She has been wrong about him in every way, not simply with regard to demeanour and appearance. Her mother styled him a scholar and a mystic, someone who spent his exile lost in arcane researches. Mimara has read enough about sorcery to know the importance of meanings, that semantic purity is a Schoolman’s perennial obsession. And yet nothing could be further from the case. As he explains to her, he cares nothing for the Gnosis, not even as a tool. He has retired from the Three Seas for heartbreak—this much is true. But the reason, the rule that makes his life rational in his own eyes, is simple vengeance.

The truth of Anasûrimbor Kellhus, he insists, was to be found in the secret of his origins—in the secret of something called the Dûnyain. “The Scylvendi was his mistake!” Achamian cries, his eyes wild with unkempt passions. “The Scylvendi knew what he was. Dûnyain!” And the secret of the Dûnyain, he claims, though Mimara understands instantly that this is little more than a hope, was to be found in the detail of Seswatha’s life.

His Dreams. His Dreams had become the vehicle for his vengeance. Here, on the very edge of the wilderness, he has bent all his efforts to decoding their smoky afterimages. Twenty years he has laboured, mapping, drawing up meticulous inventories, sifting through the debris, the detritus of a dead sorcerer’s ancient life, searching for the silver needle that would see his wrongs avenged.

It’s more than a fool’s errand; it is a madman’s obsession, on a par with those ascetics who beat themselves with strings and flint, or who eat nothing but ox-hides covered in religious writings. Twenty years! Anything that could consume so much life simply has to be deranged. The hubris alone …

His hatred of Kellhus she finds understandable, though she herself bears no grudge against her stepfather. She barely knows the Aspect-Emperor, and those rare times she found herself alone with him on the Andiamine Heights—twice—he seemed at once radiant and tragic, perhaps the most immediate and obvious soul she had ever encountered.

“You think you hate her,” he once said—referring to her mother, of course.

“I know I do.”

“There’s no knowledge,” he had replied, “in the shadow of hate.”