Then came another son, Inrilatas—and there was no doubt that he could love. But Esmenet had developed instincts for these things, as mothers who bear many children sometimes do. From the very beginning, she had known something was wrong, though she could never name the substance of her misapprehensions. But it became plain to his nurses by his second year. Inrilatas was three when he first began speaking the little treacheries that dwelt in the hearts of those about him. The entire court walked in terror of him. By the age of five he could summon words so honest and injurious that Esmenet had seen hard-hearted warriors blanch and reach for their blades. She would never forget the time when, after singing to him in his bed, he had looked up with his too-nimble face and said, “Don’t hate yourself for hating me, Mommy. Hate yourself for who you are.” Hate yourself for who you are, spoken in the dulcet tones of child adoration. By the time he was six, only Kellhus could fathom, let alone manage, him, and he had not the time for anything more than a cursory relationship. She still shuddered whenever she recalled the rare conversations they shared, father and son. Afterwards, it was as if Inrilatas, who had always walked the perimeter of sanity, simply tripped and tumbled in the wrong direction. The veil of utter madness was drawn down.

She had prayed for the passing of her fertility during this time, for what the Nansur called meseremta, the “dry season.” But Yatwer’s Water continued to flow, and she so dreaded coupling with Kellhus that she actively sought out surrogates for him, women of native intellect like herself. But if his divine seed was a burden she could scarce bear, then it broke all the others. Of the seventeen concubines he impregnated, ten died in childbirth, and the others gave birth to more … nameless ones. Thirteen in sum, all drowned in wine.

Esmenet sometimes wondered how many hapless souls had been assassinated to keep this secret. A hundred? A thousand?

News of Mimara’s discovery arrived shortly after Inrilatas’s final breakdown. For almost ten years Esmenet’s men, soldiers of the Eöthic Guard who had sworn to die before returning to their mistress empty-handed, had scoured the Three Seas. In the end they found Mimara in a brothel, dressed in paste and foil to resemble none other than Esmenet herself, so that low men might couple with their dread Empress. All Esmenet could remember of the news was the cruelty of the floor.