The dark Prince-Imperial said nothing, simply glared with eyes like chips of sky. His brother Kayûtas snorted in laughter.

Sorweel felt the blood rise to his face. They were scarcely older than him, he realized, and yet he was the boy here—unquestionably so. Was it the same with Zsoronga? Did they have this impact on everyone who came before them?

“How is Porsparian treating you?” the General asked in Sakarpic.

“As well as can be expected,” Sorweel replied, though the words felt false on his lips. The Shigeki slave had tended to his modest needs with diligence—this much was true. But the old man’s religious zealotry unsettled him: Porsparian was forever praying over the small mouths he moulded in the earth, continually feeding warm food to cold dirt, and forever … blessing the young King.

At least there had been no more episodes like that first night.

“Good,” Kayûtas said nodding, though for the merest sliver of a heartbeat, a shadow crossed his face. “My father has at last chosen your tutor,” he continued in a you-must-be-wondering tone, “a Mandate Schoolman named Thanteus Eskeles. A good man, I am told. He will accompany you throughout the remainder of the march, teach you Sheyic while you ride … I trust you will defer to his wisdom.”

“Of course,” Sorweel said, quite at a loss as to what to think. Moënghus and the nameless woman continued staring at him, each with their own variety of contempt. Sorweel found himself looking to his feet, fuming. “Is there anything else?” he asked with more heat than he intended.

He was a king! A king! What would his father say, seeing him like this?

General Kayûtas laughed aloud, said something in the same language spoken by the woman moments earlier. “I’m afraid so,” he continued in effortless Sakarpic. He spared a droll glance at his sister—whose name Sorweel suddenly recalled: Serwa. Anasûrimbor Serwa.

“As you might imagine,” the fair-haired General continued, “the line between insolence and sacrilege is a rather hazy one in an endeavour such as this. But there are those who … watch such things. Those who keep count.”

Something in his tone pried Sorweel’s gaze upward. Kayûtas was leaning forward now, his elbows on his knees, so that the white silk of his robe hung in a series of luminous arcs below his throat. Behind him, his brother had turned away in apparent boredom, gnawed at what looked like a section of dried meat. But the woman continued watching as intently as before.