And the sheer clarity of it bewildered Sorweel, shook him as deeply as anything since the death of his father and the humiliation of his people. Truth! The Anasûrimbor spoke only truth. How? How could a demon do such a thing? What demon would?

And how? How could such a thing be …

Be miraculous?

Sorweel’s heart began pacing the Aspect-Emperor’s arcane transit once he reached the apex of the horseshoe and began moving toward them. Dread cinching his chest, he watched the expressions of those who believed, upturned and rapt, brightening as he soundlessly passed, then falling into shadow. The floating figure drew closer and closer, as inexorable as an equation, as bright as a prison window, until Sorweel’s heart seemed to be beating against him. Finally, the Aspect-Emperor slowed, came to a hissing stop no more than two lengths away. He tilted back on an invisible axis to regard someone on the highest tier.

“Impalpotas, habaru—”

“Impalpotas,” Eskeles said with a quaver, “tell me, how long has it been since you were dead?”

A collective intake of breath. The man called Impalpotas sat four people abreast of Sorweel—three of Eskeles—and two rows higher. The young King of Sakarpus found himself peering against the shining proximity of the Anasûrimbor: The Inrithi had the clean-shaven look of a Nansur but seemed different in dress and hair. A Shigeki, Sorweel guessed. Like Porsparian.

“Impalpotas …” the Aspect-Emperor repeated.

The man smiled like a rake caught wooing a friend’s daughter—an expression so at odds with the circumstances that Sorweel’s stomach reeled as if pitched from a cliff.

Impalpotas leapt—no, exploded—from the tiers, sword out and flashing in divine light. A crack of voice greeted him in the interval, a word shouted beneath the skins of all present. Bald and searing light flooded the pavilion to the seams. Sorweel blinked against the glare, saw the Shigeki hanging before the Anasûrimbor, pinned to nothing, encased in a calligraphy of blinding lines. Impalpotas’s sword had dropped from nerveless fingers and now lay upright between the feet of a Conriyan on the bottom tier, its point buried into carpet and turf the depth of a palm.

The assembly broke out in roaring commotion. Like fire across desert scree, outrage leapt from face to face, a wrath too feral to be called manly. Beards opened about howls. Swords were brandished across the rows, like shaking teeth.

The Anasûrimbor’s voice did not so much cut through the din as harvest it—the uproar collapsed like wheat about the scythe of his declaration. “Irishi hum makar,” he said, continuing to scrutinize those seated before him. Save for his tongue and lips, he had not moved.

Eskele’s stunned and stammering voice was several heartbeats in translating. “Be-behold our foe.”