At first this struck Sorweel as almost laughably obvious. When the seed was strong, women were but vessels; they bore only what men planted in them. If a boy-child was born white-skinned, then his or her father was white-skinned, and so on, down to all the particularities of form and pigment. The Anasûrimbor simply couldn’t be Moënghus’s true father, and that was that. It had been a revelation of sorts to realize the Men of the Circumfix, without exception, overlooked this plain fact. Eskeles even referred to Moënghus as a “True Son of the Anasûrimbor” forcefully, as though the wilful application of a word could undo what the world had wrought.

But another glimpse of the madness that had seized these men.

The Interval tolled, its resonant sound eerie because of the way it passed through the pavilion. The last of the stragglers filed in, three long-haired Galeoth, a lone Conriyan, and a contingent of goateed Khirgwi or Kianene—Sorweel still had difficulty telling them apart. Dozens of men still shuffled along the various tiers searching for gaps or friends, including two Nansur who shimmed past their knees with fierce yet apologetic smiles. The pavilion took on the open roar of men attempting to press in final comments and observations, a stacking of voices that was progressively doused into murmurs.

It would have reminded Sorweel of Temple—were it not for the skidding sense of doom.

“Tell me, your Glory,” Eskeles muttered close in his ear. His breath smelled of sour milk. “When you look into these faces, what do you see?”

Sorweel thought the question so strange that he glared at the sorcerer, suspecting some kind of joke at his expense. But the fat man’s friendly expression shouted otherwise. He was genuinely curious. The young King found this alarming in a vague way, like a spontaneous and inexplicable pain. “Gulls,” he heard himself blurt. “Gulls and fools!”

The Mandate Schoolman chuckled, shook his head like someone too familiar with the ways of conceit not to be amused.

The Interval’s second sounding hung prickling in the avid air, soaking all other noise. Sorweel saw faces turn in curiosity across the tiers, at first to one another, then, as though bent to some singular will, to the pavilion floor …

He failed to see the prick of light at first, perhaps because his gaze shied from the eye-twisting planes of the arras. Some twenty Shrial Knights, resplendent in white and silver and gold, had taken up positions across the front of the dais, accompanied by three of the surviving Nascenti, the first of the Aspect-Emperor’s disciples, clad entirely in silken black. It was the shadows thrown from the shoulders of these newcomers that drew his eyes to the glittering point behind them.

It twinkled at first, like a star watched with tired eyes. But it resolved, became more dense with blank incandescence. The Interval tolled again, deeper this time, like the boom of faraway thunder drawn into a string. The braziers wheezed into strings of smoke. Skirts of gloom fell from the tented heights.