A gentle smile. “Because I know what it means to be thrown over the edge of the world.”

Sorweel brooded over these words as they resumed walking, realizing they inadvertently explained what had pained his eyes when he looked southward. The Lonely City had become an edge. It had been more than conquered, its solitude had been consumed. Once an island in wicked seas, it was now a mere outpost, the terminus of something far greater, a civilization—just like the times of the Long Dead.

More than his father had been killed, he realized. His father’s world had died with him.

He blinked at the heat in his eyes, saw the Aspect-Emperor leaning over him, blond and luminous, a sunlit man in the heart of night. “I am no conqueror …”

These proved long thoughts for the short walk to Prince Zsoronga’s pavilion. He found himself within the small Zeümi enclave before he was even aware of approaching it. The Prince’s pavilion was an elaborate, high-poled affair, roofed and sided in weathered black-and-crimson leather, and chased with frayed tassels that may have once been golden but were now as pale as urine. A dozen or so smaller tents reached out to either side, completing the enclosure. Several Zeümi milled about the three firepits, staring with a directness that was neither rude nor welcoming. Anxious, Sorweel found himself considering the tall wooden post raised in the enclosure’s heart. Satyothi faces, stylized with broad noses and sensual lips, had been carved one atop another along its entire length, stacks of them staring off in various directions. This was their Pillar of Sires, he would later learn, the relic to which the Zeümi prayed the same as Sakarpi prayed to idols.

Obotegwa led him directly into an antechamber at the fore of the pavilion, where he bid Sorweel to remove his boots. This proved to be the only ceremony.

They found Prince Zsoronga reclined across a settee in the airy depths of the central chamber. Light filtered down through a number of open slots in the ceiling, blue shafts that sharpened the contrast between the illumined centre of the chamber and the murky spaces beyond. Obotegwa bowed as he had earlier, uttering what Sorweel imagined was some kind of announcement. The handsome young man sat up smiling, set down a codex bound in gold wire. He gestured to a neighbouring settee with a long arm.

“Yus ghom,” he began, “hurmbana thut omom …”

Obotegwa’s voice rasped into the thread of his with practised ease, so much so it almost seemed Sorweel could understand the Prince directly.

“Appreciate these luxuries. The ancestors know how hard I had to fight for them! Our glorious host does not believe the rewards of rank have any place on the march.”

Stammering his thanks, self-conscious of his pale white feet, Sorweel sat erect on the settee’s edge.