Sometimes the unmapped immensity of it all would come crashing through the tedium. The mundane circuit would peel open, the matter of course would evaporate into the hollow of a million mortal obligations. Women. Children. Wilful men. A crazed anxiousness would seize her. If she were walking, she would reel like a drunk, clutch at her vertigo with outstretched hands. If she were talking, she would trail into silence, avert her face and simply breathe, as though that were the endangered thread. I am Empress, she would think, Empress, and the title would speak not to the glory, but to the horror and the horror alone.

But typically the combination of routine and abstractions kept her afloat. To condense all the administrative details into the “Ministrate” or all the ecclesiastical confusion into the “Thousand Temples” was a powerful and a comforting thing. She would consult the appropriate officials and that was that. Yes, I understand. Do your best. Sometimes it even felt simple, like a library with all the books inventoried and titled—all she need do was make the proper entries. Of course, some crisis would quickly remind her otherwise, that she was simply confusing the handle for the pot, as the caste-menials would say. The details would always come leaking through—in their multitudes.

Part of her would even laugh, convinced that it was simply too absurd to be real. She, Esmenet, a battered peach from the slums of Sumna, wielding an authority that only Triamis, the greatest of the Ceneian Emperors, had known. Souls in the millions traded coins with her profile. Oh what was that, you say? Thousands are starving in Eumarna. Yes-yes, but I have an insurrection to deal with. Armies, you see, simply must be fed. People? Well, they tend to suffer in silence, sell their children and whatnot. So long as the lies are told well.

At such a remove, so far from the gutters of living truth, how could she not be a tyrant? Not matter how balanced, thoughtful, or sincerely considered her judgments, how could they not crack like clubs or pierce like spears?

Exactly as Nel-Saripal had implied, the wretch.

Without warning, a small voice piped through the officious murmur. “Thelli! Thelli! Theliopa found another one!” Esmenet saw her youngest, Kelmomas, barrelling through the secretaries, then around the grand table. He ran across his reflection to throw his arms around her waist. She hugged him, laughing.

“Sweetling … What do you mean?”

At times his beauty struck her breathless, his features avid beneath a mop of lavish blond curls. But when he surprised her like this, the bouncing perfection of him fairly hummed through her, made her throat thicken for pride. With Kelmomas she could almost believe the Gods had relented.

“A skin-spy, Momma. Among the new slaves for the stables—Theliopa found another one!”

Esmenet involuntarily stiffened. Captain Imhailas appeared on the heel of these words, fairly swinging through the entrance to fall onto his knees. “Your Glory!”