She leaned forward, braced her elbows against her knees to watch him the way she had when he was but a babe. "I will not fail, Inrilatas. If Maithanet assumes my eventual failure, then he's mistaken. If he acts on this assumption, then he has broken the Aspect-Emperor's divine law."
Inrilatas's chuckle was soft, forgiving, and so very sane.
"But you will fail," he asserted with a slaver's nonchalance. "So why should I do this for you, Mother? Perhaps I should side with Uncle, for in truth, only he can save Father's Empire."
How could she trust him? Inrilatas, her and her husband's monstrous prodigy…
"Because my heart beats in your breast," she said out of rash maternal reflex. "Because half of your madness is mine…" But she trailed, troubled by the way Inrilatas could, merely by listening, reveal the falsehood of sentiments that seemed so simple and true otherwise.
A jerk and rattle of iron chains. "Things heave in me, Mother. Be. Quick."
"Because I know that you want the Empire to fail."
His laughter was curious, as though crazed forces sheered the humour underpinning it.
"And you will trust… what I tell you?" he said, his voice cracked by inexplicable exertions. "The words… of a madman?"
"Yes. If only because I know that Truth is your madness."
A kind of jubilation accompanied these words-one that she immediately repented, knowing her son had already seen it, and fearing he would deny her for simple perversity's sake. Even as a young child, he had always sought to quash whatever was bright within her.
"Inspired words, Mother." His tone was thin and blank, almost as if he mocked his older sister, Theliopa. "The very kind Father has warned you not to trust. You cannot see the darkness that precedes your thoughts, but unlike most souls you know it exists. You appreciate how rarely you are the author of what you say and do…" He raised his shackled hands for a clap that never came. "I'm impressed, Mother. You understand this trick the world calls a soul."
"A trick that can be saved… or damned."
"What if redemption were simply another form of damnation? What if the only true salvation lay in seeing through the trick and embracing oblivion?"
"And what if," Esmenet replied with more than a little annoyance, "these questions could be debated endlessly without hope of resolution?"
In a wink, Theliopa's manner vanished, replaced by a hunched ape, leering and laughing. "Father has been rubbing off on you!"
Perhaps she should have been amused. Perhaps she would have been, despite the utter absence of trust. But her heart had been bludgeoned, her hope battered beyond the possibility of amusement.
"I tire of your games, Inrilatas," she said, speaking a fury that seemed to gather strength in the sound of her voice. "I understand that you can see my thoughts through my voice and face. I understand your abilities as well as anyone without Dunyain blood can. I even understand the predicaments I face in merely speaking to you!"
More laughter. "No, Mother. You most certainly do not understand. If you did, you would have drowned me years ago."
She fairly leapt to her feet, such was the sudden violence of her anger. But she caught herself. "Remember, Esmi," Kellhus had warned her, "never let your passions rule you. Passions make you simple, easy to master. Only by twisting, reflecting upon your reflections, will you be able to slip his grasp…"
Inrilatas had leaned forward from his hunch, his face avid with a shifting melange of contradictory passions, a face like a pick, sorting through tumblers of her soul.
"You lean heavily on Father's advice…" he said, his voice reaching for intonations that almost matched Kellhus's. "But you should know that I am your husband as he really is. Even Uncle, when he speaks, parses and pitches his words to mimic the way others sound-to conceal the inhumanity I so love to flaunt. We Dunyain… we are not human, Mother. And you… You are children to us. Ridiculous and adorable. And so insufferably stupid."
The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas could only stare in horror.
"But you know this…" Inrilatas continued, his gaze fixed upon her. "Someone else has told you this… And in almost precisely the same words! Who? The Wizard? The legendary Drusas Achamian-yes! He told you this in a final effort to rescue your heart, didn't he? Ah… Mother! I see you so much more clearly now! All the years of regret and recrimination, torn between terror and love, stranded with children-such wicked, gifted children! — ones you can never hope to fathom, never hope to love."
"But I do love you!"
"There is no love without trust, Mother. Only need… hunger. I am a reflex, nothing more, nothing less."
Her throat cramped. The tears welled to her eyes, spilled in hot threads across her cheeks.
He had succeeded. At last he had succeeded…
"Damn you!" she whispered, swatting at her eyes. Battered and exhausted-that was how she felt after mere moments with her son. And the words! What he had said would torment her for nights to come-longer. "This was a mistake," she murmured, refusing to glance at his lurid figure.
But just as she turned to signal the slaves to leave, he said, "Father has cut off all communication."
She slumped in her seat, breathing, staring without focus at the floor.
"Yes," she said.
"You are alone, lost in a wilderness of subtleties you cannot fathom."
"Yes…"
At last she raised her gaze to meet his. "Will you do this for me, Inrilatas?"
"Trust. Trust is the one thing you seek."
"Yes… I…" A kind of resignation overwhelmed her. "I need you."
Invisible things boiled through the heartbeats that followed. Portents. Ruminations. Lusts.
"There can only be three of us…" Inrilatas finally said. Once again, unnameable passions creaked through the seams of his voice.
The Blessed Empress blinked more tears, this time for relief. "Of course. Just your uncle and myself."
"No. Not you. My brothers…" A heaving breath swallowed his voice.
"Brothers?" she asked, more alarmed than curious.
"Kel…" he said with a bestial grunt, "and Sammi…"
The Holy Empress stiffened. If Inrilatas had been seeking a fatal chink, he had discovered it. "I don't understand," she replied, swallowing. "Sammi is… Sammi, he…"
But the figure she spoke to was scarce human anymore. Anasurimbor Inrilatas rose with a dancer's slow deliberation, then threw himself forward, his arms and legs outstretched, straining against the limits of his chains. He stood there, all spittle and squint-eyed passion, his naked limbs heaving, trembling with veins and striations. Her shield-bearers, Esmenet could not help but notice, had shrunk behind the wicker screens meant for her.
"Mother!" her son shrieked, his eyes shining with murder. "Mother! Come! Closer!"
Something of her original imperviousness returned. This… This was her son as she knew him best.
The beast.
"Let me see your mouth, Mother!"
Iothiah
The woman called Psatma Nannaferi was brought before the Padirajah and his loutish court the same as all the other notable captives, stripped naked and shackled in iron. But where other attractive women had been greeted with lascivious hoots and calls-humiliation, Malowebi had realized, was as much as part of the proceedings as the Padirajah's judgment-a peculiar silence accompanied Psatma Nannaferi's short march to the floor below Fanayal. Rumours of this woman, the Mbimayu sorcerer decided, had spread quickly among the desert men. The fact that he had not heard these rumours simply served to whet his curiosity, as well as to remind him that he remained an outsider.
Fanayal had seized one of the few temples not burned, a great domed affair that abutted the Agnotum Market-the ironic point of origin for many luxury goods that found their way to Zeum. The altar had been broken down with sledges and hauled away. The tapestries with panels drawn from the Tractate and the Chronicle of the Tusk had been burned. Those representing the First Holy War, Malowebi was told, had been carted out of Iothiah to line the horse stalls seized by Fanayal's growing army. The frescoes had been defaced, and graven images everywhere had been smashed. Several green-and-crimson banners bearing the Twin Scimitars of Fanimry had been roped and tacked across the walls. But the Tusks and Circumfixes were simply too ubiquitous to be completely blotted. No matter where his eye strayed, along the columns, over the cornices and vaults of the flanking architraves, Malowebi glimpsed unscathed evidence of the Aspect-Emperor and his faith.