Frada glanced down at Roshnani, who was talking with a leatherworker. He still hesitated to look directly at her for more than a moment, but let his eyes slide across her and then back. Even so he said, "Well, considering what she did, maybe she does deserve to be out and about."
Since that was as close to a concession as he would get from his brother, Abivard clapped Frada on the back. "I thank you," he said. "Do remember, this is new for me, too. I expect it will grow easier for both of us-and maybe for Roshnani, as well-as time goes by. The Videssians let their women out freely, and so do our common folk. I don't think we'll fall into the Void if we do the same."
"I notice you haven't turned your other wives loose," Frada said.
"I would have, if Kishmar and Onnophre had kept their legs closed while I was away," Abivard answered irritably. "You'll notice they both got themselves with child while they were supposed to be locked away in the women's quarters, too; they could hardly have done more if they were selling themselves in the market square down in the village. But rewarding the others right after that would have been too much."
"What about our half sisters?" Frada asked.
"You're full of impossible questions today, aren't you?" Abivard said. He thought that one over, then sighed. "I probably won't let them out, not right away, anyhow. Having them known for wandering about outside the women's quarters wouldn't do their chances for a proper marriage match any good."
"That makes good sense," Frada allowed. "I give you credit for seeing the potholes and ruts in the road you're traveling."
"I'm glad of that," Abivard said. "Sometimes I don't think you see the road in the potholes and ruts I'm traveling." Both brothers laughed. Abivard said, "By the God, I did miss you. Sharbaraz King of Kings is a fine man and a good friend, but he's not an easy fellow to be foolish with."
"Nice to know I'm good for something," Frada said. "If all's well up here, as it looks to be, shall we go down and find out how Ganzak is doing with the latest armor? If he stays as busy as he has been, we'll be able to outfit a formidable band of lancers before long." His grin turned predatory. "All the neighboring dihqans will fear us."
"There are worse things," Abivard said. "Aye, let's go." Together, they descended from the wall and hurried across the courtyard to Ganzak's smithy. In winter, the smithy had been a welcome refuge against the cold. With fall still some ways away, sweat started on Abivard's brow as soon as he went into the fire-filled chamber.
Ganzak labored naked to the waist; his forehead and broad, hairy chest gleamed with sweat. Its odor filled the smith, along with woodsmoke and the almost-blood smell of hot iron. When Abivard and Frada came in, Ganzak was working not on armor but on a sword blade. His muscles rippled as he brought a hammer down on the iron bar he held to the anvil with a pair of tongs. Metal clashed against metal; sparks flew.
The smith plunged the blade-to-be into a barrel by the anvil. The hiss that rose might have come from the throat of a great venomous snake. Ganzak lifted the blade out of the quenching bath, examined it with a critical eye, and set it aside. He laid the tongs down on the anvil with a clank. "The God give you good day, lord," he said, nodding to Abivard.
"And to you," Abivard answered. Then he blurted, "How do you stand the heat in here?"
Ganzak threw back his head and laughed, loudly and gustily. "Lord, this chamber is my home. When I come out of it, I sometimes think I'm about to start shivering, I'm so used to it here."
Abivard and Frada exchanged glances. Frada said, "What I think is that you ought to go down into the village and have Tanshar or one of the old wives brew you up a potion, for it's plain you're not a well man."
The smith laughed again. He was always good-natured, which, given his size and strength, was fortunate. Now he stretched, and the molten motion of the muscles under his sweat-shiny skin was like those under a lion's pelt. "Do I look infirm to you?" he demanded.
"No, no," Frada said hastily. However good-natured Ganzak was, only a foolish man would undertake to argue with him.
Abivard said, "We came to see how you were faring with the armors the domain needs."
"I should finish the eighth suit before the moon is new again," the smith answered. "That's gear for man and horse both, you understand, and puts us two equipages ahead of where we were before Peroz King of Kings led the army up into Pardraya. We're also ahead in helms and shields both, and I've had men ask for mail shirts, too: they're a long way from full armor, I'll not deny, but better than leather dipped in boiling wax."
"I know where they got the idea, unless I'm much mistaken," Abivard said. "Are they men who rode with Sharbaraz King of Kings?"
Ganzak's brow furrowed. "Now that you mention it, lord, they are. How did you know that?" Before Abivard could answer, the smith snapped his fingers. "Wait! I have it. You think they filched the notion from the Videssians, don't you?"
"I certainly do," Abivard said. "The Videssians wore armor enough to dominate our light-armed horse archers and even to confront our lancers, but they were a lot more mobile than heavy cavalry. Their way of doing things had merit, I thought, and from what you say, I wasn't the only one."
"Mm-I wouldn't quarrel with you," Ganzak said. "They turned out to be men of more parts than I'd expected, I will say that for 'em. I figured they'd be all gold and sneakery and no guts, and they weren't like that at all." His jaw worked, as if he were chewing on something whose flavor he didn't quite fancy.
"I don't know but what I'd sooner have had 'em be more like the tales tell. They'd be less dangerous, I think."
"I think you're right," Abivard said. Ganzak showed clear understanding. He was a good smith, no doubt about that. Abivard wondered what sort of dihqan he would have made, had he been born to the nobility. A good one, was his guess. The realm needed smiths, yes, but it also needed good leaders. As Tanshar had asked, what was it losing because so many men never got to display the things of which they were capable?
Frada looked frustrated to the point of bursting. "Everyone chatters on about the Videssians and how they're this and how they're not that," he cried, "and here I've never been within a thousand farsangs of one."
"Don't let it bother you, brother of mine," Abivard said. "You'll have your chance against them, too."
"When?" Frada asked. "When I'm old and gray like Smerdis? I won't be able to do any good against them then. What with Sharbaraz King of Kings all friendly with Likinios Avtokrator, we're liable to have peace for the next generation." He spoke as if that were one of the worst things that could happen, but then, he had never been to war.
"I don't think you'll have to wait so long," Abivard said. "Sharbaraz King of Kings is a man of honor; he wouldn't pick a fight with Likinios without good reason. But Likinios is liable to give him reason. He took a chunk of Vaspurakan from us, remember, as the price for his aid. He's the kind who's always reaching out for his own advantage. One day he may well overreach himself, and then you'll have your wish."
Frada bent his arm, as if to couch a lance in the crook of his elbow. "It can't come soon enough."
Abivard laughed at him. "I said one day, brother of mine, not tomorrow or even next year."
"I heard what you said," Frada answered. "I just didn't listen to you."
The winter before, Abivard had passed his time in chilly exile at Serrhes in the Empire of Videssos. The winter before that had been filled with excitement and frantic preparations for revolt, with Sharbaraz a fugitive and Smerdis holding most of Makuran in the hollow of his hand.
This winter was different. It wasn't the near hibernation Abivard had known in his younger days. He was dihqan now, not Godarz, and on his shoulders rested responsibility for solving the squabbles in his domain and for making sure supplies would stretch till spring. But the harvest had been good-better than he had expected-and the storehouses held enough wheat and nuts and fruit to ensure that the domain would not go hungry before warmth returned.
He got the chance to relax a little, the first time
he'd had that chance for two and a half years. He made the most of it, sleeping through long winter nights, drinking hot spiced wine to fight the chill of snowstorms and icy breezes, taking advantage of the good harvest to eat until he had to fasten his sword belt one notch closer to the end than he had before.
Some crops grew despite the beastly weather. Roshnani's belly swelled, which she regarded with a mixture of pride and wry amusement. As her pregnancy advanced, her ankles also swelled when she was on her feet for any length of time. That limited her trips outside the women's quarters, much to her annoyance.
Abivard kept calling her to his bed even after she had grown quite round. That irked his other wives; one of them complained, "Why don't you summon me more often? Aren't I prettier than she is?"
"If you have to ask the question, the answer is always no," Abivard answered, "because just letting it cross your lips makes you ugly."
The woman stared at him in bafflement. "I don't understand," she said.
"I know," he answered, sighing. "That's part of the problem."
Little by little, he began to let his other wives make excursions outside the women's quarters. He remained unconvinced that was a good idea but found no way around it. Before he let any of his wives out to explore the rest of the stronghold, he offered such freedom to his mother. Burzoe rejected it, as she had before. He had expected as much, but it still saddened him. Others were moving in new directions, but her path through life remained fixed.
"What are we going to do with her?" he asked Roshnani one chilly night when the two of them huddled together in the bed in the dihqan's bedchamber as much for warmth as from affection. "If those others go out and see things and do things she doesn't, how will she keep the lead in the women's quarters?"
"She probably won't," Roshnani answered. "It will pass to someone else." Since she was the present dihqan's principal wife, when she said "someone else" she undoubtedly meant herself, but she was characteristically self-effacing.
She was also sure to be right. Abivard realized that change would have to come anyway, sooner or later: Burzoe was, after all, only the widow of the former dihqan. But she had been undisputed mistress of the feminine side of the stronghold for longer than he had been alive; the idea of that power slipping out of her hands was as upsetting as an earthquake. He shook his head in bemusement.
Roshnani felt the motion and asked, "What is it?"
He explained, then said, "I was thinking of all the changes that have happened lately, but here's one I hadn't looked for: maybe that's what makes it so upsetting."
"As you said, though, it's a change that's coming because she refuses to change," Roshnani reminded him. "And more changes are yet to come." She took his hand and set it on her belly. The skin there was stretched tight over her growing womb.
The baby inside her kicked and squirmed, then pushed something hard and round against Abivard's palm. "That's the head," he said in delight. "That has to be his head."
Her hand joined his. "I think you're right," she said, just before, like some magical island that could rise out of the water and then vanish once more, it sank away from them as the baby shifted position.
Abivard hugged Roshnani to him. As he did so, the baby kicked vigorously. They both laughed. "Someone's doing his best to come between us," he said.
Roshnani turned serious. "That will happen for a while, you know," she said.
"I'll need some time to recover after the baby's born, and he'll need me for a while, too, in spite of servants and wet nurses."
"I do know that," Abivard said. "I expect it will be all right. I'm just waiting to see which of us he favors. If he looks like your brother Okhos, he'll have all the maidens sighing for him."
"I've no reason to complain of the looks on your side of the family," Roshnani said, which made Abivard hug her again and also made the baby wiggle in her belly-or perhaps the baby would have wiggled anyhow. Roshnani went on, "And what shall we call him, once he comes out?"
"I'd like to name him Varaz, after my brother who perished up on the Pardrayan plain," Abivard answered. "Do you mind? You lost your father and brothers on the steppe, as well."
"He'll be of Vek Rud domain, and heir to it, so he should have a name that goes with it," Roshnani said after a little thought. "We'll have others to remember my kin-and your father, too. I'd thought you might want to name the boy Godarz, in fact. Why don't you?"
"Because my father's memory will stay green for years to come in the hearts and minds of everyone who knew him," Abivard said; he had thought about that, too. "He was dihqan, and a good one; he touched people's lives. That's a better monument than a baby's name. But Varaz was cut down before he had the chance to show everything he could do in life. He deserves to be remembered, too, and for him I think this is a good way."
"Ah." Roshnani nodded against his chest. "Every so often, you've accused me of being sensible. Husband of mine, I have to say I'm not the only one here with that affliction."
"Accused? Affliction?" Abivard snorted. "You make it sound as if something's wrong with common sense. The only thing wrong with it I can think of is that not enough people have any of it… Some of my former wives spring to mind," he added with a touch of malice.
Roshnani refused to let the last gibe distract her. "What could be more wrong with it than that?" she asked, and, as she had a way of doing, left Abivard groping for an answer.
* * *
Winter solstice came and went. The year before, in Serrhes, the Videssians had celebrated the day with raucous, sometimes rowdy rites. Here it passed quietly, almost unnoticed. In a way, that felt good and normal. In another way, Abivard missed the excitement of the Videssian festival.
Snowstorms rolled down from the north one after another: invaders from the steppe as dangerous as the Khamorth and, unlike the nomads, impossible to repel. The storms killed beasts and occasionally herdsmen; like everyone in the stronghold and the village below, Abivard worried that the fuel carefully gathered during the warm season would not last through the cold. Every icy blast that shook the shutters on the window to his bedchamber made him fret more.
Then, one day when the year's reckoning said the equinox was approaching but the snow-covered ground seemed certain winter would last forever, such mere pragmatic concerns as fuel vanished from his mind, for a maidservant came out of the women's quarters and, wrapped in thick sheepskins, hurried down to the village. She soon returned with the midwife, a gray-haired woman named Farigis.
Abivard met the midwife in the courtyard, just inside the main gate. She bowed politely, then said, "Your pardon, lord, but I would sooner not stand about here making polite chitchat. Your wife has more need of me than you do right now."
"Of course," Abivard said, stepping aside to let her pass. She swept by him without a backward glance, her long coat trailing in the snow. Far from being offended, Abivard was relieved: to his way of thinking, anyone who put business ahead of conversation was likely to know that business.
He did not follow Farigis into the women's quarters. For one thing, he suspected she would have thrown him out, and in such matters her word, not his, was law. And for another, childbirth was a women's mystery that frightened him worse than any of the armored lancers he had faced during the civil war: this was a battlefield on which he could not contend.
As he paced the hall outside his bedchamber, he murmured, "Lady Shivini, if you'll hear the prayer of a mere man, help bring my lady through her ordeal." That done, he went back to pacing. He wanted to send the prayer up again and again but refrained, fearing he would anger the prophet if he seemed to nag.
After a while Frada took him by the arm, led him into the kitchens, sat him down, and set a mug of wine in front of him. He drank mechanically, hardly aware of what he was doing.
"This is taking a very long time," he said presently.
"It can do that, you know," Frada answered, although he knew less about the matter than Abivard did, which, given the level of Abivard's ignora
nce, was not easy. He picked up Abivard's empty mug and carried it away, returning a moment later with it full and a matching one for himself in his other hand.
Every time a serving woman came into the kitchens, Abivard jumped, thinking either that she was Farigis or that she brought word from the midwife. But the sun had set and darkness settled over the stronghold like a cloak before Farigis came forth. Abivard sprang to his feet. The smile on the midwife's face told him everything he needed to know, but he stammered out his questions anyhow. "Is she…? Is the baby…?"
"Both well, and you have a son, as I gather Tanshar told you that you would," Farigis answered. "A good-size lad, and he cries as loud as any I've heard, which is good, though your lady won't think so when he wakes up howling a few weeks from now. She says you'll name him for your brother. The God grant him a long and healthy life."
"May I see her?" Abivard asked, and then, correcting himself, "May I see them?"
"Aye, though she's very tired," the midwife said. "I don't know how long she'll want to see you, and this once, lord, you'd do well to let your wife's wishes prevail, not your own."
"My wife's wishes prevail more often than you think," Abivard told her. She didn't seem much impressed; Abivard got the feeling she was anything but easy to impress. The sweet jingle of the silver arkets with which he paid her fee, though, definitely gained her complete, undivided, and approving attention.
"Congratulations, lord!" The call followed Abivard through the stronghold to the door of his bedchamber, then picked up again, higher-pitched, in the women's quarters.
Roshnani looked up when he came into her room. Farigis had warned him she was weary, but the exhaustion she showed shocked him. Beneath her naturally swarthy cast of skin, she was dead pale. The room smelled of stale sweat, as if she had labored in the fields rather than in childbed.
"Are you all right?" he asked, alarmed.
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