Horse-King. This was the name they used for him, Sorweel realized. Zsoronga would not have spoken with such ease otherwise.

“And so what happened?”

“Deals were struck. Treaties were signed by flatulent old men. Whispers of weakness began circulating through the streets and halls of High Domyot. And here I am, a Successor-Prince, hostage to an outland devil, pretending that I ride to war, when all I really do is moan to sausages like you.”

Sorweel nodded in understanding, smiled ruefully. “You would prefer the fate of my people?”

The question seemed to catch the Successor-Prince by surprise. “Sakarpus? No … Though sometimes, when my ardour overmatches my wisdom, I do … envy … the dead among you.”

For some reason, the hooks of this reference to his overthrown world caught Sorweel where all the others had skipped past. The raw heart, the thick eyes, the leaden thought—all the staples of his plundered existence—came rushing back and with such violence he could not speak.

Prince Zsoronga watched him with an uncharacteristic absence of expression. “Ke nulam zo …”

“I suspect you feel the same.”

The young King of Sakarpus looked to the red disc of wine in his bowl, realized that he had yet to take a single sip. Not one sip—all his pain seemed condensed in this idiotic fact. Mere weeks ago, simply holding wine would be cause for celebration, another pathetic token of the manhood he had so desperately craved. How he had yearned for his first Elking! But now …

It was madness, to move from a world so laughably small to one so tragically bloated … Madness.

“More than you could know,” he said.

Sorweel found many things in Zsoronga’s company, much more than he was willing to admit to himself, let alone anyone else. The friendship he could acknowledge, as this was a Gift prized by men and gods alike, particularly with someone as resolute and honouable as the Zeümi Prince. His relief was something he had to admit, though it shamed him. For some perverse reason, all men found heart in learning that others shared not only their purpose, but their grief as well.

What he could not acknowledge was the relief he found in simply speaking. A true Horselord, a hero such as Niehirren Halfhand or Orsuleese the Faster, viewed speech with the high-handed distaste they reserved for bodily functions, as something men did only out of necessity. Sakarpus found its strength in its solitude, in its lack of intercourse with other babbling nations—it was not called the Lonely City for nothing—so its great men affected to do the same.