The king gasped then and half lifted one arm as if in protest, but Rustem felt the catch as the arrowhead was gathered and shielded in the cup. He had done it in one pass. He knew a man, a teacher in the far east, who would have been gravely, judiciously pleased. Now only the smooth, oiled sides of the spoon itself would be exposed to the wounded flesh, the barbed flange safely nestled within.

Rustem blinked. He went to brush the sweat from his forehead with the back of one bloody glove and remembered-barely in time-that he would die if he did so. His heart thudded.

"We are almost home, almost done," he murmured. "Are you ready, dear my lord?" The vizier had used that phrase. In this moment, watching the man on the bed deal silently with appalling pain, Rustem meant it too. Vinaszh, the commander, surprised him by coming forward a little at the head of the bed and leaning sideways to place his hand on the king's forehead above the wound and the blood: more a caress than a restraining hold.

"Who is ever ready for this?" grunted Shirvan the Great, and in the words Rustem caught-astonishingly-the ghost of a sardonic amusement. Hearing it, he set his feet to the west, spoke the Ispahani word engraved on the implement and, gripping with both gloved hands, pulled it straight back out from the mortal flesh of the King of Kings.

"I am to live, I take it?"

They were alone in the room. Time had run; it was full dark now outside. The wind was still blowing. On the king's instructions, Vinaszh had stepped out to report only that treatment was continuing and Shirvan yet lived. No more than that. The soldier had asked no questions, neither had Rustem.