CHAPTER FIVE
Cyrodian, the second prince of the empire, was indeed a man to inspire fear. Huge—taller by a head than the tallest soldier in the Khamar palace guard—he was broad-shouldered, buffalo-chested, with arms and legs the size of oaks. His beard and mustache were coarse, and he wore his hair in a modified soldier’s cut: far back from the forehead, unkempt at the shoulders. In aspect he was a human bear; in temperament, as wayward and eruptive as a demon; in intellect, intelligent though roughly schooled, preferring muscle to argument. Truly might Yta, in comparing her second to her first and third sons, wonder whether Cyrodian were some strange changeling.
Yet he was not evil. He was a brute, a braggart, an ill-tempered mammoth, a man of unswerving and unservile opinions. “Hrux,” some of his men called him, borrowing a name from religious parable—for Hrux had supposedly been the wild ox made human for a year; when returned to its animal state, it bewailed the fact constantly. Hence the ox’s constant low bellow, sounding as of pain or torment.
Hrux, he was called by his men. The youngest general in the army of the Athadian Empire. Cyrodian: a man of strength, sword, anger.
Tonight, while Khamars guarded his late father’s ashes out on the plain, while Yta sat speechless and undecided in her chambers with Abgarthis, while the temple gongs and bells tolled death and anguish to the heavens, Cyrodian sat in his elder brother’s lavish rooms in the east wing of the palace and played with his daggers—six of them, the edges keen, their points exactly sharp. Dressed in his rough trousers and open shirt, he relaxed in a large wooden chair, feet up on a hassock, watching Elad as Elad paced before the great fire in the wall.
“Sit, brother.”
“I am nervous, Cyrodian.”
“You’re making me ill with your old woman’s games.”
Elad stopped and threw his hands behind his back. Uncomfortable with ceremonial attire, he had changed into a plain shirt, loose doublet, and black woolen trousers. He regarded his brother coolly. “Old woman?”
“Let Yta cry over the passing of our father. You and I must talk. Sit and drink your wine.”
“I am not thirsty.”
Cyrodian barked a laugh. “Not for wine, anyway.”
A slight tapping at the outer door. Elad called, and a servant entered with a tray of fresh wine and hard brown bread and meats.
“Put it over there,” Elad told him.
The servant set down the tray, placed the decanter on the table, and the plate of bread and meats, then took up the half-empty, warm jug.
“Where is the queen?” Elad asked this man.
“In her chambers, my lord, resting.”
“And Abgarthis?”
“In his own room, I believe.”
“Drafting the queen’s formal abdication, I trust?” Cyrodian said.
Elad shot him a hard glance.
“I—I know not,” stuttered the servant.
Cyrodian aimed a knife and let it fly in the servant’s direction. It chunked into the wooden jamb; the servant, astonished, cried out, jumped, and dropped his tray and wine jug on the floor. Cyrodian howled with laughter.
Elad spat at him. “So very humorous, isn’t it? Fool!”
Cyrodian made an expression of mock intimidation. The servant, sweating, bent to the floor, placed the broken jug onto his tray, and sought to soak up the spill with his apron.
“Just let it go,” Elad ordered him impatiently.
“My lord?”
“Clean it up later!”
“Y-yes…yes.…” He rose to his feet and left the princes alone.
Elad scowled at Cyrodian. “You make enemies of all the small people. A fine king you’d be.”
Cyrodian quickly aimed his other knives and hurled them. All five struck close to the first in the doorjamb, their blades no farther apart than a finger width.
“You have to keep them on their toes,” Cyrodian explained, reaching for the new wine after his display of targetry. “Make them dance to your song, my weak-stomached brother, or you’ll dance to theirs.”
“You learn that in the army?”
“I taught that to the army.”
“I have more than the army to worry about. I have the council and cities and bankers, ten thousand aristocrats, a hundred thousand bureaucrats—”
“Not yet, you don’t,” Cyrodian reminded him. “Now pour yourself some wine and sit. Or is the wine not safe?”
Elad scowled. “Of course it’s safe. What do you take me for?”
“I take you,” Cyrodian replied, “exactly for what you are. Brother.”
He swallowed a long draft as Elad at last followed his suggestion and took a cushioned chair.
“Our mother is not our problem,” Cyrodian said. “Not our paramount problem. We can outflank her. Drive for the center—hard, fast. Cut off the poisonous part of the snake first; the rest you chop up at your leisure.”
Elad rolled his goblet between the palms of his hands. “Meaning—Dursoris.”
“Meaning Dursoris. You have the council. Let’s be frank. If you made your bid tonight, two-thirds of them are with you, if only because they think you’re not man enough to be the crown and so the more easily manipulated. And I have the army.”
Elad scowled, set aside his cup, and slumped in his pillows.
“There are only two ways to get and hold power,” Cyrodian continued, “—legally and illegally. Short of causing another civil war, our best chance for now is to bring Dursoris around to our way of thinking. Yta has just enough faith in you to give you the throne; she doesn’t want succession, yours or hers, to drag on to the detriment of the empire. Which is just what could happen if we decide to throw it before the council, even on the most transparent of motives. Are you listening, brother?”
“We’ve discussed this so many times, I know it by heart. We’ve recited it like a ballad. ‘We must win Dursoris.’ But if Dursoris doesn’t wish to be won? What then? ‘Another civil war’?”
“Of course not; that leaves us far too unprotected.” Cyrodian finished his wine and wiped his sprinkled beard. “He meets with an accident. Happens in the army all the time.”
“Did you teach that to the army, too?” Elad scowled.
Cyrodian laughed again. “It happens often enough in court, too. Think how many of our father’s enemies accidentally had their throats slit.”
“Those days are gone, Cyrodian.”
“Then let’s keep it that way. The right of the nation is stronger than the right of blood. To sacrifice one life for the empire is far better than sacrificing the entire empire because of one dissenting voice. The common good, Elad.” Cyrodian shrugged then. “But I don’t relish killing my own brother, and I don’t think I’ll have to. Dursoris knows how we feel, and I’m certain that at this very moment, he knows where his loyalty lies.”