'Jaspar?' Carnelian gasped, and dizzied, struggling to suck in breath.

'Imago Jaspar, yes, it was he. He told the Empress that you might bear watching, that you were the Lord Suth's fatal weakness. We saw you in the library, we saw you in the Yden.'

The syblings' hands made an obscene gesture.

'We saw everything,' said Left-Hanus.

'It was the most inconceivable folly that you should both come down here again, but she had hoped for that and you did not disappoint her.' The mask began pulling away. 'Pleasant dreams, my Lord.'

Tomorrow you die,' his brother said.

The syblings receded, their hands remaining behind only long enough to make a summoning.

One of the Brotherhood appeared. He brought a cane over the rim, a spear questing for Carnelian's face. Carnelian tried to move his head but his knees held it like a clamp. The cane impaled his lips. He tasted blood resisting it. The man's palm struck the other end. It tore through his lip, clunked against his teeth and then twisted into his tongue. Blood welled its metal taste. The cane was a nail through his face. He vibrated with terror as the man put his mouth to the other end of it. He watched the cheeks inflate. The man spat out and Carnelian choked and gagged as something like a fruit stone punched into his throat. He tried to vomit it out but the cane was in the way. It melted down into him. The cane rasping out of his mouth allowed him to rack out some coughs.

He gulped, trying to bail the blood from his mouth with his tongue. His hands flailed for the urn's lip, as he tried to drag himself out of its maw. Voices were barking remotely. The light was as sharp as spears. His head was a stone sinking up to the ears between his knees. His hands folded and tucked into the urn. His body was a deadman's. He felt the darkness coming. A night sky pressing down upon his head and then a grinding that locked him into a world crammed full with his dead flesh in which the only sound was breathing.