‘Do you get along with birds?’ Shahin asked.
‘Of course!’ Javeed replied. ‘I even met the Simorgh once.’
‘The Simorgh?’ Shahin laughed. ‘Well then, an eagle shouldn’t trouble you one bit.’ He took a strip of leather from a small pail sitting on the ground beside him and wrapped it around Javeed’s right hand. ‘Hold your arm up, boy.’ Javeed complied. ‘A little higher,’ Shahin suggested. ‘I want to be sure he can see you way down there.’
Shahin whistled, and took a piece of rabbit meat out of a second, covered pail. Martin heard the swish of wings before he spotted the eagle approaching, descending from a nearby cypress tree. Javeed flinched slightly as the bird came closer; he turned his face aside, but he managed to keep his arm motionless. When the eagle alighted on his leather-bound fist, it found itself unable to wrap both feet at once around this tiny perch. Martin feared that it might sink its talons into the unprotected skin further up Javeed’s arm – and though his gut reaction was all about the nonexistent threat of pain and injury, the risk of the bird puncturing the illusion of its own physicality seemed real enough. But instead, it managed a kind of balancing act, shifting from one foot to another as it gobbled the rabbit flesh that Shahin dangled in front of it as a reward. Javeed wouldn’t feel its weight pushing his arm down, but the glove could probably manage a convincing impression of those four long, muscular toes clenching and unclenching.
They had come to the estate of King Kavus in the hope of accompanying him on his latest folly. Javeed loved all the stories of Kavus, and in the bowdlerised children’s version they were harmless enough, but Martin had baulked at exposing him to detailed immersive depictions of the king’s bloodthirsty military misadventures. Against the advice of Zal and countless others, Kavus had invaded Mazanderan, the land of demons and sorcerers, where his army had engaged in mass-slaughter – in the original, blithely hacking into unarmed men, women and children. The White Demon, protecting his land and people, had blinded Kavus and his soldiers and rounded them up as prisoners, whereupon Zal’s son, Rostam, had embarked on a quest to rescue the vain young king. This had involved slicing witches in half, pulling the ears off innocent bystanders and ultimately cutting out the White Demon’s liver and using his blood as a balm to restore Kavus’s sight.
Kavus’s repentance over the Mazanderan fiasco had proved to be shallow and insincere; he remained bloated with pride and immune to good counsel. But after scouring Zendegi’s catalogue of Shahnameh scenarios, Martin had finally found a Kavus story that was free of acts of evisceration, and he’d managed to talk Javeed into accepting it in lieu of the bloodier alternatives.
‘Now you feed him,’ Shahin told Javeed. ‘Reach behind your back and I’ll pass you the meat.’ Martin watched nervously as Javeed accepted a strip of raw pink flesh, holding it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. He brought his arm in front of him and quickly raised the meat towards the bird, releasing his grip as it seized the flesh in its beak.
‘You’re doing well,’ Shahin said. ‘Now we’ll put the hood on.’
Javeed looked to Martin for support; Martin smiled encouragingly. Shahin handed Javeed the leather hood, showing him how to hold it stretched out across his fingers and bring it over the bird’s head without alarming or annoying it. The hood had an aperture for the beak and nostrils and was loose enough to cover the eyes without touching them, but Martin still found it extraordinary that birds of prey really could be trained to accept these strange encumbrances.
At Shahin’s prompting, Javeed crouched down and slowly moved his hand and its passenger towards the wicker cage that sat beside them. Despite its blindness, as it approached the open door the bird deduced what was happening; it gave an irritated shrug and made as if to spread its wings and take flight. Javeed emitted a startled grunt, but he kept his hand steady and after a moment the bird allowed him to continue.
Shahin said, ‘Touch your hand to the side of the perch.’ Javeed did this, and the bird felt its way onto the wooden perch inside the cage. Javeed withdrew his arm and closed the door.
‘Well done,’ Shahin said. ‘You’re a fast learner.’ He turned to Martin. ‘If you and the boy can get a dozen of the king’s eagles caged by noon, I’ll take you on as assistant handlers.’
Martin glanced at Javeed. ‘We’d better get to work then.’
The empty cages were stacked nearby. Armed with a pail of rabbit meat and Martin’s imitation of Shahin’s whistling, they strode through the cypress grove, trying to lure the birds down, taking turns to offer their clenched fists as perches. Martin knew that the game wouldn’t make their task impossible – no matter what the real outcome would have been if two inexperienced strangers had sought to round up someone else’s hunting birds! – but nor did it give them an entirely easy ride. The first two birds came to them without much trouble, but the third one they spotted ignored Martin’s whistling for three or four minutes, only to swoop down unexpectedly, knock over the meat pail and return to the trees with an unearned treat in its beak.
Javeed was undeterred; in less than a minute he’d located another bird, and this one turned out to be better behaved. When it landed on Martin’s fist it stared into his face, blinking and examining him curiously. Martin doubted that anyone had side-loaded a golden eagle, so its behaviour could only be surface-deep, but he couldn’t help feeling a degree of affinity for the creature. He was on his way from the biological sphere to the digital, and in his new home this counted as native life.
When the twelve cages were full, Shahin approached them with three burly helpers. ‘Good work! Now we need to get these quickly to the king’s pavilion. He’s determined to set out while the sun is high.’
Each of them carried two cages through the grove. Javeed gripped his pair by wrapping his hands around the bars at the side; the cages were too tall for him to lift them from above. Martin doubted that anyone, let alone a six-year-old, could have borne the torque on their wrists that would have come from trying to carry the cages this way, but Javeed was smart enough not to mistake a game in Zendegi for a lesson in correct load-handling techniques.
Shahin led the way to a grassy field where Kavus’s ‘pavilion’ stood waiting. Its base was a circular platform some fifteen metres wide, constructed from a lattice of woven fibres similar to those used to make the bird cages. In the centre was the royal tent; the fabric of its walls was lavishly embroidered in gold and violet, and the open flap revealed a plushly cushioned and similarly decorated throne.
Spaced around the platform, just in from the rim, were dozens of identical wooden rods, all vertical, standing about two metres tall. Near the base of each rod a length of rope lay coiled on the platform.
Martin and Javeed had not been the only ones busy in the grove; Shahin and the others had already gathered at least thirty eagles, and their cages stood on the ground to one side of the pavilion. Martin started laughing; he couldn’t help himself. A part of him simply couldn’t believe that Kavus’s deranged scheme would succeed for one second, even in Zendegi.
Javeed was annoyed. ‘Don’t, Baba!’ he whispered. ‘You’ll make everyone cross with us.’
Martin said, ‘Sorry. You’re right.’ He glanced at the young man behind him, whose face was glistening with sweat, as if he really did feel the weight of the birds he was carrying. The man remained silent, but frowned slightly, in a manner that seemed to advise caution more than it expressed disapproval. Kavus was not a popular ruler, but the throne itself still commanded respect; only the most experienced generals and learned sages were entitled to question the king’s plans, and then only with the utmost tact and diplomacy. A commoner giggling derisively was beyond the pale, and Martin wasn’t interested in spending the next hour rotting in a dungeon.
They deposited the cages near the others; some of the newly arrived birds fluttered their wings and rose briefly from their perches, as if to protest their treatment. Martin caught himself wondering what they were ‘used to’ – how often they hunted with Shahin and the king, how often they were caged – as if such questions had answers.
Shahin addressed his workers. ‘We’ve brought forty-eight of the king’s finest eagles, as he commanded. Now watch me carefully; this is what you must do next.’
Shahin squatted down and opened one of the cages, reached in and touched the foot of the hooded bird with his leather-clad fist. It moved obligingly onto his hand and let him carry it slowly out of the cage. He walked over to the rim of the pavilion and squatted again to bring the bird close to the ground, then with his other hand he lifted up the rope that was lying coiled near one of the rods. Four strands of rope were anchored to the platform, and between those fixed ends it had been knotted and woven into an elaborate harness. Shahin slipped the harness over the bird, stroking it behind the head to calm it. Then he lowered and tilted his hand, encouraging the bird to step off. The bird took a few steps across the surface, then felt the harness grow taut. It fluttered its wings a few times, irritated by this strange new impediment, then became still, resigned to the vagaries of its fate.
Shahin turned to face them. ‘Don’t stand there idly; follow my example. The king will be here soon!’
Javeed threw himself into the task and Martin left him to it, working separately in order to get the job done quickly but staying close by. Javeed had already grown confident with the birds, in spite of their daunting size, and every time Martin glanced at him he looked focused and assured. Did it matter that real falconry took years of training and that these birds were following a script that simply forbade them from turning feral and scratching someone’s face off? Javeed wasn’t doing any of this in order to go hunting with tribesmen in Kyrgyzstan. The game-tasks still took patience and persistence and, even weightless, the birds demanded fine motor control from their handlers to stop them getting skittish. Martin resolved to stop fretting; Javeed wasn’t in danger of forgetting the stubbornness of flesh-and-blood creatures, the sharpness of real talons, the recalcitrance of the animate world. He shouldn’t start confusing Javeed’s situation with the Proxy’s; it was not his son who would soon be confined to Zendegi.
Shahin and his helpers worked faster than the newcomers; their ‘experience’ made that plausible enough, though it occurred to Martin that at another level it was down to the fact that the birds didn’t need to waste time trying to bluff these non-humans into taking them seriously. In any case, their speed was welcome; Martin had tethered just five birds – three less than an equal share – when Shahin called out to everyone to move aside. The birds were all in place, and the king was approaching.
The royal party arrived on horseback, with the king accompanied by flag-bearers, guards and courtiers. Kavus himself wore a jewelled crown and carried a mace encrusted with rubies; Martin suffered a momentary Liberace flashback.
The riff-raff stayed clear as the king inspected the pavilion and its tethered birds; three advisers walked behind him, offering obsequious praise after every royal remark.
‘I see that the clouds betray a favourable motion of the air,’ Kavus opined. ‘What could be more auspicious?’
‘Lord of the World, your wisdom is greater than that of all your ancestors combined.’
Though lines like that weren’t too far from Ferdowsi, everyone was hamming it up; Martin saw that Javeed was smiling in disbelief at these pompous gits, notwithstanding his earlier dousing of Martin’s own display of disrespect.
‘Would you trust this man to design an aircraft?’ Martin whispered.
‘No way.’
Martin patted his empty money-belt. ‘And I forgot to buy us parachutes.’
Javeed said, ‘If you get scared, just give it the thumbs-down.’
‘Okay.’
One of the king’s advisers approached Shahin and spoke to him quietly.
Shahin passed the news on to his staff. ‘The king has called for my service, and I am to bring the two lightest of my apprentices.’ Javeed was a shoo-in, obviously, but Martin was preordained to be a passenger too, which might have explained why his three competitors were all tall and solidly built. He didn’t even need to point out that he’d lost ten kilos in real life since his icon was snapped.
Kavus seated himself on his royal throne and a flunky closed the tent flap so His Majesty wouldn’t have to watch the staff carrying on untidily around him. Martin and Javeed followed Shahin onto the pavilion, where they set about priming the aircraft’s engines: hooking pieces of rabbit meat onto spikes that protruded from the forty-eight rods, just out of reach of the tethered eagles. Javeed was too short to reach the spikes himself, so his job was to carry the pail of meat and hand chunks to the two adults. The birds, still blinded, did not react to the meat, but at the sound of approaching footsteps some of them chafed against their constraints, tugging on the ropes in random directions as if to signal their annoyance to their captors.
When the preparations were complete, Shahin spoke with the adviser, who approached the royal enclosure.
‘Lord of the World, Jewel of Persia, your good fortune brings justice and happiness to all your people.’
Kavus emerged from his tent and gazed up into the sky. ‘No human before me, however great their birth and station, has dared attempt this feat; none after will have the courage to repeat it.’ He looked down and stretched out his arms towards the gathered observers. ‘The glory of this day will be burnt into your memories, as the image of the sun sears your vision.’ They bowed their heads in agreement, then began retreating to a safe distance.
The adviser remained on the platform; now he signalled to Shahin to proceed. Shahin directed Martin and Javeed to two different starting points, separated by a third of the platform’s circumference, then took up a position himself equidistant from both of them.
Kavus thumped the shaft of his mace against the wicker floor and cried out, ‘Now I join the angels!’
They began unhooding the eagles.
The first bird whose sight Martin restored paced the floor irritably for a few seconds, then feinted towards his hand as if to bite it, but once it noticed the meat dangling above its head it flapped its wings and rose into the air as far as the harness would allow it.
When the ropes grew taut, though, it seemed to grasp the nature of its situation perfectly, because it gave up struggling and returned to the floor. It knew it couldn’t reach the meat; there was nothing to be done but wait for the humans’ next bizarre, capricious action.
Alarmed, Martin looked to Shahin. His bird was on the floor too, but he was encouraging it with a series of nods and grunts; perhaps these were signals used in hunting. After a few seconds, Shahin’s bird heeded the cues and flew up towards the lure.
Martin turned to see what Javeed was doing; he was already mimicking Shahin. Martin felt weirdly self-conscious; the noises were embarrassing enough coming from Shahin, and his own attempts would surely sound sillier: all this, in the presence of royalty. But the Lord of the World would be even less pleased if his precious sky-pavilion toppled over on the grass, unbalanced by one tardy peasant.
Martin faced the eagle again and tipped his head skyward, grunting and snorting. The eagle blinked at him bemusedly. What was it waiting for – should he mime taking flight himself? If it had been a seagull he might have flailed at it with his hands to drive it off the ground, but his instincts warned against trying that on a raptor. He looked back at Javeed, whose bird was airborne now; it was straining against the harness as if the hunk of rabbit flesh just beyond its reach were a pigeon fleeing across the skies. Now there was an idea for Kavus’s next version: harness some actual living prey, and maybe take-off would proceed more smoothly.
Javeed made a guttural noise. ‘Like that, Baba!’
Martin imitated him. Nothing. He tried again, deeper in the throat, while flicking his head up encouragingly; finally, his eagle took flight, and when it reached the end of its tether it remained aloft. Maybe you had to be a native Farsi speaker for the right sound to come easily.
The three of them moved around the pavilion, unhooding the eagles and encouraging them to persist in their futile attempts to reach the lures. Martin still had the most trouble persuading his birds that they should mush like sled dogs, but Shahin and Javeed waited for him; if they’d raced ahead at their own pace that would have risked unbalancing the whole structure.
When Martin set his tenth bird in motion, the pavilion lurched and began to weave across the grass like a hovercraft with broken steering. Apparently the combined effort of thirty golden eagles – according to the game’s fanciful notion of their power – was enough to overcome the weight of the craft and its passengers; with friction all but banished, the imperfect cancellation between the horizontal thrust from the variously inclined tug-ropes was enough to send the pavilion skittering in all directions. The field was wide and there were no obstacles nearby, but the earthbound observers wisely mounted their horses and retreated further from the action.
Javeed was beaming with delight. ‘Hold on to the rods!’ Martin warned him; Javeed nodded and took hold. Martin wasn’t sure if it was entirely logical – nothing Javeed did could actually support him in his ghal’e; holding thin air wouldn’t help him stay upright when the real floor beneath his feet tilted – but it was a good habit to cultivate regardless, and it could certainly affect what the game did to his icon. Martin was feeling slightly queasy from the visual cues alone; if anything, the fact that he could feel himself lying flat on his back, motionless in the scanner, exacerbated his discomfort as his eyes told him he was zigzagging across the grass. But it was worth it just to see Javeed so happy. If the worst happened, Martin decided, Bernard would probably manage to stop him choking on his own vomit.
Kavus was standing in front of his tent, trying to appear regally composed even as he swayed like a sailor on a storm-tossed deck. His adviser, who’d wisely gripped the side of the tent, looked as sickly as Martin felt.
Shahin called out, ‘Come on, get to work! The next three together!’
Martin unhooded his eleventh eagle; it regarded the mad, sliding world around it with a look of doleful avian stoicism. ‘On the count of three,’ Shahin shouted. ‘One. Two. Three!’
Martin grunted at the bird and flicked his head. It rose from the platform, and when its tether snapped tight the pavilion’s motion suddenly became smoother. Martin peered over the edge. Before, they’d been scraping the grass, brushing against every second tussock; now they were clear of the vegetation, half a metre or so above the ground and still rising.
‘Again!’ Shahin urged them. Martin hurried to unhood the next bird. ‘One. Two. Three!’
They quickly brought the last of the eagles into play. By the time Martin had a chance to look around again they were higher than the treetops – which was lucky, because they were drifting straight towards the cypress grove.
‘The Lord of the Earth becomes Lord of the Sky!’ Kavus proclaimed modestly. ‘Ten thousand generations will not see the equal of this feat!’
‘Lord of the Earth… Lord of the Sky,’ his adviser mumbled. The poor man did not look well.
The pavilion passed over the grove, safely clear of the highest branches. Martin took a step towards Javeed, then he felt the platform tilting and retreated. Though Javeed was lighter than his two fellow bird-wranglers, Kavus and his adviser must have been far enough from the centre to help maintain the balance. But the luck – or contrivance – that had granted them a level ascent meant that any change now was risky. If they moved at all, it would have to be coordinated very carefully.
‘Try looking through the floor,’ Martin called to Javeed. Javeed glanced down, then squatted and peered through the latticework. Martin had his icon adopt the same posture, discordantly aware for a moment that his real back and knees remained unbent. He could see straight down into the treetops, and as they drifted along he spotted a small, unguarded bird’s nest with three speckled eggs, built on a forked, swaying branch. He felt a sting of resentment; however well-researched the details, there was something demeaning about seeing the natural world through so many layers of mediation – rubbing his face in his rapidly dwindling prospects of ever encountering such a thing in the wild for himself. Would he ever go hot-air ballooning with Javeed in the real world? It wasn’t beyond hope. Maybe after his transplant, if everything went well.
For now, though, this was what he had to make do with. Better to savour the details than resent them: for his own sake, for Javeed’s, for the Proxy’s.
Javeed called out to him excitedly, ‘Baba? Did you see the eggs?’
‘Yeah!’
The eagles carried them higher, and the wind – or some persistent difference in strength between the birds – drove them further across the land. The king’s estate gave way to ploughed fields, then pristine woodlands. Martin wasn’t sure exactly where in Iran they were supposed to be; Kavus was a figure out of myth, not history, and if the Shahnameh had ever named his seat of power it had slipped from Martin’s memory. It wasn’t important. Wherever they were, Javeed was ecstatic, gazing down at the landscape from the edge of their glorious, impossible contraption.
‘Baba! See the river!’
‘Yeah, it’s beautiful.’ Sunlight glistened across the silver thread. ‘Hey, see the dark spot near the bend in the river? Now it’s crossing the water-’
‘I can see it.’
‘That’s our shadow.’
Javeed looked up at him to see if he was teasing, then looked down again. ‘Ohhh!’
When they rose into a thick bank of clouds and the air turned to fog around them, everyone started laughing with delight, even Kavus and his motion-sick courtier. When they emerged, the land beneath them was hidden. They drifted through a surreal world where massive shapes that, in the distance, seemed as solid as carved white rock melted into swirling tendrils as soon as they drew near. Martin barely spoke now; he needed only to exchange a glance or a smile with Javeed to make the connection, to convey everything.
See that cloud that looks like a dog’s head?
Yes! And Baba, see the one behind it, like a nose with snot coming out one side?
They continued to ascend, and the world of giant sculptures flattened out into a blanket of torn grey fleece. Through every tear was a glimpse of the desert far below.
Then in the distance, rock punctured the blanket. The peak of a mountain broke through the clouds.
‘Mount Damavand,’ Shahin declared.
‘Mount Damavand,’ Kavus echoed, ‘where noble Feraydun imprisoned the Serpent King Zahhak, pinning him with iron stakes to the walls of the darkest cave. But as we rise above Damavand, so I rise above even Feraydun’s glory.’
‘Lord of the World, there have been none to equal you,’ the adviser declared, without much conviction.
The pavilion was starting to list. Shahin addressed the adviser discreetly. ‘The birds are tiring. It’s time to return.’
The adviser spoke with Kavus. Kavus shook his head angrily. ‘I am lord of every animal and bird; these eagles will do as I bid. I have come this far, and now the angels await me.’ He raised his face to the sky and spread his arms triumphantly. ‘See!’
Martin followed his gaze. There was high cloud above them, with the sun behind it; dazzling beads of light shone through the cloud where it thinned.
Shahin lowered his face in deference, then spoke to his apprentices. ‘We need to keep the birds striving, we need to urge them on. When you see one flagging, go to it, encourage it, assure it that it will receive its reward when the trip is done.’ Martin wondered how he could have missed the whole ‘useful phrases in the language of eagles’ seminar.
Suddenly the platform tilted, with Martin’s side dropping half a metre. Everyone but Kavus had been holding onto something; the king staggered but caught himself. One of Martin’s birds had simply given up. He approached it and began repeating the grunting and nodding that had worked before; it cocked its head sceptically and stayed exactly where it was.
The platform tipped again, this time on Javeed’s side. Martin watched Javeed moving towards his own protesting eagle. ‘Keep holding the rods!’ Martin urged him; they were close enough together that Javeed could always grab the rod ahead of him before releasing his grip on the one behind.
‘Okay,’ Javeed replied, a little irritably, as if he already had enough to think about.
‘I’m serious,’ Martin insisted. The game couldn’t test their actual grip strength – nor would it take it upon itself to prise their fingers loose, whatever the notional forces on their bodies might be – but Martin suspected that it would distinguish very sharply between ‘Look, Ma, no hands!’ and more prudent strategies.
Javeed squatted in front of the bird and tried to get it flying again, but he had no more luck than Martin. Martin called to Shahin, ‘Can we give them some meat from the pail? Maybe that will restore their energy, enough to continue.’
Shahin looked dubious, but then he said, ‘Try it.’ The pail was beside him; he bent down and gave it a shove that sent it sliding towards Martin. Martin managed to intercept it before it went over the edge; he took out a strip of pink flesh and offered it to the troublesome bird.
The bird grabbed the meat and gulped it down. In an instant, Martin’s side of the platform dropped again; the bird’s two neighbours had seen it being fed and had decided to follow the same strategy.
‘No, no, no!’ Martin wailed. He tried desperately to get the first bird flying, but it ignored him completely.
The platform began lurching ever more erratically, as one eagle after another joined the strike. Javeed was laughing; he knew the end of this story and he didn’t seem to care if his own father hastened the disaster. Martin looked over at Shahin, but even the master was having no luck.
Kavus cried out angrily, ‘I am Lord of the World, Lord of the Sky, lord of every living creature! Only God himself is above me. I command you to carry me to the sphere of the angels!’
The pavilion dropped through the clouds. About twenty of the birds were still in action, which was enough to slow their descent, but not to halt it. The desert was getting close, very fast. At least they wouldn’t drown, like Icarus, but it wasn’t going to be a soft landing.
Martin caught Javeed’s eye. ‘Hold on tight, pesaram.’
Javeed mimed straining against the two rods he was holding, to prove that his hands could not be dislodged. ‘Are you scared, Baba?’
‘No. Are you?’
Javeed looked down past the edge of the platform. ‘Zendegi won’t hurt us.’
An updraft caught the pavilion and set it tumbling. They were upside down, hundreds of metres above the desert, hanging by their wrists. Martin heard Javeed bellowing, but all he could see around him were wings and ropes; the birds had been panicked into flight, and as they tried to escape downwards they were only hastening the fall.
The roll continued, righting the platform. Martin’s skin was icy from shock; he looked around for Javeed.
Javeed had not let go. His hair and clothes were dishevelled, but he was wearing a wide-eyed roller-coaster grin. Martin emitted a brief, involuntary sob of pure relief.
None of the passengers had been dislodged, though they all looked several shades paler than before; even Kavus had had enough sense to grab hold of the royal tent, which now sported a magnificent tear along one side. The birds were bedraggled – some with feathers coming loose from their wings, some awkwardly tangled in their ropes – but about half of them were now straining upwards, offering some hope that their efforts would break the fall. Martin braced himself, tensing his muscles, sharing a smile of anticipation with Javeed.
The sound of the platform snapping apart and the thick cloud of dust rising up around them almost made up for the fact that the crash itself was imperceptible. Martin stepped off the platform, his hands trembling. He made his way through the white dust to Javeed, whose ghal’e would have shaken with a more convincing thud.
‘Are you okay?’
Javeed nodded; he was beaming, untroubled. He put his hand in Martin’s. ‘That’s the best thing we ever did!’
As the dust settled they saw Shahin tending to the birds. At first Martin thought he was merely untangling them from the rope, but then it became clear that he was releasing them from their harnesses completely.
When Kavus realised what was happening he was outraged. He screamed and gesticulated at the adviser, who approached Shahin and struck him across the face. Shahin froze and stared at the ground.
He said, ‘Lord of the World, forgive me, but we have no food for the birds.’ The strips of meat that had been spiked on the rods as lures were all gone. ‘They can’t carry us home on empty stomachs. The most we can hope for now is that they will hunt for themselves.’
Kavus composed himself. ‘Rostam will come to my aid,’ he declared. ‘Word will reach him in Zavolestan that his lord requires his assistance. He will bring food and wine, fifty slaves, fifty horses, and fifty golden cages for the royal hunting birds.’
Martin said, ‘And that will take… how long?’
Kavus blinked at him in disbelief, too startled even to be angry. For his Master of Birds to address him directly was already a staggering impertinence, but for this worthless apprentice to speak his mind loudly and freely – to question his lord’s understanding of their fate – was like something from a dream.
Martin turned to Javeed. ‘I know you’d like to meet Rostam, but I think he’s a couple of days away at least.’
Javeed looked out across the desert; there was not so much as a wisp of dust on the horizon. ‘We’ll see him next time.’ He gave the thumbs-down, and everything vanished.
Martin lay in the scanner, waiting for the motor to bring him out.