So he knew, for instance, everything about the sickness the physician-priests called Moklot, or the Shudders. He knew how to simulate the symptoms, to the point where he could fool even old Hagitatas, his mother’s court physician. All he need do was think about becoming feverish, and he became feverish. The trembly-shake-shake, well, even his halfwit brother could do that. He knew that when he told their Porsi that his calves were cramping she would rush off to fetch his medicine, an obscure and noxious leaf from faraway Cingulat. And he knew that she would not find it in the infirmary, because how could she, when it was hidden beneath her own bed? So he knew she would begin searching …

Leaving him alone with his twin brother, Samarmas.

“But why, Maitha?” Mother was saying. “Are they mad? Can’t they see that we’re their salvation?”

“But you know the answer to this, Esmi. The Cultists themselves are no more or no less foolish than other Men. They see only what they know, and they argue only to defend what they cherish. Think of the changes my brother has wrought …”

Porsi would be gone for a long time. She would never think to look under her pallet because she had never placed it there. She would search and search, growing ever more bah-bah-teary-eyed, knowing that she would be called to account.

Smiling, Kelmomas sat cross-legged and contemplated his brother, who had his head to the maroon carpets, staring up at a dragon from some miniature perspective. Though his hands dwarfed the dragon’s palm-worn head, he seemed diminutive, like a soapstone figurine playing with elaborately carved grains of sand. A toy Prince-Imperial poking toys that were smaller still.

Only the lazy battle of boredom and awe in his expression made him seemed real.

“So this business of the White-Luck?” his mother’s distant voice asked.

“White-Luck-White-Luck,” Theliopa said. Kelmomas could almost see her rocking on her stool, her joints twitching, her hands climbing from her elbows to her shoulders then back again. “A folk belief with ancient Cultic origins—ancient-old-ancient. According to Pirmees, the White-Luck is an extreme form of providence, a Gift of the Gods against worldly tuh-tuh-tyranny.”

“White-Luck-White-Luck,” Samarmas chimed in unison, then gurgled in his chin-to-windpipe way. Kelmomas glared him into silence, knowing that their uncle, at least, was entirely capable of hearing him.

As was anyone who shared their father’s incendiary blood.

“You think it’s nothing more than a self-serving fraud?” his mother asked his uncle.

“The White-Luck? Perhaps.”

“What do you mean, ‘perhaps’?”

Samarmas had ambled to and from the toy trunk, bearing several more figures, some silver, others mahogany. “Mommy,” he murmured in a worlddoes-not-exist voice, extracting the figurine of a woman cast in aquiline silver. He held her to the hoary dragon so they could kiss. “Kisses!” he exclaimed, eyes lit with gurgling wonder.