Sorweel stood, stared aghast at his father’s blank visage. King Harweel was not an old man, but his face seemed slack and rutted about his hanging blond moustaches, his neck bent by the weight of his gold-andiron crown. Sorweel could feel the impulse, errant and unbidden, the overwhelming urge to cover for his father’s shameful indecision, to lash out, to … to …

But Harweel had recovered both his wits and his voice.

“Then decamp,” he said in dead tones. “March to your death in Golgotterath or return to your hot-blooded wives. Sakarpus will not yield.”

As though deferring to some unknown rule of discourse, Proyas lowered his face. He glanced at the bewildered Prince before returning his gaze to the King of Sakarpus. “There is the surrender that leads to slavery,” he said. “And there is the surrender that sets one free. Soon, very soon, your people shall know that difference.”

“So says the slave!” Harweel cried.

The Emissary did not require the translator’s sputtering interpretation—the tone transcended languages. Something in his look dismayed Sorweel even more than the forced bluster of his father’s response. I am weary of blood, his eyes seemed to say. Too long have I haggled with the doomed.

He stood, nodding to his entourage to indicate that more than enough breath had been spent.

Sorweel had expected his father to draw him aside afterwards, to explain not only the situation, but the peculiarities of his demeanour. Though he knew well enough what had happened—the King and the Exalt-General had exchanged one final round of fatuous words to sanctify the inevitable conclusion—his sense of shame forced a kind of confusion upon him. Not only had his father been frightened, he had been openly so—and before the most dire enemy his people had ever faced. There had to be some kind of explanation. Harweel II wasn’t simply King, he was also his father, the wisest, bravest man Sorweel had ever known. There was a reason his Boonsmen looked upon him with such reverence, why the Horselords were so loath to invite his displeasure. How could he of all Men be afraid? His father … His father! Was there something he wasn’t telling him?