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  She heard rather than saw the release of the curtains that concealed the scaffold behind her. Shouts like a thunderclap. The mobs surged, not so much forward as outward. Hands were raised in air-pummelling exultation. Lips curled. Teeth flashed with sunlit spittle.

  Somehow, through the roar, she could hear Samarmas bawling to her right. When she looked, she saw him huddling, shoulders in and chin down, as though trying to squeeze through some hidden passage within himself. A kind of maternal hatred clamped her jaw tight, a wild urge to order the Guardsmen into the masses, to cut and beat them from her sight. How dare they frighten her child!

  But to be a sovereign is to be forever, irrevocably, cut into many. To be a matron, simple and uncompromising. To be a spy, probing and hiding. And to be a general, always calculating weakness and advantage.

  She fought the mother-clamouring within, ignored his distress. Even Samarmas-who she was certain would become nothing more than a dear fool-even he had to learn the madness that was his Imperial inheritance.

  For him, she told herself. I do this for his sake!

  The mobs continued howling, not at her or her sons, but at the sight of the Consult skin-spy, which she knew would be strung like a spitted pig through the centre of the scaffold above and behind her. According to tradition, her eyes were too holy for such a horrific sight, so a lottery was held among the caste-nobility to see who would be granted the honour of bringing her the hand mirror she would use to actually witness the creature's purification. With some surprise she saw Lord Sankas approach, his elbows pressed together before his cuirass, so that the mirror could lay flat across his inner forearms.

  Samarmas flew from his seat and hugged him about the waist. For a moment the old caste-noble teetered. Gales of laughter passed through the crowds. Esmenet hastened to detach him, wiped his cheeks and kissed his forehead, then directed him back to his little throne.

  Grinning in embarrassment, Biaxi Sankas knelt so that he might offer up the mirror. Nodding to show Imperial favour, she took it from his arms, raised it so that she saw flashing sky, then her own face. Her beauty surprised her-large dark eyes on an oval face. She could not remember when it happened, when she starting feeling older and uglier than she in fact was. She had always been popular as a whore, even in a city renowned for its white-skinned tastes. She had always been beautiful-and in that down-to-the-bones way that somehow followed certain women even into their decrepitude.

  She had never been a match for her face.

  A pang made her avert the mirror, and she glimpsed the uppermost timbers of the scaffold hanging in a pool of bald sky. Tilting the handle, she followed beams to where the chains were anchored, then followed the chains until the skin-spy occupied the mirror's centre. With pinched breaths, she gazed at what she had already seen in the multitude of faces before her: coin for the toll their Aspect-Emperor had exacted from them.

  The thing bucked and thrashed, bouncing like a stone tied to a bowstring. Perched on separate boarded platforms, two of Phinersa's understudies ministered to the thing, the one already making the incisions required to peel back the skin, the other flicking the Neuropuncture needles that controlled the abomination's reaction-the thing would simply cackle and climax otherwise. Like a chorus of burning bulls it screamed, its spine arched, the radial limbs of its face yanked back like the petals of a dying flower.

  Both the twins had climbed into their seats to gaze over the back, Kelmomas pale and expressionless, Samarmas with his shining cheeks pressed to the cushion. She wanted to shout at them to turn away, to look back to the shrieking mob, but her voice failed her. Even though the mirror was meant to protect her, holding it the way she did seemed to make it all the more real, into something that rubbed against the soft-skin of her terror.

  The brand was drawn from an iron-bowl of coals that had been raised into the scaffold. The thing's eyes were put out.

  With a kind of rapt horror she found herself wondering at her circumstances. What kind of whore was Fate, to throw her into this place, this time, to make her the vessel of cruel godlings and the bar of world-breaking events? She believed in her husband. She believed in the Great Ordeal. She believed in the Second Apocalypse. She believed in all of it.

  She just couldn't believe that any of it happened.

  She whispered to herself in that paradoxical voice we all bear within us, the one that speaks the most wretched truths and the most beguiling lies, the one that is most us, and so not quite us at all. She whispered, "This is a dream."

  Sarmarmas wept and Kelmomas, who otherwise seemed so strong for a child his age, trembled like an old man's dying words. At last she relented. Setting down the mirror, she reached over the arms of her throne to squeeze both their hands. The feel of small fingers closing tight about her own brought tears to her eyes. It was a sensation so primeval, so right, that it almost always daubed the turmoil from her soul.

  But this time it felt more like an… admission.

  The masses roared in exultation, becoming in some curious way, the iron that burned, the blade that peeled. And Esmenet sat painted and rigid, gazing out across their furious regions.

  Thug. Tyrant. Empress of the Three Seas.

  A miracle not quite believed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Honoreal

  For He sees gold in the wretched and excrement in the exalted.

  Nay, the world is not equal in the eyes of the God.

  — Scholars, 7:16, The Tractate

  Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), Southwestern Galeoth

  There is no other place. It is as simple as that.

  She cannot go back, not to the brothel that is her mother's palace, nor to the brothel that is a brothel. She was sold so very long ago, and nothing-no one-can buy her back.

  She pilfers wood from the shed-little more than a wall cobbled from the debris fallen from the upper tower-and watches his slave curse and scratch his woolly head, then strike out to replace it. She makes fires, even though she has nothing to cook or to burn, and she sits before them, poking them like an anthill or staring at them, as though it were a little baby kicking and clawing at an impossible sky. She lets her mule, whom she calls Foolhardy, wander free, thinking or maybe even hoping that it would run away. Each night, she hugs herself in shame and guilt, certain that Foolhardy will be taken down by the wolves or at least spooked into running by their endless howls. But each morning, the brute is still there, standing close enough to be hit by a stone, flicking its ears at flies, staring off in any direction but hers.

  She cries.

  She continues to watch her fire, gazes at it with a new mother's fascination, gazes at it until her eyes are pinched dry. There is something proper about flames, she thinks. They possess a singularity of purpose that can only be called divine…

  Flare. Wax. Consume.

  Like a human. Only with grace.

  One of the children, the youngest of the girls, creeps down to her to explain they have been forbidden to speak or play with her because she is a witch. Was it true she's a witch?

  As a joke Mimara grimaces and croaks, "Yeeaasss!"

  After the little girl flees, she sees them from time to time, hiding behind a fence of weeds or the ridged edge of some immense tree trunk, crawling and peering and running with faux-screams whenever they realize that she sees them watching.

  She can see the Wards set about the tower, though she can only guess at their purposes. And she notes the scattered signs of more violent, more ephemeral sorceries-a gash in a monstrous elm, scorching across plates of stone, earth cooked to glass-proof that the Wizard has resorted to his prodigious skills. Always and everywhere she sees the ontic plenitude of things-the treeness of trees, the essence of water and stone and mountains-mostly pristine, but sometimes wrecked thanks to Schoolmen and their savage croon. The eyes of the Few were with her always, prodding her onto this path she has chosen, fortifying her resolve.

  But more and more the different eye seems to
open, one that has perplexed her for many years-that frightens her like an unwanted yen for perversion. Its lid is drowsy, and indeed it slumbers so deep she often forgets its presence. But when it stirs, the very world is transformed.

  For moments at a time, she can see them… Good and evil.

  Not buried, not hidden, but writ like another colour or texture across the hide of everything. The way good men shine brighter than good women. Or how serpents glow holy, while pigs seem to wallow in polluting shadow. The world is unequal in the eyes of the God-she understands this with intimate profundity. Masters over slaves, men over women, lions over crows: At every turn, the scriptures enumerate the rank of things. But for terrifying moments, the merest of heartbeats, it is unequal in her eyes as well.

  It's a kind of madness, she knows. She has seen too many succumb in the brothels to think she is immune. Their handlers were loath to mark the skin, so they punished the soul. She was no exception.

  It has to be madness. Even still, she cannot but wonder how Achamian will appear in the light of this more discerning eye.

  The morning sun rears from the bulk of the hill and lances across the trees with their limbs like frozen ropes, spilling pools of bright through the thatched gloom. And she watches and watches, until the colours pale into coral evening.

  And she thinks the tower was not so tall. It only seems such because it occupies higher ground.

  The world hates you…

  The thought comes upon her, not with stealth or clamour, but with the presumption of a slave owner, of one who sees no boundaries save their own.

  The suffering follows quick upon the heels of her vigil-she had exhausted the last of her provisions before reaching the tower-and something within her rejoices. The world does hate her-she does not need a small brother's tearful confession to know that. "It hurts Momma to even look at you! She wishes she would have drowned you instead of sold you…" Here she sits, starving and shivering, staring and croaking at the inscrutable window beneath the tower's demolished crown. This one thing she wants-to become a witch, to exact what she has paid…

  So of course she must be denied.

  There is no other place. So why not cast her life across the Whore's table? Why not press Fate to the very brink? At least she will die knowing.

  She weeps twice, though she feels nothing of the sorrow that moves her: once glimpsing one of the little girls crouched peeing beneath sun-shot bowers, and again seeing the Wizard's silhouette pacing back and forth across his open window-back and forth. She literally cannot remember the last time she has been at one with her weeping. In her childhood, she supposes. Before the slavers.

  At the very end of the heart's exhaustion lies a kind of resignation, a point where resolve and surrender become indistinguishable. Wavering requires alternatives, and she has none. The world is in rout. To leave would be to embark on a flight without refuge, to lead an itinerant existence, aimless, with nothing to credit one far-flung road over another, since despair has become all directions. She has no choice because all her choices have become the same.

  A broken tree, as her brothel-master once told her, can never yield.

  Two days become three. Three become four. Hunger makes her dizzy, while the rain makes her clay-cold. The world hates you, she thinks, staring at the broken tower. Even here.

  The last place.

  And then one night he simply comes out. He looks haggard, not just like an old man who never sleeps, but one who never forgives-himself or others, it does not matter. He bears rank wine and steaming food, which she falls upon like a thankless animal. Then he sits opposite her fire and begins talking. "The Dreams," he says with the intensity of someone who has waged long war against certain words.

  She stares at him, unable to stop fingering food into her mouth, which she swallows against the sob in the back of her throat. The firelight seems to have grown shining porcupine quills. For a moment, she fears she might swoon for relief.

  He speaks of the Dreams of the First Apocalypse, the nightmares that all Mandate Schoolmen share thanks to the derelict memories of their ancient founder, Seswatha, and the long dark horror of his war against the Consult. "Over and over," he mutters, "as if a life can be writ like a poem, torments fashioned into verses…"

  "Are they that bad?" she asks in the lame silence. She can scarce see him past the combination of her tears and the fire's glare: an old and rutted face, one that has seen much-too much-and yet has not forgotten how to be tender or honest.

  He winks at her before gazing down to fiddle with his pouch and pipe. He stuffs the bowl, his look both pensive and sealed. He picks up a twig from the fire's edge; a small flame twirls from the end of it.

  "They used to be," he says, lighting the pipe. He goes cross-eyed, staring at the touch of fire and bowl.

  "I don't understand."

  He draws deeply on the stem; the bowl glows like a molten coin.

  "Do you know," he asks, exhaling a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke, "why Seswatha left us his dreams?"

  She knows the answer. Her mother always resorted to talk of Achamian to salve the abrasions between her and her embittered daughter. Because he was her real father, Mimara had always thought. "To assure the School of Mandate never forgets, never loses sight of its mission."

  "That's what they say," Achamian replies, savouring his smoke. "That the Dreams are a goad to action, a call to arms. That by suffering the First Apocalypse over and over, we had no choice but to war against the possibility of the Second."

  "You think otherwise?"

  A shadow falls across his face. "I think that your adoptive father, our glorious, all-conquering Aspect-Emperor, is right." The hatred is plain in his voice.

  "Kellhus?" she asks.

  An old man shrug-an ancient gesture hung on failing bones. "He says it himself, Every life is a cipher…" Another deep inhalation. "A riddle."

  "And you think Seswatha's life is such."

  "I know it is."

  And then the Wizard tells her. About the First Holy War. About his forbidden love for her mother. About how he was prepared to gamble the very World for the sanctuary of her arms. There is a candour to his telling, a vulnerability that makes it all the more compelling. He speaks plaintively, lapsing time and again into the injured tone of someone convinced others do not believe them wronged. And he speaks slyly, like a drunk who thinks he confides terrible secrets…

  Even though Mimara has heard this story many times, she finds herself listening with an almost childish attentiveness, a willingness to be moved, even hurt, by the words of another. He has no idea, she realizes, that this story has become song and scripture in the world beyond his lonely tower. Everyone knows he loved her mother. Everyone knows that she chose the Aspect-Emperor and that Achamian subsequently fled into the wilderness…

  The only secret is that he still lives.

  With these thoughts her wonder quickly evaporates into embarrassment. He seems overmatched, tragically so, wrestling with words so much larger than himself. It becomes cruel to listen as she does, pretending not to know what she knows so well.

  "She was your morning," she ventures.

  He stops. For a heartbeat his eyes seem to lose something of their focus, then he glares at her with a kind of compressed fury. He turns to tap his pipe against a stone jutting from the matted leaves.

  "My what?"

  "Your morning," Mimara repeats hesitantly. "My mother. She used to tell me that… that she was your morning."

  He holds the bowl to the firelight for inspection. "I no longer fear the night," he says with an absent intensity. "I no longer dream as Mandate Schoolmen dream." When he looks up, there is something at once flat and decisive in his eyes. The memory of an old and assured resolution.

  "I no longer pray for the morning."

  She leans back to pluck another log for the fire. It lands with a rasping thump, sends a train of sparks twirling up through the smoke. Watching their winking ascent to avoid his gaze, she hugs h
er shoulders against the chill. Somewhere neither near nor far, wolves howl into the bowl of the night. As though alarmed, he glances away into the wood, into the wells of blackness between the variant trunks and limbs. He stares with an intensity that makes her think that he listens as much as he hears, to the wolves and to whatever else-that he knows the myriad languages of the deep night.

  It is then that he tells his tale in earnest…

  As though he has secured permission.

  Her mother had waited for him like this, so very long ago.

  Over the days and nights since Mimara's arrival, Achamian had told himself many things. That he was angry-how could he reward such impudence? That he was prudent-what could be more dangerous than harbouring a fugitive Princess-Imperial? That he was compassionate-she was too old to master the semantics of sorcery, and the sooner she understood this, the better. He told himself many things, acknowledged many passions, save the confusion that was the truth of his soul.

  Her mother, Esmenet, had waited for him on the banks of the River Sempis over twenty years previous. Not even word of his death could turn her from her vigil, so obstinate, so mulish was her love. Not even sense could sway her.

  Only Kellhus and the appearance of honesty.

  Even before Mimara began her watch-or siege, as it sometimes seemed-Achamian knew that she shared her mother's stubbornness. It was no small feat travelling alone from Momemn the way she had; his skin prickled at the thought of it, this small woman daring the Wilds to find him, spending night after night alone in the scheming dark. So even before he had shut his doors against her, commanded his slaves to avoid her, he knew she would not be so easily driven away. Even that night when he had struck her in the rain.

  Something more was needed. Something deeper than sense.

  He told himself that she was mad enough to do it, that she would literally waste to nothing waiting for him to climb down from his tower. He told himself he needed only to be honest, to confess the truth in all its mangled detail, and that she would see, realize that her vigil could win only the destruction of two souls. He told himself these things because he still loved her mother, and because he knew that one never stood still, even while waiting. That sometimes the sheathed knife could cut the most throats of all.