Kings of Morning Read Online Free PDF

sprawling. ‘Get you gone, and tell your master Prince Rakhsar comes when it suits him.’
    ‘Yes, lord,’ the girl gasped, and hobbled away, holding her side.
    ‘She did you no harm,’ Roshana said quietly.
    ‘He sent a hufsa to fetch us, as though we were tenants in his house. While our father lives, Roshana, our blood is as high and royal as that of the mighty Kouros and the bitch-mother who whelped him.’ He offered his arm. ‘Shall we go, sister? Shall we smile and bow and eat and drink with our family?’
    Roshana clicked up the latch on the nightingale’s golden cage and swung open the door. Then she took her brother’s arm.
    ‘We’ll make a grand entrance together.’
     
     
    T HE P ALACE OF the Kings was so old as to make the count of decades and centuries into an irrelevance. The only structure in the world which predated it was said to be the Fane of Bel itself. The Great Kings of Asuria had made it their seat for as long as their kingships had existed; it was said, in fact, that the kitchen levels of the ziggurat had been the original palace, but had been relegated to humbler usage as the structure was reworked and added to by Asur’s descendants. Some irreverent scholars maintained that the kings continually added to the palace ziggurat in order to overtop that of the High Priests, but if so, they had not succeeded. The twin hills of Ashur stared at each other across the teeming plain of the great city like two titans sprung from the same womb. The palace itself was as large as some cities – no-one had ever counted the rooms with any accuracy, but there were thousands – and enclosed a wide open space in which were planted the Imperial Gardens. These were as big as half a dozen farms, a landscape to themselves, with rivers and woods and pastures and herds of animals, flocks of birds, shoals of fishes. The Asurians believed that a beautiful garden partook of divinity. It was pleasing in the eyes of Bel, a reflection of heaven itself.
    At this time of year, the Great King did not always dine in the echoing chambers of the palace, but as the whim took him, he would eat under the sky amid the trees his forbears had planted. On this evening, a silk canopy had been erected in the garden and plain wooden benches and trestles had been placed upon the grass, within sight of a glittering river whose waters were pumped up from the bowels of the ziggurat by a legion of blind slaves. Lanterns were hung by the hundred in the trees about the spot, and as the evening darkened it seemed that a host of golden flickering stars had been ensnared and set to shine throughout the woods.
    The King himself sat apart on a black wooden throne, as was his wont, and the only other mark of his station was a diadem of black silk bound about his temples. A steady stream of fast-moving barefoot slaves bore the food to the tables, watched over by a tall, cadaverous Kefre who bore a silver-shod staff of ebony. The guests came one by one up to the black throne and went to their knees before the Great King before he bade them rise with a wave of his hand, and a smile for those he liked best.
    Men had been known to pay massive fortunes for the chance to kneel thus, and catch the eye of the ruler of the world. His smile, or the absence of it, had blessed or blighted lives.
    The diners were then ushered to their place at the tables by discreet pages, sons of the nobility who were brought to court to serve their king and act as surety for their families’ loyalty. Informal as the outdoor setting might seem, there was a rigid hierarchy to the place-settings, and no amount of coin in the empire could move a diner any closer to the Great King’s plate than the High Chamberlain decreed.
    Back in the trees, unobtrusive but ever-present, the King’s Honai leaned on their spears and watched the diners intently. Others stood closer-to with strung bows in their hands, whilst their commander, Dyarnes, stood behind the black throne in full