Despite the Padirajah's smile, something shrewd and quite humourless glinted in his eyes.
Second Negotiant Malowebi, Emissary of High Holy Zeum, matched the man's gaze, careful to conceal his frown. "Kurcifra…" he repeated. "Ah… you mean the Aspect-Emperor."
The Mbimayu sorcerer was old enough to remember the days when Kian ruled the Eastern Three Seas. Of all the outland peculiarities to leak into Zeum, few proved more vexing than the Fanim missionaries who trickled across the frontier, bearing their absurd message of fear and damnation. The God was Solitary. The Gods were in fact devils. And all their ancestors had been damned for worshipping them- all of them! You would think that claims so preposterous and repulsive would require no rebuttal, but the very opposite had been the case. Even the Zeumi, it turned out, were quick to embrace tales of their own iniquity, so universal is self-loathing among Men. Not a month passed, it sometimes seemed, without some public flaying.
Even still, when Fanayal's Padirajah father had sent an embassy to attend the coronation of Malowebi's cousin, Nganka'kull, the Kianene Grandees had caused a sensation among the kjineta. High Holy Zeum had always been an inward nation, too distant and too vain to concern itself with events or peoples beyond its sacred frontier. But the Kianene's pale skin, the stark luxury of their dress, their pious reserve-everything about them had hummed with exotic allure. Over night, it seemed, the Zeumi fondness for elaborate image and ornamentation had become dowdy and obsolete. Many caste-nobles even began cultivating goatees-until, that is, his cousin reinstated the ancient Grooming Laws.
Malowebi could scarce imagine these Kianene inspiring an upheaval in fashion. Where the Grandees of Kascamandri's embassy possessed the dress and bearing of heroes, Fanayal's men were little more than desert bandits. He had expected to ride with the likes of Skauras or Cinganjehoi, men terrible in war and gracious in peace, not a ragtag army of horse-thieves and rapists.
Fanayal alone reminded him of those ambassadors from long ago. He wore a helm of shining gold, five spikes rising from the peak, and perhaps the finest coat of mail Malowebi had ever seen-a mesh of inhuman manufacture, he eventually decided. His yellow-silk sleeves hung like pennants from his wrists. His curved sword was obviously a famed heirloom. The instant he had noticed it, Malowebi had known he would say, "That glorious blade-was that your father's?" He even knew the solemn way he would pitch his voice. It was an old diplomat's trick, making a conversational inventory of the items his counterparts wore.
Relationships went much smoother, Malowebi had learned, in the absence of verbal holes.
"Kurcifra…" the Padirajah repeated with a curious smile, as if considering the way the name might sound to an outsider. "The light that blinds."
Fanayal ab Kascamandri was nothing if not impressive. Handsome, in the hard way of desert breeding. His falcon eyes set close about a hooked nose. Arrogant to the point of being impervious to insult and slight-and being quite agreeable as a result.
The Bandit Padirajah he might be, but he was no bandit, at least.
"You said no man is so dangerous," Malowebi pressed, genuinely curious. "Is this what you think? That the Anasurimbor is a man?"
Fanayal laughed. "The Empress is a woman — I know that much. I once spared a Shrial Priest for claiming he had bedded her when she was a whore. The Aspect-Emperor? I know only that he can be killed."
"And how do you know this?"
"Because I am the one doomed to kill him."
Malowebi shook his head in wonder. How the World revolved about the Aspect-Emperor. How many times had he poured himself some unwatered wine just to drink and marvel at the simple fact of the man? A refugee wanders into the Nansurium from the wilderness-with a Scylvendi savage, no less! — and within twenty years, he not only commands the obedience of the entire Three Seas but its worship as well.
It was mad. Too mad for mere history, which was, as far as Malowebi could tell, every bit as mean and as stupid as the men who made it. There was nothing mean or stupid about Anasurimbor Kellhus.
"This is how Men reason in the Three Seas?" he asked. He repented the words even as he spoke them. Malowebi was Second Negotiant for no small reason. He was forever asking blunt questions, forever alienating instead of flattering. He had more teeth than tongue, as the menials would say.
But the Bandit Padirajah showed no outward sign of offence. "Only those who have seen their doom, Malowebi! Only those who have seen their doom!"
Fanayal, the Mbimayu sorcerer noted with no small relief, was a man who relished insolent questions.
"I notice you ride without bodyguards," he ventured.
"Why should that concern you?"
Though horsemen clotted the fields and berms about them, he and the Padirajah rode quite alone-aside from a cowled figure who trailed them by two lengths. Malowebi had assumed the man was a bodyguard of some description, but twice now he had glimpsed-or thought he had glimpsed-something resembling a black tongue within the cowl's dun shadows. Even still, it was remarkable, really, that someone like Fanayal would treat with anyone face to face, let alone an outland sorcerer. Just the previous week the Empress had offered another ten thousand gold kellics for the Bandit Padirajah's head.
Perhaps it spoke to the man's desperation…
"Because," the Mbimayu sorcerer said with a shrug, "your insurrection would not survive your loss… We would be fools to provoke the Aspect-Emperor on the promise of a martyr."
Fanayal managed to rescue his grin before it entirely faltered. He understood the power of belief, Malowebi realized, and the corresponding need to project confidence, both fatuous and unrelenting.
"You need not worry."
"Why?"
"Because I cannot die."
Malowebi was beginning to like the man but in a way that cemented, rather than softened, his skepticism of him. The Second Negotiant always had a weakness for vainglorious fools, even as a child. But unlike the First Negotiant, Likaro, he never let his sympathies make his decisions for him.
Commitments required trust, and trust required demonstrations. The Satakhan had sent him to assess Fanayal ab Kascamandri, not to parlay with him. For all his failings, Nganka'kull was no fool. With the Great Ordeal crawling into the northern wastes, the question was whether the New Empire could survive the absence of its Aspect-Emperor and his most fanatical followers. As the first real threat to the Zeumi people and nation since Near Antiquity, it needed to fail-and decisively.
But wishing ill and doing actual harm were far different beasts. Care had to be taken-extreme care. High Holy Zeum could ill afford any long throws of the number-sticks, not after Nganka'kull had so foolishly yielded his own son as a hostage. Malowebi had always been fond of Zsoronga, had always seen in him the makings of a truly great Satakhan. He needed some real assurance that this desert outlaw and his army of thieves could succeed before recommending the monies and arms they so desperately needed. To take isolated fortresses was one thing. But to assail a garrisoned city — that was quite another.
Iothiah, the ancient capital of Old Dynasty Shigek. Iothiah would be an impressive demonstration. Most assuredly.
"Kurcifra was sent as punishment," Fanayal continued, "an unholy angel of retribution. We had grown fat. We had lost faith with the strict ways of our fathers. So the Solitary God burned the lard from our limbs, drove us back into the wastes where we were born…" He fixed the sorcerer with a gaze that was alarming for its intensity. "I am anointed, Outlander. I am the One."
"But Fate has many whims. How can you be sure?"
Fanayal's laughter revealed the perfect crescent of his teeth. "If I'm wrong, I always have Meppa." He turned to the enigmatic rider trailing them. "Eh, Meppa? Raise your mask."