Ministers, dressed in a plain white tunic. The oiled plaits of his beard gleamed like jet in the lantern light. His height and force of presence never failed to remind Esmenet of her husband-the same light, only burning through the sackcloth of a human mother.
'Thelli found it during a surprise inspection of the new slaves,' he said, his voice so deep and resonant that it somehow blotted out the memory of the others. With a broad gesture, he drew her eyes out over the balustrade to the iron apparatus several lengths below…
Where it hung naked in a pose reminiscent of the Circumfix: the skin-spy.
Slicked in perspiration, its black limbs flexed against the iron brackets that clamped each of its joints-wrists, elbows, shoulders, waist. Even so immobilized, it seemed to seethe somehow, as though reflexively testing various points of leverage. The rusty grind and creak of the apparatus spoke to its ominous strength. Muscle twined like braided snakes.
A single gold pin had been driven into its skull, which, according to the arcane principles of Neuropuncture, had forced the thing to unclench its face. Masticating limbs waved where features should have been. They hooked the air like a dying crab, some flanged with disconnected lips, others bearing a flaccid eyelid, a hanging nostril, a furred swatch of brow. Perpetually shocked eyes glared from the pulpy shadows between. Teeth glistened from bared gums.
Esmenet clenched her teeth against the bile rising into her throat. Even after so many years, there was something about the creatures, some violation of fundamentals, that struck her to the visceral quick. As a reminder of the threat that loomed over her and her family, she kept one of their skulls in her personal apartments. It had a great hole where the eyes of a human would hang over the bridge of the nose. The rim of the hole possessed sockets for each unnatural finger. And the fingers, which some artisan had wired into a semblance of their natural pose, folded together in elaborate counterpoise, some curved and interlocking across the forehead, others bent into complex signs about the eyes, mouth, and nose. Every morning she glanced at it-and found herself not so much afraid as convinced.
It had long since become an argument for suffering her husband.
And now, here was another one, wrapped in shining meat. One of the Consults most lethal weapons. A skin- spy. A living justification. The threat that forgave her tyranny.
'Black-skinned?' she said, turning to Maithanet. 'Have we ever captured a Satyothi before?'
'This is the first,' the Holy Shriah replied, nodding toward Theliopa as he spoke. 'We think it might be a test of some kind.'
'A plausible assumption,' Theliopa said, her voice high and cold. 'If the threshold of detection were a near thing, it might have been successful. For all the Consult knows, the subtle differences between complexions and bone structure could have rendered this one undetectable. It would explain the seven hundred and thirty-three days that have elapsed since their last attempt to infiltrate the court.'
Esmenet nodded, too unnerved by her daughter's vacant and all-seeing gaze to work through the implications.
She checked on the boys. On his tiptoes, Kelmomas stared with something resembling rapt indecision, as if trying to decide whether the thing below them was a match for his wilder imaginings. Samarmas had abandoned Lord Sankas to join his twin at the balustrade. He stared between his fingers, his face held partially averted. They seemed wise and imbecilic versions of the same child, one modern, the other antique, almost as though history had folded back on itself. Without warning, Kelmomas turned to gaze into her face: In so many little ways, he was still his father's son-and it worried her.
'What do you think?' she asked with a forced smile.
'Scary.'
'Yes. Scary.'
As though sensing some kind of permission in this, Samarmas threw his arms around her waist and began blubbering. She held his cheek against her midriff and cooed to him in a soft, shushing voice. When she looked up, Phinersa and Imhailas were watching her intently. She supposed with Theliopa present she had no need to fear their intent, but even still, there always seemed to be a glimpse of malice in their look.
Or a lust that amounted to the same.
'What do you wish, your Glory?' Phinersa asked.
Without Kellhus, there was nothing they could learn from this creature. Skin-spies possessed no souls, nothing for Vem-Mithriti's sorcerous Cants to compel. And torments simply… aroused them.
'Sound the Plate,' she said with weary decisiveness. 'Let the People be reminded.'
Maithanet nodded in sage assent. 'A most wise decision.'
Everyone stared at the monstrosity for a wordless moment, as if committing its form to memory. No matter how many skin-spies she saw, they never ceased to unnerve her with their devious impossibility.
Imhailas cleared his throat. 'Shall I make preparations for your attendance, your Glory?'
'Yes,' she replied absently. 'Of course.' The People needed to be reminded of more than what threatened them, they needed to be reminded of the discipline that kept them safe as well. They needed to recall the disciplinarian.
The tyrant.
She held Samarmas tight, pressed her fingers through his hair, felt his scalp as soft and as warm as a cat beneath her palm. Such a little soul. So defenceless. Her eyes strayed to Kelmomas, who now crouched, his face pressed against the stone spindles, to better study the gasping monstrosity below.
Though it pained her, she knew her duty. She knew what Kellhus would say… By the mere fact of his blood, they would live lives of mortal danger. For their own sakes, they would need to become ruthless… as ruthless as she had failed to become.
'And for my children as well.'
'You're thinking about yesterday's recital,' the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples said.
After giving the twins back to Porsi, Esmenet had joined her brother-in-law on the long walk to the palace's postern entrance, where his bodyguard and carriage awaited. This had become something of a tradition ever since Kellhus had left to lead the Great Ordeal against Sakarpus. Not only did Maithanet's station make him her social and political equal, his counsel had become a source of comfort-sustenance, even. He was wise in a manner that, although never quite so penetrating as Kellhus, always struck her as more… human.
And, of course, his blood made him her closest ally.
'The way Nel-Saripal begins,' Esmenet replied, staring absently at the figures engraved in marble panels along the walls. 'Those first words… 'Momemn is the fist in our breast, the beating heart…' She turned to look up at his stern profile. 'What do you think?'
'Significant,' Maithanet conceded, 'but only as a signal, the way birds tell sailors of unseen land.'
'Hmm. Yet another unfriendly shore.' She studied his expression, watched the smoke tailings of an oil-lamp break about his hair and scalp. She had said this as a joke, but her scrutiny made it seem more of a test.
Maithanet smiled and nodded. 'With my brother and his stalwarts gone, all the embers that we failed to stamp out during the Unification will leap back into flame.'
'What Nel-Saripal dares, others will also?'
'There can be no doubt.'
She found herself frowning. 'So the Consult should no longer be our first priority? Is that what you're saying?'
'No. Only that we need to throw our nets wider. Think of the host my brother has assembled. The first sons of a dozen nations. The greatest magi of all the Schools. Short of the No-God's resurrection, nothing can save Golgotterath. The Consult's only hope is to fan the embers, to throw the New Empire into turmoil, if not topple it altogether. The Ainoni have a saying, 'When the hands are strong, attack the feet.''
'But who, Maitha? After so much blood and fire, who could be so foolish as to raise arms against Kellhus?'
'The well of fools has no bottom, Esmi. You know that. You can assume that for every Fanayal who opposes us openly, there are ten who skulk in the shadows.'
'Just so long as they're not so canny,' she replied. 'I'm not sure we could survive ten of him.'
Twenty years ago, Fanayal had ranked among the most cunning and committed foes of the First Holy War.
