“A witch …” Sorweel murmured. In Sakarpic, the word for witch was synonymous with many things, all of them wicked. That it could be applied to someone so exquisite in form and feature struck him as yet another Three Seas obscenity. Nevertheless, he found his gaze lingering for the wrong reasons. The word seemed to pry her open somehow, make her image wanton with tugging promise.

“Ware her, my King,” Eskeles said with a soft laugh. “She walks with the Gods.”

This was an old saying from the legend of Suberd, the legendary King who tried to seduce Aelswë, the mortal daughter of Gilgaöl, and so doomed his line forever. The fact that the Schoolman could quote the ancient Sakarpi tale simply reminded Sorweel that he had been a spy—and remained one still.

Serwa’s older brothers, Kayûtas and Moënghus, sat on the opposite side of the long table, with a dozen other Southron generals that Sorweel did not recognize. As before he was struck by the difference between the two brothers, the one slender and fair, the other broad and dark. Zsoronga had told him the rumour: that Moënghus was not a true Anasûrimbor at all, but rather the child of the Aspect-Emperor’s first wife—Serwa’s namesake, the one who had been hung with the Anasûrimbor on the Circumfix—and a Scylvendi wayfarer.

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?”