A messenger, his face filthy with road dust, came hurrying up to Abivard. Bowing low, he said, «Your pardon, lord, but I bear an urgent dispatch from the marzban of Vaspurakan.»

«What does Vshnasp want with me?» Abivard asked. Up till then Sharbaraz' governor of Vaspurakan had done his best to pretend that Abivard did not exist.

He accepted the oiled-leather message tube, opened it, and broke the wax seal on the letter inside with a thumbnail. As he read the sheet of parchment he'd unrolled, his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. When he was through, he raised his head and spoke to his expectantly waiting officers: «Mikhran marzban requests—begs our aid. Vshnasp marzban is dead. The Vaspurakaners have risen against him and against the worship of the God. If we don't come to his rescue at once, Mikhran says, the whole province will be lost.»

Abivard stormed through the corridors of his residence. Venizelos started to say something to him but got a good look at his face and flattened himself against the wall to let his master pass.

Roshnani was embroidering fancy flowers on a caftan of winter-weight wool. She glanced up when Abivard came into the chamber where she was working, then bent her head to the embroidery once more.

«I told anyone who would listen that we should have left the Vaspurakaners to their own misguided cult,» he ground out. «But no! We have to ram the God down their throats, too! And now look what it's gotten us.»

«Yes, you told anyone who would listen,» Roshnani said. «No one back in Mashiz listened. Are you surprised? Is this the first time such a thing has happened? Of course it's not. Besides, with Vshnasp over them, it's no wonder the Vaspurakaner princes decided to revolt.»

«All the Vaspurakaners style themselves princes—the God alone knows why,» Abivard said, a little less furious than he had been a moment before. He looked thoughtfully at his wife—his principal wife, he supposed he should have thought, but he'd been away from the others so long that he'd almost forgotten them. «Do you mean the Vaspurakaners would have rebelled even if we hadn't tried to impose the God on them?»

Roshnani nodded. «Aye, though maybe not so soon. Vshnasp had a reputation in Mashiz as a seducer. I don't suppose he would have stopped that just because he was sent to Vaspurakan.»

«Mm, likely not,» Abivard agreed. «Things were better with the old ways firmly in place, don't you think?»

«Better for men, certainly,» Roshnani said, unusual sharpness in her voice. «If you ask the wives who spent their lives locked away in the women's quarters of strongholds and saw no more of the world than what the view out their windows happened to give, you might find them singing a different tune.» She gave him a sidelong smile—she had never been one to stay in a bad humor. «Besides, husband of mine, are you not pleased to be on the cutting edge of fashion?»

«Now that you mention it, no,» Abivard answered. Roshnani made a face at him. Like it or not, though, he and Sharbaraz were on the cutting edge of fashion. Giving their principal wives leave to emerge on occasion from the women's quarters had set long-frozen Makuraner usage on its ear. At first, ten years ago now, men had called noblewomen who appeared in public harlots merely for letting themselves be seen. But when the King of Kings and his most successful general set a trend, others would and did follow it.

«Besides,» Roshnani said, «even under the old way, a man determined enough might find out how to sneak into the women's quarters for a little while, or a woman to sneak out of them.»

«Never mind that,» Abivard said. «Vshnasp won't sneak in now, nor women out to him. If such sneakings were what touched off the Vaspurakaner revolt, I wish some of the princes had caught him inside and made him into a eunuch so he would stay there without endangering anyone's chastity, including his own.»

«You are angry at him,» Roshnani observed. «A man says he wants to see another man made a eunuch only when his rage is full and deep.»

«You're right, but that doesn't matter, either,» Abivard answered. «Vshnasp is in the God's hands now, not mine, and if the God should drop his miserable soul into the Void…» He shook his head. Vshnasp didn't matter. He had to remember that. The hideous mess the late marzban of Vaspurakan had left behind was something else again.

As she often did, his wife thought along with him. «How much of our force here in the westlands will you have to take to Vaspurakan to bring the princes back under the rule of the King of Kings?» she asked.

«Too much,» he said, «but I have no choice. We ought to hold the Videssian westlands, but we must hold Vaspurakan. We draw iron and silver and lead from the mines there and also a little gold. When times are friendlier than this, we draw horsemen, too. And if we don't control the east-west valleys, Videssos will. Whoever does control them has in his hands the best invasion routes to the other fellow's country.»

«Maniakes has Vaspurakaner blood, not so?» Roshnani said.

Abivard nodded. «He does, and I wouldn't be the least surprised to find the Empire behind this uprising, either.»

«Neither would I,» Roshnani said. «It's what I'd do in his sandals. He doesn't dare come fight us face to face, so he stirs up trouble behind our backs.» She thought for a moment «How large a garrison do you purpose leaving behind here in Across?» Her voice was curiously expressionless.

«I've been chewing on that,» Abivard answered. The face he made said that he didn't like what he'd been chewing. «I don't think I'm going to leave anyone. We'll need a good part of the field force to put down the princes, and on the far side of the Cattle Crossing the Videssians have soldiers to spare to gobble up any small garrison I leave here. Especially after they beat the Kubratoi earlier this summer, I don't want to hand them a cheap victory that would make them feel they can meet us and win. It's almost sorcery: if they feel that, it's halfway to being true.»

He waited for Roshnani to explode like a covered pot left too long in the fire. She surprised him by nodding. «Good,» she said. «I was going to suggest that, but I was afraid you'd be angry at me. I think you're right—you'd be throwing away any men you leave here.»

«I thnk I'll name you my second in command,» Abivard said, and that got him a smile. He gave it back, then quickly sobered. «After we leave, though, the Videssians will come back anyhow. One of my officers is bound to write to Sharbaraz about that, and Sharbaraz is bound to write to me.» He rolled his eyes. «One more thing to look forward to.»

A wagon rolled up in front of the residence that had belonged to the Videssian logothete of the treasury. Abivard's children swarmed aboard it with cries of delight. «A house that moves!» Shahin exclaimed. None of them remembered what living in such a cramped space for weeks at a time was like. They'd find out Roshnani did remember all too well. She climbed into the wagon with much less enthusiasm than her offspring showed.

Venizelos, Livania, and the rest of the Videssian servants stood in front of the house. The steward went to one knee in front of Abivard. «The lord with the great and good mind grant you health and safety, most eminent sir,» the steward said.

«I thank you,» Abivard answered, though he noted that Venizelos had not prayed that Phos grant him success. «Perhaps one day we'll see each other—I expect so, at any rate.»

«Perhaps,» was all Venizelos said. He did not want to think about the Makuraners' return to Across.

Abivard handed him a small heavy leather sack, gave Livania another, and went down the line of servants with more. Their thanks were loud and effusive. He could have forced them to go along with him. For that matter, he could have had them killed for the sport of it The coins inside the sack were silver arkets of Makuran, not Videssian goldpieces. The servants would probably grumble about that once he was out of earshot Again, though, he could have done far worse.