A chime at the door: Iraji announced his return with the touch of a rod. “Pardon me, Excellences, but it’s time.”

Baru frowned. “Time for what?”

“For your exaltation, mam,” the boy said. “You go before the Emperor, and put on your new mask. And you tell us your name.”

“We’re not waiting for Hesychast?” Apparitor said, innocently. “He’s sailing all this way.…”

“What?” Baru staggered backward, cracked her hips on the breakfast table, and nearly sat in the guga. “Hesychast’s coming here?”

“Of course he is,” Apparitor said, adulterating his own coffee with wine. “Who do you think was going to take your hostage away?”

He gave her a two-fingered salute.

“May you regret what you did today,” he said, soberly, “until the end of time.”

*   *   *

INCARNATION is the art of form mimicking content.

Write a poem about linked destinies, and each verse begins with the end of the last: this is incarnation. Write a story about a mountain and it tapers to a peak on the page: incarnation. Baru always thought it was a stupid gimmick. Nobody demanded that the word billion be a thousand times longer than million, because that would be unwieldy.

The Throne had incarnated its virtues in the ritual of exaltation. And they had done it perfectly.

A great murmur of excitement ran through the gathered people—Elided Keep staff and Apparitor’s crew—as they opened their envelopes. Everyone had their own instructions; no one knew the full design.

“Is the gull part of the rite?” Baru asked her chamberlain.

It was a fat greasy-white seagull with yellow feet, perched on a spear-shaft that flew Duke Pinjagata’s banner. Apparitor said Pinjagata had been stabbed under the chin by a Clarified disguised as one of his troops. Baru missed him.

“I’m sorry, my lady Excellence.” Baru’s chamberlain had organized cabin boys to stone the gull. “It hopped down the east tower stairs. We’ve been trying to corner it but it’s quite fierce.”

The gull squawked and began to pitter-patter its feet. “Oh dear.” The chamberlain, gray and thinly drawn, covered his mouth in worry. “Kill it before it—”

The gull stopped pattering, stared in fury at the people below, and then relieved itself on Pinjagata’s banner. All the clerks groaned together. Baru bit her wrist to dam up a laugh.

“I’m so sorry,” her chamberlain whispered, “it does that whenever it patters its feet. We’ll have it taken down and cleaned, at once, at once.”

“Don’t bother. Pinjagata would’ve liked it.” She turned to the assembled technocrats. “Who’s been feeding this gull?”

“Feeding it, my lady?”

“See how it hops back and forth? It’s been trained to dance for food. Enterprising little bastard, isn’t it?” Polite laughter from all these people, people afraid of her. “Never mind. Let’s begin!”