Perhaps it was nothing to do with Sasan? For all Barbad knew, there were other prisoners in the Castle of Silence. He had no evidence, but they might exist. Or could it even be the messenger brought the order for the release of the young prince?

No, such thoughts were like a drowning man clutching at a straw. After all these months there would be no pardon for Sasan’s father. Most likely he was already dead. Tortured, broken, and dead. Shapur was a man of blood, of infinite cruelty, like Ardashir before him.

Now the time had come, the enormity of his duty pressed down on Barbad. It was a terrible thing to contemplate. To kill in cold blood a child you loved was unthinkable. The eunuch’s heart quailed.

Yet if he did not act . . .

Barbad forced himself to think of the day he was cut, and the days before that. Painfully, he dredged up the memory of the troughs.

There was no crueller method of execution. The condemned man was secured inside two tightly lashed together wooden troughs, shaped like small boats. Unable to move, only his head, hands and feet protruded. He was given food. If he refused, they pricked his eyes until he ate. He was given milk and honey to drink. They poured it into his mouth, let it run over his face.

His eyes were turned to the sun. Soon, swarms of flies would hide his face. Inside the troughs he lay in his own filth. Before long, worms and maggots seethed up from the rottenness and corruption, devouring his body and eating their way into his vitals.

Barbad’s father had been a strong man. He had taken ten days to die.

Barbad would spare the boy such a fate.

In a sense, the messenger was unimportant. Winter was fast approaching. Barbad had turned seventy-five a couple of months before. He was getting very old, his strength failing. He had a persistent dry cough. The rooms at the top of the tower could be made snug with their shutters and braziers, their hangings and rugs. But Barbad knew he would not survive winter in the mountains. The messenger had merely brought forward what he had to do.

The boy left the window. He sat on the floor by a brazier. On the rug, he spread out the bits of kindling that he used as toys. It was awful to see the prince brought so low.