“Didn’t help Sephryn.” Her brother looked disgusted. “Fate is a river too powerful to be diverted.”

“Don’t say any more,” their father snapped. “This is a matter for the emperor.”

“Sephryn said she was number seven in the prophecy,” Farilane repeated in a determined tone. “Is Grandfather number eight?”

“Be silent, I said!” Nyrian raised his voice, shocking both of them. “Come with me.”

Farilane acted the dutiful duckling, following at the rear of their tiny file as her father led them through the palace’s corridors at a brisk pace. To either side were white marble walls, and beneath them, a dark, polished floor of mosaic design. They soon came to Memorial Hall, where the corridor walls were decorated with relief images. Commissioned shortly after Nyphron’s death as a memorial to him, the scenes depicted moments from his life: his days as a youth at Alon Rhist; his conquests as a Galantian fighting goblins in the Durat ranges; the Galantians defending Dahl Rhen from a band of giants; the Battle of Grandford, where Nyphron nobly defended Persephone in the high tower; Nyphron riding a chariot across a field in the Battle of Big Meadows; and the most famous of all, the scene of him slaying the dragon-like gilarabrywn on the hilltop as the setting sun made his armor blaze. Notably absent was the scene of his death, where his daughter-in-law murdered him with an arrow through the throat just as he was about to kill Mawyndulë who was posing as Nolyn.

Next came the coronation murals. Each ceremony, from Nolyn to Estermon the Second, had been accurately depicted by artists of the day, and they forever captured a history of the city’s progression. As she passed, Farilane thought she recognized a face in the paintings that she’d never noticed before, but this was no time to admire art. At the end of Memorial Hall was their destination, a place Farilane had managed to avoid for most of her life. Her father turned left at the four-way intersection, and he moved past the Teshlor honor guards, Arturus and Maddock, who stood as still as statues, and entered through the five-story gold doors of the throne room.

This chamber beneath the golden dome was universally accepted as the center of the world and the heart of the empire. Interspersed between tall narrow windows, statues of every emperor, sculpted from white Hinterian marble, lined the rotunda. At present, there were five, with room for many more—the newest and whitest being Estermon the Second. The floor beneath the dome was polished stone, inlaid with a map of the known world that stretched from Desolatia to the Ba Ran Archipelago, most of which was colored to indicate the areas controlled by the imperium.