‘You wish to face Emperor Rhulad before I do?’ Icarium inquired.
‘I do not ask for your permission, Jhag.’
‘Yet I give it nonetheless, Karsa Orlong. You are welcome to Rhulad.’
Karsa glared at Icarium who, though not as tall, somehow still seemed able to meet the Toblakai eye to eye without lifting his head.
Then something odd occurred. Samar Dev saw a slight widening of Karsa’s eyes as he studied Icarium’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said in a gruff voice. ‘I see it now.’
‘I am pleased,’ replied Icarium.
‘See what?’ Samar Dev demanded.
On the ground behind her Taralack Veed groaned, coughed, then rolled onto his side and was sick.
Karsa released the Jhag’s arm and stepped back. ‘You are good to your word?’
Icarium bowed slightly then said, ‘How could I not be?’
‘That is true. Icarium, I witness.’
The Jhag bowed a second time.
‘Keep your hands away from that sword!’
This shout brought them all round, to see a half-dozen Letherii guards edging closer, their weapons unsheathed.
Karsa sneered at them. ‘I am returning to the compound, children. Get out of my way.’
They parted like reeds before a canoe’s prow as the Toblakai marched forward, then moved into his wake, hurrying to keep up with Karsa’s long strides.
Samar Dev stared after them, then loosed a sudden yelp, before clapping her hands to her mouth.
‘You remind me of Senior Assessor, doing that,’ Icarium observed with another smile. His gaze lifted past her. ‘And yes, there he remains, my very own personal vulture. If 1 gesture him to us, do you think he will come, witch?’
She shook her head, still struggling with an overwhelming flood of relief and the aftermath of terror’s cold clutch that even now made her hands tremble. ‘No, he prefers to worship from a distance.’
‘Worship? The man is deluded. Samar Dev, will you inform him of that?’
‘As you like, but it won’t matter, Icarium. His people, you see, they remember you.’
‘Do they now.’ Icarium’s eyes narrowed slightly on the Senior Assessor, who had begun to cringe from the singular attention of his god.
Spirits below, why was 1 interested in this monk in the first place? There is no lure to the glow of fanatical worship. There is only smug intransigence and the hidden knives of sharp judgement.
‘Perhaps,’ said Icarium, ‘I must speak to him after all.’
‘He’ll run away.’
‘In the compound, then-’
‘Where you can corner him?’
The Jhag smiled. ‘Proof of my omnipotence.’
Sirryn Kanar’s exultation was like a cauldron on the boil, the heavy lid moments from stuttering loose, yet he had held himself down on the long walk into the crypts of the Fifth Wing, where the air was wet enough to taste, where mould skidded beneath their boots and the dank chill reached tendrils to their very bones.
This, then, would be the home of Tomad and Uruth Sengar for the next two months, and Sirryn could not be more pleased. In the light of the lanterns the guards carried he saw, with immense satisfaction, that certain look on the Edur faces, the one that settled upon the expression of every prisoner: the numbed disbelief, the shock and fear stirring in the eyes every now and then, until they were once more overwhelmed by that stupid refusal to accept reality.
He would take sexual pleasure this night, he knew, as if this moment now was but one half of desire’s dialogue. He would sleep satiated, content with the world. His world.
They walked the length of the lowest corridor until reaching the very end. Sirryn gestured that Tomad be taken to the cell on the left; Uruth into the one opposite. He watched as the Edur woman, with a last glance back at her husband, turned and accompanied her three Letherii guards. A moment later Sirryn followed.
‘I know that you are the more dangerous,’ he said to her as one of his guards bent to fix the shackle onto her right ankle. ‘There are shadows here, so long as we remain.’
‘I leave your fate to others,’ she replied.
He studied her for a moment. ‘You shall be forbidden visitors.’
‘Yes.’
‘The shock goes away.’
She looked at him, and he saw in her eyes raw contempt.
‘In its place,’ he continued, ‘comes despair.’
‘Begone, you wretched man.’
Sirryn smiled. ‘Take her cloak. Why should Tomad be the only one to suffer the chill?’