wandered-'the almighty Gods… are against us?'
Disaster. It fairly slapped the blood from Mother's painted face. Her lips retreated, the way they always did during such moments, into a thin line.
He offends me… the secret voice cooed. The fat one.
'Now…' she began, only to halt to master the emotion in her voice. ' Now… Pansulla, is the time for care. Heretical superstition will be the end of us all. Now is the time to recall the God of Gods and his Prophet.'
The threat was clear-enough to trigger another exchange of whispers among the tiered men. Smiling with greasy insincerity, Pansulla knelt to the floor, so big and so floridly gowned that he looked more a heap of laundry than a man.
'But of course, Holy Empress.'
For the slightest instant, his mother's hatred lay plain on her face.
'Courage, Pansulla,' she said. 'And you too, loyal Tutmor. You must find courage, not in the Hundred, but, as Inri Sejenus and my divine husband have taught, in their sum.'
The Nansur Consul struggled back to his feet.
'Indeed, Empress,' he said, smoothing his silk robes. ' Courage… Of course…' His eyes strayed to the others. 'We must remind ourselves that we know better… than the Gods.'
Kelmomas grappled with the squeal of joy clawing at his throat. He so loved his mother's fury!
We've never killed someone so fat before.
'Not 'we,' Cutias Pansulla. Not you, and certainly not me. Your Holy Aspect-Emperor. Anasurimbor Kellhus.'
The young Prince-Imperial understood what his mother was trying to achieve with these appeals to his father. Always using him as a goad. Always trying to vanish into the might of his name. But he could also see, with a kind of child-cunning, how this undermined her authority.
Once again the obese Consul nodded in jowl-quivering exaggeration. 'Ah, yes-yes… When the Cults fail us, we must turn to the Thousand Temples.' He glanced up as if to say, How could I be such a fool? He made of a show of turning to Maithanet's vacant seat, then looked to his Empress with mock confusion. 'But when can we hope to hear our Holy Shriah's most wise couns-?'
'Tidings!' a voice pealed. 'Tidings, Empress! Most dire tidings!'
All eyes in the Synodine turned to the figure gasping on the chamber's threshold: an Eothic Guardsman, red- faced for exertion.
'Most Holy Empress…' The guardsmen swallowed against his wind. 'The Kianene-the loathsome bandit, Fanayal!'
'What of him?' Mother demanded.
'He has struck Shigek.'
Kelmomas watched his mother blink in confusion.
'But… he's marching on Nenciphon…' A frantic note climbed into her voice. 'Don't you mean Nenciphon?'
The messenger shook his head in sudden terror.
'No, most Holy Empress. Iothiah. Fanayal has taken Iothiah.'
The Andiamine Heights was a city in its own right, albeit one enclosed beneath a welter of rooftops, with gilded concourses instead of processional avenues and mazed dormitories instead of alley-riddled slums. Any number of routes could be taken between any two points, allowing the inhabitants to travel in celebrity or discretion. Unlike his father, Kelmomas's mother almost always chose the most discreet route possible, even if it made the journey twice as lengthy. Though some might think this was yet one more sign of her general insecurity, the young boy knew otherwise. Anasurimbor Esmenet simply despised the sight of people falling to their faces.
The Imperial Synod dissolved, the Empress led her small retinue down into the Apparatory before turning to climb the rarely used stairs and halls that threaded the palace's eastward reaches. She clutched Kelmomas's hand with the too-tight desperation he so adored, tugging him when his pace faltered. Theliopa followed close behind with Lord Biaxi Sankas breathing hard at her side.
'Will Uncle Maithanet get mad at you again?' Kelmomas asked.
'Why would you say that?'
'Because he blames you for everything that goes wrong! I hate him!'
She ignored him after that, visibly angered.
Glutton, the secret voice reproached. You need to take care.
'Most Holy Empress,' Lord Sankas said into the ensuing silence. 'I fear the situation with your brother-in-law grows untenable…' Kelmomas glanced back at the man. He almost looked like Thelli's grandfather, he was so tall and slender. Decked in full martial regalia-a ceremonial Kidruhil cuirass and the purple cloak of a retired general-and cleanshaven in the traditional way, he resembled the old Nansur that Kelmomas so often saw engraved or painted in the original parts of the palace.
'Fanayal is in Shigek,' she replied testily. 'If you haven't noticed, Sankas, I have more pressing concerns.'
But the Patridomos was not so easily silenced. 'Perhaps if you were to speak with hi-'
'No!' the Empress exclaimed, wheeling around to glare up at the man. The wall to their left had yielded to an open colonnade that overlooked the Imperial Precincts and the east more generally. The Meneanor heaved dark beneath the sun on the horizon beyond.
'He must never see my face,' she said more evenly. The shadow of an arch divided her from waist to shoulder so that her lower gown shimmered with light. Kelmomas pressed his face into the warm, scented fabric. She combed his scalp out of maternal reflex. 'Do you understand, Sankas? Never. '
'Forgive me, Most Holy!' the caste-noble fairly cried. 'It-it was not my intent to cause offence…'
He trailed awkwardly, looking as though he had tripped across some disastrous suspicion. 'Most Holy Empress…' he said tightly. 'May I ask why the Shriah must not see your face?'
Kelmomas almost chortled aloud, saved himself by looking away in the appearance of little-boy boredom. Over a jumble of roof and structure, he glimpsed a formation of distant guardsmen doing drills on one of the seaward campuses. More soldiers were arriving every day, so many it was becoming impossible for him to adventure in the old way.
'Thelli,' his mother said from above. 'Please, would you assure Lord Sankas that I am not a skin-spy.'
The Patridomos blanched. 'No… No!' he blurted. 'That is certainly no-'
'Mother is not-not a skin-spy,' Theliopa interrupted.
His mother's hands and presence slipped away from the boy. Ever conscious of her menial stature, the Empress used the view as an excuse to step clear of the looming Patridomos. She gazed out over the Meneanor. 'Our dynasty, Sankas, is a… a complicated one. I say what I say for good reason. I need to know that you have faith enough to trust that.'
'Yes-certainly! But…'
'But what, Sankas?'
' Maithanet is the Holy Shriah…'
Kelmomas watched his mother smile her calm, winning smile, the one that told everyone present that she could feel what they felt. Her ability to communicate compassion, he had long since realized, was easily her strongest attribute-as well as the one most likely to send him into jealous rages.
'Indeed, Sankas… He is our Shriah. But the fact remains: my divine husband, his brother, decided to trust me with the fate of the Empire. Why might that be, you wonder?'
The man's pained squint relaxed in sudden comprehension. 'Of course, Most Holy! Of course!'
Men cast their lots, the Prince-Imperial realized. They gambled time, riches, even loved ones, on those great personages they thought would carry the day. Once the gambit was made, you need only give them reasons to congratulate themselves.
His mother dismissed both Sankas and Theliopa shortly afterward. Kelmomas's heart cartwheeled for joy. Again and again and again, he was the one she brought with her to her apartments.
He was the one! Again and again. The only one!
As always, they passed the ponderous bronze door to Inrilatas's room with their ears pricked. Kelmomas's older brother had ceased screaming of late-like the seasons he had his tempests and his idylls-leaving the young
