Despite the absence of skin, Kellhus immediately recognized horror in the flayed face of the specimen strapped before him. Like warring flatworms, the fine muscles about his eyes strained outward and inward at the same time. The larger, rat-sized muscles about his lower face yanked his mouth into a perpetual fear-grin. Lidless eyes stared. Rapid breaths hissed . . .

"You're wondering how he can maintain that particular expressive configuration," the Pragma said. "Centuries ago we found we could limit the range of behaviours by probing the brain with needles-with what we now call neuropuncture."

Kellhus stood transfixed. Without warning, an attendant loomed over him, holding a narrow reed between his teeth. He dipped the reed into the bowl of fluid he carried, then blowing, sprayed the specimen with a fine orangish mist. He then continued on to the next.

"Neuropuncture," the Pragma continued, "made possible the rehabilitation of defectives for instructional purposes. The specimen before you, for instance, always displays fear at a base-remove of two."

"Horror?" Kellhus asked.

"Precisely."

Kellhus felt the childishness of his own horror fade in understanding. He looked to either side, saw the specimens curving out of sight, rows of white eyes set in shining red musculatures. They were only defectives-nothing more. He returned his gaze to the man before him, to fear base-remove two, and committed what he saw to memory. Then he moved on to the next gasping skein of muscles.

"Good," Pragma Meigon had said from his periphery. "Very good."

Kellhus turned once more to Esmenet, peeled away her face with the hooks of his gaze.

She'd already made two trips from the fire to her tent-promenades to draw his attention and covertly gauge his interest. She periodically looked from side to side, feigning amusement in things elsewhere to see if he watched her. Twice he let her catch him. Each time he grinned with boyish good nature. Each time she looked down, blushing, pupils dilated, eyes blinking rapidly, her body radiating the musk of nascent arousal. Though Esmenet had not yet come to his bed, part of her ached for him, even wooed him. And she knew it not.

For all her native gifts, Esmenet remained a world-born woman. And for all world-born men and women, two souls shared the same body, face, and eyes. The animal and the intellect. Everyone was two.

Defective.

One Esmenet had already renounced Drusas Achamian. The other would soon follow.

Esmenet blinked against the turquoise sky, held a hand against the sun. No matter how many times she witnessed it, she was dumbstruck.

The Holy War.

She'd paused with Kellhus and Serwe on the summit of a rise so that Serwe could readjust her pack. Fields of Inrithi warriors and camp-followers walked past them, toward the crumbling cliffs of the southern escarpment. Esmenet looked from man to armoured man, each farther than the next, past clots and through thickening screens, until losing them in the teeming distances, where they winked in the sunlight like metal filings. She turned, saw the sand-coloured walls of Ammegnotis behind them, dwindling against the black and green of the river and her verdant banks.

Shigek.

Goodbye, Akka.

Teary-eyed, she deliberately struck out on her own, simply waving a hand when Kellhus called out to her.

She walked among strangers, feeling the aim of hooded eyes and muttered words-as she so often did. Some men actually accosted her, but she ignored them. One even angrily grabbed her tattooed hand, as though to remind her of something she owed all men. The parched grasses became thinner and thinner, leaving gravel that burned toes and cooked air. She sweated and suffered and somehow knew it was only the beginning.

That evening she found Kellhus and Serwe without much difficulty. Though they had little fuel, they managed dinner with a small fire. The air cooled as quickly as the sun descended, and they enjoyed their first desert dusk. The ground radiated warmth like a stone drawn from a hearth. To the east, sterile hills ringed the distance, obscuring the sea. To the south and west, beyond the riot of the encampment, the horizon formed a perfect shale line that thickened into red as it approached the sun. To the north, Shigek could still be glimpsed between the tents, its green becoming black in the growing twilight.

Serwe was already snoozing, curled across her mat close to the little lapping tongue of their fire.

"So how was your walk?" Kellhus asked.

"I'm sorry," she said, shamefaced. "I-"

"There's no need to apologize, Esmi . . . You walk where you choose."

She looked down, feeling both relieved and grief-stricken.

"So?" Kellhus repeated. "How was your walk?"

"Men," she said leadenly. "Too many men."

"And you call yourself a harlot," Kellhus said, grinning.

Esmenet continued staring at her dusty feet. A shy smile stole across her face.

"Things change . . ."

"Perhaps," he said in a manner that reminded Esmenet of an axe biting into wood. "Have you ever wondered why the Gods hold men higher than women?"

Esmenet shrugged. "We stand in the shadow of men," she replied, "just as men stand in the shadow of the Gods."

"So you think you you stand in the shadow of men?" stand in the shadow of men?"

She smiled. There was no deception with Kellhus, no matter how petty. That was his wonder.

"Some men, yes . . ." men, yes . . ."

"But not many?"

She laughed, caught in an honest conceit. "Not many at all," she admitted. Not even, she breathlessly realized, Akka . . .

Only you.

"And what of other men? Aren't all men overshadowed in some respect?"

"Yes, I suppose . . ."

Kellhus turned his palms upward-a curiously disarming gesture. "So what makes you less than a man?"

Esmenet laughed again, certain he played some game. "Because everywhere I've been-every place I've heard heard of for that matter-women serve men. That's simply the way. Most women are like . . ." She paused, troubled by the course of her thoughts. She glanced at Serwe, her perfect face illuminated by the wavering light of the fire. of for that matter-women serve men. That's simply the way. Most women are like . . ." She paused, troubled by the course of her thoughts. She glanced at Serwe, her perfect face illuminated by the wavering light of the fire.

"Like her," Kellhus said.

"Yes," Esmenet replied, her eyes forced to the ground by a strange defensiveness. "Like her . . . Most women are simple."

"And most men?"

"Well, certainly more men than women are learned . . . Wise."

"And is this because men are more more than women?" than women?"

Esmenet stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Or is it," he continued, "because men are granted granted more than women in this world?" more than women in this world?"

She stared, her thoughts spinning. She breathed deeply, set her palms carefully upon her knees. "You're saying women are . . . are actually equal? equal?"

Kellhus hoisted his brows in pained amusement. "Why," he asked, "are men willing to exchange gold to lie with women?"

"Because they desire us . . . They lust."

"And is it lawful for men to purchase pleasure from a woman?"

"No . . ."

"So why do they?"

"They can't help themselves," Esmenet replied. She lifted a rueful eyebrow. "They're men men."

"So they have no control over their desire?"

She grinned in her old way. "Witness the well-fed harlot sitting before you."

Kellhus laughed, but softly, and in a manner that effortlessly sorted her pain from her humour.

"So why," he said, "do men herd cattle?"

"Cattle?" Esmenet scowled. Where had all these absurd thoughts come from? "Well . . . to slaughter for . . ."

She trailed in sudden understanding. Her skin pimpled. Once again she sat in shadow, and Kellhus hoarded the failing sun, looking for all the world like a bronze idol. The sun always seemed to relinquish him last . . .

"Men," Kellhus said, "cannot dominate their hunger, so they dominate, domesticate, the objects objects of their hunger. Be it cattle . . ." of their hunger. Be it cattle . . ."

"Or women," she said breathlessly.

The air prickled with understanding.

"When one race," Kellhus continued, "is tributary to another, as the Cepalorans are to the Nansur, whose tongue do both races speak?"

"The tongue of the conqueror."

"And whose tongue do you speak?"

She swallowed. "The tongue of men."

With every blink, it seemed, she saw man after man, arched over her like dogs . . .

"You see yourself," Kellhus said, "as men see you. You fear growing old, because men hunger for girls. You dress shamelessly, because men hunger for your skin. You cringe when you speak, because men hunger for your silence. You pander. You posture. You primp and preen. You twist your thoughts and warp your heart. You break and remake, cut and cut and cut, all so you might answer in your conqueror's tongue!"

Never, it seemed, had she been so motionless. The air within her throat, even the blood within her heart, seemed absolutely still . . . Kellhus had become a voice falling from somewhere between tears and firelight.

"You say, 'Let me shame myself for you. Let me suffer you! I beg you, please! please!'"

And somehow, Esmenet knew where these words must lead, so she thought of other things, like how parched skin and cloth seemed so clean . . .

Filth, she realized, needed water the same as men.

"And you tell yourself," Kellhus continued, "'These tracks I will not follow!' Perhaps you refuse certain perversities. Perhaps you refuse to kiss. You pretend to scruple, to discriminate, though the world has forced you onto trackless ground. The coins! The coins! Coins for everything, and everything for coins! For the landlord. For the apparati, when they come for their bribes. For the vendors who feed you. For the toughs with scabbed knuckles. And secretly, you ask yourself, 'What could be unthinkable when I'm already damned? What act lies beyond me, when I have no dignity?'"

"'What love lies beyond sacrifice?'"

Her face was wet. When she drew her hand from her cheek, the whorls of her fingertips were black.

"You speak the tongue of your conquerors . . ." Kellhus whispered. "You say, Mimara, come with me child."

A shiver passed through her, as though she were a drumskin . . .

"And you take her . . ."

"She's dead!" some woman cried. "She's dead! dead!"

"To the slavers in the harbour . . ."

"Stop!" the woman hissed. "I say, no!"

Gasping, like knives.

"And you sell her."

She remembered his arms enclosing her. She remembered following him to his pavilion. She remembered lying at his side, weeping and weeping, while his voice made her anguish plain, while Serwe stroked tears from her cheeks, ran cool fingers through her hair. She remembered telling them what had happened. About the hungry summer, when she had swallowed men for free just for their seed. About hating the little girl-the filthy little bitch!-who wept and demanded and demanded, who ate her food, who sent her into the streets, all because of love! About the hollow-eyed madness. Who could understand starvation? About the slavers, their larders growing fat because of the famine. About Mimara shrieking, her little girl shrieking! About the poison coins . . . Less than a week! They had lasted less than a week!

She remembered shrieking.

And she remembered weeping as she'd never wept before, because she'd spoken, and he had heard he had heard. She remembered drifting in his confidence, in his poetry, in his godlike knowledge of what was right and true . . .

In his absolution.

"You are forgiven, Esmenet."

Who are you to forgive?

"Mimara."

She awoke with her head upon his arm. There was no confusion, though it seemed there should be. She knew where she was, and though part of her quailed, part of her exulted as well. She lay with Kellhus. I didn't couple with him . . . I only wept. I didn't couple with him . . . I only wept.

Her face felt bruised from the previous evening. The night had been hot, and they'd slept without blankets. For what seemed a long time, she lay motionless, simply savouring his white-skinned nearness. She placed a hand upon his bare chest. He was warm and smooth. She could feel the slow drum of his heart. Her fingers tingled, as though she touched an ironsmith's anvil as he hammered. She thought of the weight of him, flushed . . .

"Kellhus . . ." she said. She looked up to the profile of his face, somehow knowing he was awake.

He turned and looked at her, his eyes smiling.