That was the exorcism of this dream. I never had it after. The priest who saved me from it was none other than my music girl, the Sparrow. She told me in the morning I had been crying out in the dark, and she leaned to my ear, and whispered to me all was well, without waking me. It was a trick she had learned long before to calm the nightmares of a sister when they slept together in one poor little bed in the lower quarter of Eshkorek.

Despite Erran’s proposals, as far as I know no girl conceived by me in his palace, nor by any other man, for that matter; I never saw a lifted girdle in all my days there, though plenty of lifted skirts to account for it, and there were few children. I suspect the city women grew barren, their wombs shriveled like the brains of their men, by legends and excessive glorious poverty.

The snow broke and the winds came. They roared like ghostly cannon through the city.

The fierce horses liked to race the wind. You could see them do it any day, when they were out on the flats of the park. Tathra had told me in my infancy that to her own tribe the wind god was a black horse; sometimes he would sweep down the slopes and get the mares in foal. It seemed all the Eshkir horses were children of the wind god, and roused at his passing to pursue and follow him.

The So-Essian equerry, Blue-Sleeve, said we should be going on the spring horse-catching through the northern mountain valleys once mild weather had laid hold. He leaned on a thin black cedar tree and whistled after the horses as they ran madly up and down the landscape of brown-bleeding thaw snow, the speed and the gusts fraying out their manes and tails.

Over to our left, the cluster of grooms disbanded and pointed along an avenue of rotting green statuary; Erran was coming on a crimson trapped horse, about thirty of his silvers around him, and a group of golds. There were women, too, their veils and wrappings billowing in the wind.

Every man on the flats doffed his mask save for those already unmasked, as I was. I scarcely ever bothered with my metal skin—some artisan’s shaping of a falcon’s head—but wore it fastened on my shoulder as others did when going bare-faced.

Even some of the horses ceased running, as if they sensed the lord was near, and froze, intently staring sideways through the smoky afternoon.

Erran rode out onto the flats, his company trotting behind, and reined up, looking about with his golden leopard-head.

“Blue-Sleeve,” he called to the equerry.

Blue-Sleeve hurried to Erran. He bowed, and stood answering questions with nods and brief humble sentences. Like all Erran’s dogs, he was well trained.

I glanced at the silver people, in particular the women. I had not seen many females of that class. Generally they did not eat at the evening meal with the captains. Not a face was on show. Even the round breasts and arms so frequently offered to view in the palace were muffled from the cold. Then I saw the deer-mask of Demizdor.