale. She reached blindly for a handhold, and her fingers found and clutched Arslan's shoulder. He did not dissuade her, as he was just as transfixed as she.

And the harper went on, telling of the boy left to die in the desert, and of the black Simurgh bird, with wings as wide as could block the sun, and talons long as a grown man's hand, hearing the cries of this pale creature and knowing it would be good food for the young waiting in her nest. She snatched the prince from the ground and carried him to her high aerie, and left him among her hungry nestlings.

But they turned from the strange pale creature, and would not harm him. When the Simurgh bird returned from her hunt, this time with a young deer bleeding on her talons, and saw how the prince curled around the warm, downy bodies of her young, she fed him from the tender parts of the deer.

And the harper described the prince this way: grown strong and tall and beautiful under the care of the Simurgh bird, and knowing the mountains as closely as his winged brothers. As the years passed, the men who lived in the mountains would sometimes glimpse a fantastic creature dashing over the hillsides. But they could never say with certainty if he ran with white hair streaming down his back, or flew by on white feathers.

Misra had witnessed Saim's cruelty, and cursed his queen so that she bore no more children after the first. He was alone in his quiet palace when he heard the rumors from the mountain people, and suspected that his son might yet be alive. He set out with his most favored retainers to see the wonder for himself.

With her keen eyes, the Simurgh bird saw Saim at the foot of her mountain, and said to the prince, "Know that you are my own dear son, and I would not wish to lose you. Yet there is another one here who would claim you as a son. Though he left you to die in the desert, he now repents, and he can give you the glories of the world of men as I cannot. It is fitting that you should meet him." So saying, the Simurgh bird carried the prince down to Saim.

Saim saw his son and knew him, and so the Simurgh bird was willing to let him go. But first she plucked a feather from her wing, and said to the prince in her own language, "Remember the vagaries of men, and the dearness of loyalty. If you need me, burn this feather to ash, and I will come to you." And with the gifts of feather and warning, the Simurgh bird took flight. The prince stared after her, unblinking, even as the king touched his white hair and said, "You will be named Zal. You will be my heir."

All of this the harper said as the final chord melted into the night.

He laid his harp, now a cold, dead thing that his hands no longer stroked it, on the stone of the fountain. He rose as a very old man would, or perhaps as a dreamer from a bed. The audience echoed his silence, swaying as a single entity.

Then one pale woman draped in pale silks tilted her fine, coifed head to her companion and murmured in his ear. He laughed at her wit.

The harper stared at her. Belatedly, she found enough courtesy to flush red.

But the harm was done, because with that single, thoughtless laugh, all the lovely girls stirred themselves and remembered to smile sweetly at their admirers. In turn, the admirers remembered to be charmed by their polished beauty. Huref, and a dozen graying lords like him, remembered to disparage the music for not being as sweet as the songs from their youth. Polite applause rustled through the crowd.

The harper accepted the praise with lowered eyelashes and an insincere smile. His audience noticed the artful expression, recognized it as one of their own, and rewarded him with renewed applause. At this he bowed, with deep precision, directly towards one onyx pillar. He did not rise.

This was a most curious response. The people peered around each other, jostling to determine the recipient of their new darling's attention. The Hyrcani girl looked down, and blushed like fire to realize whose shoulder she had appropriated for balance. She snatched back her hand. The crowd whispered as some recollected, and others discovered, precisely who stood in their midst. A path formed and cleared between the harper and the heir-prince.

"Well played, harper," said Arslan.

The young man finally rose, exhibiting the same grace he had displayed in his bow. "I thank you, Your Royal Highness."

The harper's use of formal address, so outwardly correct, still managed to raise Daryoon's hackles. Arslan only seemed faintly amused.

"Do you have a name?"

"Don't we all?" Then the harper flushed and lowered his eyes, in a manner so perfect that Daryoon knew it to be rehearsed. Likely the man practiced his insults, just to deliver such a fine picture of contrition.

"Your pardon, Highness, for my shameful manners. I am unpracticed in conversation with those of rank. My name is Gieve, and I am at your disposal."

"I take that to mean you have no patron at present."

"Unfortunately, no. I have only just arrived in the city." His eyes grew wide. "Is Your Highness a patron of the arts? And perhaps in need of a harper?"

Arslan stiffened. A mild chuckle carried from the cluster of bearded lords, and Daryoon had an impulse to turn and pin the man so amused with a glare.

With a tilt of his chin, Arslan said, "You expose another flaw in your manners. Patronage is a right of majority, and one I will not hold until I return from my blooding."

The harper blinked. Daryoon thought it to be the first honest emotion that passed over his face all evening. "Your pardon."

Arslan shrugged. "Given freely." Then he nodded to the surrounding crowd, who still listened with the interest of avid gossips. "If you will play again, even without my official consideration, there are those here who are eager to listen."

"Of course," said the harper. "As you command."

Arslan smiled tightly. "That was not a command."

"Then as you request," he said. He sat again on the rough stone of the fountain and crooked one knee to support the harp in his hands, still focused on Arslan. He lifted his voice to address the company at large. "It is my calling to play to all who gather to listen, with indifference to how fine-- or how coarse-- the blood of their heart." He paused for a smattering of laughter. "But you must tell me the tales of your longing, the stories that you desire."

Arslan turned his back on the gaze of the harper, on the calls for this song and for that legend, and disappeared through an arch into the kaleidoscope of the great hall.

*

Daryoon was delayed by the need to shoulder through the crowd as he tried to catch up with Arslan. He realized it was a sign of his own distraction that he'd allowed himself to be blocked in, left without a route of exit.

By the time he reached the arched entrance, Arslan was yards away, with another glass of the yellow wine he professed to hate in his hand and on its way to his lips. He was as distant as possible from the man at the center of attention on the far side of the dome: Andragoras, descended from his throne, not needing his captive cats with his courtiers available to lay praise at his feet. In contrast, Arslan was curiously alone a room full of pulsing life.

Daryoon decided to let him be. Arslan was capable enough of seeking him out if he chose to do so. Besides, Daryoon never managed the trick of saying the right things, the phrases needed to lighten a moment. Better to leave a bruise alone than disturb it into further pain.

And, apparently, Daryoon had his own acquaintances to deal with.

A man approached him, near enough to his own age, sharing the same coloring that marked the children of the southern plains. Though he no longer wore the insignia of the tenth where they once served together, he was recognizable enough in his glinting embroidery of yellow on rust.

"Daryoon," he said. "It's been an age."

"Marton." He gripped the proffered forearm and found his own gripped in return. It was a brief contact, but from habit he assessed what he could from the muscle and bone beneath his hand: still lean, and likely still dangerous. To his adversaries, at least. It was not a simple task to separate Marton's enemies from his allies, as he had always been a lover of the currents of intrigue swimming through the army, and rode them as a means to his own ascent.

It was time, then, for Daryoon to see if he'd learned anything about politics.

"Last I heard, you commanded a tenth in Kharlan's marsbaan."

"Indeed I do," said Marton. His grin was an excuse to bare his teeth. "I am here as Kharlan's surrogate tonight. Pressures in the field prevent his personal attendance."

"That is understandable." As a favorite of Andragoras, Kharlan's marsbaan enjoyed the privilege of assignment to the volatile western border.

"And I'd heard you'd been given your own tenth. What reason brings you here?"

Daryoon deliberately misunderstood. "The reasons of the grand commander. It was he who ordered the assignment." Yes. Let Marton think he was here as Vafuriez' ear for the intrigue nearest the throne, and that he knew more than he actually did.

"Ah. Then you have not lost interest in your command?"

"Hardly."

That earned Daryoon another display of teeth. "I did not think so. You have not changed that much, and I remember you never disguised your ambition." His voice lightened in the most peculiar manner, and he watched Daryoon closely as he said, "Parus will always require talented generals, no matter what changes come. Kharlan has often spoken to His Majesty on the need for strength."

Here Daryoon began to suspect he was not as prepared for this game as he had first presumed. Marton's words skirted insubordination, to suggest that a marsbaan, even a favorite, was accustomed to the liberty of lecturing the king.

Daryoon felt the subject of some arcane scrutiny, the goal of which he could not determine. "Yes," he said slowly. "The kingdom is only as powerful as its leadership."

"Exactly!" Marton was as intent as a cobra scenting prey. "The power of Parus' leader must be supported."

Daryoon looked to where Arslan last stood and found him still there, his back turned to Daryoon. He was no longer alone. The Ecbatana girls of the early evening had vanished, along with their fluttering chaperones, and now the prince conversed with a woman wearing a breastplate of layered Parusian coins, as only the daughters of the Runatha matriarchs had the right to wear.

When a rider felt a trail begin to crumble under the hooves of his horse, it was time to retreat. Mildly, Daryoon said, "His Majesty has always had the support of his lords. I know of no one in a position of authority who thinks otherwise."

"Nor do I." Marton shrugged. "Retaliation would be swift if they did. As it should be. A fine sense of vengeance should always be cultivated in a man." He smirked. "Or in a woman. I could name a few who elevated revenge to the level of art. You remember the whore who tailed our first sergeant from camp to camp?"

Daryoon had not the slightest recollection of any such woman. "Of course," he said.

As Marton recounted details from years that were better left forgotten, Daryoon idly watched the assembly, his focus flickering from one moving body to the next, from the bright gather of a red skirt to the glint of jade beads slithering through braided hair, all the scene swirling like eddies in a rock-studded river.

It was, in fact, the spear-straight line the white man walked that cried to him of wrongness.

His skin was white and covered by pale clothing, with an unmarked white robe over it all, the summation made all the more flawless by his black hair, just as a shadow is needed to attest to the glare of the sun. He brushed against laughing, chattering revelers as he followed his too-perfect path, his shoulders momentarily caught and thrown back but his feet never pausing in their determined steps. He was aiming for something. For someone. And by the time Daryoon realized the target, the man in white was too close to Arslan, and Daryoon was much too far away.

Daryoon shouted. Or at least he thought he did; the hall echoed with too many voices for his lone cry to carry. It disappeared into the unsteady air, was carried to the heights of the dome and broke apart. He was moving, running into the crowd, half-crouched to better shove aside the unaware guests who stood in his way only as obstacles to be overcome. The white man was much closer. Daryoon would be too late.

For no logical reason, Arslan chose that moment to glance to his left. For no logical reason, but for the whim of chance. And he saw.

Three steps away from the prince, the white man's arm resolved itself from the undefined limits of his robe. Two steps away, he raised the dagger in his hand to the height of Arslan's waist, blade turned flat to better slide between Arslan's ribs and find a kidney and the liver and other pieces of tender viscera.

When he took the final step, Arslan moved.

The prince dropped to the floor in a crouch. Already committed, unable to check his momentum, the white man followed through on his thrust, but the loss of his target sent him stumbling for balance. Arslan stood, and was now behind his attacker. He drove the heel of his hand into the man's outstretched elbow.

The joint was not designed to absorb such force from so wrong an angle. The man screamed. His hand convulsed involuntarily, and the dagger fell from his nerveless fingers.

Arslan slammed his booted foot against the white man's knees. He crumpled to the floor.

Yes, Daryoon thought, even as his own legs burned from the cross-room sprint, and the polished floor threatened to betray his feet. Here is the reason for the tedium of all that practice, for the cyclic, endless repetition. Now the very fiber of the muscle remembers the motions, instinctively, independent of conscious thought.

The failed assassin, so noticeable now that he was a pale wound on the midnight floor, struggled to his knees. He clutched his damaged arm to his chest.

An eternity after he began his dash, Daryoon drew close enough to seize Arslan's elaborate robe in his fist and wrench the prince behind him. The six royal guards, having failed in their assigned intimidation, arrived moments later. They kicked the man back down to the floor and pressed their short, honed swords against the softest parts of his flesh.

Silence diffused through the crowd like ripples over water.

"I had him," Arslan said, his robe still caught in Daryoon's fist. He tried to shove Daryoon aside, throwing his weight against Daryoon's back, but Daryoon was expecting this and was not budged.

"I know," said Daryoon. "I saw."

He heard scrambling footsteps, and Andragoras' heavy tread approaching in regular rhythm. Lord Syvet walked at his right hand and a contingent of favored lords trailed behind, whispering and straining for a suitable view of the dramatic scene. Andragoras stopped at the feet of the sprawled man and took him in with the briefest of looks.

"What is this?" he asked the captain of the guard.

It was the white man who answered in a thin voice, shrill with feverish intensity. "I am here in the name of the Pure and the Only, and I bear the truth of His words! The polluted line on the throne of Parus shall not continue! There will be no one but the One, and any who refuse him will die. We will have purity!"

Andragoras did not acknowledge the speech. He did not so much as glance at the floor. Instead, he turned and stared beyond the lords, beyond even the shielding presence of Daryoon.

He stared at Arslan.

Then he turned to the captain. "Kill him," he said.

For one insane moment, Daryoon thought Andragoras had ordered Arslan's death. It was long enough for his gut to coat with ice and for his hands to twitch towards his covered blades, as he had frantic thoughts of the minutes he could buy the prince before the guard overwhelmed him by virtue of sheer numbers.

Then the captain moved towards the struggling man on the floor, and clear logic descended on Daryoon.

From above, and at a slight angle, the captain thrust his sword cleanly into the man's chest. He responded with a wet choke. The sound was echoed by the crowd, amplified through a thousand shared throats, as a stain of red ate through the pristine white clothes. With their sensitive noses, the hunting cats chained to the throne scented fresh blood and yowled their eagerness to share in the kill.

Daryoon saw Arslan flinch silently.

Andragoras saw it too, and turned away. "Get rid of it," he said to the captain, who stood and wiped his blade.

The captain promptly signaled to two of his men, who crouched and lifted the corpse by shoulders and knees, leaving a pool of dark liquid on the starry black floor.

To Lord Syvet, though his voice was pitched to carry, Andragoras said, "This was unexpected entertainment. You should have told me it was planned, and I would have looked forward to it."

Syvet made no sign that he detected sarcasm, only bowing his ugly head to his chest.

"Well. It will have to be music again for the rest of the night. Play something with drums," Andragoras called to a knot of silent musicians, and to the rest of the crowd said, "Dance. It's what you came for."

The pulse of a drumbeat stuttered to life as the king retreated to his dais. The crowd was primed and electric. Certain of the courtiers, studiously obedient to the king, took up the beat into a dance, and the soft soles of their slippers padded over the floor. But most of those gathered were already recounting their stories, questioning their neighbors for the smallest missed detail, tense with the anticipation of the countless retellings they would give.

The abundance of unfocused curiosity required a target. The corpse was gone, and the last traces of its existence were disappearing into the rags of industrious servants on hands and knees to polish the floor. Seeking truer than an assassin's blade, the attention converged on Arslan. They watched him from the corners of their eyes, never directly, and spoke in low voices that made individual words indistinct, though it was clear what they spoke of.

Perhaps the prince was well used to receiving more than a fair share of observation, but Daryoon could see too much white in his eyes, and the finest of vibrations traveling his body. "Your Highness," he said under the rumble of the music. "We should leave, for the sake of your safety."

Arslan's mouth twitched. "I'm safe enough now. I have hundreds of people watching me."

"And any one of them could be drunk on prophecy."

"They would not try again, in the same night that they failed. Even I know that much."

"Your Highness," said Daryoon. He let the title stand alone in the air between them.

Arslan sighed.

"Yes. All right. Go ahead and get me out of here."

Daryoon took the simple expediency of making for the door with no intention of stopping for whomever, short of the king, might be in his way. It worked surprisingly well. Arslan followed closely in his wake.

Among a sea of people too intent on propriety to be caught staring, Daryoon noticed the red-haired harper watching openly, unashamed, from the threshold of the garden and of the night.

*

"I could have handled him."

Until the moment Arslan spoke, they walked the corridors to the fringes of the palace in complete silence. The old stone walls flashed color from their tracings of mosaic, like an old woman wearing strings of glass beads stolen from a granddaughter. The lamps quietly released the aroma of charred oil and a yellow stain of light that jaundiced the skin.

Daryoon frowned. That Arslan had managed on his own was obvious. If he had not, there would now be another corpse to burn.

"You did handle him. You reacted just as was required. Avoid the initial strike. Regroup. Attack while your opponent is distracted. I can not think of anything that I would have done differently, if I had been in your place."

"I know that," snapped Arslan, "and that's what I'm saying to you. I was fine."

They walked a handful of yards through the silent opulence.

"I knew what I was doing."

Daryoon shook his head. The night grew late, and he was not interested in having this conversation. "When did I suggest otherwise?"

"When you pulled me away!" shouted Arslan. He rounded on Daryoon, forcing him to stop and face him. "I had him!"

"I know you did! I saw!"

Abruptly, Daryoon could stand to see no more and broke away, stalking resolutely down the corridor.

Arslan chased him down in two fast steps. "Listen to me," he said, grabbing Daryoon's arm. "This was bound to happen sooner or later, that someone would try for me. You knew that, and you prepared me for it. I'm trying to tell you that it wasn't wasted. I knew what to do. You didn't have to protect me."

"Yes, I did. That's what I was assigned here to do. To protect you."

"Not all of the time."

"Of course all of the time! At any time! That's why they never made it so close before."

As soon as it was spoken, Daryoon knew it was the wrong thing to say. Arslan's mouth went hard in that way Daryoon had come to recognize as the face of his royalty, arriving to mask every emotion with the guise of absolute authority.

"What before?" he asked. Then, warningly, "Daryoon."

Daryoon sighed. He knew better than to lose his temper in an argument. It only made for carelessness. He stared at the wall, counting chips in the mosaic.

"This was not the first attempt."

Arslan stood very still. "How many times?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Four. Five, counting tonight. Not all the same group. At least, not that we know of. The guard killed most of them before they could be questioned, and well before they managed to come close enough to threaten you."

Arslan looked shocked. "They never told me."

"I ordered them not to."

"You had no right!"

"I had every right. Having you preoccupied would not have helped anyone. Your job is to learn what you can. Mine is to protect you."

And what a success he was, for all his pride and braggadocio. The Black Knight, commander of a thousand troops, the youngest in the army to currently hold such a post. And here was Arslan, only one, single boy.

Daryoon fell to one knee, on the floor of the corridor. "Tonight I failed. It was inexcusable, Your Highness, and I can only beg your pardon."

Arslan only looked impatient. "Get up," he ordered, and Daryoon did so. Standing again, in the glow of the lamps, he could see the frown on Arslan's face, and how tired he appeared.

"From now on," said Arslan, and it was not an order, but a plea, "you tell me these things."

"Yes, Your Highness."

They continued walking, but it felt entirely different to Daryoon, as if he'd suddenly lost the right to lead Arslan anywhere. It was not only the matter of having to report to Arslan any future attempts made on his life. And there would be more; of that Daryoon was certain. Arslan would only become an increasingly important figure on the chessboard of Parusian politics, and there would always be certain factions with an interest in seeing him dead. But now that Arslan knew, now that he had seen what might happen with his own eyes and had stopped it with his own hands, the damage was already done. He would always be watching the dark corners of the rooms he entered, whether or not Daryoon had declared them safe.

There was something else changed, here. To Daryoon, it felt like a colt he'd trained up into a fine two-year-old had suddenly taken over the bit, realizing that he held the power all along, and now Daryoon could only cling and be swept along.

With no need to protect an empty room, the prince's guards were gone when they arrived at Arslan's apartments, and Arslan allowed Daryoon to step in front of him and enter first. The lit lamps, and the pitchers of fresh water and wine standing ready signaled recent occupation, but at the moment the rooms were clearly deserted.

Arslan swept past Daryoon, wrenching the clasp at his neck open and tossing his robe onto the couch. It promptly slithered to the floor. He strode to his desk, grabbing a sheet of paper, inking a pen, and without bothering to sit, balanced his weight on his left hand and began to write.

Daryoon could tell when he was being ignored. "If there is nothing else, Your Highness," he said, taking a step towards the door, "I will see you in the morning."

"No. Wait." The scratch of pen nub over paper continued. As he was bid, Daryoon turned to wait for the prince.

Arslan stopped writing. He flipped the page and pressed it to the blotter, then folded it in thirds. He did not seal it. He held it out to Daryoon, who stepped forward to accept it.

"Find the harper from the garden," Arslan said, in a new voice, one unfamiliar to Daryoon. "His name was Gieve. Wait for his answer."

No, thought Daryoon. I will not. Whatever this paper says, it can not be truly meant.

What Daryoon actually said was: "Yes, Highness," as he turned and left the room.

Daryoon was, foremost of all his roles, a soldier, and it was the refuge of a soldier to ignore the part of his mind that protests and offers rational arguments in favor of simply executing his orders in the most efficient manner possible. He decided it would be impractical to return directly to the great hall. His entrance would be marked, made all the more noticeable for his appearance without the prince, and it was well known that the guards were the backbone of the palace rumor mill. He would be an item mentioned over breakfast the following morning, if he did not take care. That left an approach through the gardens themselves, as ridiculous as he felt skulking around like a child escaped from his nursery.

Autumn scent, hinting of forthcoming frost, pricked at his sinuses when he stepped outside and breathed deeply of the night air. He had been at the palace long enough to know the less-traveled paths and where they led. This was in part due to Arslan's own tendency to favor unpredictable routes. Daryoon knew this was how he managed to overhear more conversations than were ever intended for his ears.

The path Daryoon chose now was deserted, flanked right and left only by elm trees, their arching branches encouraged by gardeners untold years before to span and mingle above his head. In their shade crept dark masses of ivy, black in the dim light that seeped from the palace, sheltering an abundance of crickets singing frantically at the end of their season.

He cut between the elms and through a side garden dominated by a long reflecting pool, a remnant of an earlier dynasty's preference for calm, contemplative landscapes; the current fashion demanded fountains and waterfalls, and had no use for water that did not burble with energy. The winged seeds of an ash littered the pool's surface. Daryoon stopped to listen. Atonal music, perhaps the sound of a distant harp if well-masked by the chirp of insects. Daryoon could see the dome of the great hall cresting over the tree line, and veered slightly to his left.

Arslan's letter was soft in his hand, and he caught his thumb tracing the unsealed edge of the paper. He walked past a bed of red flowers that appeared black in the darkness, another of white that glowed an eerie blue, and was again on the main garden's footpath. The majority of the blue paper lanterns had guttered out, but there was no one here to care. The sound of a harp again, but distinct. Close by.

He rounded a bend and found the courtyard with the endlessly spilling fountain. He also found Arslan's harper, alone. Daryoon approached with quiet steps.

Either the harper possessed remarkably keen hearing, or was unusually wary, because he looked up before Daryoon drew close. He made the longest strings hum with beats of his thumbs. "The prince's guard," said the harper, in a sing-song voice. "And without the prince."

Daryoon, saying nothing, handed him Arslan's letter. He left off playing, and the bass drone was subsumed by the noise of spilling water as he accepted the paper and unfolded it to read.

There was little enough written on it, and it did not take him long to finish. His mouth quirked up. "I would be more than pleased to accept," he said, refolding the letter along the original creases and then in half again, and tucking it between his shirt and his belt. As there was no seal, and therefore nothing to prove it came from the prince, Daryoon allowed him the privilege.

He stood and gathered his harp like a small child against his hip, then hoisted it over his shoulder. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to lead the way? Unless you would rather I ask one of the king's guards to head me in the proper direction."

Though he had known what was in the letter, known well enough even without reading it to predict he would have to take this harper back to Arslan, the reality of it still managed to surprise Daryoon. He considered the possibility of walking the man to the gate of the palace compound and leaving him on the other side, then returning after a suitable length of time to tell Arslan that, unfortunately, he had been unable to deliver the message. Or, as an alternative that ranked somewhat closer to the truth, tell him the message had indeed been delivered, but that the harper was bound by an unavoidable previous appointment.

Though given the hour of the night, the exact details of such an appointment were not immediately apparent to Daryoon. And he knew he would never be able to speak such a lie to Arslan.

"You first," he said. He would do as he must, but would not go so far as to turn his back on this man.

The harper grinned and started walking.

Daryoon's belligerence made for a fine moral stand, but it proved impractical. The harper did not know where to go. Daryoon caught up to him and steered him off the path, turning them into the heart of the empty gardens.

The night would have been a pleasant one, if not for the circumstances that had brought him here. He could think of many nights in his life that fell under the same description. If a night did prove perfect, sometime in the future, without anything unpleasant to mar it, Daryoon wondered if he would know enough to recognize it. Behind the trees, locked in the cages of the king's menagerie, a tiger growled. Daryoon looked to see if the harper would jump, and was disappointed when he did not.

The other man placed his feet carefully as he walked, not disturbing the loose gravel underfoot. Perhaps the sign of some earlier training. It was not unusual for the sons of poor families to try their luck in the infantry, rather than end wrenched in house they had been born in. If they were bright enough, they might even be pulled aside and trained as scouts, and given some minor responsibility.

This one had probably deserted.

He carried his harp in the common manner, strapped over his left shoulder and sheltered by the drape of his cloak. Yet he walked with his right arm slightly bent, his hand hovering casually near his hip. It was a loose, unconscious gesture. Habitual.

"Stop," Daryoon said, seizing that bare right arm. He felt the muscle clench. "Hand it over."

The other man blinked. "Hand what over?" He peered at the gloved hand on his biceps as if it were a shiny, oversized beetle.

Daryoon was not a fool, nor did he suffer them gladly. He did not elaborate. He did not relinquish his grip.

The harper sighed loudly. With broad, deliberate motions, he used his left hand to free a sheathed dagger from under his belt. He proffered it, hilt first, to Daryoon. "This is strictly a defensive weapon, I assure you. I have an overdeveloped sense of caution when it comes to extending my own life."

"I don't care," said Daryoon. He traded his hold on the man for his dagger, then thrust it into his own waistband at the small of his back. With a jerk of his chin, he ordered the harper to continue.

The other man rolled his eyes, but complied.

Again past the elms, where a pair of bats swooped knots around the trunks, seeking insects for their dinner. When they entered the palace at the crossing of hallways, and Daryoon turned right, the harper frowned.

"This is not to way to the royal apartments."

"I thought you needed a king's guard to find your way around the palace."

"Well," the harper said, with a trace of a smirk, that half-smile that accompanied a confidence between equals, "I do have some small knowledge of a very few rooms. The girls who serve the queen proved most generous, when they learned that I knew no one here."

"I'm sure they did." Daryoon lengthened his stride. Let the harper find one of his generous girls, then, and Daryoon would tell Arslan to seek him out in the rooms of his mother's serving maids.

The harper was not so easily shaken. Either he did not notice Daryoon's disinterest, or saw it as an opportunity to annoy him further. "You might appreciate knowing them better once the cold months arrive. Tell me what sort of woman you like, and I'll introduce you."

Daryoon said nothing. But the harper grinned as if he'd answered with a great revelation.

"Or don't tell me. I'm sure they already know just how charming you are. Bright girls, the whole beautiful lot of them. There's a song in that, I think," he said, and hummed a scrap of melody under his breath.

Daryoon though he would like to return to the harper his dagger, but unsheathed, and blade first.

Suitable lyrics were, apparently, slow in coming. The harper abandoned his humming. "Why does the prince keep his apartments out here?"

"He prefers the silence," Daryoon muttered.

But not low enough to pass unheard. The harper burst into unbridled laughter. Daryoon's glare did nothing to subdue him.

"No, I'm sorry," he said around gasps for air, "but that's just too wonderful. Your prince must crave silence. Rooms far away from anything else. A guard who hardly deigns to speak. I see now how it all makes perfect sense."

"You know nothing of sense. And nothing of the prince."

"No, nothing whatsoever. What would I know of it, not being born to a rich father of a rich father? Clearly, one such as I could know nothing." He bowed in a mockery of deference even as they rounded the last corner.

Daryoon opened the prince's door and the harper brushed past, as if used to having others facilitate his entrances.

Daryoon thought Arslan would be on his feet and pacing. Wandering without a goal in front of the windows, as he did when faced with a problem, thinking better on his feet than folded into a chair. But he sat calmly, chin in hand, perfectly appropriate in his opulent outer room, in one chair of a matched set turned at an angle to face the door. His legs were crossed at the ankles, and a small table to his right held a pitcher and two empty glasses.

The harper took this in and stopped short. He offered no bow.

"It looks," he said, "as if you expected me to say yes, Your Highness."

Arslan moved his hand away from his mouth. "You did say yes."

"It wasn't a foregone conclusion."

"No," said Arslan, his voice light and mild. "And I thank you for agreeing to give me a lesson. I may not be permitted now, but I will someday need a harper. I do not see how I can choose one if I know nothing of the harp."

The harper seemed to consider this explanation, then to consider the picture made by the prince himself. After a long moment, he said. "A most reasonable course of action."

Arslan nodded towards the table. "There's wine, if you want it."

Daryoon felt a prick of pleasure to see that Arslan made no move to fill the glasses himself. Intellectually, he knew it mean nothing; it was only the habit of a man accustomed to having servants perform such tasks for him. In any case, the harper did not seem to expect service. He stepped forward and poured himself a full glass, then looked to Arslan and quirked his eyebrows, asking if he should fill the second. Arslan shook his head.

The harper drank. Then he studied the wine with an appraiser's eye. "This is better than what was served in the hall."

Arslan's lips twitched. "It should be. There's not enough of it to waste."

"Certainly not." The harper drank again, more deeply, and began to walk the perimeter of the room. He drew the curtains away from the windows then let them fall back into place; he tested the weight of the curiosities displayed on the tabletops as if he had every right to do so. Arslan watched him until he moved beyond his field of vision, then he turned his gaze on Daryoon.

Daryoon stared back. Arslan's consideration disturbed him, in a way that would have made him shift his weight like an awkward recruit if he hadn't been so well trained. It was not a matter of being the subject of an intense examination. That much he was used to. It was the element of assessment, the part of the look that added him up and marked him with a tally of his worth. He had not expected to be on the receiving end of such a look from Arslan.

It was enough of a provocation that he was the first to look away.

His circuit of the room now complete, the harper again stood before the prince, his stance steady but not relaxed. He reminded Daryoon of an untamed pet wary of being struck. He ignored Daryoon's presence, most certainly unaware of his disconcertion. Another swallow of wine disappeared down his throat. Even as he tipped back his head to drink, he did not look away from Arslan.

"I am surprised, " he said to the prince, "that you only asked me to come. I would have expected an order."

"I told you in the garden that I can not be your patron. How could I give you orders?"

The harper shrugged. "There are those who think a title is reason enough."

"You can not think for yourself, then?"

A fragment of a smile crossed the harper's face. "I can."

He drained the last of his wine. "Well, then," he said, and brushed against Arslan's arm as he returned his empty glass to the table. He rose and released the clasp of his cloak with one turn of his hand, catching it before it slid to the floor and depositing it on the unused chair. As he swung his harp down from his back he ran his hand over its curved belly, then nestled it tightly against the cloak.

"The first lesson of harping," he said, "is that everything depends on the fingers. If I may?"

He reached down and took Arslan's hands in his own. Daryoon stiffened. Arslan seemed not to mind at all that he was still seated, even as the harper stood over him closely, near enough to prevent his rising from his chair without a fight.

The harper pursed his lips and murmured in disapproval.

"What is it?" asked Arslan.

The harper ran his thumbs over Arslan's fingertips. "Your nails. A slight tip is required to strike the strings. Yours are trimmed far too closely."

They are not trimmed, Daryoon wanted to protest. He chews them away when he is lost in thought.

The harper did not release Arslan's hands.

Arslan tilted his head back to look the harper in the face. "Then I am hopeless?"

"Completely hopeless."

The harper took a step back, and as he still held Arslan's hands in his own, the prince had no recourse but to stand with him. Then Arslan took still one more step, until their linked hands were at the harper's waist, and the harper needed to break his grip and lift his hands to Arslan's face as Arslan kissed him.

It was clear how Arslan wanted this in the way he skated his palms up the harper's back, and rocked his body to guide the kiss. Daryoon could do nothing. As much as he might like to drive his fists into the other man's gut, to drag him away from the prince and this room and from the palace entirely, to interfere now would be to go against Arslan's will, and that he would not do.

A small noise came from Arslan's throat. He jerked back, a flinch of surprise, but before Daryoon could bring himself to move, he relaxed again against the harper and loosed a visible sigh. From the angle of his throat, from the way he parted his lips, Daryoon could see he was being tasted. Daryoon swallowed, and felt his pride disappear with his anger.

He kept his determination to see this through to its end.

The harper's hands fell from Arslan's hair to rest on his shoulders. He broke the kiss, leaving the prince with a reflecting wetness on his mouth, and twin streaks of color high on his cheeks.

Arslan opened his eyes and took his lower lip between his teeth.

"Why do you stop?" he asked.

The harper darted a glance over his shoulder.

"Is he going to watch?"

Not so ignored after all, thought Daryoon. He lifted his head, and crossed his arms behind his back. His feet were planted in a shoulder-wide stance he could maintain for hours, if he so chose.

Arslan regarded Daryoon over the shoulder of the harper. His eyes were surprisingly clear. The lamplight struck him broadside and feathered through the chips of crystal in his ears, and his hands moved idly, calming, in little circles over the small of the other man's back.

Arslan tilted his head. He spoke to the harper, but kept looking at Daryoon.

"Daryoon's only duty is to assure my safety. It is not a task he takes lightly." Then, to the harper directly, "Will this be a problem?"

All three men in the room were silent. Beyond the window, the trees rattled their leaves, and a chorus of locust buzz rose and fell, then rose again. Daryoon could smell the night air and, if he breathed deeply enough, a perfume that did not belong to Arslan.

Daryoon realized that permission to stay would mean he had to.

The harper disturbed the stillness by tossing his hair way from his face. He said, "No. Not a problem at all."

He leaned back in to meet Arslan's lips. Arslan closed his eyes. As if leading a dance, the harper turned himself and the prince in a short arc, barely the quarter distance of a circle. It afforded Daryoon with a view, unhindered by shadow, of how their bodies touched at mouth and hip and thigh.

Daryoon found that he could distinguish without trouble between the times when the harper controlled the kiss, and the moments when Arslan was the one who led. Maybe this would be true for any kiss; he had never watched one so closely before without being a part of it, and so could not say. Maybe it was only that he was used to reading Arslan. He saw when the prince grew short of breath and needed to pull back, and how the harper seized the chance to venture a taste of his ear and of his jaw, of the line of his neck, of the tendons exposed when Arslan tipped back his head.

Carotid, thought Daryoon. Jugular. Never slice a man's throat on the horizontal; it is not necessarily fatal. Always take the diagonal, from ear to collarbone, and sever the main bloodlines.

Arslan ran his hand into the harper's hair and tugged his face up so he could kiss him with short, restless movements. The harper caught on quickly to the signs of his impatience. Starting from the button at Arslan's throat, he undid the front of his shirt with practiced flicks of his fingers.

Arslan was undistracted. He bit at the harper's lower lip. The context was new, but it was nothing to him to have someone else attend to his clothing,

The harper pushed Arslan's shirt off his shoulders. The folds caught in a tangle at Arslan's wrists and hid his hands from sight. He trailed his mouth over the newly bared skin, down the swell of Arslan's arm, tracking the blue line of a vein into the hollow of his elbow while he applied his fingers to unbuttoning Arslan's cuffs. Released, the shirt fell to the floor, and Arslan stood bare to the waist. The harper ran his hands up Arslan's sides. Daryoon could only look.

It was clear that Arslan was no laborer. A workman's son, or the child of a farmer would have more bulk by now, just by virtue of the type of strength required in the crafthalls or in the fields. Arslan's muscle held the distinct promise of a swordfighter. His youth kept his development modest, but it was still delineated. In a few years his training would produce a lean, flexible form rounded with restrained threat.

The harper pressed his hand against the front of Arslan's pants. Arslan cried out. His hand flew down to catch the harper's by the wrist and wrench it away. The harper looked startled. Arslan looked feral. He thrust the harper's hand to the side and used his own to pull the shirt up from the sash at the harper's waist.

"What are you doing?" breathed the harper, raising his hand to Arslan's arm.

Arslan batted it away. "You are getting to far ahead of me," he said. He shoved the shirt up and over the harper's head. The harper emerged from the other side with a flushed face and tousled hair.

When the shirt tangled at his wrists, just as Arslan's had done, the prince made no move to free him.

Arslan walked him backwards, steering him around furniture, but keeping a steady pace into the bedroom. The backs of his legs hit the end of the bed and he sat down heavily. Leaning forward, he found enough leverage to finally free his hands and toss the shirt to the floor. Eye-level now with Arslan's chest, he again moved his hand between Arslan's legs, but this time, when the prince raised his own hand he was ready, and grabbed him by the forearm. One particularly well-placed caress through the fabric and Arslan ceased to struggle. Balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, he leaned into the touch. His eyes were open and he looked down at the harper.

"You have me here all night," the harper said. "Don't rush."

"Then don't tease me," said Arslan.

He bent down and swiftly kissed him. He straightened, and took a step back, just beyond the reach of the harper's hands, to undo the ties at his hips and shuck off his pants and boots one leg at a time. He wrapped his hand around his sex, and stepped back into the harper's circle. Offering himself.

Daryoon burned. He could feel the blood flush rising on his cheeks. The low ache as he started to harden. He wanted to reach down and help it along. Instead he gripped his own wrists behind his back and clamped down, until the fingers of his left hand started to tingle in protest.

To see Arslan naked was no novelty. Hardly shocking. Daryoon had been far more stunned the first time he'd bloodied the prince in the training yard, sent his fist flying at his nose and been too slow in checking his swing. To spill the heir's blood was to verge on the unpardonable. But what fault could fall on Daryoon if he watched him strip after a practice and plunge into a bath?

This was something else. This took Arslan and sex and tied them together in Daryoon's mind in a way that he couldn't ignore.

When the harper made his first strong stroke, Arslan grabbed for his shoulders and did not let go. Grinning, the harper did it again. Again. Pressed the palm of his other hand against the head of Arslan's sex and rubbed.

Arslan choked out, "That..."

The harper murmured, "Is this it?" He was intent on Arslan's face. Turned his hand around so his thumb ran up the underside. "Is this what you want?"

"Yes."

And that was what the harper gave him for a minute that stretched out on Arslan's quick breaths. Daryoon watched him tense his back and his hindquarters, watched him rock up on his toes to get more, and clenched his own muscles in sympathy.

"No, just keep... keep..."

Arslan's voice broke and he frowned. Daryoon figured the harper had done something differently, something that he couldn't see but that the one in the harper's hands could certainly feel.

"Sorry," said the harper, "Sorry. Like this?"

Whatever he did then was very, very right, because Arslan moaned and threw his hips forward so heavily he upset the harper's rhythm, and Daryoon wanted nothing more than to go over and press up against Arslan's back and force him to hold still, just for a moment, just so the harper could finish him off like he wanted.

No need. So closely did the harper pay attention to Arslan that Daryoon found it hard to hate him. He caught up to Arslan, matched him, and stayed there until Arslan cried out and shivered and spilled onto his hands and down his arms.

Daryoon could smell Arslan's release from where he stood. If he tried, if he really concentrated, he thought he could imagine the taste on his tongue. He made himself shudder with the thought.

Arslan bowed his head and breathed. He locked his elbows and rested against the harper's shoulders. The harper did not seem to mind. He took his hands off Arslan, sending another shiver through the prince, and wiped them on the bedsheets, then reached up and pulled Arslan down to the bed.

He mostly fell. Laughed a little as the bed bounced under his weight, then rolled over onto his back and smiled at the ceiling. If this had been Arslan alone, Daryoon could have smiled, too. As it was, the harper might notice him, so he did not.

The harper lay on his back next to the prince.

Arslan turned onto his side and propped his head up on his hand. "You realize that you are still dressed."

"So I am." The harper smirked, then yawned. "Will His Highness now order me to be rid of my remaining clothes?"

"Does His Highness need to?"

The harper laughed. "No." He hooked his thumbs into his pants and wriggled them off, never sitting up, and kicked them from his feet. His sex was flush with blood and lifted away from his body. He dug his bare toes into the mattress.

Arslan was rapt. His cheeks were still flushed, and his lips slightly parted, as he took in the view with the same concentration he brought to all his lessons. He shifted his hips.

"What are you looking at?" asked the harper, gently.

Arslan dragged his gaze away from between the harper's legs, and met his eyes instead. He smiled and shrugged a little. Daryoon thought he had not looked so young all evening as he did in that moment.

The harper folded his arms under his head. "Look with your hands, not your eyes," he teased. His smile took any edge off his words. "I certainly won't stop you."

It was all the asking Arslan needed. The first place he touched was the harper's throat. He splayed his fingers over the ridge, going for the tender places above the collarbone, under the chin, just below the lobe of the ear where the heart beat near the surface. The harper swallowed, and his adam's apple dipped under Arslan's hand. Arslan slid his hand into his hair.

The harper shut his eyes. Arslan traced over the thin lids, then down his cheeks and over the mouth he had kissed so anxiously earlier. He lingered there for a while, then skipped down to his ribs and the curve of his belly.

There was no clear method to how Arslan touched him. Daryoon thought he seemed more curious than anything else, trying out different spots to see what sort of reaction he could provoke. Stroking into his armpit and watching the harper twitch. Raking his nails down his sides to bring up gooseflesh. And perhaps Arslan was a little too young, or a little too noble, or much too unused to other people needing him, because he neglected to see the way the harper clenched his jaw whenever Arslan brushed against his sex but failed to take it in his hand.

Daryoon noticed. He was impressed in spite of himself that the harper did not ask for more. He thought he might have asked, if he was the one lying beside Arslan. Just standing here, watching, he'd grown hard to the point where he ached. How much worse would it be under Arslan's hands? Daryoon tried to imagine these were the moments just before a battle, when his sword was drawn and his horse could sense his tension and was starting to mince out of line, and he need to take long, deep breaths to calm himself or he would never be able to make it through. It worked, to a degree. He could hear Arslan murmuring to the harper, instead of his own blood pounding in his ears.

Arslan's sex started to stir again, lift a bit from where it lay against his thigh. He reached down and touched himself. Looked up and saw the harper watching him through half-closed eyes, and took his hand away. He threw his thigh over the harper's and shifted until his sex pressed hard against the other man's, and levered up on one elbow and one hand so he could reach his mouth and kiss him.

Seeing that reminded Daryoon of exactly what it felt like to have another man's hardness grind against his, and undid every bit of calm he had managed to find. A play, Daryoon thought. This was like watching a play. Only the actors were not pretending, and the audience could not leave.

The harper's eyes were tightly closed. He moaned in the back of his throat.

"You're a quick study," he murmured. "A talent that surpasses your years."

Arslan stiffened. Daryoon saw it.

"When I was so young, I..." He trailed off as Arslan's drew his entire body away. He moved until he did not touch the harper at all.

Cruel satisfaction shot through Daryoon.

The harper looked up at Arslan. The prince did not speak. He did not need to; the cool mask that shuttered his eyes said enough.

The harper was suddenly grave. "Your forgiveness. I forget myself." No fool, this man. Perhaps unaccustomed to flattering royalty, but not unaccustomed to cajoling a lover. Arslan did not look as cold as he had before, though he was not entirely mollified.

The harper reached down and laced his fingers together with Arslan's. Tugged the prince's hand up to his chest and held it there.

"Tell me what you want," he said, and he sounded earnest. "You can have whatever you want."

Arslan tilted his head. Considered. He freed his hand and ran it down the harper's body, not touching where he wanted it most, and slid his fingers between the other man's legs to where Daryoon could not see.

"This?" asked Arslan.

"Yes, of course--" said the harper, and that was all he managed before he inhaled sharply and lifted his hips from the bed, and Daryoon guessed that Arslan had curled one of his fingers, so unsuited for playing the harp, deep into him.

The harper made a noise far in the back of his throat and turned onto his side. He faced Daryoon, though he did not seem to notice he was there, much less look towards him. He had clearly waited too long now to be conscious of anything beyond his own body. Arslan withdrew his hand to let him move, then slid down behind him, close, and tucked his hand back between his legs. The harper closed his eyes tightly and frowned, but canted his hips up and back.

Arslan leaned over and put his mouth close to the harper's ear and Daryoon couldn't make out his words, but the harper answered, "No, not--" in a voice half air and half sound. Arslan hummed a little and kissed behind the harper's ear, down his throat, on his shoulder, and did something with his hand that made his biceps stand out in relief.

The harper moaned into the bedsheets.

Arslan buried his face into the harper's hair and kept moving his hand, until the harper moved his top leg forward and rolled partway onto his stomach and groaned something muffled that could have been, "Oh," or could have been "Now," but meant the same thing either way. Arslan slung a leg between his and covered him a little more.

Daryoon could tell-- he wished Arslan's face wasn't hidden, he wanted to see his face-- when he entered him. Arslan scrabbled for the harper's hip, and then found the harper's sex, and that made the other man buck back and jolted them into a rhythm.

Daryoon wasn't sure what he should be feeling, torn as he was between remembering what it felt like to get that and what it felt like to do that, with entirely different thoughts of Arslan wrapped through and coloring everything he remembered. He thought about closing his eyes, but knew that would only make it worse; to hear what was happening but not be able to see it would be to some degree cowardly, when it was his duty to watch after Arslan. Always. Whenever. And if he watched him closely enough, could guess at what he must be feeling, then it made his own body easier to ignore. As if there was not enough room for both of their pleasure, and his own desire was completely swallowed up in Arslan's. He would have to come for them both.

At first Arslan managed to keep his hand moving on the harper's sex, stripping him from root to crown, but eventually he was distracted by his own pleasure, and his touch became sporadic. One last strong stroke, then a long minute where he rested the flat of his hand on the harper's belly. The harper made an encouraging sound and took himself in hand. Arslan abandoned him and thrust, single-minded.

And when Arslan came, he tossed his head back, and Daryoon wasn't sorry anymore that he hadn't been able to watch his face all along, because the shock of seeing him breathless and crying in that one moment made him look all the more beautiful.

The harper stilled his hips, but not his hand; quickened his strokes and soon followed. He was very quiet. Arslan opened his eyes wide and shivered and said something in low tones against the harper's neck that made him laugh through his last few strokes. Kept him laughing even after he was finished.

Daryoon realized his eyes stung from staring too long, and blinked. He felt like an idiot.

Arslan finally pulled away and rolled over onto his back. He sighed. Yawned enormously. The harper stretched and looked lazily around the room and came very close to looking at Daryoon, but avoided meeting his eyes at the last second. Over his shoulder he asked, "Tired?" but Daryoon could see that Arslan was already asleep.

In silence, the harper turned over watched the prince breathe. Daryoon only grew impatient. He wondered how long it would be before the harper left, and if anything he could think to say would make him leave sooner.

Finally, the harper turned away on his own. He sat up and reached to the bedside table, tossing a towel meant for drying hands into the basin, and poured water over both. He wrung it out and wiped the back of his neck, shivering at the contact between cold cloth and his skin, then ran it down his chest and between his legs. Water dripped to the floor. Twisting his upper body, he turned to face Arslan with the towel in his hands. He hesitated.

"You won't wake him," said Daryoon. "He sleeps like the dead."

The harper looked at him, directly, for the first time since they had walked into the prince's rooms. Lamplight was unkind. It struck him full in the face and made his eyes look dull. He nodded, turning away, and ran the towel lightly over Arslan.

The prince rolled to his side and curled up, but he did not wake.

The harper tossed the towel into the basin and stood up. For all his intensity a few minutes before, he now looked worn, the last of his adrenaline burned away and leaving only a tired young man dressing in the dead hours between midnight and dawn. He tracked the discarded pieces of his clothing away from the bed and back towards the door. Daryoon followed him.

He swung his cloak over his shoulders, disturbing the air and transforming the harp strapped to his back into an anonymous flat hump masked by the red of the wool. He turned to Daryoon.

"Don't bother to guide me. I can find my own way back."

"I'm sure you can," said Daryoon. He held open the door.

The harper did not look back to the bed or to its sleeping occupant, but did toss Daryoon a final insolent grin as he walked out. Daryoon ignored him. He shut the door firmly when he was gone.

He returned to Arslan's bedside and stood watch until morning broke.

*

Epilogue

It was pure chance he didn't break his demon-spawned neck. There was a limit to how surefooted even the finest warhorse could be, and his had performed beyond the possible.

His mare's hooves kicked up shards of rock as he careened through the mountains, desperate to reach the far side of the valley of Atropatene. Damn Kharlan to desert hells for his betrayal, for committing treason against the king, a charge he had admitted with pride, and for giving his country to the enemy with its defenses torched and its army slaughtered. Let him deny it if he wanted. The proof burned in the cradle of the valley behind Daryoon's back. And damn himself for not being quicker to kill the man, for not seeing what he was planning months ago. Goddess damn his bitch blind eyes. To leave Kharlan alive was the only choice he had. The dead can not get revenge. And if Kharlan had betrayed his king, had betrayed Daryoon, then certainly he had planned for the death of his third obstacle.

Daryoon hauled back on the reins and his mare stopped short. Misra aid him. Where was Arslan?

Scattered fighting marked the field ahead of him. Most of the dead wore Parusian gold, not Lusitanian red. The few of the advanced guard who had survived this long would not make it much longer, both separated and outnumbered by a wide margin. Fifty yards from where he stood, a single Parusian soldier on horseback wheeled away from two Lusitanian cavalry.

Daryoon kicked his horse into a gallop. She responded well. He slapped away the first man's sword and sliced open his unguarded belly. Caught the second on his weak left in the middle of a turn, and laid open his throat. He rounded on the Parusian.

"The heir prince! Where is he?"

The soldier looked at him with dull eyes. Dumbly, he pointed over Daryoon's shoulder.

Turning, galloping, desperately hunting for a white cape that would be nearly invisible in this mist. Perhaps a glimpse of a blade that would prove to be the jewel and gilt sword of the prince. Daryoon himself had thrust that blade into Arslan's hands the morning after... the morning after the Queen's birthday, saying, "Every sword is different. It's time you learned the particulars of this one."

For a few weeks, everything had proceeded as it always had: drills in the morning, tutors in the afternoon. If there were a few afternoons that autumn when Daryoon turned around to find Arslan gone, and if Daryoon said nothing of the absences when he returned, then it was not so important as to upset the balance they had silently cultivated.

Daryoon never did see the harper again.

Then a day came shortly after the winter solstice, when Daryoon followed Arslan into the council room as he did every week, and found Vafuriez waiting with the other lords for the arrival of the king. When Andragoras arrived, and took his seat at the head of the great table, he announced that Eatran had been taken with a fever, and was not expected to survive. Daryoon would assume command of his marsbaan.

With a calm he did not feel, Daryoon rose and made the proper acceptance. When Andragoras waved him back into his chair he sat gratefully. Arslan kicked his foot under the table, and Daryoon looked out of the corner of his eye to see the prince smiling softly at the surface of the table.

His training of the prince ended abruptly. Winter kept him at the palace, but he met that very afternoon with his field commanders, arrived with Vafuriez, to discuss their new duties. Then word came from agents in Lusitania that there was a new leadership growing, its source unknown but still dangerous, and there was even more work for the army's youngest marsbaan to attend to. Daryoon still saw Arslan, of course, particularly as the intelligence became certain of the forthcoming battle and Arslan's own role grew more defined, but things were different.

He had last seen the prince this very morning, on horseback next to the grand commander, as Vafuriez teased, "You worry more than I do, Your Highness, and I'm an old man. We have 85,000 cavalry. We'll crush them at Atropatene."

Daryoon had ridden up on Arslan's other side. "What is it that worries you, Highness?"

Arslan tuned to face him. "This mist doesn't smell right. It doesn't feel right. It isn't... natural." Arslan had not looked scared. Daryoon thought he knew enough to say what scared looked like. And there was something odd to how the Lusitanians had moved forward onto the plain proper, as if they expected to mist to thicken, not burn away in the sun. So when Arslan left to lead the advance guard into the hills, and Daryoon followed Vafuriez into the king's tent for their final orders, he was resolved to speak Arslan's concerns as his own.

Daryoon was the youngest to have made marsbaan since the current dynasty had ascended the throne. Now he was the youngest to have it revoked. He was good at breaking expectations, wasn't he? If he only could do it once more, by finding Arslan before--

There. Not the white cape after all, but the golden helmet that outshone copper. He was still standing-- Misra, thank you, Goddess-- sword in hand, dodging an overhand blow from a soldier in red.

Daryoon crouched forward on his galloping mare and begged, "Please, girl, faster. Faster."

The Lusitanian struck and Arslan parried; he struck again and their swords locked, and Daryoon swore. He knew what would happen, knew it before he saw Arslan's sword wrenched out of his grip and lofted into the air, and heard the Lusitanian snarl at the prince and charge--

Daryoon's timing was perfect, and the force of his strike sent the Lusitanian's corpse sprawling.

"Your Highness! Are you all right?" As Daryoon swung down from his horse she turned her nose into his shoulder, streaking him with her white sweat. He touched her neck and silently apologized.

"Daryoon!" called Arslan. Then, a little breathless, but otherwise as calm as if he'd never come close to dying, "It's good to see you."

He had been perfect at his blooding, thought Daryoon as he went to one knee, but he had never been like this. Never a prince.

"The grand commander sent me to your side." And Vafuriez had been more right than he'd known. Daryoon would have to thank the old man for that, when he saw him again.

"Thank you. Do you know if my father is safe?"

With great precision, Daryoon said, "If Vafuriez and my cavalry are with him, I'm sure he's safe."

Arslan blinked. "You released your cavalry to Vafuriez?"

And even though he knew, now, that there'd been other forces at work, it still stung, and it hurt to admit. Trust Arslan to make him say it.

"I'm no longer marsbaan. I was dismissed."

"Father's short temper, again?" Trust Arslan not to judge him. He didn't even seem to entertain the idea that Daryoon had deserved the dishonor.

"No," said Daryoon, "Kharlan's treachery."

"Kharlan?"

Enough. This was neither the time nor the place; he would inform the prince of the details as they retreated. As they ran away. Impossible to return to Ecbatana, their best chance lay in following the road through the mountains ahead. If they pressed hard and rode well past dusk, and were not overly concerned with covering their tracks, they might make it far enough to demand shelter from a particular someone that he knew.

Someone with experience in running away.

Yes, they should leave a trail for the Lusitanians follow. For Kharlan. It could very well take an enemy army to convince Narsus to help them.

He'd never been good at convincing Narsus of anything.

"Your Highness," said Daryoon, "it's mad to stay on this battlefield any longer. Your duty is to protect yourself, and preserve your lineage."

"But the capital lies on the other side of this battlefield. You're an excellent warrior, but how can we do it?"

"I've thought it over, and I have a plan."

He rose and called to his horse. Arslan whistled for his white. Daryoon swung up into the saddle, then pulled ahead of the prince and led them up the rocky slopes to the plateau. The gray smudge of the forest was visible on the horizon.

The wind tossed up from the valley smelled charred.

Daryoon heard the hoofbeats trailing him stop, and turned to see Arslan staring over his shoulder, watching fire eat the valley.

"Your Highness, we have to hurry. As long as you are alive, you have a chance for revenge." One chance for Arslan. One for himself. "But right now, you need to concentrate on survival."

Arslan turned and met his eyes. Then he kneed his horse forward.

Guard the prince, just for a year, Vafuriez had ordered him twelve months ago. Then he will be past the most vulnerable point.

It occurred to Daryoon that he had never known Vafuriez to be wrong before. Bravado and courage were what the old man had built his career upon. But this time, Daryoon thought, Vafuriez had miscalculated. This war he had failed to predict.

This was the beginning.

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Author's Notes:

Apparently, our dear Gieve has a county library card, just as I do, because his version of "Zal the White-Haired" draws heavily from the legend of the same name in _Tales of Ancient Persia_, retold by Barbara Leonie Picard, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1972, ISBN 0192741543.

Arslan's sword is a single-handed broadsword from the thirteenth century (rather after the setting of the anime, I know). Daryoon's is a Japanese tachi, a cavalry sword (and contradicts the straight blade he uses in canon, I also know). Everything I know about swords comes from watching *Highlander,* so if I screwed up, it's because I don't really know anything.

The city of Ecbatana existed under that name in the time of Alexander the Great. In 324 B.C., a year before Alexander's own death, Hephaestion, his loyal lieutenant since his childhood in Macedonia, fell ill at Ecbatana and died there. Alexander was as excessive in grief as he was in everything else: he promptly had Hephaestion's physician crucified. The modern city of Hamadan, Iran is built directly on top of Ecbatana's ruins, so very little archeological exploration of the old city has taken place.