The commander of the guards stared. Then, to Kaden’s shock, dropped to his knees. Behind him, his men shifted in confusion. The air was thick with smoke and warped by the heat of the still-burning flames, but if he could see them, they could see him, and one by one, they saw. One by one, they fell to their knees, pressed foreheads against the bloody stone. For what seemed like a long time there was only the crackling of flame, the sobs of the mangled. Then, like the low rumble of a flooded river, the voices came:

“All hail the Scion of Light, the Long Mind of the World, Holder of the Scales, and Keeper of the Gates.”

Kaden felt like choking, like vomiting. He wanted to fall to the stones and weep. But the Shin had taught him to stand even when his body flagged. They had taught him to look at the world without weeping.

“All hail,” the voices continued, rising above the wind, above the flame, “he who holds back the darkness. All hail the Emperor.”

50

A dare stood at the end of the dock, back to the still-burning desolation of Andt-Kyl’s eastern island, eyes on the small boats quartering through the waves. There were half a dozen of them, and they’d been at it all morning, back and forth, back and forth, dropping their weighted nets, trolling the bottom, then pulling them up slick and glistening with small fish. They kept those fish, tossing them into wooden barrels before lowering the nets once more. Adare chafed at the delay, the distraction, but she could hardly fault them. She had given the fisherman of Andt-Kyl this task, had asked it of them at a time when such asking was hard. Their town still smoldered. Many of their dead remained unburied. The wounded—both the screaming and the silent—needed tending. And still she had asked these men to go out in their small boats, to trawl for bodies.

“You will want to search for your mothers and fathers swept into the lake, for your brothers and sisters,” she had said, then added silently, shamefully, And for my own.

The fishermen had just glanced at each other, looked out over the waves, then nodded. Half of Andt-Kyl was in flames, including storerooms and root cellars stocked with the last of the winter’s provisions, food intended to carry the townsfolk through to the harvest. It made a certain sense to take to the boats. The living would need to eat, and these men knew their business; they could do their usual work while they searched for the dead.