Ynnir brought his open hand to his chest, then spread his fingers, a gesture called Significance Incomplete. “We can only wait and be patient, old one, hard as that is. Many threads still remain unbroken.”

“I would not have spent my last seasons this way,” said Zsan-san-sis. “Holding together what is broken, knowing that my daughter’s daughter’s daughters will bear their young in pools without light.”

Ynnir shook his head. “We all do what we can. You have done more than most. This defeat was authored when Time began—all we do not know is the hour of its coming.”

“Who could not say with certainty that it is upon us?”

“I could not.” Ynnir said it gently, letting it pass to the ancient guardian with an undertone of spring, of hope, of renewal even after death. “Neither should you. Do as you have always done—do as your broodsire raised you. We will face it bravely, and who knows? We may yet be surprised.”

Zsan-san-sis’ glow guttered for a moment, then burned more strongly. “You are more king than your father was, or his father before him,” he said.

“I am my father, and his father before him,” said the blind king. “But I thank you.”

He did not clasp the old chieftain’s hand—it would be unwise even for the king to touch one of the Children of the Emerald Fire—but he nodded his head so slowly it might almost have been a bow. He left the robed guardian in a posture of surprise as he walked into the Deathwatch Chamber.

The beetles on the walls shifted minutely as he entered and the movement of their iridescent wingcases sent a ripple of changing colors across the entire chamber. They settled again; the flickers of blue and pale green were replaced by an earthier tone that better reflected the gray and peach of the cloud-wreathed sunset outside the open window. Blind for centuries, Ynnir could smell the sea as powerfully as a drowning man could taste it, and he hoped that his sister-wife could smell it too, that it gave her a little relief in the growing dark.

He stood over the bed and looked at her, so wan, so still. It had been a full turning of the seasons since she could even bear to be sat up in Hall of Mirrors like some obscene, floppy icon. He was almost grateful that those humiliating days had passed, that she had slipped down into herself so far that she could not even be moved.

Even as he stared in silent contemplation he realized he saw no traces of life at all. Alarmed, he looked to her lips, the pink now paler than ever, almost white, and felt a moment of real fear. Always before, even on the worst days, she had greeted him before he spoke. So still…!

My queen, he called to her, shaping each word so clearly that he could imagine it as a stone dropped into a still pond, the ripples sending everything that swam beneath them scattering, until the stone itself struck into the softness at the bottom. Can you hear me? My twin?