“Which might work to our advantage. Sharacinth is a proud and ambitious woman, one who chafes at being a figurehead.”

Quick recovery steps. Feet swishing over polished stone. A gurgling laugh caught in an anxious, reflexive swallow.

“What? Are you suggesting we bribe her? Offer to make her Mother-Supreme?”

“That’s one possibility.”

The slender body bent about an invisible point, one which seemed to roll from side to side.

The surrounding air deep with the promise of gravity.

“As Shriah you hold the power of life and death over her.”

“Which is why I suspect she knows little or nothing of these rumours, or what her sisters plan.”

Eyes avid and exultant. Hands cycling air. A breathless grinning.

“That’s something we can use.”

“Indeed, Esmi. As I said, she is a proud woman. If we could induce a schism in the Cult …”

Samarmas tottering. A bare foot, ivory bright in the glare, swinging out from behind the heel of the other, around and forward, sole descending, pressing like a damp cloth across the stone. A sound like a sip.

“A schism …”

The shadow of a boy foreshortened by the high angle of the sun. Outstretched hands yanked into empty-air clutches. Feet and legs flickering out. A silhouette, loose and tight-bundled, falling through the barred shadow of the balustrade. A gasp flecked with spittle.

Then nothing.

Kelmomas stood blinking at the empty balcony, oblivious to the uproar rising from below.

Just like his father, he was able to hold so much more in the light of his soul’s eye than the people around him. It had been this way ever since Hagitatas had taught him the difference between beast, man, and god—ever since he first had looked away from his brother’s face. Beasts move, the old man had said.

Men reflect.

So he knew the love and worship Samarmas bore him, knew that he would do anything to close the abyss of insight and ability between them. And he knew precisely where the Pillarian Guards fixed their sandalled feet, where they planted the butt of their long spears …

Alarums rang through the Enclosure, clawed up to the sky. Soldiers, their martial voices hoarse with grief and terror. The guarded babble of slaves.

As though stunned, Kelmomas walked to the marble railing, leaned over the point where his brother had fallen. He looked down, saw his brother in an armoured circle of guardsmen, his eyes rolled back, his right arm coiled like rope, his torso twitching about the spear-shaft that pierced his flank.

The young Prince-Imperial was careful to wipe the olive oil from the rail. Then he howled the way a little boy should.

Why? the voice asked. The secret voice.

Why didn’t you kill me sooner?