“I am not sent, as you put it.” The dwenda knelt beside him. “But you do have your petitioners for my favor. There are those, it seems, who have no wish to see your grim but still rather beautiful face get slashed to ribbons in squabbles of petty honor.”
He raised his hand again, palm-down, fingers lightly flexed. The gesture blocked light from Ringil’s eyes.
“Wait,
It took Ringil a moment to understand that the dwenda had obeyed. He could not read the sudden flurry of expression that chased across the unhuman face as it hung there. He thought he saw impatience, but impatience with whom it was hard to tell.
“Well?”
“Tell me.” Faintly. Ringil’s voice was almost emptied out, no stronger now than his limbs. “One thing, I need to know. It’s important.”
The palm hovered. “Yes?”
“What’s your name? We fucked all night, and I never asked.”
Another hesitation, but finally it gave way to a curious smile. “Very well. You may call me Seethlaw, if that will serve.”
“Oh, it will.” And now Ringil smiled as well. “It will.”
Silence dripped between them. The dwenda’s palm stayed where it was.
“You mind telling me why now you suddenly want to know my name?” it asked him finally.
Ringil nodded weakly. Summoned some last fragments of breath and made his lips move.
“Simple enough,” he whispered. “A cheap fuck doesn’t need to have a name. But I like to know what to call the men I’m going to kill.”
Then the dwenda’s hand came down, touched his face, lifted gently off again. It seemed to lift consciousness away from him as well, like a delicate mask he’d been wearing and hadn’t noticed until now.
The last thing he saw, as his own vision inked out, was the dwenda’s gaze as it raised its head to face the windows; the featureless empty eyes, now washed the color of blood by the rising sun.
She went up to the palace at first light.
Earlier would have invited arrest. While the lower echelons of palace life—the lighting of stoves, the cleaning of acres of marble flooring—got under way well before dawn, courtiers did not present themselves before breakfast. It was a rule of thumb with strong precedent. Two years ago, a provincial governor had made the mistake of bringing his concerns before Jhiral while the Emperor was still in bed. The occasion was a local revolt by resettled eastern nomads who’d jumped their reservation and reverted to banditry against the trade caravans, so there was some justification for the urgency, at least in the eyes of the governor’s special envoy, who rode up to the main gate at the head of a cavalry squad just as the sun was rising, and started yelling for the Emperor’s immediate attention.
