The faces fell one by one, gushing like slashed wineskins.
The Matriarch was quite awake by the time the little boy slipped into her bedroom. "Tweet!" he trilled. "Tweet-tweet!" His giggling was uncontrollable…
Almost as much as her shrieking.
Anasыrimbor Esmenet casually dismissed the four Shrial Knights they found standing rigid in the hallway, looked around sourly at the ostentatious decor-anything but the dead Yatwerian sentry slumped across the carpet. In the Ikurei days, guests had been housed within the Andiamine Heights, something that simply wasn't possible given the greater administrative demands of the New Empire. The Guest Compound was one of the Holy Dynasty's first works, raised in the heady days before the fall of Nilnamesh and High Ainon, when Kellhus seemed to hold the world's own reins within his haloed fists. The marble, with its distinctive blue bruising, had been transported all the way from quarries in Ce Tydonn. The towering panels, each depicting heroic scenes from the Unification Wars in relief, had been drafted by Niminian himself and carved by the most renowned Nansur stonemasons.
All to the glory of the Aspect-Emperor.
She had no desire to revisit the carnage beyond the threshold. Esmenet had witnessed her fair share of death, perhaps more than any woman in the Three Seas, but she had no stomach for murdered faces.
"We'll wait here," she told the two men who had taken up positions on either side of her. As always, Phinersa's look seemed to flitter about the outskirts of her form. Captain Imhailas, on the other hand, was a study in contrast. He could stare with decisive constancy-too decisive, Esmenet sometimes thought. The man always seemed to be communicating urges he scarcely knew he possessed. Sometimes an arrogant curiosity would creep into his look, and he would press his manner to the very brink of transgression, standing almost too close, speaking in a way that was almost too familiar, and smiling at thoughts to which only he was privy. And as every prostitute knew, the only thing more threatening than eyes that had too many qualms were eyes that had too few. What had the strength to seize also had the strength to choke.
Moments afterwards, Maithanet appeared in the doorway, stepping carefully to avoid the clotted threads and buttons of blood. He was dressed plainly: no felt-shouldered vestments, no hems swaying with stitched gold, only a tunic possessing the satin gloss of a horse on parade. Ochre-coloured, it etched the contours of his limbs and torso in detail, revealing the kind of chest and shoulders that stirred some feminine instinct to climb. For the first time, it seemed, Esmenet realized how much the intimation of sheer physical strength contributed to his sometimes overawing presence.
The Shriah of the Thousand Temples was a man who could break necks with ease.
Both Phinersa and Imhailas fell to their knees, bowed as low as jnan required of them.
"I came as soon as I heard," he said. To better cultivate the distinction between the political and the spiritual organs of the Empire, Maithanet always resided in the Cmiral temple-complex, never the Imperial Precincts, when he stayed in Momemn.
"I knew you would," Esmenet replied.
"My brother-"
"Gone," she snapped. "Shortly before word of… of this… arrived. I ordered the area sealed as soon as I heard of it. I knew you would want to see for yourself."
His look was long and penetrating. It seemed to concede her worst fears.
"How, Maitha? How could they reach so deep? A mere Cult. The Mother of Birth, no less!"
The Shriah scratched his beard, glanced at the two men flanking her. "The Narindar, perhaps. They possess the skills… perhaps."
The Narindar. The famed Cultic assassins of yore.
"But you don't believe as much, do you?"
"I don't know what to believe. It was a shrewd move, that much is certain. Figurehead or not, Sharacinth was our royal road, our means of seizing control of the Yatwerians from within, or at the very least setting them at war from within…"
Phinersa nodded appreciatively. "She has become their weapon now."
Esmenet had concluded as much almost the instant she had stepped into the blood-spattered antechamber earlier that night. She was going to be blamed for this. First the rumours of the White-Luck Warrior, then the Yatwerian Matriarch herself assassinated while a guest of the Empress. The bumbling preposterousness of it mattered not at all. For the masses, the outrageousness of the act would simply indicate her fear, and her fear would suggest that she believed the rumours, which in turn would mean the Aspect-Emperor had to be a demon…
This had all the makings of a disaster.
"We must make sure no word of this gets out," she heard herself saying.
Each of the men save the Shriah averted their gaze.
She nodded, tried to press her snort of disgust into a long exhalation. "I suppose that's too late…"
"The Imperial Precincts," Phinersa said apologetically, "are simply too large, your Glory."
"Then we must go on the offensive!" Imhailas exclaimed. Until this moment, the handsome Exalt-Captain had done his best to slip between the cracks of her Imperial notice, his eyes wired open by the certainty that he would be held accountable. The security of the Imperial Precincts was his sole responsibility.
"That is true in any event," Maithanet said gravely. "But we have another possibility to consider…"
Esmenet found herself studying Sharacinth's ash-grey bodyguard, quite numb to what she was seeing. The smell of corruption was already wafting through the hall, like sediment kicked up in water. How absurd was it for them to have this discussion-this council of war-here in the presence of the very circumstantial debris they hoped to bury? People were dead, whole lives had been extinguished, and yet here they stood, plotting…
But then, she realized, the living had to forever look past the dead-on the pain of joining them.
"We must ensure this crime is decried for what it is," she said. "Few will believe us, but still, it's imperative that an Inquiry be called, and that someone renowned for his integrity be made Exalt-Inquisitor."
"One of the Patriarchs of the other Cults," Maithanet said, studying the carpets meditatively. "Perhaps Yagthrыta…" He raised his eyes to her own. "The man is every bit as rabid as his Patron God when it comes to matters of ritual legality."
Esmenet found herself nodding in approval. Yagthrыta was the Momian Patriarch, famed not only because he was the first Thunyeri to reach such an exalted rank, but because of his reputed piety and candour. Apparently, he had journeyed across the Meneanor from Tenryer to Sumna in naught but a skiff-a supreme gesture of faith if there ever was one. Best of all, his barbaric origins insulated him against the taint of the Shrial or Imperial Apparati.
"Excellent," she said. "In the meantime, it is absolutely crucial we find this Psatma Nannaferi…"
"Indeed, your Glory," Imhailas said, nodding with almost comic grandiloquence. "As the Khirgwi say, the headless snake has no fangs."
Esmenet scowled. The Captain had a habit of spouting inane adages-from some popular scroll of aphorisms, no doubt. Usually she found it charming-she was not above forgiving handsome men their quirks, particularly when she was their motive-but not on a matter as grievous as this, and certainly not in the presence of rank carnage.
"I'm afraid I've nothing new to add, your Glory," Phinersa said, his gaze ranging across the scenes of war and triumph along the walls. "We still think she's somewhere in Shigek. Think. But with the Fanim raiding the length of the River Sempis…" His eyes circled back only to flinch the instant they met her own.