She could feel him, as if he stood just on the other side of the well- could almost see him, a pale, pale boy with hair as flame-red as the streak in her own dark locks, a boy staring at her without seeing, his eyes haunted…

"Briony!"

She was terrified. The thing's wet fingers were curling on the lip of the well and the boy couldn't even see it? She wanted to know why he called her by that strange name, but instead when she found her voice at last she heard herself ask him, "Why are you in my dreams?"

And then the blackness burst up from below and the boy blew away like smoke and the shriek at last came rushing out of her, rising, ragged…

Qinnitan sat up, gasping. Something had a grip on her and for a moment she struggled fruitlessly against it until she realized it was not huge and chilly but small and warm and… and frightened. It was Pigeon. Pigeon was hanging onto her, grunting with fear. He was terrified, but he was try¬ing to comfort her.

"Don't worry," she said quietly. She found his head in the darkness, stroked his hair. He clung to her like a street musician's monkey. "It was just a bad dream. Were you frightened? Did you call me?"

But of course he couldn't have called her-not in words. The voice had been a dream, too. Briony. What a strange name. And what a terrible dream! It had been like the nights when she had lived in the Seclusion, when the priest Panhyssir had given her that dreadful elixir called the Sun's Blood, that poison which had left her feverish and terrified that it was stealing her mind.

Remembering, Qinnitan shivered helplessly. Pigeon was already asleep again, Iris bony little body pressed against her so that she couldn't lower her arm, which was already beginning to ache a little. How could she have be¬lieved that the autarch would simply let her go? She was a fool to linger here in Hierosol, only a short distance across the sea from Xis itself. She should pack up in the morning, leave the citadel and its laundry behind.

As she lay cradling the boy in the darkness, she heard something moan¬ing: outside the dormitory, the winds were rising.

A storm, she thought. Wind from the south. What do they call it here? "Red wind"-the wind from Xand. From Xis…

She rolled over, gently dislodging Pigeon. His breathing changed, then settled into a low buzz again, soothing as the drone of the sacred bees, but Qinnitan could not be so easily calmed. Winds push ships, she thought. Sud¬denly, sleep seemed farther away than the southern continent.

She got up and made her way across the cold stone floors to the main room, reassuring herself by the sound of the sleeping women she passed that all was ordinary, that only night's darkness was making it seem strange. She stepped to one of the windows and lifted the heavy shutter, wanting a glimpse of moonlight or the sight of trees bending in the wind's grasp, any¬thing ordinary. Despite evidence of the ordinary all around her, she half-expected to find Cat's Eye Street and the uncovered well outside, but instead she was soothed to see the high facades of Echoing Mall. Something was moving on the otherwise empty street, though-a manlike figure in a long robe walking away down the colonnade with casual haste. It might simply have been one of the citadel's countless other servants returning home late, or it might have been someone who had been watching the front of the dormitory.

Holding her breath as if the retreating shape might hear her from a hun¬dred paces away, Qinnitan let the shutter down quietly and hurried back across the dark house.

There were times that the great throne room of Xis seemed as familiar to Pinimmon Vash as the house in the temple district where he had spent his childhood (a large dwelling, but not too large, a dream of wealth to the servants but only one residence out of many that belonged to the eminent Vash clan). This throne room was the Paramount Minister's place of work,

after all: it was understandable that he might sometimes fail to notice its size and splendor. But sometimes he saw it for what it truly was, a vast hall the-size of a small village, whose black and white tiles stretched away for him dreds of meters in geometric perfection until the eye blurred trying to look at them, and whose tiled ceiling covered in pictures of the gods of Xis seemed as huge as heaven itself. This was one of those times.

The hall was full. It seemed as if almost every single person in the court had come to see the Ceremony of Leavetaking-even twitching Prusus was here, who generally only left his chambers when Sulepis demanded his at¬tendance, and who Pinimmon Vash was seeing for an almost unprecedented second time in one day. Vash was glad to see that the scotarch, nominal suc¬cessor to the monarchy, had been dressed as was fitting in a sumptuous robe too dark to show the spittle that dripped occasionally from his chin.

The monstrous chamber was so crowded that for the first time since the autarch's crowning, Vash could not see the pattern on the floor. Everyone was dressed as if for a festival, but instead they had been standing in silence for most of the morning as the parade of priests and officials filed past to take their places in front of the Falcon Throne, dozens upon dozens of functionaries who only appeared on these state occasions:

The Prophets of the Moon Shrine of Kerah

The Keepers of the Autarch's Raptors

The Master of the Sarcophagus of Vushum

The Chiefs of the Brewers of Ash-hanan at Khexi

The Eyes of the Blessed Autarch of Upper Xand

The Eyes of the Blessed Autarch of Lower Xand

The Oracle of the Whispers of Surigali

The Master of the Sacred Bees of Nushash

The Scribe of the Tablet of Destinies

The Wardens of the Gates of the Ocean

The Supplicators of the Waves of Apisur

The Wardens of the Royal Canals

The Keeper of the Sacred Monkeys of Nobu

The Sacred Slave of the Great Tent

The Master of the Seclusion of Nissara

The Chief of Royal Herds and Flocks

The Master of the Granaries of Zishinah

The Priests of the Coming-Forth of Zoaz

The Guardians of the Whip that Scourges Pah-Inu

The Wardens of the Digging-Stick of Ukanion The Priests of the Great Staff of Hernigal

There were other priests, too, many more: Panhyssir, high priest of Nushash and the most powerful religious figure in the land next to the autarch himself, along with priests of Habbili and priests of Sawamat (the great goddess who, truth be told, had far more priestesses than priests, but whose female servants, like the priestesses of the Hive, were subordinated to their male masters and had only a token presence)-priests of every god and goddess who ever lived, it seemed, and of a few that may have existed only in the tales of other deities.

And as many court functionaries crowded the chamber as priests, the Favored of the palace and the whole men of the autarch's army and navy, stable masters and kitchen masters, the clerks of records and the scribes of all the granaries and butteries and storehouses of the gigantic Orchard Palace, not to mention the ambassadors of every tame country that now danced to the autarch's tune: Tuan, Mihan, Zan-Kartuum, Zan-Ahmia, Marash, Sania, arid Iyar, even a few abashed envoys from the northern con¬tinent, representing captive Ulos, Akaris, and Torvio. There were islanders from distant Hakka wearing their skirts of palm fronds, and chieftains of the desert herders, camel masters and sneeringly proud horsemen of the red desert, from whom the autarch's own family had sprung, but who had the sense now to bend their knees beside everyone else. (To be master of the desert and kin to the autarch himself might be a matter of pride, but too much pride in the presence of the Golden One was foolishness; the few fools bred by the sands did not usually live to adulthood.)