C

HANGE THE

W

ORLD.

“The emperor will receive you now.”

Akiva had been staring over the skybridge at the gray glass domes of the seraglio where he had been born. It was so closed and silent, so unknowable from the outside, but he had dim memories of noise and shafting light, children and babies, playing and singing—and he looked around at the voice. It was the head steward, Byon, leaning on his cane and dwarfed beneath the high, heavy arch of Alef Gate and the pair of Silverswords who flanked it. He was white-haired and grandfatherly at a glance, but only at a glance. It was Byon who maintained the lists of the emperor’s bastards, canceling the dead so their names might be given to the newborns. Seeing him, Akiva couldn’t help wondering if he would outlive the old seraph, or if that crabbed hand would draw the strike through his own name. He had stricken six Akivas already; what was one more?

For a moment he felt himself to be nothing more than a placeholder for a name—one is a succession of flesh placeholders for a name that belonged, like everything else, to the emperor. Expendable. Endlessly renewable. But then he focused on what he had come here to do, and he met Byon’s rat-black eyes with the cultivated blankness that had been his default expression for years.

He was no placeholder. There would be no eighth Misbegotten bearer of the name Akiva; fathering bastards was only one of many things that Joram would not be doing after tonight. Along with starting wars. Along with breathing.

“Remove your weapons,” Byon instructed.

This was expected. No arms save the guards’ own were permitted in the emperor’s presence. Akiva hadn’t even worn his usual pair of swords crossed at his back—the cape that was part of his formal uniform interfered with them. He had buckled a short sword at his hip only to make a show of laying it down on request, which he did.

Hazael and Liraz likewise disarmed and laid down their weapons.

Their visible ones, anyway.

Akiva’s own glamoured blade hung from the opposite hip from the one he had laid down. It couldn’t be seen, but anyone studying him closely might notice a quirk in the play of shadow along his leg where it hung invisible, and of course it could be felt—cold steel—by any who brushed too near or thought to search him or embrace him, which Akiva thought a small enough risk—the embrace, anyway. As for the search, this was the first test of the emperor’s suspicion.

Had he brought the Prince of Bastards here to use him, or to expose him? Akiva waited out the steward’s scrutiny. There was no search. Byon gave him the merest nod, and when he turned and vanished into the Tower of Conquest, Akiva fell into step behind him, and Hazael and Liraz behind him in turn.

The emperor’s inner sanctum. Hazael had made inquiries; they knew roughly what to expect—the interlocking passages of thick, honey-hued glass, gate after guarded gate. Akiva committed each turn to memory; this way would be the only way out. They would glamour themselves; that was the plan. In the tumult that would follow the assassination, in the rush and stomp of guards they would vanish and retreat. And escape.

He hoped.

Another passage, another turn, another gate, another passage. Deeper into the emperor’s inner sanctum. Akiva’s anticipation grew taut.

How weary he was of this brute response to all problems: Kill your enemy. Kill, kill. But right now the brute response was the only response. For the good of Eretz, for an end to war.

Joram must die.

Akiva reached for sirithar—the state of calm in which the godstars work through the swordsman—but didn’t come anywhere close to it. He managed to hold his heartbeat steady, but his mind raced—through scenarios, magical manipulations, even words. What would he say when he faced his father and unsheathed his blade? He didn’t know. Nothing at all. It didn’t matter. It was the deed that mattered, not words.

Do the thing. Kill the monster. Change the world.

67

T

HE

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NLY

H

OPE

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S

H

OPE

Amzallag bulled forward and fell to his knees before Issa. “Who?” he asked, almost whispering. “Who went into the cathedral?” A few other soldiers leaned forward with intense, restrained yearning.

“Thousands.” Issa’s voice was tender. “There was no time to make a record. I’m sorry.”

Karou stepped forward. “All the children went,” she said, looking to Issa for confirmation. “And all the mothers. The chances are very good for your families.”

Amzallag looked stunned. On his tiger features “stunned” came across as a wide-eyed version of his constant ferocity—ferocity that was more Karou’s doing than his. His soul was as plain as tilled earth and as steady as a carthorse, but with this body she had given him he could hardly help but look ferocious. His jaws with their kitchen-knife fangs were agape and his deep orange eyes were unblinking. Although he was kneeling—his stag forelegs buckled before him and tiger haunches bunched in a crouch—he still towered above Issa, and his arms, when he reached for her hands, were huge and gray. Before he sees his family again, Karou thought, I can give him a gentler form.

But that was getting ahead of herself. Way ahead.

While Amzallag’s big hands took Issa’s, Karou watched Thiago. When Amzallag said “Thank you,” in a voice like the saddest pull of a violin, Thiago’s fangs showed in a fleeting snarl.

“I am only a messenger,” said Issa.

At that, Thiago’s eyes slid from her to Karou. “Tell us again,” he said, “how exactly that was accomplished.”

“How what was accomplished?” Issa asked. Amzallag released her hands and rose, turning himself with smooth tiger movements to stand at her side—and Karou’s side—across the court from the Wolf. The move was deliberate, and sent a clear message of allegiance. Karou’s feeling of triumph was compromised, however, by the inquisition she felt coming.

“How you arrived among us,” Thiago said. “One morning, here you were. It is very strange.”

“Strange it may be, but I can’t satisfy you. The last thing I remember before waking is, of course, dying.”

“And where was it Brimstone planned to send your soul, in the grip of his squall? You must know that at least.”

Karou interrupted. “Is this all you have to say? We’ve just told you that thousands of our people can still be saved, and you talk of squalls? Thiago, our children can live again. This is enormous news. Can’t you be glad?”

“My gladness, my lady, is tempered with realism, as yours should be. Live where? Live how? This changes nothing.”

“It changes everything!” she cried. “Everything you’re doing is hopeless. Can’t you see? It is futureless. This brutality, the civilian attacks? Your father would be sick. Everything you do to the seraphim, Joram will return a hundredfold, a thousandfold.” She was appealing to the host now. “Did Thisalene give you satisfaction? The angels must die?” She pinpointed Tangris and Bashees, and fought against the fear that would have snatched her voice right back into her throat. To call out the Shadows That Live? Was she mad? Remember the chicken impression, she told herself with a surge of hysteria.

“In Thisalene,” she said, “you slew a hundred angels.” The sphinxes met her look in their inscrutable way. “And hundreds of chimaera died for it.” One sphinx blinked. Karou continued, taking in the others. Oh, her heart, it was beating furious-fast. “And the rest of you. You let them die. You gave them hope—the Warlord’s smiles, the messages. We are arisen? And then? All those folk of the south, they couldn’t believe that you would start this fight, call the enemy down on them in such impossible numbers, only to abandon them. Do you know…” Karou swallowed. Her own cruelty felt icy, spiky, to put it to them like this. “Do you know that they died watching the sky for you?”