“Leave us,” Esmenet commanded Ngarau. The old Imperial Seneschal clapped his hands in dismissal, and a retreating commotion descended on the chambers.

“How is it my son bears this news to me?” she asked, gesturing for the Exalt-Captain to take his feet.

“I beg mercy, your Glory.” Imhailas was extraordinarily attractive in a way that only Norsirai men could be. It seemed to render his embarrassment all the more ludicrous. “I set out to inform you immediately! I have no idea how—!”

“Can I seeee, Momma? Please!”

“No, Kel. You certainly may not!”

“But I need to see these things, Momma. I need to know. Someday I’ll need to know!”

Scowling, she looked from the boy to the Captain, who stood armour agleam in the broken light. Through the propped doors, she could see the last of the functionaries fleeing into the palace’s polished depths. One of the laggards stumbled on the hem of his robes, and for an instant, she glimpsed the tar-black bottoms of his silk slippers.

She blinked, focused on the Exalt-Captain. “What do you think?”

Imhailas hesitated for a moment, then with an air of quotation said, “Calloused hands suffer no tender eyes, your Glory.”

Esmenet frowned at the hackneyed quote. Only an idiot, she found herself thinking, asks an idiot for advice. But her dismissal caught in her throat when she looked at Kelmomas. Squares of light graphed his clothes and skin, bright and oblong where not undone entirely by the compact curves of his body. For an instant, he seemed so very soft, the world’s most vulnerable thing, and her heart heaved with the dwarfing confusion that mothers call love. Mere months had passed since his Whelming—since the assassination attempt on the Scuari Campus. All she wanted was to protect him. She would will herself into a cocoon if she could, an impervious and eternal shield …

But she knew that she could not. And she was wise enough not to confuse her want for her world.

“Please, Momma,” he said, his blue eyes glittering with teary eagerness. The sun seemed to shine through his flaxen curls. “Please.”

She composed her face and looked back to Imhailas. “I think …” she said with a heavy sigh. “I think you’re quite right, Captain. The time has come. Both my sweet cherries should see Thelli’s latest discovery.”

Another skin-spy in the court. Why now, after so many years?

“Both boys, your Glory?”

She ignored this, the way she ignored all the tonal differences that seemed to colour references to Kelmomas’s twin, Samarmas. In this one thing, she would refuse the world its inroads.