Tevis’s eyes bulged. “You don’t frighten me, you fat bitch,” he began, but another man, shorter, with a wide face and fleshy nose, hauled him hastily to a seat on one of the crates, whispering something furiously in his ear. Tevis glanced back at the woman, hesitated a moment, then shook off his companion. Rage twisted his face, but Kaden noted that he did not stand, nor did he speak again. The others watched the woman warily.

Kegellen ignored them all. “Now,” she said, spreading her hands in invitation, “Gabril, you delicious rock of a man, why don’t you explain where you found yourself an emperor?”

Gabril shook his head. “The Malkeenian will speak for himself.”

Kaden breathed out a slow, quiet breath, then stepped forward. Gabril and Morjeta had warned him of the difficulties entailed in his plan, warned him dozens of times over, and while Kaden had understood those difficulties intellectually, the true challenge of what he faced was only now setting in. The nobles were already clawing at each other’s eyes; there was every chance that the offer he’d come to make would lead to blood on the floor of the warehouse, but there was no going back now.

“My name is Kaden hui’Malkeenian, son of Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian, the Scion of Light, the Long Mind of the World, Holder of the Scales, and Keeper of the Gates. I am the heir to the Unhewn Throne.”

“Nice list,” said a tall, broad man with a huge, red-gold beard—Vennet, according to Gabril’s description. “You come here to rub our faces in your pretty polished titles?”

Kaden fixed the speaker with his burning eyes, waiting until he looked away. “No, Vennet,” he said quietly. “I came here to tell you I am done with them.”

Glances darted like swallows in the dark silence that followed, men and women sizing up Kaden and then one another, tempted to see their own advantage in his words, but wary and uncertain.

Tevis narrowed his eyes. He had slipped his rapier back into its sheath, but kept one hand on the pommel.

“What do you mean by done?”

“Just that,” Kaden replied evenly. “I am giving up the titles. Giving up the Unhewn Throne.”

Kegellen pursed her lips, flicked absently at one of her dangling earrings with a fingernail. “Giving them,” she asked mildly, “to whom?”

Kaden shook his head. “To no one. Perhaps I misspoke. I said I was giving them up. What I meant was that I plan to destroy them.”