Narses’ eyes flitted around the interior of the large tent. Clearly enough, Damodara had instructed everyone to wait outside. None of his officers were present, not even Rana Sanga. And there were no servants in the tent. That, in its own way, indicated just how uneasily Damodara himself was taking the news.
Narses brought himself under control, with the iron habit of a lifetime spent as an intriguer and spymaster. He gave Lord Damodara a quick, shrewd glance.
First things first. Reassure my employer.
“Of course,” he said harshly, “I will report to Great Lady Sati that you have never given me permission to do anything other than my officially specified duties. Which is the plain and simple truth, as it happens.”
Lord Damodara’s tension seemed to ease a bit. “Of course,” he murmured. He studied his spymaster carefully.
“You have met Great Lady Sati, I believe?”
Narses shook his head. “Not exactly. She was present, yes, when I had my one interview with Great Lady Holi. After my defection from Rome, and before Great Lady Holi departed for Mesopotamia. Where she met her death at Belisarius’ hands.”
He left unspoken the remainder: and was—replaced?—by Great Lady Sati.
“But Lady Sati—she was not Great Lady, then—said nothing in the interview.”
Damodara nodded and began pacing slowly back and forth. His hands were pressed together as if in prayer, which was the lord’s habit when he was engaged in deep thought.
Abruptly, he stopped his pacing and turned to face Narses squarely.
“How much do you know, Roman?”
Narses understood the meaning. “Malwa is ruled by a hidden—something. A being, let us call it. I do not know its true name. Once, it inhabited the body of Great Lady Holi. Today, it resides in Great Lady Sati. Whatever it is, the being has supernatural powers. It is not of this earth. I believe, judging from what I have learned, that it claims to come from the future.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he added: “A divine being, Malwa believes it to be.”
Damodara smiled thinly. “And you?”
Narses spread his hands. “What is divinity, Lord? For Hindus, the word deva refers to a divine creature. For Zoroastrians, it is the word assigned to demons. What, in the end, is really the difference—to the men who stand under its power?”
“What, indeed?” mused Damodara. He resumed his pacing. Again, his hands were pressed together. “Whatever the being may be, Narses—divine or not, from the future or not—have no doubt of one thing. It is truly superhuman.”
He stopped and, again, turned to face the eunuch. “One thing in particular you must understand. A human being cannot lie to Li—the being—and keep the lie from being detected.”
Narses’ eyes did not widen in the least. The spymaster had already deduced as much, from his own investigations.
“It cannot be done,” the Malwa lord reiterated forcefully. “Do not even imagine the possibility.”
Narses reached up and stroked his jaw. “The truth only, you say?” Then, seeing Damodara’s nod, he asked: “But tell me this, Lord. Can this being truly read a man’s thoughts?”
Damodara hesitated. For a moment, he seemed about to resume his pacing, but instead he simply slumped a bit.
“I am not certain, Narses.”
“Your estimate, then.” The words were spoken in the tone of command. But the lord gave no sign of umbrage at this unwarranted change of relationship. At the moment, his own life hung by as slender a thread as the eunuch’s.
Whatever his doubts and uncertainties, Damodara was an experienced as well as a brilliant military commander. Decisiveness came naturally to him, and that nature had been honed by his life.
“No,” he said firmly. “In the end, I do not believe so. I think it is simply that the being is—is—” He groped for the words.
Narses’ little exhalation of breath seemed filled with satisfaction. “A superhuman spymaster. Which can study the same things any spymaster learns to examine—posture, tone of voice, the look in the eyes—to gauge whether a man speaks true or false.”
Damodara’s head nod was more in the way of a jerk. “Yes. So I believe.”
For the first time since he read the message summoning him to the Grand Palace, Narses smiled. It was a very, very thin smile. But a smile nonetheless.