But for Kelmomas. He had lost so much more than a sibling or a playmate. He had lost his days. He had lost himself. And he could not comprehend.

I’m all he has left, she thought, stroking his fine, golden hair.

Even still, something dark in her recoiled.

Children. They wept so much.

Save for the long gold-and-white banners depicting the Circumfix, the Imperial Audience Hall on the Andiamine Heights looked much the same as it had during the Ikurei Dynasty. Everything was designed to overawe petitioners and to concentrate the glory and the dignity of those sitting upon the Mantle. The old Nansur Emperors had always aspired to an architectural and decorative opulence at odds with their actual power, perhaps thinking that the illusion, if pursued with enough patience and zeal, could be made manifest.

It was as Kellhus said: Monuments were as much prayers as they were tools, overreaching arrested in dwarfing stone. That the world was littered with their ruins illustrated more than a few uneasy facts regarding the human soul. Men were always inclined to bargain from a position of strength, especially where the Gods were concerned.

Today, Esmenet could not help but reflect, would almost certainly be a case in point.

She had grown quite accustomed to her seat just below the Mantle on the dais, fond of it even. Several paces from her slippered feet, steps descended in broad hemispheric arcs to the Auditory, the main floor where the penitents and courtiers assembled. An arcade of immense pillars soared to either side, diminishing both in perspective and illumination. Ornate tapestries hung motionless between the marble trunks, each a Gift from some province of the New Empire, each featuring the Circumfix as its central motif. Animal totems from Thunyerus. Tigers and twining lotus from Nilnamesh …

Everything, it seemed, had been pinned to her position, as though stone and space had faces that could turn, that could lower in obeisance. She was the windless centre, the intangible point of balance.

But it was the missing rear wall that pleased her most, the sense of natural light showering over her shoulders, the knowledge that everyone gathered across the Auditory saw her against the sky-bright firmament. It rendered what could be the most vulnerable position, the place of the effigy, into something too elusive to serve as a convincing target of curses. She loved nothing more than evening audiences, where petitioners often held their hands against the sun to see. It let her act and speak with the impunity of silhouettes.