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.'
Malowebi twisted in his saddle to better regard the man. Meppa raised bare hands, pulled back the deep cowl that had obscured his face. The mask Fanayal referred to was not so much a mask as a kind of blindfold: a band of silver as wide as a child's palm lay about his upper face, as if a too-large crown had slipped over his eyes. The sun flashed across its circuit, gleamed across the innumerable lines etched into it: water rushing sideways, around and around in an infinite cataract.
His cowl thrown back, Meppa raised the band from his head. His hair was as white as the peaks of the Atkondras, his skin nut brown. No eyes glinted from the shadow of his sockets…
Malowebi fairly gasped aloud. Suddenly, it seemed absurd that he had missed the hue of ochre in the man's dust-rimmed robes or that he had mistaken the serpent rising from the folds about the man's collar for a black tongue.
Cishaurim.
'Look about you, my friend,' Fanayal continued, as if this revelation should settle the Second Negotiant's every misgiving. He gestured to the pillars of smoke bent across the sky before them. 'This land simmers with rebellion. All I need do is ride fast. So long as I ride fast, I outnumber the idolaters everywhere!'
But the sorcerer could only think, Cishaurim!
Like every other School, the Mbimayu had assumed the Water-Bearers were extinct-and like every other School, they had been happy for it. The Tribe of Indara-Kishauri was too dangerous to be allowed to live.
Small wonder the Bandit Padirajah had such a talent for survival.
'Then what need do you have of Zeum?' Malowebi asked quickly. He had hoped Fanayal would overlook his obvious fluster, but the sly glint in the man's eye confirmed what the Second Negotiant had already known: very little escaped the claws of Fanayal's acumen. Perhaps he was the first foe worthy of the Aspect-Emperor.
Perhaps…
'Because I am but one,' the Padirajah said. 'If a second strikes, then a third will join us, and a fourth…' He flung out his arms in an expansive gesture, setting alight the innumerable links of his nimil mail. 'The New Empire- all of it, Malowebi! — will collapse into the blood and lies from which it was raised.'
The Zeumi Emissary nodded as though acknowledging the logic, if not the attraction, of his argument. But all he really could think was, Cishaurim.
So… the accursed Water still flowed.
Discord is the way of imperial power. Triamis the Great once described empire as the perpetual absence of peace. 'If your nation wars,' he wrote, 'not at the periodic whim of aggressors both internal and external, but always, then your people continually imposes its interests upon other peoples, and your nation is no longer a nation, but an empire.' War and empire, for the legendary Near Antique ruler, were simply the same thing glimpsed from different summits, the only measure of power and the only surety of glory.
In the Hoshrut, the Carythusali agora famed for the continuous view it afforded of the Scarlet Spires, the Judges publicly lashed a slave they had apprehended for blasphemy. She was lucky, they reasoned, since they could have charged her with sedition, a capital crime, in which case the dogs would already be lapping her blood from the flagstones. For some reason the unruly temper of the crowds that surrounded them escaped their notice. Perhaps because they were true believers. Or perhaps because the Hoshrut Pole, like the thousands of others scattered across the Three Seas, was so often used for matters of expedited justice. Either way, they were entirely unprepared for the mob's rush. Within a matter of moments they had been beaten, stripped, and hung from the hanging stone gutters of the Imperial Custom House. Within a watch, a greater part of the city rioted, slaves and caste-menials mostly, and the Imperial Garrison found itself engaged in pitched battles in the streets. Thousands died over the days following. Nearly an eighth of the city burned to the ground.
In Oswenta, Hampei Sompas, a high-ranking Imperial Apparati, was found in bed with his throat cut. He was but the first of many-very many-assassinations. As the days passed more and more Shrial and Imperial functionaries, from the lowest tax-farmers to highest judges and assessors, were murdered, either by their body- slaves or by the bands of armed menials that had taken to revenge killings in the streets.
There were more riots. Seleukara burned for seven days. Aoknyssus was only wracked for two, but tens of thousands were killed, so savage were the Imperial reprisals. The wife and children of King Nersei Proyas were removed to Attrempus for safety's sake.
Long-running insurrections flared into renewed violence, for there was no shortage of old and sequestered foes eager to take advantage of the general discord. In the southwest, the Fanim under Fanayal ab Kascamandri stormed and seized the fortress of Gara'gul in the province of Mongilea, and in numbers so alarming that the Empress ordered four Columns rushed to defend Nenciphon, the former capital of the Kianene Empire. In the east, the wilder Famiri tribes from the steppes below the Araxes Mountains overthrew their Imperial administrators and massacred the Zaudunyani converts among them: sons of the families that had ruled them from time immemorial. And the Scylvendi raided the Nansur frontier with a daring and viciousness not seen for a generation.
