Few Three Seas Men had ever seen grassland steppes, let alone the vast and broad-backed Istyuli. Beneath grey skies, with tracts still scabbed with snow, it seemed a trackless and desolate place, a precursor to Agongorea, about which they had heard so much in endless recitations of The Sagas. Those raised on the coasts were reminded of the sea, of horizons as flat as a rule, with nothing but limits for the eye to fasten upon. Those bred along desert margins were reminded of home.

It was raining when the multitudes climbed into the broad scuffs of land that lifted the Lonely City above the plain. At last, the two Exalt-Generals clasped arms and set about planning the assault. They scowled and joked and shared reminiscences, from the legendary First Holy War to the final days of the Unification. So many cities. So many campaigns.

So many proud peoples broken.

The Emissary arrived in the pre-dawn cold, demanding to see Varalt Harweel II, the King of Sakarpus.

Unable to sleep for fear of the morrow, Sorweel was already awake when his menial came to rouse him. He regularly attended all important audiences—his father insisted on it as part of his princely education. But until recently, “important” had meant something quite different. Skirmishes with the Sranc. Insults and apologies from Atrithau. Threats from disgruntled nobles. Sorweel could not count the times he had sat at the stone bench in the shadow of his father’s throne swinging his bare feet in what seemed mortal boredom.

Now, only a year shy of his first Elking, he planted his boots and stared at the man who would destroy them all: King Nersei Proyas of Conriya, Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal. Gone were the courtiers, the functionaries, the partisans of this or that petty interest. Vogga Hall stood vacant and dim, though for some reason, the cavernous aisles and galleries failed to make the outlander look small. From across the terra cotta reliefs that sheathed the walls and columns, Sorweel’s ancestors seemed to watch with graven apprehension. The air smelled of cold tallow.

“Thremu dus kapkurum,” the outlander began, “hedi mere’otas cha—” The translator, some mangy herdsman from the Saglands by the look of him, quickly rendered his words into Sakarpic.

“Our captives have told us what you say of him.”

Him. The Aspect-Emperor. Sorweel silently cursed his skin for pimpling.

“Ah, yes,” King Harweel replied, “our blasphemy …” Even though the ornate arms of the Horn-and-Amber Throne concealed his father’s face, Sorweel knew well the wry expression that accompanied this tone.

“Blasphemy …” the Exalt-General said. “He would not say that.”

“And what would he say?”

“That you fear, as all men fear, to lose your power and privilege.”

Sorweel’s father laughed in an offhand manner that made the boy proud. If only he could muster such careless courage.