He staggered a few steps toward her, looming over her like a tree that might topple. “Nothing wrong! By the fiery balls of Nushash, do you think the autarch will care? Do you think he will call off his torturers and say, ‘You know, this fellow isn’t so bad. Let him go back to his life again.’ You liar. You heartless bitch! You slut…!” The captain’s hand shot out and clutched her arm so hard she could not escape, although he could barely stand straight.

“I have done nothing wrong!” she shouted. “Nushash himself is my witness—I was taken as a virgin from the Temple of the Hive and Jeddin came to me in the Seclusion and told me he was in love with me. Is it my fault he was mad, the poor dead fool?”

Dorza’s free hand rose up, trembling, to strike her, but then it fell again. He let go of her arm and stumbled back to his chair. “Then that son of a bitch Jeddin has destroyed me as surely as if he had shot me with a musket ball.” He turned a red eye on Qinnitan again. “Go. Get out of this house and take that idiot child with you. I do not care where you go—I never want to hear your name again. When the autarch’s men come to cut my head off and drag my wife and children into slavery, I will be certain to tell them what you said…that it was not your fault.” He made a horrible barking sound, half laugh, half sob.

“You are casting me out? With nothing? Out of fear that some of the autarch’s spies might find out…”

“The autarch’s spies? Are you whores of the Seclusion really so ignorant? We always thought you knew more of events than we outside the palace ever could.” He spat on the floor—shocking from such a tidy man. “It is only a matter of a few moons or so before the autarch’s fleet sails. He is outfitting new warships and arming soldiers even now.” Dorza took a key from his belt, then bent and clumsily unlocked the chest chained to the table leg. He took a few pieces of silver out and dropped them to the floor. One coin rolled right to Qinnitan’s feet, but she did not stoop for it. “Take those. At least you may then get far enough from me before you’re caught that I will gain a few more weeks of life.”

“What do you mean, the autarch’s fleet? Sails where?”

“Here, you foolish, foolish girl. He is coming here, to conquer Hierosol, then the rest of Eion after it. Now get out of my house.”

6

Skurn

Here is truth! The light was Tso, and Zha was the wife he created out of the nothingness. She fled him but he followed. She hid, but he discovered.

She protested, but he persuaded. At last she surrendered, and at their lovemaking the heavens roared with the first winds.