“If glad is true,” he said. His father’s life was blunted, now, turned sharply back on itself: no heir, no wife, and now a diminished reputation, either in laughter or in pity. Was that gladness in Tain Trin Tain? Was Tain in any wise relieved to have signed that armistice with the Ila?

He thought not. But he thought little else. The pain in his body diminished, but the roaring in his ears reached a numbing pitch, and persisted, as if all the voices were bottled up in him, trying to find expression. Death began again to seem friendly. He asked himself how much more before his brain scrambled, before he had to scream. He bit his lip, bit it bloody.

“Do you see lights and hear voices?” the Ila asked.

“Yes.”

“And what do these voices say?”

“Nothing of sense.” Could it be worse? He doubted he could keep his feet if he could gain them.

“And the pictures? The images? The visions?”

He fixed his sight on the Ila’s face, one stable point in a swinging world. It spun, and tilted, and stopped, over and over again. “Buildings,” he said. “Buildings. A tower.”

“This tower? The Beykaskh?”

He shook his head to clear it. She might take that headshake for no, and it was the truth. He focused on her, only on her. Past the whiteness, she had a classic Lakhtanin face, thin and bow-nosed. Her lids were black-rimmed. The iris was dark. The eyes became pits into which sense could fall, and, no, she was not a child: the eyes alone said she was not a child.

A gloved finger raised, forbidding, then curled itself across the lips, convenient resting place. “The son of my enemy. The one who burns my towns, steals from my treasury, robs my caravans, despoils my priests. What shall I make of you?”

The pain had spread out of the joints and migrated to soft places. The noise in his ears roared and made her voice distant.

“Tain has given his son away,” the Ila mocked him, “so I take him. What shall I make of you, Marak Trin Tain? What shall I name you instead?”

Mockery he would not endure. “General of your armies,” he said, courting their violence. “Captain of your guard.”

She leaned back, lifted a hand, perhaps to forestall her officers. The au’it, who had written it all, ceased writing, poised the pen above the page of her book.

The Ila’s hand described a circle in the air. The au’it shut the book and put down her pen.

“Now without record,” the Ila said, “I ask you… where is this madness?”

“In the east,” he said without thinking, and astonished himself. It was in the east. Everything was in the east. It had no reason to be, but he knew it was, and it disturbed him to the heart.