Mustafa walked out of the great hall. Even as he was about to leave the palace grounds, he could not help looking back at the grand, colossal archway of Taq Kasra Palace.
At his side, his nephew, serving as his sword-bearing attendant, could not help asking, "What are you looking at?"
"This palace, built by the late King Kasra."
"You've been looking at it for half your life. Aren't you tired of it?"
Mustafa came from a powerful Saracen family in Mesopotamia. His granted Iqta territories—similar to pronia, legally non-hereditary fiefs that in practice differed little from feudal estates—totaled more than a hundred thousand hectares, equivalent to a typical European duchy.
He had served as Grand Vizier for twenty-three years, through the reigns of two Sasanian Kings. He knew this palace even better than Bahram VI did.
"I'm worried that someday, even if I want to see it again, I won't be able to."
Mustafa shook his head and sighed. "Fadler, if one day the Tatars break through Ctesiphon and recreate the tragedies of Nishapur and Ray City here, what would you do?"
The attendant froze for a moment before replying, "You must be joking."
But Mustafa did not look as though he were joking. The smile on the attendant's face quickly faded. "Though the Empire has suffered a severe blow in Persia, its main forces remain intact, and its foundations are unshaken. We will soon organize a counterattack and recover the lost lands."
Their family's primary foundations lay in Mesopotamia. They were the leading family among the Saracen nobles, and in the eyes of that faction, the Empire's territorial losses in Persia were not necessarily a bad thing.
After all, the Persian nobles had always held an edge over the Saracen nobles, who were latecomers to the Sasanian Dynasty.