“Who comes here?”

“It is I, your son the King.”

“Ah, Alain! Come on in, dear, come on in . . .”

Alain Khad turned the crystal knob and marched into the antechamber. It was filled with various gewgaws, all of them in pristine condition. Carnival glass, china, an alabaster statue of a wood nymph, a fancy ramekin, bits of colored glass shaped like the javelin sigil of Tilva Khad, and many a faerie mask.

He felt there was a different air to the chamber compared to the last time he had been here. Once he was inside, he saw the occupant had changed a ton as well.

Eoli Khad was standing with her fingers intertwined by her waist between the two stone lions which guarded either side of her bed. His mother had been bettering, by the looks of it. There was a radiance to her, a warmth that only seldom reached her eyes, eyes white as daisies, eyes duplicate of his own. The warmth was there now.

Her hair had been dyed black, and pulled into a fantastic braid. She was dressed in a paisley gown with a plunging neckline, glittering opals expertly scattered throughout the fabric. It looked quite exquisite. He had forgotten how exquisite his mother could appear when she made an effort to be.

“You seem in a right cheerful mood to-day, mother.”

“Indeed I am!” she said in a sunny voice he would never connect to her.

“And why, may I ask, is that so?”

Eoli blinked. “You’re having a baby. What is there to not be cheerful about?”

“Why the dress?” Alain queried, taking seat on the futon opposite the bed. “Going someplace special?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I am.”

“Where?”

“To the royal temple.”

Alain stared into the eye of a stone lion, said, “What for?”

“To conspire against you with that rebel. What was his name again?”

“Parush,” Alain said instinctively. His mouth felt bitter.

“Yes, him.”

“What for really, though?”

“Why does one go to a temple, dear? To pray, to worship, that’s why!”

 Only those who are not worth being worshipped themselves worship others, his father the late King Aryan Khad had told him. That a bunch worship men in the clouds and not those in their front should tell you the kind I rule.

“Well, tide well with that. I hope the Holder gets better along with you than he does with me.”

“You should start paying him his due obeisance too, Alain. You are about to be a father now.”

“Oh, yeah? And will he give me parenting tips, is that what?”

Unexpectedly, Eoli smiled. After a pause she said: “I prayed and prayed when I was pregnant with you, you know. Maybe that is the reason you’re King to-day.”

“If so, I wish you had never done it. This King business is no fit for me. I was better off as the second prince, the one everyone overlooked, the one who attended balls and skipped his lessons.”

“Think what you will, Alain, but you are perfectly sovereign.”

“There is no such thing as perfectly sovereign, mother.”

As soon as he said this he felt he had fed her a prompt to launch into talk about his father. About how awesome he had been, how immaculate in everything that he did, how his touch turned shit into gold.

But Eoli’s smile seemed to have fallen in love with her lips. “They will remember you, my son, mark these words. History will remember you. As a great leader.”

“Sure. If I don’t lose my throne to that fucking rebel or fucking Ptirre, sure they will. Or maybe they’ll find an ape better fit to be king than I am. Pardon my language, mother, manners have never been my strong forte.”

“Before long that fucking rebel,” Eoli said, taking Alain by surprise, “will be kissing your boots. People like him always do. You think he really cares about the people? Their liberty and so forth?” She scoffed. “It’s all about power, in the end. Power and little else.”

“Well, he’ll have all the power he wants once my head is on a spike.”

“Don’t act an idiot, dear, it does not suit you. Listen to what I’m saying. Make him an offer he can’t refuse. Money, castles, whatever he wants.”

“Win their side to our side because we cannot prevail over them?” It was Alain’s turn to scoff. “Next there will another Shmeg’nar, and we’ll have to buy him too. Then another, and another, until the treasury goes hollow.”

“Valid point. Now let me make mine clear.” Eoli cleared her throat in a queenly fashion. “Raiders raid a farmer’s crop. The farmer has spent months growing it, but he lets them make what mischief they will because they are armed, and he has children he cannot put to risk. Next harvesting season the raiders come again. This time the farmer has made provisions. He makes sure their blood enriches the soil.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “you have to take measures you are not proud of. Measures you would not otherwise take. The Tethered Five are your children, Alain. Let the crop be taken for once. Let this Parush have his petty little victory. Next time some oaf decides he’ll make a better ruler than you, you can benevolently usher his head to the depths of our city moat.”

Alain chose silence.

Money talks, bullshit walks, had been another one of Aryan Khad’s favored sayings.

“Think about it,” she told him, adding: “Congratulation also on securing Dassan, that was nicely done.”

“It was my father-in-law that did the dirty work,” said Alain grudgingly. “He . . . confirms what others have been suspecting for a while now.”

“Really?”

“Your tone suggests you know already.”

“Know what?”

“The Rys Ami are not a fantasy. They are re –“

“I told you so! ‘Don’t trust your maidens or scriptures, mother, they’re stupid and so are you’.”

“That’s . . . not how I put it. And that is a poor impersonation of me.”

“What did you expect? I’m no actress.”

“No, but you’re sufficiently smug to be. Never too late to choose a new career, to follow your passion.”

“I suppose I'll enroll with the Gorub Pahnk within the month. That I’m the King’s mother should get me a few leading roles, don’t you think?”

“On a serious note,” said Alain, liking this leap to the light side his mother had made, “we have no idea how we’ll deal with them. They’re Shadows and Smoke. Here, this is what Sanghon tells us of them.”

He produced a chit from the sleeves of his coat, handed it to her. Eoli grabbed her jewel-studded optics from the bed and studied it for several seconds. “Do you have need of this?” she then asked him. When he shook his head she put it inside a baize-covered book. “How do you fight an enemy that steel can’t touch?”

“Maybe your gods can tell you.”

“If the gods bothered involving themselves in our skirmishes, dear, they’d not have drowned in the Shadneer. What did you come to me for, by the by? Just to tell me I was right to be skeptical all along?”

“Can’t a son check up on his dear old mum every once in a while?”

Eoli raised a brow.

“Fine,” said Alain, sticking his arms up in the air, “I seek your wisdom, wise one.”

“I’m here for it.”

“You read a lot of books.”

“I do.”

“Know the world.”

“I try to keep informed, yes.”

Alain mapped her gown, her eyes alit like lanterns in a lake of shadow. “Will you help select a few names for my child-to-be?”  

Silence, as they watched her.

Sterya repressed a grin. She rolled the dice. The trucebreaker read, “Seven.”

Sterya repressed another grin. She made her face a wooden mask, pretended to inspect her strad-cards. “Seven,” she confirmed untruthfully.

Silence, while they weighed her bluff. Selicia had her upper lip curled, Beigall had hers bit. On the sofa, Saphira’s expression was inscrutable.

“Anyone wants to call charade?” the trucebreaker offered, already handing Sterya the stag-card. “Didn’t think so. Well, this game goes to her Majesty – “

“Can I join you?” A newcomer’s voice.

They turned all of them, the old trucebreaker a tad slower than the rest, to find the Lady Vieira Tremletti standing in the frame of the doorway in a splendid silk dress and an enviable posture.

“Of course,” said Sterya warmly, although she would much prefer to keep their circle small. If anything, she could afford to loose the Highlady Beigall Arvala from it. “Any person with as winning a smile as yours is most welcome here.”

“Too kind, your Majesty.” Lady Vieira placed herself next to Saphira on the sofa like she were a delicacy made of glass. You could tell she had had excellent tutors in etiquette, just like the queen. Her large eyelashes, encumbered by alchemical make-up, fluttered over the Penva board. “I’m afraid I need to be familiarized with the rules. I have never been much of a, ah, gambler.”

“You mean that as a slight to us, don’t you?” Sterya wanted to say, but what she said was, “We do not gamble, my lady. We play for the pleasure of it.”

“Myself, I like to find pleasure in other things, if you know what I mean.” Vieira winked, plucking a biscuit from the crock besides the board. “Usually, that involves a man and a bed.”

Beigall cackled like a witch at the joke, and Sterya found herself thinking: They are going to get along royally well.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Vieira said, slapping her forehead with the biscuit. She turned in the sofa to face Saphira while somehow poring over her nails. “Compliments on the pregnancy, Siph.”

Saphira blinked. “How did you know I like to be called Siph?”

“I thought that was your name! What a happy mistake!” Vieira was joined in her laughter by Beigall’s cackle. “And many congrats to her Majesty, obviously,” she said to Sterya in a voice straight out of a sugar factory, “for bearing the royal seed. A hand for her!”

Beigall and Selicia clapped while Saphira rolled her eyes.

Sterya simply smiled, hand kept on her belly. “Thank you,” she said politely.

“That seed could’ve been mine, you know,” Vieira said, and this time there was a quality of abrasion to her voice. “Alain and my engagement was never formally annulled.”

Everyone stared at her.

“A poor jest!” she added then, back to being sickly sweet, swallowing the biscuit whole. “Delicious. Old woman,” she regarded the trucebreaker, “are you going to tell me the rules in the next Era or what?”

So the chats went on while the rules were explained to Vieira.

Sterya’s mind, meanwhile, wandered to all sorts of places. She couldn’t keep her thoughts in one place these days. Maybe that was a symptom of her condition, but she didn’t think so. She had dipped her toes into some rather disturbing things lately.

Saphira – a fellow victim of having to grow a human in her body – said that the child sees and hears what the mother sees and hears during the period that he is inside her.

Sterya seriously wished this wasn’t true, otherwise her child would come out scarred. What with the horrifically hypnotizing books she had read at the library . . . those twisted humans, those bony critters with lamplights for eyes, those Bvegans as the book had called them . . .

She shivered. To think that the Lady Mother Lady Highest Eoli Khad had been reading such texts for months was none the less disturbing. Although her mother-in-law seemed to have warmed to her being his son’s wife owing to the pregnancy. The visit she had paid to her in the infirmary had been good-natured, the kind of thing Admiral Hasheem would do.

Sterya watched the Ladies, discussing fortunes and games, jewelry and attires, when the revolutionaries raged outside in Charmat, everyplace from the New Market to the Danir Stronghold. Gods, they had begun hassles in Pardel now. Alain had told her one Lord Heavestate had been stretched by his limps till they detached from him. Torn apart, literally. The gatehouse was no stopper on the rebellion’s spirit.

Not to mention the horrible nightmare she had had which she could not shake off, or the looming threat which made all others shrink in comparison.

The threat of Shadows of the scriptures.

Saint Eladeen looked a thousand years old. His was the face that came to mind when Alain thought of monastic businessmen, or bullshitters in general. The high priest smelled of incense and tabac, and wore loose apricot robes, linen wrapped around his body like goo around a bulldreg. A short miter hat sat on his pink bald head.

“I daresay even the Holder must be surprised you remembered Him, your Grace,” said he.

“I’m the King of the Tethered Five,” Alain Khad said. “I’m sure he won’t mind me calling him at odd hours.”

Saint Eladeen smiled. “I’m sure He won’t.”

I already feel sick, thought Alain. Why did I decide to pay the temple a visit to-day? Oh, that’s right. Because my mother put ideas in my head.

“I am to be a father in a few months. Let the gods know I’m willing to put aside our differences if it means they’ll bless my son.”

And a son it would be, he was sure of it, sure as he was that the ground was beneath his feet and the sky above.

Saint Eladeen turned and signaled for another ner’ang. “Acolyte Mora here can break the beads on your behalf, your Grace.”

“He most definitely cannot. I have servants and stewards do everything for me, I have soldiers and Ardaunts fight my war, you can be damn well sure I’ll pray for my son myself at least.”

The two high priests, Eladeen and Mora, bowed reverentially.

Moments later Alain was standing at the center of the painted Eye on the floor of the temple’s main hall, already regretting his decision. The Eye was three concentric circles – black, grey, and the innermost red in which he stood. Ten span from him, on an opulently shining pedestal, lay a Trident. The object of devotion, Nherse the Creator’s weapon, and the weapon of the Holder his son.

Saint Eladeen and all others had left the hall, for pure prayers require diluted noise and concentrated devotion.

Only high priest Mora was there with Alain, chanting in a bored voice. “I will send for you my Children, my Children there for you, my Childs . . .”

Alain wasn’t well cut out for religion, but even he knew this was the part where he was supposed to kneel. But he didn’t. If any god was so petty as to not bless him if he didn’t kneel, that was not a god he wanted the blessings of for his child.

After what to him felt like an aeon, Mora approached him with a chain of ivory beads. Alain made to touch it, but the priest stepped back. “No touch of flesh. Flesh is impure. Only steel.”

Fortunately Alain had his sword on him. He was not a very good swordsman, and in case of – well, in case things shot to shit, his Tester mageic would a much better defense mechanism than swiping a blade. No, he carried it because it was considered proper of men to have steel on them when in a place of worship. It made a slight scrape as he drew it now – it winked at him, the sharp thing. Sharp despite not having been whetted anytime in a long time. It was of Ylar forge, after all.

“I break the beads now, aye?” He consulted the priest, who nodded.

The sword chopped down at the chain. Beads flew left and right. One or two bounced off his coat. They were rolling everyplace for a few ridiculously solemn moments before they stopped.

“And now we collect the beads?”

“We can collect them for you, your Grace,” said Mora. “It is quite a tedious task.”

“Watch me,” said Alain, and grabbed a small sack and set to collecting the scattered beads. Might as well do things proper. The temple was essentially one large hall with the Trident at the farthest end, and some of the beads had flown all the way to the entrance. Mora watched him with that bored expression these priests all seemed to forevermore tolerate. “You can lend a hand, you know,” Alain told him humbly, realizing this indeed was a tedious task.

Alain had always been a firm believer in “friendships in unlikely places, unlikely faces,” in spite of never having made friends with a random person he met. Alas, he seldom even met random people. It was the same old faces swimming in front of him, all day, every day. But hunting for beads in a quiet reverence, especially when you are not a religious man, will make you want to strike up a conversation with anyone around.

“So,” said Alain, pale eyes roving in search of the tiny buggers, “what purpose does this breaking the bead business serve?”

“When a child is born, he is pure. As he grows various poisons of material life pollute him. Bind him. When one takes the name of God, one is breaking away those bonds like we broke that chain.”

It sounded like a rehearsed answer to Alain, but nevertheless an interesting one. “And collecting them?”

“Graced by God, even poison becomes refined. We must recollect what it was like to be pure, when we were born. We must reform, become whole again as He made us. There are many realities. In all of them – “

“Aha! Sorry – found two.”

“Well done, your Grace.”

Alain wondered if that was sarcasm the ner’ang used. But he doubted it. The dull drawl of his voice left no space for sarcasm, or anything else, really. In fact the priest's lips hardly seemed to move when he spoke. It was like a poor ventriloquist were operating his lips. It sounded eerily like the voice of someone who had been separated from an integral part of himself, the spark which in humans –

“You are a magus?” Alain asked. It was a hunch.

Mora nodded serenely, putting another bead into the sack.

“Placated?”

Another nod. But Alain, through his mageic, could sense the man’s heart pounding harder.

“What kind?” Alain pressed.

“A Seer,” replied Mora.

“Which Ations House?”

“Toechurner Lawns, the one in Charmat.”

“And you rode to a ner’ang. Impressive. Er. I thought mages were . . . unholy in the eyes of the Holder.”

“I have been placated. I am now His as any of us are.”

After this there was silence till all beads were gathered but one. “There are fifty four here,” Mora counted the contents of their sack. “There are supposed to be fifty five.”

“Maybe your count is off,” said Alain. “Either way, fifty four sounds good to me. I am the King, and I have other matters to attend to.”

“Your will, your Grace.” The priest bowed deeply. 

Actually Alain had kept one bead for himself, in a superficial pocket of his splendid coat. He did not know exactly why. Maybe as a sign of defiance to the Holder, that even in sanctity he could be a rebel. Maybe he wanted to feel like a rebel, and this was one of the few small opportunities he got to act one. Get into the head of his enemy, that Parush, eh? Maybe he just wasn’t cut out to do things proper. Or maybe . . . he wanted to remember that conversation. As a reminder of how little he really knew.

Maybe the revolutionaries were right. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be king, either.

His boots clapped against the floor as he began to walk out.

“Wheel of blood.”

A chill crept up his organs. Alain wheeled around. High priest Mora had gone rigid, the sack of beads clasped tight in his hand. His eyes began to roll wildly in their sockets; they could have been an orrock’s eyes and you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

“Pardon?” said Alain.

“Wheel of blood,” Mora hissed. His voice – or the voice of the creature that had become him – was low, so low Alain should not have been able to hear it, but it seemed to echo against the plain black walls of the temple. “Wheel of blood. Wheel of blood. Wheel of blood.”

“Are you alright?” Alain’s own muscles had become hard.

“Wheel of vengeance. Wheel of remorse. Eye of white. Eye of gait.”

Then high priest Mora began to shake like a leaf, and then his legs gave away, and the sack left his hold, and the beads they had so diligently collected were spilled again.

Hey there. How you doin'?