Meoraq smiled faintly. “Xi’Matezh.”

The exarch rocked back and stared at him with such astonishment that Meoraq could not resist twisting the knife. He leaned in even closer, close enough to be threat as much as insult, and smiled. “Seen in that light, I haven’t asked for too damned much at all, have I?”

“That will take…days!” Ylsathoc sputtered, backing away again. “A brace of days! Two braces at the least!”

“Three is far more likely.”

“Winter is all but at the gate! The cold season—”

“I know about cold.”

“You will never make it there and back across the mountains before the snows!”

“I do not expect to.”

“You cannot mean to leave your House empty so long!” Ylsathoc grappled visibly with the humility he had been warned to demonstrate, but outrage soon defeated him. “It is the founding House of Uyane’s bloodline, the line of that great oracle’s descent! Its steward champions all Xeqor, who champions all Yroq, who sits at the very heart of all that is left of this land! Where is your sense of duty?”

“I have a duty to more than one father,” Meoraq replied. “He who sired my clay would surely understand that I serve He who hammered my soul first. Sheul has called me to a pilgrimage. Have my things waiting at Eastgate by fifth-hour and if you dare to protest just once more, I swear to you here in the sight of Sheul that your father will receive a note for the cost of your funeral along with the rest of your expenses.”

Ylsathoc looked down at the list and up again. He opened his mouth.

Meoraq waited, ready to draw. He was well aware of his own propensity to be impatient, particularly with those of the lesser castes, and he would even admit to the spitefulness Ylsathoc had alleged (although never to the other man’s face), but in spite of his divine right and his frequent threats, he had never killed anyone just for rudeness. Scarred a few, though. And he’d by-Gann be scarring this one if he said one more word.

But Ylsathoc only sighed and shut his mouth again. He bent his neck in a sullen sort of bow and swept out past the returning abbot, reading his list and muttering about impropriety to himself in much-offended and very soft tones.

The abbot waited in the doorway while the boy he’d brought labored his food-laden tray over to Meoraq at the table and poured the nai. Then he said, without reproach, “It is a mark of great favor to be born under the sign of the Blade, honored one.”

Meoraq grunted and broke open his bread. It had been stuffed with gruu, fried in fat to a crunchy paste and should have been very good, but Meoraq could not eat without thinking of the previous night’s trial and how a few rows of gruu, more or less, had killed a Sheulteb. All things served God and Meoraq knew he’d done His work well, but still it made the bread bitter this morning.

“Fewer yet are called to be Sheulek,” the abbot continued.

“No one feels that privilege more deeply than I, priest.”

“But do you feel the privilege, honored one, that He continues to show you? Not one Sheulek in sixty will ever stand as steward of his bloodline or Lord of his House. You are the Sword He raises highest.”

“No,” said Meoraq, tossing his inedible bread down on the tray. “I am the Sword He has sheathed! And if that is His will, I accept it, but before I submit to that end, I will hear it in His own voice.”

The abbot’s boy gaped at him. The abbot himself merely bowed.

Meoraq looked at his untouched food, then drank off his nai and banged the cup down empty. “I am done with this,” he said brusquely. “I am taking the rooftop. See that I am not disturbed.”

“Yes, honored one.”

“I want to wash first,” said Meoraq, which was not the truth. He did not want the bath; he wanted the woman whose task it would be to bathe him and he didn’t care who knew it.

The abbot bowed again, silent in his assent. He gestured to his boy, who took up the tray. They left, shutting the door softly behind them.

Meoraq sat alone, staring at the ceiling and counting his breaths.

“Fuck,” he said, and went to the roof without his bath. He still wanted the woman, but he suspected he needed to pray.

* * *

Somewhere between the third hour and the fourth, the rooftop door scraped open.

Stretched out on a bench to watch the clouds roll by, Meoraq raised the samr he had been idly tapping against his boot and called, “I do not wish to be disturbed.”

“I know.”

Meoraq sat up and sheathed his sword. “Nkosa,” he said, surprised.

“I shouldn’t be here,” his blood-kin admitted, still lingering by the stair. “And if you don’t want to see me—”

Meoraq gestured at the bench beside him, his spines forward in invitation. “How did you get up here?”

“I relieved the guard below,” said Nkosa, settling himself uncomfortably on the very edge of the bench. “And as soon as his real relief shows up, he or I or all three of us are probably going to be whipped. I just…I heard about Rasozul.”

Meoraq grunted and looked inanely at the rooftop wall, which had nothing at all to show him. “I envy him,” he said. “He sees our true Father’s face tonight.”

“Well…I’m sorry anyway. I know you were looking forward to seeing him at home.”

Meoraq glanced at him and frowned at the wall some more. “I will see him in the Halls of Sheul.”

“Until then,” said Nkosa quietly, “I’m sorry.”

The wind blew.

Meoraq’s stiff spines lowered some. “Thank you,” he said. He wasn’t sure that was the thing to say, but he didn’t know what was. He’d killed many men in his time of service, but he had never had to suffer a loss of his own.

Nkosa tapped at Meoraq’s knee with the backs of his knuckles, awkwardly proving his sympathies, then took his hand back. “Everyone’s talking this morning. They said that exarch was here to appoint you steward?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t let him?”

“I had to pray.”

“About what?”

Meoraq flicked his spines and stared at the wall.

“Now they’re saying you’re leaving for Xi’Matezh?”

“Yes.”

“Xi’Matezh?”

“Yes.”

Nkosa waited, his head tipped to encourage further explanations that never came. At last, he blew out a rude breath and said, “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, O mighty Sword of God, but if you want to kill yourself, you can just jump off the wall.”

Meoraq tried and failed to catch the laugh that coughed out of him. He eyed his cousin, rubbed his snout, and sighed.

“Marriage isn’t all bad,” said Nkosa.

“That would depend on who you get,” Meoraq muttered.

“At least you’ll have a choice.”

“For all it matters.” Meoraq sat up straighter and looked at his blood-kin. “I don’t want a choice, ‘Kosa. In fact, you could say that I am going to Xi’Matezh so that the choice is made for me.”

“I could.” Nkosa flicked his spines in polite incomprehension. “And why in Gann’s grey hell would I say that?”

“Sheul lit that fire in the sky for me,” Meoraq said, stating it as plainly as such a statement could be made. “I thought it was to bring me here, but even when I first saw it, I knew it didn’t lie directly in the line of Tothax. It was further east.”

Nkosa frowned, uneasy. “In the line of Xi’Matezh, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t possibly know that. You can’t sit on the roof in Xheoth and know where Xi’Matezh is.”

“I know,” Meoraq insisted.

“Fine, then point to it.”

Meoraq looked out at the wildlands, his spines low, scowling. “I can find it.”

Nkosa snorted. “So could I. East to the mountains and over into Gedai, then east to the Ruined Reach and up along the end of the world until you trip over the shrine. That’s the thing about legends, everyone knows how they go. But don’t sit there and tell me the burning tower was pointing the way to Xi’Matezh because you can’t know that.”