But to be a sovereign is to be forever, irrevocably, cut into many. To be a matron, simple and uncompromising. To be a spy, probing and hiding. And to be a general, always calculating weakness and advantage.

She fought the mother-clamouring within, ignored his distress. Even Samarmas—who she was certain would become nothing more than a dear fool—even he had to learn the madness that was his Imperial inheritance.

For him, she told herself. I do this for his sake!

The mobs continued howling, not at her or her sons, but at the sight of the Consult skin-spy, which she knew would be strung like a spitted pig through the centre of the scaffold above and behind her. According to tradition, her eyes were too holy for such a horrific sight, so a lottery was held among the caste-nobility to see who would be granted the honour of bringing her the hand mirror she would use to actually witness the creature’s purification. With some surprise she saw Lord Sankas approach, his elbows pressed together before his cuirass, so that the mirror could lay flat across his inner forearms.

Samarmas flew from his seat and hugged him about the waist. For a moment the old caste-noble teetered. Gales of laughter passed through the crowds. Esmenet hastened to detach him, wiped his cheeks and kissed his forehead, then directed him back to his little throne.

Grinning in embarrassment, Biaxi Sankas knelt so that he might offer up the mirror. Nodding to show Imperial favour, she took it from his arms, raised it so that she saw flashing sky, then her own face. Her beauty surprised her—large dark eyes on an oval face. She could not remember when it happened, when she starting feeling older and uglier than she in fact was. She had always been popular as a whore, even in a city renowned for its white-skinned tastes. She had always been beautiful—and in that down-to-the-bones way that somehow followed certain women even into their decrepitude.

She had never been a match for her face.

A pang made her avert the mirror, and she glimpsed the uppermost timbers of the scaffold hanging in a pool of bald sky. Tilting the handle, she followed beams to where the chains were anchored, then followed the chains until the skin-spy occupied the mirror’s centre. With pinched breaths, she gazed at what she had already seen in the multitude of faces before her: coin for the toll their Aspect-Emperor had exacted from them.