Morjeta spread her hands, even that small motion studied, elegant. “To see the new Emperor with their own eyes, to take the measure of the man,” she paused, “or woman. To see if they can gain an audience that will lead to some petty advantage. Lower taxation. A favorable trading arrangement. Some of them just enjoy being close to the center of power, like beggars who linger at the gates when a rich man holds a feast, hoping for a few scraps.”

“So I have scores of disgruntled nobles to deal with, even if I seize the throne,” Kaden said, shaking his head.

“Some of those nobles might back you,” Kiel pointed out. “Of course, that will alienate others.”

Kaden tried to imagine it, walking the streets of Annur with his hood pulled up, pounding on door after door, showing his eyes to the guards, demanding to be admitted. What would he say? How would he convince anyone to join the cause of a dispossessed Emperor with no coin or army, no experience running a state? Hello, my name is Kaden hui’Malkeenian. Will you help me reclaim my throne from the greatest general in Annurian history? I’d be grateful, but have nothing to offer in return.

“It’s not enough,” he said finally, shaking his head. “It’s like Adare and il Tornja have been playing their stones for years and I’ve just now sat down at the board.”

“They don’t control everything,” Kiel said. “They can’t.”

“They control what matters. The army. The capital. The Ministry of Finance. I could maybe raise a small rebellion with two or three nobles desperate enough to ride my miserable coattails, but it won’t work. My enemies already have me encircled.”

“Well, you have to do something,” Triste exploded.

Kaden almost laughed. Do something. The mildest Shin umial would have whipped him for the notion. Eight years they’d tried to grind it out of him, this thought that he could be something, do something, have something. Their mantras still whispered in his ears like the sound of his own breath: Emptiness is freedom. Absence is truth. Eight years of cutting away, of carving out, of clearing, of emptying, and, right at the end, just as he was starting to master the letting go, to see the true power in the nothingness, here he was, needing to claw it all back.

Himself, first. Then his allies. His throne. His empire.