Her temples looted and burned. So many of her sisters raped and put to the sword, and here she stood, drunk with joy.
"Are you such a dog?" she asked the open air. "Eh, Snakehead?"
She turned to where Meppa stood on the pavilion's threshold. The ornate flaps swayed into motionlessness behind him. Highland cool wafted through the interior.
"You," he said with muttering intensity. His face remained directed forward, but the black finger of his salt asp had turned directly toward the cringing body-slave. The Mother-Supreme smiled, knowing the old man would not live to see dawn. He would die for her sake, she knew, and he would reach…
"Always guarding his master's portal," she cackled.
"Cover yourself, Concubine."
"You do not like what you see?"
"I see the withered old crone that is your soul."
"So you are a man still, eh, Snakehead? You judge my beauty, my worth, according to the youth of my womb… My fertilit — "
"Still your tongue!"
" Bark, dog. Rouse your master. Let us see whose snout he will strike."
The shining snake finally turned to regard her. The lips beneath the silver band tightened into a line.
Psatma Nannaferi resumed her appraisal of her miraculous twin in the mirror. "You bear the Water within you," she said to the Last Cishaurim. She drew a palm across the plane of her abdomen. "Like an ocean! You can strike me down with your merest whim! And yet you stand here bandying threats and insults?"
"I serve my Lord Padirajah."
The Mother-Supreme laughed. This, she realized, was her new temple, a heathen army, flying through lands where even goatherds were loathe to go. And these heathen were her new priests-these Fanim. What did it matter what they believed, so long as they accomplished what needed to be done?
"But you lie," she croaked in her old voice.
"He has been anoin-"
"He has been anointed!" she cackled. "But not by whom you think!"
"Cease your blasphem-"
"Fool! All of them. All these Men — all these Thieves! All of them think themselves the centre of their worlds. But not you. You have seen. You alone know how small we are… mere specks, motes in the gusting black. And yet you place your faith in errant abstraction-the Solitary God! Pfah! You throw number-sticks for your salvation, when all you need do is kneel!"
The Cishaurim said nothing in reply. The salt-asp, lantern light gleaming along the cross-hatching of its scales, hooked away from her toward a point over her shoulder.
She turned to see Fanayal standing naked in a kind of stationary lurch behind her. He seemed insubstantial for the play of shadow and gloom.
"Do you see now?" Meppa asked. "Her treachery. Her devilry! My Lord, please tell me that you see!"
Fanayal ab Kascamandri wiped his face, breathed deep, his nostrils whistling. "Leave us, Meppa," he said roughly.
A moment of equipoise followed, the mutual regard of three overbearing souls. Their breathing abraded the silent air. Then with the merest bow, the Cishaurim withdrew.
The Padirajah loomed behind the diminutive woman.
He flung her about, cried, "Witch!" He clamped callused hands about her neck, bent her back, crying, "Accursed witch!"
Groaning, the Mother-Supreme clutched his hard muscled arms, hooked a naked calf about his waist.
Thus he ravished her.
Still huddled between the settees, the doomed body-slave wept for watching…
Soft earth deeply ploughed.
Scant ceremony greeted Uncle Holy's arrival at the Andiamine Heights' postern gate, only sombre words and unspoken suspicion. Slaves raised embroidered tarps against the rain, forming a tunnel with upraised arms, so Maithanet was spared the indignity of soaking in his own clothes. Kelmomas was careful to observe and mimic the attitude of his mother and her retinue. Children, no matter how oblivious otherwise, are ever keen to their parent's fear and quick to behave accordingly. Kelmomas was no different.
Something truly momentous was about to happen-even his mother's fool ministers understood as much. Kelmomas actually glimpsed crooked old Vem-Mithriti shaking his head in disbelief.
The Shriah of the Thousand Temples was about to be interrogated by their God's most gifted, destructive son.
Uncle Holy paced the dripping gauntlet in the simulacrum of fury. He fairly shouldered aside Imhailas and Lord Sankas to stand before Mother, who even so diminutive seemed imposing for the strangeness of her shining white mask. For not the first time, Kelmomas found himself hating his uncle, not simply because of his stature, but because of the way he occupied it. No matter what the occasion, be it a blessing or a marriage or an exhortation or the Whelming of a child, Anasurimbor Maithanet cultivated an aura of neck-breaking strength.
"Dispense with the frivolities," he snapped. "I would be done with this, Esmi."
He wore a white robe with gold-embroidered hems-stark, even by his staid standards. Aside from the heavy Tusk-and-Circumfix that hung above his sternum, his only concessions to ornament were the golden vambraces that sheathed his forearms in antique Ceneian motifs.
Rather than speak, the Empress lowered her head a degree short of what was demanded by jnan. Kelmomas felt her hand tighten about his shoulder as she did so.
The young Prince-Imperial savoured the way they carried the scent of rain into the closeted halls of the palace. Moist creases of silk and felt. Feet squishing in sandals. Wet hair growing hot.
Neither party spoke a word the entire trek, save Vem-Mithriti, who begged his mother's pardon as soon as they climbed beyond the Apparatory, asking whether he could continue on his own at a pace more suitable to ancient bones. They left the frail Saik Schoolman behind them, following a path of stairs and corridors cleared in advance and guarded at every turn by stone-faced Eothic Guardsmen. The wall sconces were idle despite the darkness of the day, so they passed through pockets of outright gloom. Despite his mother's fixed, forward glare, the young Prince-Imperial could not resist craning about, matching the ways he could see with the ways he could not-comparing the two palaces, visible and invisible.
At long last they gained the Imperial Apartments and reached the Door.
It seemed taller and broader than the boy remembered, perhaps because his mother had finally ordered it polished. Normally chalked in green, the Kyranean Lions now gleamed in florid majesty. He wanted to ask Mother whether this meant Inrilatas would be set free, but the secret voice warned him to remain silent.
The Empress stood before them, her masked face lowered as if in prayer. All was silent, save for the creak of Imhailas's gear. Kelmomas reached about her silk-girdled waist to press his cheek into her side. She ran thoughtless fingers through his hair.
Finally Maithanet asked, "Why is the boy here, Esmi?"
No one could miss his tone, which twisted the question into, What is this morbid fixation?
"I don't know," she replied. "Inrilatas refused to speak to you unless he was present."
"So this is to be a public humiliation?"
"No. Only you and my two sons," she replied, still gazing at the Door. "Your nephews."
"Madness…" the Shriah muttered in feigned disgust.
At last she turned her mask toward him. "Yes," she said. " Dunyain madness."
She nodded to Imhailas, who grasped the latch and pushed the great door inward.
The Shriah of the Thousand Temples looked down to Kelmomas, clasped his small white hand in the callused immensity of his own. "Do you fear me as well?" he asked.