The Prince held the moment with his breath, the way a bard might. In his soul’s eye, Sorweel could see it, the feathered pomp and glory of the Great Satakhan’s court, the sun sweating between great pillars, the galleries rapt with black faces.

“With that, the three men produced razors from their tongues and opened their own throats!” He made a tight, feline swiping motion with his left hand. “They killed themselves … right there before us! My father’s surgeons tried to save them, to staunch the blood, but there was nothing to be done. The men died right there”—he looked and gestured to a spot several feet away, as though watching their ghosts—“moaning some kind of crazed hymn, to their last breath, singing …”

He hummed a strange singsong tune for several heartbeats, his eyes lost in memory, then he turned to the young King of Sakarpus with a kind of pained incredulity. “The Aspect-Emperor had sent us three suicides! That was his message to my father. ‘Look! Look what I can do! Now tell me, Can you do the same?’”

“Could he?” Sorweel asked numbly.

Zoronga pulled a long hand across his face. “Ke amabo hetweru go …”

“I’m too hard on my father. I know I am. Only now can I appreciate the deranged bind that gesture put him in. No matter how my father responded, he would lose … Perhaps he could find three fanatics willing to return the message, but what kind of barbarity would that be? What unrest would that cause the kjineta? And what if they lost heart at the penultimate moment? Who would the people call to account for their shame? And if he refused to respond in kind, would that not be an admission of weakness? Tantamount to saying, ‘I cannot rule as you rule …’”

Sorweel shrugged. “He could have marched to war.”

“I think that’s what the devil wanted! I think that was his trap. The provocation of rebuilding Auvangshei, followed by this mad diplomatic overture. Think of what would have happened, what a disaster it would have been, had we taken the field against his Zaudunyani hosts. Look at your city. Your ancient fathers weathered Mog-Pharau, turned aside the No-God! And the Aspect-Emperor broke you in the space of a morning.”

These words hung between them like lead pellets on sodden cloth. There was no accusation in them, no implication of fault or weakness, just a statement of what should have been an impossible fact. And Sorweel realized that his question—his discovery—was the same question everyone was asking, and had been asking for years. Everyone who was not a believer.

Who was the Aspect-Emperor?

“So what did your father do?”

Zsoronga snorted in derision. “What he always does. Talk, talk, and bargain. My father believes in words, Horse-King. He lacks the courage your father showed.”