“Tell me,” he said, looking at my aura. He never squinted or strained or looked as if it took much effort when he did, incidentally, nor did his eyes take on any strange gaze; he’d look at it as you or I would scan the sky for weather. I only knew when he was doing it by where he looked. “Tell me about when you knew you didn’t want to be a warrior.”

“Knew I didn’t want to be a warrior? I never knew such a thing.”

I stayed in the office late that night to finish the letters—the one to Esora-e probably the most awkward, tentative thing I’ve ever written in my life, the one to my mother much easier but still very hard—and directed them to be sent them off with the early-morning semanakraseyeni wing-courier. Personal business, yes, but, when I thought about it, did the Yeoli and Arkan taxpayer not own me anyway?

Then I took Kallijas and Niku into one of the very private rooms in the Imperial chambers.

“Have you talked to anyone else about it? Family, friends?”

“No one. I couldn’t bring myself.”

“You need others as well as me. Your family, your spouses, your friends, do they know about your foreknowledge?”

“My mother, one of my wives and one of my husbands do.”

“What would they feel and think, if they knew what you now do, about it?”

Somehow, this made me want to breathe deep and hard. “The first thing to do—you are doing it already, good. Breathe. Keep it flowing, like water. When did you last drink?” He went away and came back with a large cup of water and made me drain it dry, though I had not thought I was thirsty. He touched the top of my head and the spot between my legs again. “See that river of light between my fingers. Feel it. As well you must open yourself.”

“More than I already have? You have my great secret, and how long have I been here—a twentieth?”

[Niku:]

Another letter to Piatsri I can’t send.

Last night, we had to pick Chevenga up off his desk again, past midnight. I wanted him badly, I still do, and now I have to wait another day.

I hate this. I knew it would be this way the moment he talked about going back to Arko about that fahkad statue. Why do you think I broke that shkavi sideboard when he came back ah-kah from the Bring Back Chevenga people boozing him up to get him to sign?

My children, his children, had a father. They fikken don’t, any more. Again.