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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.
    The first danger was always excessive bleeding. He had packed the expanded wound opening with lint and a clean sponge. He left the wound unclosed. Closing wounds too soon was the most common error doctors made, and patients died of it. Later, if all went well, he would draw the wound together with his smallest skewers as sutures, taking care to leave space for drainage. But not yet. For now he bandaged the packed wound with clean linen going under the armpit and across the chest, then up and around both sides of the neck in the triangle pattern prescribed. He finished the bandage at the top and arranged the knot to point downwards, as was proper, towards the heart. He wanted fresh bedding and linen now, clean gloves for himself, hot water. He threw the commander’s bloodied gloves on the fire. They could not be touched.
    The king’s voice, asking the question, was faint but clear. A good sign. He’d accepted a sedating herb this time from Rustem’s bag. The dark eyes were calm and focused, not unduly dilated. Rustem was guardedly pleased. The second danger now, as always, was the green pus, though arrow wounds tended to heal better than those made by a sword. He would change the packing later, wash the wound, and change the salve and dressing before the end of the night: a variant of his owndevising. Most physicians left the first bandage for two or three days.
    ‘My king, I believe you are. The arrow is gone, and the wound will heal if Perun wills and I am careful with it to avoid the noxious exudations.’ He hesitated. ‘And you have your own . . . protection against the poison that was in it.’
    ‘I wish to speak with you about that.’
    Rustem swallowed hard. ‘My lord?’
    ‘You detected the fijana’s poison by the smell of it? Even with your own scented herbs on the fire?’
    Rustem had feared this question. He was a good dissembler—most physicians were—but this was his king, mortal kin to the sun and moons.
    ‘I have encountered it before,’ he said. ‘I was trained in Ispahani, my lord, where the plant grows.’
    ‘I know where it grows,’ said the King of Kings. ‘What else do you have to tell me, physician?’
    Nowhere to hide, it seemed. Rustem took a deep breath.
    ‘I also smelled it elsewhere in this room, great lord. Before I put the herbal scent to the fire.’
    There was a silence.
    ‘I thought that might be so.’ Shirvan the Great looked coldly up at him. ‘Where?’ One word only, hard as a smith’s hammer.
    Rustem swallowed again. Tasted something bitter: the awareness of his own mortality. But what choice did he now have? He said, ‘On the hands of the prince, great king. When he bade me save your life, at risk of my own.’
    Shirvan of Bassania closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, Rustem saw a black rage in their depths again, despite the drug he had been given. ‘This . . . distresses me,’ said the King of Kings very softly. What Rustem heard was not distress, however. It suddenlyoccurred to him to wonder if the king had also detected kaaba on the arrowhead and shaft. He had been ingesting it for twenty-five years. If he had known the poison, he had allowed three physicians to handle it today without warning them, and had been about to let Rustem do the same. A test of competence? When he was on the brink of dying? What sort of man . . . ? Rustem shivered, could not help himself.
    ‘It seems,’ said Great Shirvan, ‘that someone besides myself has been protecting himself against poisons by building up a resistance. Clever. I have to say it was clever.’ He was silent a long time, then: ‘Murash. He would have made a good king, in fact.’
    He turned away and looked out the window; there was nothing to see in the darkness. They could hear the sound of the