Lady Hish Tulla’s return had been less than delightful. A woman torn from her new husband made for fierce moods and a displeased outlook, and already Sukul longed for the days when she and Rancept had been virtually alone amidst servants, grooms and maids, while the Houseblades kept to their barracks gambling with bones or playing Kef Tanar.

But even Sukul could agree that a meeting of the highborn bloods was long overdue. Her own interest in the matter was increasingly losing its intriguing and delightful irrelevance – that sense of its being a game, a curious realm of machination and ambition – and luring her into the world of adults, where she could dwell beneath notice, unremarked upon and thereby made invisible.

The voices rising from beneath her belonged to a trio of guests. Sukul had met Lord Vanut Degalla and his odious wife Syl Lebanas once before, at some event in the Citadel, although her memory of the details was vague – she had been very young then, too wide-eyed to comprehend much beyond a few names and the faces to which they belonged. Her sister Sharenas had expressed disdain for the pair, although Sukul could not quite recall why. The third guest sharing the small chamber below was Lady Aegis, of House Haran, an outlying estate inclined to isolation. Tall, attractive in a regal fashion, somewhat diminished by the obvious efforts she made to maintain that regal air, Aegis had already set herself in opposition to Hish Tulla, for reasons Sukul did not yet understand.

Moving quietly, she seated herself on a chest, drawing her fur robe closer about her shoulders, and listened.

Syl Lebanas was speaking. ‘The fault lies with Anomander,’ she said yet again. ‘I think we can all agree on that. It falls to the comportment of Mother Dark’s champion to affect the proper unity among the highborn. After all, the face of our enemy is hardly obscure—’

‘Oh, enough of that, Syl,’ cut in Aegis, her clipped manner of speaking hinting, as always, at impatience and contempt. ‘Insist upon simplicity as it seems you must, if only to find false comfort in your mastery of the situation. The truth of this matter… far more complicated. Allegiances uncertain. Loyalties suspect. What looms before us is nothing short of a fundamental reordering of power in the realm. As such… promises to be vicious.’

‘Against which,’ Vanut Degalla murmured, ‘even you must acknowledge, Aegis, Lord Anomander has failed and continues to fail in placating. Blood will be spilled in the Citadel itself before this is done.’

‘Let the two priestesses set talons to each other,’ Aegis retorted. ‘All this talk of Father Light and Mother Dark. Since when did matters of religion demand… unveiling of daggers, much less swords? Before this pogrom – before the atrocity… unmitigated slaughter of innocents – we Tiste dwelt well enough in a plurality of faiths.’