WHEN I HEARD OF THE GUARDS’ PLOT against the king, I almost hoped Bigtan and Teresh would confess to abducting the young prince. But they admitted their conspiracy and treason without mentioning the boy, and I realized I had been guilty of reckless hope.
Two more days passed with no sign of Pharnaces. The highest-ranking officers of the king’s Immortals searched the entire palace for signs of the young prince; then they interviewed the other children, the concubines, and the eunuchs who guarded the harem.
Finally their captain approached the king and shared the tragic news—the prince Pharnaces had disappeared without a trace.
My master’s fury thundered as I had known it would, but the mystery left him with no one to blame. He did not want to admit the child might be dead, so how could he execute someone for murder? He could hardly kill the captain of his guard, though I am certain the idea crossed his mind, nor could he condemn the child’s mother.
“Mark my words,” my frustrated king finally proclaimed before a crowd in the great hall. “When the prince Pharnaces again appears before his father, Xerxes the king, he shall declare the name of the person or persons who caused his disappearance, and those persons will be impaled on the mount at Susa. By the favor of Ahura Mazda, I will find the villain and have no mercy upon him.”
That night, one of the king’s bodyguards pulled me from sleep with a sharp jab from the blunt end of his spear. “Biztha summons you,” the guard whispered. “He tells you to hurry.”
My first thought, as always, was for the king, who snored loudly in his bed. Though he scarcely knew his missing son, the boy’s loss had plunged him into melancholy and reminded him of the queen’s delicate condition, so he slept alone. After making sure the king would rest unmolested during my absence, I followed the guard out of the royal bedchamber and went in search of Biztha.
I found him in the subterranean areas far below the rooms that housed the royal family, the guards, and the cooking areas. Only the lowliest slaves and eunuchs slept here, but when I found Biztha, he was not in his bed. Instead he was bent over a straw mattress where another man lay, a eunuch I recognized from the harem.
Blood streaked the man’s round face; red tracks ran from the man’s eyes, nose, and mouth. The arm he clutched was purple and so swollen that I feared the skin would tear.
“Jangi,” Biztha said, informing me of the man’s name. “He has a story to tell, and you should hear it now, before he dies.”
The wretched man rolled onto his side, shuddered, and vomited his last meal in a slurry of blood. When he had finished, he rolled back onto his mattress, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. In truth, I thought I had come too late.
“Go on.” Biztha jostled the man’s shoulder. “The king’s chamberlain is here. Tell him what you told me.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor and leaned closer. “I will listen.”
The man drew a gasping breath, then shook his head. “I cannot see you. How do I know it’s you and not . . . her?”
I clasped his uninjured arm and leaned close enough to whisper in his ear. “It is I, Harbonah. Tell me what happened.”
With great effort, the man swallowed. “She has killed me. She sent me to fetch a ball . . . for the crown prince . . . but when I put my hand in the box . . . an adder instead. She did it so the truth would die . . . with me.”
I bit my tongue, knowing it would be useless to hurry him along. The man was dying. Since he had not been able to control the events of his life, the least I could do was let him control his death.
Biztha was not as patient. “Tell him who sent you.”
“Vashti.” The man shuddered again, and when I pressed my hand to his forehead, I realized that he burned with fever.
“She commanded me . . . to help her,” the man continued. “I took young Pharnaces from his bed . . . put him in a cart . . . and told him we were playing a game. Then I took the cart from the harem . . . without anyone seeing.”
I pressed my lips together, frustrated beyond the point of endurance. “Where did you take the boy?”
“Vashti . . . wanted a sacrifice for Ahura Mazda so . . . the new queen . . . would lose . . . her baby. She wanted . . . a nobleman’s son, but what child could be more noble than . . . the son of a king?”
I glanced at Biztha. For the past few weeks Vashti had been a near continual presence in the harem; everyone had seen her. If she had only arranged the prince’s abduction, perhaps there was still time to save his life.
“Tell us where you have hidden him,” Biztha commanded. As the man spewed blood and foam from his lips, Biztha looked at me. “Before I sent for you, I knew only that Vashti had forced him to take the boy. I don’t know what she did with him.”
Terrified that the eunuch would die before finishing his confession, I grabbed the front of his robe and shook him. “Speak, man! Where is the boy now?”
Jangi’s breathing grew still as his head lolled to the side. My heart rose to my throat as I considered the real possibility that I had killed him. Then he gasped another breath. “The tomb,” he said, and the exhalation that escaped his lips was his last.
I released his robe, then scrambled backward, shaken by the man’s death and the news I’d learned. Vashti was the queen of cunning, so I did not doubt that she had used this slave and killed him to ensure his silence. She must have had him take the prince away from the royal mount because she could not leave the palace without attracting attention.
“Did he say what I thought he said?” Biztha caught my gaze. “A tomb? Which tomb?”
I shook my head. My master’s burial chamber was under construction in a cliff north of Persepolis, where his father had been buried. The distance was too great; Pharnaces could not possibly be there. As for other tombs—many noble families had tombs in rocky areas near the river. The boy could have been taken to any of them and placed inside. If he had been provided with ventilation, food, and water, he could still be alive, but if not, he was almost certainly dead.
Knowing Vashti as I did, Jangi’s story made complete sense. The former queen had no tolerance for competition, and she had seen Esther in the sort of free-flowing gown favored by expectant women. Vashti had guessed at the truth and taken action to ensure that Esther’s offspring would never usurp her own sons’ positions.
And she’d been willing to sacrifice another woman’s child to accomplish her goal.
I leaned against the uneven wall and propped my hands on my bent knees. Biztha looked at me, weariness evident in the lines on his face. “So what do we do now?”
What, indeed? Two eunuchs could not accuse one of the king’s women of murder. With our only witness dead, providing information to the guards might only implicate us in the crime. If a search was conducted and the boy found, Vashti could always say that Biztha and I had concocted the plot, stolen the boy, and planned to demand our freedom and a ransom. After all, I was the king’s chamberlain and in a position of some authority. Likewise, as one of the king’s trusted attendants, Biztha could have easily snatched the boy while pretending to be on royal business.
If faced with that scenario and his shrewd former queen, I could not be certain that my master wouldn’t believe her. . . .
Before I laid the bare truth before Biztha, one question demanded an answer.
“Do you believe it will happen?” I asked.
“What?”
“Do you believe Ahura Mazda will honor Vashti’s sacrifice? That he will destroy the present queen’s child?”
Biztha scowled. “Ahura Mazda honors men who are pure in heart.” He lowered his voice, lest the shadows around us harbor a pair of listening ears. “Vashti’s heart is not pure.” He waited, then cocked his head at me. “Don’t tell me you think Ahura Mazda will hear her.”
I shrugged. “I have no doubt that some god rules this earth . . . but though my king honors Ahura Mazda with ceremonies, he does not seek the god’s favor in his life. If Ahura Mazda honors sacrifices, I’ve seen no proof of it. And if a god does not answer the king of an empire, then who can hope to appeal to him?”
Biztha turned to stare at the body of the eunuch, then shook his head. “So we have no hope of justice. Will you tell Queen Esther about this?”
I hesitated, remembering the queen’s earnest request that I tell her when the boy had been found. He hadn’t exactly been found . . . and probably never would be.
I rose, slowly, and eased my tired bones back into an erect position. “We can do nothing to change the outcome of this misadventure, and the queen should not be at risk. So we should do what we have always done—remain silent and serve our master. Tomorrow will almost certainly be a better day.”
I had no idea that an even greater evil awaited us.