“Well, your Majesty, this bullock here”—with a nod toward Khatin—“says you desire my head. By Mithra! I wonder that, after imprisoning Cyrus’s envoy, you hesitate to kill him also.”
Belshazzar, by an effort, ignored the taunt, and with uncommon smoothness answered: “Noble prince, few have deplored more than I your nominal imprisonment. I have summoned you here to declare that you are shortly to be set free.”
Darius looked gravely into the king’s eyes.
“I rejoice to hear it, my lord,” said he, sternly; “yet more would I rejoice to know how your Majesty will account to Cyrus for this outrage upon the person of his ambassador. A strange story, surely, to send to Susa!”
“If the noble prince,” commenced Avil in turn, speaking gently, as if treading on slippery ground, “will deign to listen to his slave—”
“Ugh!” grunted the Persian, turning his back on the pontiff, “what foul dæva told you how I was to serve the king of the Aryans?”
“Do you speak for us all,” Belshazzar nervously commanded Bilsandan.
“May it please the preëminently noble son of Hystaspes,” began the vizier, also timidly, “there has just come to Babylon a courier saying a second embassy from Cyrus is close to Babylon, and has sent so unfriendly a letter on before it, that we are fain to ask my lord to explain it to us.”
“Ha!” They saw the prince’s lips curl in half-suppressed triumph; but he demanded, “And what proof, wretched oath-breakers, have you to lay before me, a prisoner, that you are telling me one morsel of the truth?”