The Dance of Time

"The letter tells me nothing, naturally, of the girls' location. But it does depict, in far more detail than I would have expected, the comfort of their lives now. And there are so many references to the mysterious 'ladies' to whom they have—this is blindingly obvious—grown very attached."

"You conclude from this?"

Dadaji studied the letter in his hand, for a moment. "I conclude from this that someone—not my daughters, someone else—is sending me a message here. Us, rather, a message."

Rao leaned back in his throne. "So I think, also. You will all remember the message sent to us last year from Dadaji's daughters, with the coin?"

Several heads nodded, Shakuntala's among them.

"And how Irene Macrembolitissa convinced us it was not a trap, but the first step in a complex maneuver by Narses?"

All heads nodded.

Rao pointed to the letter. "I think that is the second step. Inviting us to take a third—or, rather, allow someone else to do so."

That statement was met by frowns of puzzlement on most faces. But, from the corner of her eye, Shakuntala saw Bindusara nodding.

She could sense that she was losing the argument. For a moment, she had to struggle desperately not to collapse into sheer girlish pleading—which would end, inevitably, with her blurting out before the council news she had not yet even given to Rao. Of the new child that was coming.

Suddenly, Rao's large hand reached over and gave her little one a squeeze. "Oh, be still, girl. I can assure you that I have no intention whatsoever of fighting Rana Sanga again."

His smile was simply cheerful now. "Ever again, in fact. And that is precisely why I will accept the challenge."

In the few seconds those two sentences required, Shakuntala swung from despair to elation and back. "You don't need to do this!"

"Of course, I don't. But Rana Sanga does."

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Framed

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Chapter 10

Axum

"What, no elephants?" Antonina asked sarcastically.

Ousanas shook his head. "They won't fit in the corridors, not even in the Ta'akha Maryam. We tried. Too bad, though. It would have made a nice flourish. Instead—"

He gestured before them, down the long hallway leading to the throne room. "—we must walk."

Antonina tried to picture war elephants inside the Ta'akha Maryam, her mind boggling a little. Even if the huge beasts could have been inserted into the halls...

She looked down the long rows of guards and officials, flanking both sides. "They'd have crushed everybody," she muttered.

"Oh, not the soldiers. Most of them would have scampered aside in time, and the ones who didn't had no business being sarwen anyway. In fact, Ezana thought it would be a useful test."

Ezana was the senior commander of the three royal regiments. Antonina thought he was probably cold-blooded enough to have said that. There was something downright scary about Ezana. Fortunately, he was not hot-tempered, nor impulsive. Even more fortunately, his devotion to the dynasty was unquestioned by anyone, including Antonina.

Ezana had been one of Eon's two bodyguards while he'd still been a prince. That was a very prestigious position for the soldiers who made up Ethiopia's regiments—the "sarwen," as they called themselves. When Eon had assumed the throne, Ezana had become the commander of the royal regiments—and the other bodyguard, Wahsi, had been appointed the military commander of the Ethiopian naval expedition that Antonina had used to rescue Belisarius and his army from the siege of Charax.

Wahsi had died in battle in the course of that expedition. Eon's son, the new Axumite King of Kings, had been named after him.

So, Antonina had no doubt at all of Ezana's loyalty to the infant negusa nagast, sired by the prince he'd guarded and named after his best friend. Still, he was... scary.

"The slaughter among the officials, of course, would have been immense," Ousanas continued cheerfully. "seeing how half of them are as fat as elephants, and eight out of ten have brains that move more ponderously. But it was my assessment that the loss of one-third would be a blessing for the kingdom. Ezana was hoping that half would be crushed."

Antonina thought the aqabe tsentsen was joking, but she wasn't sure. There were ways in which Ousanas was even scarier than Ezana. But since they were nearing the entrance to the throne room, she decided she'd simply pretend she hadn't heard.

One-third of Ethiopia's officials, slain in a few minutes! Half, according to Ezana!

Bloodthirsty African maniacs. Antonina would have been quite satisfied with a simple, unostentatious Roman decimation.

* * *

"All be silent!"

As if his booming commander's voice wasn't enough, Ezana slammed the iron-capped ferrule of his spear onto the stone floor. "Be silent!"