Bystanders in a story of lots

Wise man, knower of times

The king was a decent king when sober, Carshena thought ruefully. Unfortunately, the king was rarely sober. Still, King Ahasuerus was wise enough to allow Carshena to keep his own sobriety, even when what seemed the entire male population of Susa took full advantage of the king's decree that wine flow freely. Every lord and princeling, every administer and commander, had come to the banquet, languishing upon feasting-beds of Egyptian gold and Ionian silver rather than taking care of the matters of state. No wonder the Athenians beat our navies at every engagement, he thought. Luckily for the peoples of Persia and Medea, Carshena made it his mission to keep track of the dwindling treasury that was even now threatening to collapse an empire to whom no army had been more than a nuisance in generations. But even the fury of godly Ahura-Mazda could not fight a failing economy and the demon Ahriman's own vengeance was no more of a threat than a shadow compared to a king's extravagance.

Around him, dancers and musicians from a hundred nations sought the advancement only royal pleasure could bring. Acrobats from Arabia flipped between each other's shoulders as serving maids glided between Elamite sword jugglers, their admirable balancing act made that much more difficult by the dozen drunk revelers without the decency the gods gave a frog. One maid passing between him and his watchful gaze upon the king-of-kings slipped on a puddle of wine unfortunately camouflaged in the purple-and-blue-veined marble floor. Bowls of figs and pomegranates flew off her platter to rain upon a troop of Medes playing chirpy tunes on lute and reedpipe. Those pomegranate seeds would take a lot of picking to remove from inside the hollows of lutes; he smiled, once it was clear no one was hurt. The maid would be chastised, of course, but Carshena made a mental note to ensure nothing worse befell the girl. Beyond, a row of eunuchs began assembling around the king's balcony. That would mean trouble, in the king's current state. His smile vanished.

He found Haman laying on an ornamented bed of gold on the king's left, as usual, but others of the king's high magistrates were present as well: Admatha, devouring a fruit so big it could only have been one of the famed Parthian melons, though in its current disassemblement, Carshena doubted a melon farmer would recognize it. Meres was cheering a pair of dancers, each wrapped in transparent silk robes matching the other's completion: a short Numidian girl in silk as white as a Zoroastrian priestess's gently circled a tall Caucasus-mountains beauty in shadowy robes. Shethar, expectedly, had long since fallen asleep, his eastern blood not suited to hold even a quarter kapith of Persian wine. A harpist plucking at a golden instrument twice his height went almost unnoticed in the hassle. Only Mordecai was notable in his absence, though Carshena was not surprised – the Judean officer was the only official besides himself who did not succumb to the king's wine. Not that the old man would be found a hundred paces from Haman; an old blood feud, Carshena was told.

"The king cannot let this pass!" he caught Haman saying, purposely slurring his words and brandishing a glass of wine as if to seem drunker than he ever allowed himself to get. A sly politician, Haman. Any who caught the king-of-kings's ear and survived the month had to be sly. But Carshena had been the chamberlain of three generations of great kings and knew the game better than any young Uzean man so recently arrived from the southern borderlands. "If the king wills, He must make an example..."

"An example of whom, Haman?" Carshena's echoing voice could strike awe in everyone around when he wished it. Everyone but the king-of-kings, of course. And Haman, it seemed.

"The queen, your eminence," whispered one of the eunuchs beside him, the servant's gaze remaining on his clasped hands in a more than dutiful fear of the chamberlain. Harbona, he remembered – one of the king's favorites, and one of the most loyal.

"Queen Vashti refused the king's command," Haman continued theatrically, repeating the eunuch's clarification as if the half-man had been another of the garden's statues.