The Dance of Time

Boys, on the other hand, mattered. And now—curse him!—the new king was seducing boys away from their proper and traditional allegiances to babble mystical nonsense in monasteries. Even teaching them to read, as if any Pathan tribesman ever needed such an effeminate skill.

The process would take decades, of course, even generations. But it would work, as surely as the sunrise—provided that Kungas established from the beginning that however much the clan chiefs hated him they did not dare to oppose him openly. Or try any violent tactic against him, whatsoever.

Which he had just done. More efficiently, ruthlessly, pitilessly, and savagely than any of the clan chiefs had ever imagined he would. Just as, in a different universe, the Mongols had obliterated the cult of the Hashasin which had given the world the term "assassin" to begin with—by demonstrating that they were perfectly willing to transform the definition of the word by an order of magnitude.

Yet...

Irene knew her husband very well, by now. Kungas enjoyed her intelligence and her sense of humor, but this was no time for rational argument, much less jests.

She fell back on an emotional appeal that was even more powerful than horror and disgust and anger.

"There's this, if it helps. The dynasty is secured."

She looked down, stroking the silk raiment covering her belly. She was still, to all appearances, as slender as ever. "Well. Most likely. I might have a miscarriage."

His eyes were drawn to her waist, and she could sense Kungas' mood shifting. So, smiling gently, she ventured a little joke.

"Of course, you'll make that good, soon enough."

For a moment, Kungas tried to maintain his ferocious mood. "Typical! Salacious Greek women. Seductresses, every one of you. If you weren't so beautiful..."

In point of fact, Irene wasn't beautiful at all. Attractive, perhaps, but no more than that. Her thick and luxurious chestnut hair was not even much of an asset, any longer, tied back as she now had it in a pony tail. And she'd found, to her disgruntlement, that becoming a queen hadn't made her big nose any smaller or made her narrow, close-eyed face any fuller. Even with the pony tail, she still looked like exactly what she was—an intellectual, not a courtesan.

Happily, none of that mattered to Kungas. Her little joke wasn't really even that. By the end of the evening, most likely—tomorrow night, at the latest—Kungas would demonstrate that there wasn't any danger that the new dynasty would die out from lack of vigor.

Kungas sighed. "It really was a hateful business, Irene. Damn those old men! I would have preferred..."

He let the thought trail away. Then, gave her something in the way of an apologetic shrug.

In point of fact, it had been Irene who suggested that he restrict himself to simply executing all of the clan chiefs—and Kungas who had declined the suggestion.

"No," he'd said. "That won't be enough. However stupid and vicious, no clan chief is a coward. They'll accept their own deaths, readily enough, as stubborn as they are. The only thing that will really terrify them is the extinction of their entire clan. So I have no choice but to demonstrate that I'm quite willing to do so. Maybe if I do it once, right now, I'll never have to do it again."

He'd been right, and Irene had known it. She'd only advanced her suggestion because she knew how much Kungas detested the alternative. As hard a man as he was, and as hard a life as he'd led, not even Kungas could butcher babies to punish octogenarians without shrieking somewhere in his iron-masked soul.

Finally, she could sense the mood breaking. The surest sign came when Kungas made his own jest.

"And who's the father, by the way?"

Irene's eyes narrowed. "Don't be stupid. As often as you mount me, when would I have the time to cuckold you? Even assuming I wasn't too exhausted, you insensate brute."

Kungas was still scowling. In his own way, he could teach stubbornness to clan chiefs.

"Not that," he said curtly, waving the notion aside with an economical little gesture. "I don't doubt my cock's the only one that gets into you. But it's just a conduit. Spiritually speaking. Who's the real father? Have we moved up to gods, yet? Will I discover as an old man that the children I thought mine were actually sired by Zeus and who knows how many randy members of the Hindu pantheon?"

"What a heathen notion!" Irene exclaimed. "You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"I'm not a Christian," he pointed out.

"You're not really a Buddhist, either, even if you insist on the trappings. So what? It's still a barbarous notion."

She drew herself up with as much dignity as she could manage. That was... hard, given that she was almost laughing.

"And it's all nonsense, anyway. Of course, you're the father. The ancestry gets interesting, though."