If Mother were to ever look at him with those eyes…
'The Far-callers…' Mother said with the reluctant air of admission. 'They've heard nothing for two weeks now.'
The merest flicker of horror slackened Theliopa's pale face. Perhaps she could feel surprise after all-as crippled as her heart was. 'What?'
'Do not fear,' Mother said. 'Your father lives. The Great Ordeal continues its march. I am certain of that much at least.'
'Then-then what has happened?'
'Your father has declared an Interdiction. He has forbidden every Schoolmen in the Great Ordeal, on pain of execution, from contacting any soul in the Three Seas.'
Kelmomas recalled his lessons on Cants of Far-Calling well enough. The primary condition of contacting someone in their dreams was to know, precisely, where they were sleeping. This meant the Great Ordeal had to contact them, since it travelled day by day.
'He suspects spies among the Schools?' Theliopa asked. 'Is this some kind of ruse to draw them out?'
'Perhaps.'
His sister was generally averse to eye contact, but those rare times she deigned to match someone's gaze, she did so with a peculiar intensity-like a bird spying worms. 'You mean Father hasn't told you anything?'
'No.'
'He abides by his own embargo? Mother… has Father deserted us?'
The young Prince-Imperial abandoned the pretense of his garden play. He even held his breath, so profound was his hope. For as long he could remember, Kelmomas had feared and hated his divine father. The Warrior- Prophet. The Aspect-Emperor. The one true Dunyain. All the native abilities possessed by his children, only concentrated and refined through a lifetime of training. Were it not for the demands of his station, were he more than just a constantly arriving and departing shadow, Father would have certainly seen the secret Kelmomas had held tight since his infancy. The secret that made him strong.
As things stood, it was only a matter of time. He would grow as his brothers and sisters had grown, and he would drift, as his brothers and sisters had drifted, from Mother's loving tutelage to Father's harsh discipline. And one day Father would peer deep into his eye and see what no one else had seen. And that day, Kelmomas knew, would be his doom…
But what if Father had abandoned them? Even better, what if he were dead?
He has the Strength, the voice whispered. So long as he lives, we are not safe…
Mother raised a finger to scoop tears from either eye. This, the young Prince-Imperial realized. This was why she had struck him the previous day! This was why the fat fool, Pansulla, had so easily goaded her, and why the tidings from Shigek had so dismayed her…
If Father is gone… the secret voice dared whisper.
'It would appear so,' she said, speaking about a crack in her voice. 'I fear it has something to do with your uncle.'
Then we are finally safe.
'Maithanet,' Thelli said.
The Empress mastered her feelings with a deep breath. 'Maybe this is a… a test of some kind. Like the fable of Gam…'
Kelmomas recalled this from his lessons as well. Gam was the mythical king who faked his own death to test the honour of his four sons. The boy wanted to shout this out, to bask a moment in Mother's pride, but he bit his tongue. For the briefest of instants, he thought he saw his sister glance at him.
'It need not have anything to do with Uncle,' Theliopa said. 'Maybe the Consult has discovered some way of eavesdropping on our communications…'
'No. It has something to do with Maithanet. I can feel it.'
'I can rarely fathom Father,' Theliopa admitted.
'You?' the Empress cried with pained hilarity. 'Think about your poor mother!'
Kelmomas laughed precisely the way she wanted.
'Ponder it, Thelli. Your father assuredly knows about the strife growing between us, his wife and his brother, so then why would he choose this moment to strand us each with the other?'
'That much is simple-simple, at least,' Thelli replied. 'Because he believes the best solution will be the one you find on your-your own.'
'Exactly,' Mother said. 'Somehow he thinks my ignorance will serve me in this…' Her voice trailed into pensive thought. For several moments she let her gaze wander across points near and far within the Sacral Enclosure, then shook her head in sudden outrage and disgust.
'Damn your father and his machinations!' she cried, her voice loud enough to draw looks from the nearby Pillarian Guardsmen. She glanced skyward, her eyes rolling with something like panic. 'Damn him!'
'Mother?' Theliopa asked.
The Empress lowered her head and sighed. 'I am quite all right, Thelli.' She spared her daughter a rueful look. 'I don't give a damn what you think you see in my face…' She trailed, her mouth hanging on these words. Kelmomas held his breath, so attuned had he become to the wheel of his mother's passion.
'Thelli…' She began, only to hesitate for several heartbeats. 'Could… Could you read his face?'
'Uncle's? Only Father has that-that ability. Father and…'
'And who?'
Theliopa paused as if weighing the wisdom of honest answers. ' Inrilatas. He could see… Remember Father trained-trained him for a time…'
'Father trained who?' Kelmomas cried, the way a jealous little brother might.
'Kel-please.'
'Who?'
Esmenet raised two fingers to Theliopa, turned to Kelmomas, her manner cross and adoring. 'Your older brother,' she explained. 'Your father hoped teaching him to read passions in others would enable him to master his own.' She turned back to her daughter. 'Treachery?' she asked. 'Could Inrilatas see treachery in a soul so subtle as Maithanet's?'
'Perhaps, Mother,' the pale girl replied. 'But the real-real question, I think, is not so much can he, as will he.'
The Holy Empress of all the Three Seas shrugged, her expression betraying the fears that continually mobbed her heart.
'I need to know. What do we have to lose?'
Since Mother had to attend special sessions with her generals, the young Prince-Imperial dined alone that evening-or as alone as possible for a soul such as his. He was outraged even though he understood her reasons, and as always he tormented the slaves who waited on him, blaming his mother for each and every hurt he inflicted.
Later that night he pulled the board from beneath his bed and resumed working on his model. Since his uncle's treachery had loomed so large that day, he decided to work on the Temple Xothei, the monumental heart of the Cmiral temple complex. He began cutting and paring miniature columns, using the little knives that Mother had given him in lieu of a completed model. 'What a man makes,' she had told him, 'he prizes…' Unerringly, without the benefit of any measure, he carved them, not only one identical to another, but in perfect proportion to those structures he had already completed.
He never showed his work to Mother. It would trouble her, he knew, his ability to see places just once, and from angles buried within them, yet to grasp them the way a bird might from far above.
The way Father grasped the world.
But even worse, if he showed his little city to her, it would complicate the day when he finally burned it. She did not like the way he burned things.
Bugs, he thought. He needed to fill the streets of his little city with bugs. Nothing really burned, he decided, unless it moved.
He thought of the ants in the garden.
