As though sensing some kind of permission in this, Samarmas threw his arms around her waist and began blubbering. She held his cheek against her midriff and cooed to him in a soft, shushing voice. When she looked up, Phinersa and Imhailas were watching her intently. She supposed with Theliopa present she had no need to fear their intent, but even still, there always seemed to be a glimpse of malice in their look.

Or a lust that amounted to the same.

“What do you wish, your Glory?” Phinersa asked.

Without Kellhus, there was nothing they could learn from this creature. Skin-spies possessed no souls, nothing for Vem-Mithriti’s sorcerous Cants to compel. And torments simply … aroused them.

“Sound the Plate,” she said with weary decisiveness. “Let the People be reminded.”

Maithanet nodded in sage assent. “A most wise decision.”

Everyone stared at the monstrosity for a wordless moment, as if committing its form to memory. No matter how many skin-spies she saw, they never ceased to unnerve her with their devious impossibility.

Imhailas cleared his throat. “Shall I make preparations for your attendance, your Glory?”

“Yes,” she replied absently. “Of course.” The People needed to be reminded of more than what threatened them, they needed to be reminded of the discipline that kept them safe as well. They needed to recall the disciplinarian.

The tyrant.

She held Samarmas tight, pressed her fingers through his hair, felt his scalp as soft and as warm as a cat beneath her palm. Such a little soul. So defenceless. Her eyes strayed to Kelmomas, who now crouched, his face pressed against the stone spindles, to better study the gasping monstrosity below.

Though it pained her, she knew her duty. She knew what Kellhus would say … By the mere fact of his blood, they would live lives of mortal danger. For their own sakes, they would need to become ruthless … as ruthless as she had failed to become.

“And for my children as well.”

“You’re thinking about yesterday’s recital,” the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples said.

After giving the twins back to Porsi, Esmenet had joined her brother-in-law on the long walk to the palace’s postern entrance, where his bodyguard and carriage awaited. This had become something of a tradition ever since Kellhus had left to lead the Great Ordeal against Sakarpus. Not only did Maithanet’s station make him her social and political equal, his counsel had become a source of comfort—sustenance, even. He was wise in a manner that, although never quite so penetrating as Kellhus, always struck her as more … human.

And, of course, his blood made him her closest ally.

“The way Nel-Saripal begins,” Esmenet replied, staring absently at the figures engraved in marble panels along the walls. “Those first words … ‘Momemn is the fist in our breast, the beating heart …’” She turned to look up at his stern profile. “What do you think?”

“Significant,” Maithanet conceded, “but only as a signal, the way birds tell sailors of unseen land.”