The Company rode in haphazard echelon across the plain, each pony hauling skirts of spectral dust. Zsoronga rode alone, relieved of his Brace by the steady loss of their mounts. He hung his head, his blinks so sticky as to become heartbeats of sleep. His mouth hung open. They had ridden past exhaustion, into mania and melancholy, into the long stupor of mile stacked upon endless mile.
"I'm next," the Successor-Prince said with offhand disgust as Sorweel approached. "The fat man eyes my Mebbee even now. Eh, Mebbee?" He raked affectionate fingers through his pony's plumed mane. "Imagine. The Satakhan of High Holy Zeum, stumping alone through the dust…"
"I'm sure we'll fi-"
"But this is good," Zsoronga interrupted, raising a hand in a loose but-yes gesture. "Whenever my courtiers air their grievances, I can say, 'Yes, I remember the time I was forced to hobble alone through Sranc-infested wastes…'" He laughed as if seeing their faces blanch in his soul's eye. "Who could whine to such a Satakhan? Who would dare?"
He had turned to Sorweel as he said this, but he spoke in the inward manner of those who think their listeners cannot understand.
"I'm not one of the Believer-Kings!" Sorweel blurted.
Zsoronga blinked as though waking.
"You speak Sheyic now?"
"I'm not a Believer-King," Sorweel pressed. "I know you think I am."
The Successor-Prince snorted and turned away.
"Think? No, Horse-King. I know. "
"How? How could you know?"
Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.
Zsoronga grinned in what could only be called malice. "The Aspect-Emperor. He sees the hearts of Men, Horse-King. He saw yours quite clearly, I think."
" No. I… I don't know what happened at the-the…" He had assumed his tongue would fail him, that his Sheyic would be so rudimentary that it would only humiliate him, but the words were there, cemented by all those dreary watches he had spent cursing Eskeles. "I don't know what happened at the council!"
Zsoronga looked away, sneering as though at a younger sister. " I thought it plain," he said. " Two spies were revealed. Two false faces…"
Sorweel glared. Frustration welled through him and with it an overwhelming urge to simply close his eyes and slump from his saddle. His thoughts sagged, reeled into nonsensical convolutions. The ground looked cushion soft. He would sleep such a sleep! And his pony, Stubborn-Eskeles could have him. He was strong. Zsoronga could keep Mebbee, and so lose the moral high-ground to his whining courtiers…
The young King was quick in blinking away this foolishness.
"Zsoronga. Look at me… Please. I am the enemy of your enemy! He murdered my father! "
The Successor-Prince pawed his face as though trying to wipe away the exhaustion.
"Then why-?"
"To sow… thrauma… discord between us! To sow discord in my own heart! Or… or…"
A look of flat disgust. "Or?"
"Maybe he was… mistaken."
"What?" Zsoronga crowed, laughing. "Because he found your soul too subtle? A barbarian? Spare me your lies, shit-herder!"
"No… No! Because…"
"Because… Because…" Zsoronga mocked.
For some reason this barb found its way through the numbness, stung enough to bring tears to his eyes. "You would think me mad if I told you," the young King of Sakarpus said, his voice cracking.
Zsoronga gazed at him for a long, expressionless moment-a look of judgment and decision.
"I've seen you in battle," he finally said, speaking with the semblance of cruelty that men sometimes use to make room for a friend's momentary weakness. He smiled as best his heart could manage. "I already think you mad!"
A single teasing accusation, and the rift of suspicion between them was miraculously healed. Often men need only speak around things to come together and so remember what it means to speak through.
Too weary to feel gratified or relieved, Sorweel began telling the Successor-Prince everything that had transpired since the death of his father and the fall of his hallowed city. He told him of the stork who had alighted on the walls the instant before the Great Ordeal attacked his city. He told him how he had wept in the Aspect-Emperor's arms. He confessed everything, no matter how shameful, how weak, knowing that for all the aloofness of Zsoronga's gaze, the man no longer judged him with a simple rule.
And then he told him about the slave, Porsparian…
"He… he… made a face, her face, in the earth. And-I swear to you, Zsoronga! — he gathered… mud… spit, from her lips. He rubbed it across my chee-"
" Before the council?" Zsoronga asked, astonished eyes shining from a dubious scowl. "Before the Anasurimbor named you one of the faithful?"
"Yes! Yes! And ever since… Even Kayutas congratulates me on my… my turning."
"Conversion," Zsoronga corrected, his head slung low in concentration. "Your conversion…"
So far the young King of Sakarpus had spoken through the weariness that hooks lead weights to each and every thought, making the effort of talking akin to that of lifting what would rather sink. Suddenly speaking felt more like trying to submerge air-filled bladders-holding down things that should be drowned.
"Tell me what you think!" Sorweel cried.
"This is bad rushru… The Mother of Birth… For us, she is the slave Goddess. Beneath our petitioni-"
"It does shame me!" Sorweel blurted. "I am one of the warlings! Born of blood both ancient and noble! Trothed to Gilgaol since my fifth summer! She shames me!"
"But not beneath our respect," Zsoronga continued with an air of superstitious concern. Dust had chalked his kinked hair, so that he resembled Obotegwa, older and wiser than his years. "She is among the eldest… the most powerful."
"So what are you saying?"
The Successor-Prince absently stroked his pony's neck rather than answer. Even when hesitating, Zsoronga possessed a directness, a paradoxical absence of hesitation. He was one of those rare men who always moved in accordance with themselves, as though his soul had been cut and stitched from a single cloth-so unlike the patched motley that was Sorweel's soul. Even when the Successor-Prince doubted, his confidence was absolute.
"I think," Zsoronga said, "and by that I mean think… that you are what they call narindari in the Three Seas…" His body seemed to sway about the stationary point of his gaze. "Chosen by the Gods to kill."
"Kill?" Sorweel cried. "Kill?"
"Yes," the Successor-Prince replied, his green eyes drawn down by the frightful weight of his ruminations. When he looked up, he gazed with a certain blankness, as if loathe to dishonour his friend with any outward sign of pity. "To avenge your father."
Sorweel already knew this, but in the manner of men who have caged their fears. He knew this as profoundly as he knew anything, and yet somehow he had managed to convince himself it wasn't true.
He had been chosen to kill the Aspect-Emperor.
"So what am I to do?" he cried, more honest to his panic than he intended. "What does She expect of me?"
Zsoronga snorted with the humour of the perpetually overmatched. "What does the Mother expect? The Gods are children and we are their toys. Look at you sausages! They cherish us one day, break us the next." He held out his arms as if to mime Mankind's age-old exasperation. "We Zeumi pray to our ancestors for a reason."
Sorweel blinked against mutinous eyes. "Then what do you think I should do?"
"Stand in front of me as much as possible!" the handsome Successor-Prince chortled. A better part of Zsoronga's strength, Sorweel had learned, lay in his ability to drag good humour out of any circumstance. It was a trait he would try to emulate.