As if Kayûtas were more an expression than an individual. A particle of fate.

Walking the short distance to the white-tented complex that formed the General’s command, Sorweel struggled with a skin-tingling sense of exposure. A kind of anxious reluctance balled like a fist in his chest. He could hear the Prince-Imperial’s declaration from their last meeting: “I need only look at your face to see your soul, not so clearly as Father, certainly, but enough to sound the measure of you or anyone else before me. I can see the depth of your pain, Sorweel …”

This was no mean claim, the kind men make when “measuring tongues,” as the Sakarpi said, attempting to cow others with boasts and breast-beating. It was—and Sorweel knew this without reservation—a fact. Anasûrimbor Kayûtas could see through his arrogant posture, his feeble mask of pride—through him.

How? How did one war against such men?

A kind of panic welled through his thoughts as he approached the General’s Horse-and-Circumfix standard. He did not want to be known …

Least of all now, and least of all by him.

A mixed cohort of soldiers crowded about the austere tent, some wearing the armour and crimson uniform of the General’s Kidruhil guard and standing at attention, others garbed in silk-green beneath corselets of the finest chain and milling at ease—Pillarians, Sorweel would later learn, the personal bodyguard of the Imperial Family. A fair-haired Kidruhil officer barked senseless words at him as he approached, then nodded at his obvious incomprehension, as if there could be only one such fool.

Within heartbeats he found himself inside the command tent. As before, the interior was spare, almost devoid of ornament, and the furnishings severe. The setting sun flared across the westward panels, illuminating everything in white-filtered light. The contrast to Prince Zsoronga’s pavilion with its gloomy corners and elaborate trappings could not be more complete. “Our glorious host,” Sorweel remembered the Zeümi Prince saying, “does not believe the rewards of rank have any place on the march.”

Only what was needed. Only what was necessary.

Kayûtas sat as before at the same sheaf-covered table, only this time he stared at Sorweel with mild expectation instead of reading. A beautiful woman, her flaxen hair braided and bound about her head, sat to his immediate right, dressed in a gold-and-charcoal gown: Kayûtas’s sister, Sorweel realized, glimpsing the familial resemblance in her face. Kayûtas’s dark-maned brother, Moënghus, hulked several paces away, fairly bristling with weaponry. There was a taut humidity in the air, the kind found in the wake of heated arguments.

The woman stared at him with the amused boldness of an aunt finally laying eyes on a sister’s vaunted child. “Muirs kil tierana jen hûl,” she said. Though her gaze never wavered, the way she tilted her head told Sorweel she had directed her words at Moënghus behind her.