As he left the guarded fastness of the Mandrake Court and hurried through the cavernous ministerial audience chamber at the heart of the Pomegranate Court, lesser folk scattered from his path like pigeons, as frightened of his anger as he was terrified of the autarch’s. Pinimmon Vash reminded himself he should conduct a full sacrifice to Nushash and the other gods soon. After all, he was a very fortunate man—not just to have risen so high in the world, but also to have survived so many years of the father’s autarchy and this first year of the son’s: at least nine of Parnad’s other high ministers had been put to death just in the short months of Sulepis’ reign. In fact, should Vash need an example of how lucky he was compared to some, he only had to think about the man he was going to see, Hijam Marukh, the new captain of the Leopard guards—or more to the point, think about Marukh’s predecessor, the peasant-soldier Jeddin.

Even Pinimmon Vash, no stranger to torture and execution, had been disturbed by the agonies visited upon the former Leopard captain. The autarch had ordered the entertainment conducted in the famous Lepthian library, so he could read while keeping an eye on the proceedings. Vash had watched with well-hidden terror as the living god danced his gold finger-stalls in the air in rhythm with Jeddin’s shrieks, as though enjoying a charming performance. Many nights Vash still saw the terrible sights in his dreams, and the memory of the captain’s agonized screaming haunted his waking mind as well. Near the end of the prisoner’s suffering, Sulepis had even called for real musicians to play a careful, improvised accompaniment to his horrendous cries. At points, Sulepis had even sung along.

Vash had seen almost everything in his more than twenty years of service, but he had never seen anything like the young autarch.

But how could an ordinary man judge whether or not a god was mad?

“This makes no sense,” said Hijam Marukh.

“You are foolish to say so,” Vash hissed at him.

The officer known as Stoneheart allowed only a lifted eyebrow to animate his otherwise inexpressive face, but Vash could see that Marukh had realized his error—the kind that in Xis could swiftly prove fatal. Recently promoted to kiliarch, or captain, the Leopards’ squat, muscular new master had survived countless major battles and deadly skirmishes, but he was not quite so used to the dangers of the Xixian court, where it was assumed that every public word and most private ones would be overheard by someone, and that one of those listeners likely either wanted or needed you dead. Marukh might have been cut, stabbed, and scorched so many times that his dark skin was covered in white stripes like a camp mongrel’s, might have earned his famous nickname by passing unmoved through the worst carnage of war, but this was not the battlefield. In the Orchard Palace no man’s death came at in him from the front or in plain sight.