Proyas stood, retreated from his old sword-trainer's furious aspect. He did did know how "these things" worked. He know how "these things" worked. He had had threatened Eleazaras with war. threatened Eleazaras with war.

He laughed bitterly. "Are you mad mad, Zin? Are you truly asking me to put my old boyhood tutor before my God? To put a sorcerer sorcerer before my God?" before my God?"

Xinemus released the table, stood upright. "After all these years, you still don't understand, do you?"

"What's there to understand?" Proyas cried. "How many times must we have this conversation? Achamian is Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!" A heady sense of conviction seized him, an incontestable heady sense of conviction seized him, an incontestable making making-certain, as though knowing possessed its own fury. "If blasphemers kill blasphemers, then we're saved oil and wood."

Xinemus flinched as though struck. "So you will do nothing."

"And neither will you, Marshal. We prepare to march against the South Bank. The Padirajah has summoned every Sapatishah from Girgash to Eumarna. All Kian assembles!"

"Then I resign as Marshal of Attrempus," Xinemus declared in a stiff voice. "What is more, I repudiate you, your father, and my oath to House Nersei. No longer shall I call myself a Knight of Conriya."

Proyas felt a numbness through his face and hands. This was impossible. "Think about this, Zin," he said breathlessly. "Everything . . . Your estates, your chattel, the sanctions of your caste . . . Everything you have, everything you are everything you are, will be forfeit."

"No, Prosha," he said, turning for the curtains. "It's you who surrender everything."

Then he was gone.

The reed wick of his oil lamp sputtered and fizzled. The gloom deepened. So much! The endless battles with his peers. The heathen. The burdens-the innumerable burdens! The never-ending fear of what might come. And Xinemus had always been there. He'd always been the one! one! The one who understood, who made clear what vexed, who shouldered what was beyond bearing . . . The one who understood, who made clear what vexed, who shouldered what was beyond bearing . . . Akka. Akka.

Sweet Seja . . . What had he done?

Nersei Proyas fell to his knees, clutched at a knifing pang in his stomach. But the tears wouldn't come. I know you test me! I know you test me! I know you test me! I know you test me!

Two bodies, one warmth.

Wasn't that what Kellhus had said of love?

Esmenet watched Xinemus sit hesitantly, as though unsure of his welcome. He ran a heavy hand across his face. She could see the desperation in his eyes. welcome. He ran a heavy hand across his face. She could see the desperation in his eyes.

"I've made," he said leadenly, "what inquiries I could."

He meant there had been talk, the chatter of men who must make certain sounds, preserve certain semblances.

"No! You must make more! You can't give up, Zin. Not after . . ."

The pain in his eyes completed her sentence.

"The Holy War assaults the South Bank in a matter of days, Esmi."

He pursed his lips.

He meant the issue of Drusas Achamian had been conveniently forgotten, as all intractable and embarrassing matters must be. How? How could one know Drusas Achamian, wander through his precincts, and then away, whisked like sheets across dry skin? But they were men. Men were dry on the outside, and wet only within. They couldn't commingle, [missing] their life to another in the ambiguity of fluids. Not truly.

"Perhaps . . ." she said, wiping tears and trying hard, very hard, to smile. "Perhaps Proyas is-is lonely . . . Perhaps he n-needs to take his with-"

"No, Esmi. No."

Hot tears. She shook her head slowly, her face slack.

No . . . I must do something something! There must be There must be something something I can do! I can do!

Xinemus looked past her to the sunny earth, as though searching lost words.

"Why won't you stay with Kellhus and Serwe?" he asked.

So much had changed in such a short time. Xinemus's camp dissolved with his station. Kellhus had taken Serwe to join Proyas, a thing that had dismayed her even though she understood his reason-much as Kellhus loved Akka, all men were his province now. But she'd begged! Grovelled! She had even tried, at the pitch of her desperation, to seduce him, though he would have none of it.

The Holy War. The Holy War. Everything was about the fucking Holy War!

What about Achamian? Achamian?

But Kellhus couldn't cross Fate. He had a far greater whore to answer to . . .

"And if Akka comes back?" she sobbed. "What if he comes back and can't find me?"

Though everyone had left, her tent-Akka's tent-hadn't moved. She lingered in the gap where her joy had been. Now under the command of Iryssas, the Attrempans treated her with deference and respect. The "sorcerer's woman" they called her . . . tent-hadn't moved. She lingered in the gap where her joy had been. Now under the command of Iryssas, the Attrempans treated her with deference and respect. The "sorcerer's woman" they called her . . .

"It's not good for you to stay here alone," Xinemus said. "Iryssas will march with Proyas soon, and the Shigeki . . . There could be reprisals."

"I'll manage," she croaked. "I've spent my life alone, Zin."

Xinemus pressed himself to his feet. He held a hand to her cheek, pinched away a tear with a gentle thumb. "Stay safe, Esmi."

"What are you going to do?"

He glanced into the distance behind her, perhaps at the hazy ziggurats, perhaps at nothing.

"Search," he said in a hopeless voice.

"I'll ride with you," she exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

I'm coming, Akka! I'm coming!

Xinemus strode wordlessly to his horse, climbed into his saddle. He drew a knife from his girdle, then tossed it high in the air. It thudded into the bare earth between her feet.

"Take it," he said. "Be safe, Esmi."

For the first time Esmenet noticed Dinchases and Zenkappa in the distance, also mounted, waiting for their former lord. They waved before falling in behind him. She fell to her seat, burst into further sobs. She buried her face in hot arms.

When she looked up, they were gone.

Helplessness. If women were hope's oldest companions, it was due to helplessness. Certainly women often exercised dreadful power over a single hearth, but the world between hearths belonged to men. And it was into this world that Achamian had disappeared: the cold darkness between fire-pits.

All she could do was wait . . . What greater anguish could there be than waiting? Nothing etched the shape of one's impotence with more galling meticulousness than the blank passage of time. Moment after moment, some dull with disbelief, others taut with voiceless shrieks. Moment after gnashing moment. Bright with the flare of agonized questions: Where is he? What will I do without him? Where is he? What will I do without him? Dark with the exhaustion of hope: Dark with the exhaustion of hope: He's dead. I am alone. He's dead. I am alone.

Waiting. This was what tradition said a woman should should do. To wait at the hearth's edge. To peer and peer and yet always be stared down. To haggle endlessly with nothing. To think without hope of insight. To repeat words said and words implied. To chase hints into incantations, as though by their tumbling precision and the sheer pitch of their pain the movements of her soul might seize the world at some deeper level, and force it to yield. do. To wait at the hearth's edge. To peer and peer and yet always be stared down. To haggle endlessly with nothing. To think without hope of insight. To repeat words said and words implied. To chase hints into incantations, as though by their tumbling precision and the sheer pitch of their pain the movements of her soul might seize the world at some deeper level, and force it to yield.

As the days passed, it seemed she'd become a still point in the ponderous wheel of events, the only structure to remain after the floodwaters retreated. The tents and pavilions fell like shrouds unfurled across the dead. The vast baggage trains were loaded. Armoured men on horse chopped to and fro from the horizon, bearing arcane missives, onerous commands. Great columns were formed up across the pasture, and with shouts and hymns, they passed away. Like a season.

And Esmenet sat alone in the midst of their absence. She watched the breeze tease threads free of trampled grasses. She watched bees dart like black buzzing dots across the bruised reaches. She felt embalmed by the silence. She was held motionless by the false peace of passing commotion. Sitting before Achamian's tent, her back turned to their pathetic possessions, her every surface exposed to gaping, sun-bright spaces, she wept-called out his name as though he might lie hidden behind some copse of black willows, whose verdant branches waved each independent of the other, as though beneath the tug of different skies.

She could almost see him, crouched behind that shade-black trunk. Come out, Akka . . . They've all left. It's safe now, my love . . . Come out, Akka . . . They've all left. It's safe now, my love . . . Day. Night. Day. Night.

Esmenet would make her own silent inquiries, an interrogation without hope of answer. She would think much of her dead daughter, and make forbidden comparisons between that cold world and this one. She would walk down to the Sempis and stare at its black waters, not knowing whether she wanted to drink or drown. She would glimpse herself in the distance, arms waving . . .

One body, no warmth.

Day. Night. Moment by moment.

Esmenet had been a whore, and whores knew how to wait. Patience through the long succession of lusts, her days lined up as though words on a scroll as long as life, each whispering the same thing.

It's safe now, my love. Come out.

It is safe.

Since leaving Xinemus's camp, Cnaiur passed his days much as before, either conferring with Proyas or discharging his requests. Skauras had wasted little time in the weeks following his defeat on the Battleplain. He'd ceded what land he couldn't hold, which included the entire North Bank of the Sempis. He burned every boat he could find to prevent any mass crossing, raised makeshift watchtowers along the entire South Bank, and gathered the remnants of his army. Fortunately for the Shigeki and their new Inrithi warlords, he hadn't burned the granaries or scorched the fields and orchards as he withdrew. In Council, Saubon claimed this was due to the heathen's haste, which in turn was due to their terror. But Cnaiur knew better. There had been nothing haphazard about the Kianene evacuation of the North Bank. They knew Hinnereth would delay the Men of the Tusk. Even at Zirkirta, where the Scylvendi had crushed the heathen eight years before, the Kianene had recovered quickly from their initial rout. They were a tenacious and resourceful race.

Skauras had spared the North Bank, Cnaiur knew, because he intended to reclaim it.

This wasn't a fact Inrithi stomachs found easy to digest. Even Proyas, who'd set aside the many conceits of his caste and had embraced Cnaiur's tutelage, couldn't believe the Kianene still posed any real threat.

"Are you assured of your victory?" Cnaiur asked one night while supping with the Prince in private.

"Assured?" Proyas replied. "But of course."

"Why?"

"Because my God has willed it."

"And Skauras? Would he not give much the same answer?"

Proyas's eyebrows jumped up, then knitted into a frown. "But that's not to the point, Scylvendi. How many thousands have we killed? How much terror have we struck into their hearts?"

"Too few thousands, and far, far too little terror." Cnaiur explained the way the memorialists recited verses dedicated to each of the Nansur Columns, stories that described their devices, their arms, and their mettle in battle so that when the Tribes went on pilgrimage or to war, they could read the Nansur battle line. "This was why the People lost at Kiyuth," he said. "Conphas switched his Columns' devices, told us a false story . . ."

"Any fool knows how to read his opponent's line!" Proyas spat.

Cnaiur shrugged. "Then tell me," he said, "what story did you read on the Battleplain?"

Proyas blanched. "How in the blazes am I supposed to know? I recognized only a handful . . ."

"I recognized all of them," Cnaiur asserted. "Of all the great Kianene Houses, and there are many, only two-thirds rode against us on the Plains of Mengedda. Of those, several were likely token contingents, depending on how many enemies Skauras entertains among his peers. After the massacre of the Vulgar Holy War, many among the heathen, including the Padirajah, were no doubt contemptuous of the Holy War's threat . . ."

"But now . . ." Proyas said.

"They will not repeat their mistake. They will strike treaties with Girgash and Nilnamesh. They will empty every barracks, saddle every horse, arm every son . . . Make no mistake, even now they ride toward Shigek in their thousands. They will answer Holy War with Jihad."

Following this exchange, Proyas out and out capitulated to his admonishments. At the next Council, after the other Great Names, with the exception of Conphas, scoffed at Cnaiur and his warnings, Proyas had captives secured in cross-river raids dragged before them. They confirmed everything Cnaiur had predicted. For over a week, the wretches said, Grandees from as far away as Seleukara and Nenciphon had been riding out of the southern deserts. Some names even the Norsirai seemed to recognize: Cinganjehoi, the far-famed Sapatishah of Eumarna, Imbeyan, the Sapatishah of Enathpaneah, even Dunjoksha, the tyrannical Sapatishah who ruled the governorate of Amoteu from Shimeh.

It was agreed. The Holy War had to cross the River Sempis as soon as humanly possible.

"To think," Proyas confided to him afterward, "that I thought you no more than an effective ruse to employ against the Emperor. Now you're our general in all but name. You realize that?"

"I have said or offered nothing that Conphas himself could not say or offer."

Proyas laughed. "Save trust, Scylvendi. Save trust." Though Cnaiur grinned, these words cut him for some reason. What did it matter, the trust of dogs and cattle?

Cnaiur had been born for war, as much as he'd been bred for it. This, and this alone, was the one certainty of his life. So he bent himself to the problem of assaulting the South Bank with relish and uncommon zeal. While the Great Names directed the construction of rafts and barges in great enough numbers to convey the entire Holy War across the Sempis, Cnaiur supervised the Conriyan effort to find the ideal place to land. He led his war parties on night raids against the South Bank, even bringing cartographers to map the terrain. If one thing impressed him about the Inrithi manner of making war, it was their use of maps. He directed the questioning of captives, and even taught several traditional Scylvendi techniques to Proyas's interrogators. He questioned those, such as Earl Athjeari, who raided the South Bank to plunder and harry, about what they'd seen. And he held council with others, like Earl Cerjulla, General Biaxi Sompas, and Palatine Uranyanka, who shared his task.

Except for Proyas's councils, he neither saw nor spoke to Kellhus. The Dunyain was little more than a rumour.

Cnaiur's days were much the same as before. But his nights . . . They were far different.

He never pitched his tent on the same ground. Most evenings, after sunset or after supping with Proyas and his caste-nobles, he rode from the Conriyan camp, past the sentries and out into the fields. He struck his own fire, listened to the night wind roar through the trees. Sometimes, when he could see it, he stared at the Conriyan encampment and counted fires like an idiot child. "Always number your foemen," his father had once told him, "by the glitter of their fires." Sometimes he gazed at the stars and wondered if they too were his enemies. Every so often, he imagined he camped across the lonely Steppe. The Holy Steppe.

He often brooded over Serwe and Kellhus. He found himself continually rehearsing his reasons for abandoning her to the Dunyain. He was a warrior-a Scylvendi warrior! What need had he, man-killing Cnaiur, of a woman?

But no matter how obvious his reasons, he still couldn't help but think of her. The globes of her breasts. The wandering line of her hips. So perfect. How he'd burned for her, burned the way a warrior, a man, should! She was his prize-his proof!

He remembered pretending to sleep while listening to her sob in the darkness. He remembered the remorse, as heavy as spring snow, pressing him breathless with its cold. What a fool he'd been! He thought of the apologies, of the desperate pleas that might soften her hatred, that might let her see. He thought of kissing the gentle swell of her belly. And he thought of Anissi, the first wife of his heart, slumbering in the nickering gloom of their faraway hearth, holding tight their daughter, Sanathi, as though sheltering her from the terror of womanhood. And he thought of Proyas.

On the worst nights he hugged himself in the blackness of his tent, screaming and sobbing. He beat the earth with his fists, stabbed holes with his knife, then fucked them. He cursed the world. He cursed the heavens. He cursed Anasurimbor Moenghus and his monstrous son. He thought, So be it. So be it.

On the best nights he made no camp at all, but instead rode to the nearest Shigeki village, where he would kick in doors and glory in screams. On a whim, he avoided those doors marked with what he imagined was lamb's blood. But when he found all the doors so marked, he ceased to discriminate. "Murder me!" he would roar at them. "Murder me and it stops! and it stops!"

Bawling men. Shrieking girls and silent women. He would take what compensation he could.

A week passed before Cnaiur found the Holy War's best point of purchase on the South Bank: the shallow tidal marshes along the southern edge of the Sempis Delta. Of course all the Great Names, with the exception of Proyas and Conphas, balked at the news, especially after their own people returned with descriptions of the terrain. They were knights, through and through, trained and bred to the charge, and from all accounts, no horse could do more than thrash its way forward through the marsh.

But of course that was the point.

At a Council held in Iothiah, Proyas bid him to explain his plan to the assembled Inrithi. He unrolled a large map of the southern Delta across the table occupied by the Great Names.

"At Mengedda," he declared, "you learned the Kianene were faster. This means no matter where you assemble to cross the Sempis, Skauras will assemble first. But at Mengedda you also learned the strength of your footmen. And more important, you taught taught. These marshes are shallow. A man, even a heavily armed man, can easily walk through them, but horses must be led. As much as you pride your mounts, the Kianene pride theirs more. They will refuse to dismount, and they will not send their conscripts to contest you. What could conscripts do against men who can break a Grandee's charge? No. Skauras will yield the entirety of the marsh . . ."

He jabbed a chapped finger at the map, some distance to the south of the marsh.

"He will draw back here, to the fortress of Anwurat. He will give you all this pasture to assemble. He will cede you both ground and your horses."

"How can you be so certain?" Gothyelk cried. Of all the Great Names, the old Earl of Agansanor seemed the most troubled by Cnaiur's savage heritage-with the exception of Conphas, of course.

"Because Skauras," Cnaiur said evenly, "is not a fool."