Yadovír walked home alone, heavy with regret, not even bothering to push through the crowd still seething after the execution. His only comfort was imagining all sorts of fantastic ways in which he would someday be able to torment Sabíana.

“Sudar Yadovír!”

He looked up absently, not recognizing the voice. When he saw Kalún, he hurried to the priest, then bowed before him and kissed his hand in the customary greeting.

“You look as if you were the one condemned today, Yadovír.” The priest chuckled. “Come and dine with me. I think a hearty meal will lift your spirits.”

Inwardly, Yadovír groaned at the thought of a meal with a man who chronically starved himself.

“Oh, Otar Kalún, I am honored, honored!” he said, assuming his habitual subservience. He was surprised to see the priest’s face frost over with scorn.

“Don’t pander to me. It is beneath you. I invite you as an equal. Act as one.”

Yadovír’s heart skipped a beat, as much from exhilaration as from embarrassment. He had never before been acknowledged as an equal by a third-reacher.

Yadovír was amazed at the interior of Kalún’s spacious third-reach house. It was bare. Stone walls, a few wooden tables, some benches, and nothing else, even in the expansive hearth-hall.

“Otar Kalún, you live so simply. I admire that.”

Kalún smiled. “My family is among the oldest in Vasyllia. It does not follow, however, that I should live extravagantly. I have always prized abstemiousness over excess. I do not believe in even moderate enjoyment of physical pleasures. I seek something else. Dare I say, something higher?”

Yadovír felt a sharp thrill at the words. There was an intangible quality to the priest’s tone that Yadovír knew well. This man was a fanatic. Yadovír had uses for such a man.

“How sad that more do not follow such a path,” said Yadovír. “Certainly, the refugees do not.”

“How true. Until I saw these Nebesti, I did not know human beings were capable of swallowing so much food at once.”

“You will be happy to know that the Dumar is considering keeping the refugees restricted to the first reach. What with the pestilence rearing its head.”

“Yes, I am glad to hear it. What is perhaps less encouraging, however, is the Dumar’s continued inability to stop the spread of rumor. Have you heard the latest stories about our mysterious invaders?”

“How they flay their victims alive and brutalize their women? Yes, yes, I have heard. Nothing particularly interesting in that, is there? It is a tactic as old as time itself to intimidate an enemy with propaganda. It would not surprise me if a few of the refugees are in the pay of the invader.”

“Now that is interesting. I had not considered it.”

Kalún’s formality had begun to soften. Yadovír wanted to rush forward with his characteristic enthusiasm, but this fish needed to be boiled slowly, or it would jump out of the pot.

Kalún served Yadovír with his own hands—there was not a servant to be seen anywhere—from a heavy iron pot. The red lentil stew proved to be surprisingly filling and very well-seasoned, even to Yadovír’s pampered tastes. Heartened by the food and the conversation, Yadovír decided on a tentative attack.

“I was pleased, Otar Kalún, that we agreed on so many points during the trial of Voran. How shocking to find so little intelligence among any of the other counselors.”

“Indeed. Now that you mention it, I had intended to speak to you on this matter.”

It took all of Yadovír’s honed self-possession not to jump in excitement.

“I hope that we understand each other,” said Kalún, lowering his voice, though they were the only people in the entire house. “What I say to you must never leave this room. I do not play court games with you. I know that what you are about to hear will be worth a great deal of money if you decide to betray me. I trust you will not do that.”

Kalún’s eyes bored into him, assessing, then the priest visibly relaxed. Yadovír assumed he passed the test.

“You were present at the execution, yes? What would you say if I suggested that such punishment is not sufficient?”

“What do you mean, Otar?”

“I believe that we are all at fault for the profanation of the Temple. I believe we must all pay the price. In fact, I welcome the invasion of Vasyllia.”

Something twisted uncomfortably in Yadovír’s gut. This was not how the conversation was supposed to go.

“You cannot mean that.”

“I do, Sudar Yadovír, I assure you. There is more. Vasyllia must be purified by fire. I believe Adonais has provided a refining fire in these invaders.”

“Otar Kalún, we do not yet know how the Dar’s troops fared against them in the open field. Is it not perhaps a bit early to speak of Vasyllia’s fall?”

Kalun smiled knowingly. “I have no doubt the Dar’s armies will be routed by the invader. It would not surprise me if Vasyllia itself would be under siege in a matter of days. And I intend to be the hand that wields the invaders as a tool for the purification of our great city.”

Yadovír’s blood froze. He had been mistaken. Kalún was no mere fanatic; he was a madman.

“Otar, what you suggest is brave, bold. But surely all other measures must be considered before such drastic action?”

Kalún’s manner snapped back to formal. The conversation was at an end.

Yadovír hardly remembered how he managed to walk back to his house in the second reach. He stood before his door with its gilded hinges and couldn’t bring himself to raise a hand to push it open. He shouldn’t be this disappointed. This was just one minor setback amid hundreds in his life. But he couldn’t help himself. He was devastated.

The door opened before him, as though of its own volition. Immediately, the scarlet hangings and golden braziers seemed to leap out of the house at his eyes, laughing at him. You can pretend all you like, they mocked, but you’ll never be a real noble. You can wear silver in your ears, drip lavender oil into your hair, collect painted chests from Negoda and ceramic tiled stoves from beyond the mountains to your heart’s content. Go ahead, hang that ancient Vasylli suit of armor in your bedchamber. Hang ten of them! What does it matter? You’ll always remain just outside the reach of real power.

“Yadovír? Are you ill?”

Yadovír was so lost in self-pity, he had actually thought that the doors opened themselves. He didn’t even see Otar Gleb there.

“What are you doing in my house? I’ve had enough of priests for today.”

“Ah,” whispered Otar Gleb with that crook in his smile that endeared so many. “You need to sit by the hearth with me, my friend. I’ve brought mead.”

“I don’t drink that first-reacher stuff, you know that.”

“Today, you do,” said Gleb, and dragged Yadovír into the house and slammed the door behind him. Gleb led him through the hallways like an invalid, with a hand as strong as a cohort elder’s. He passed all the smaller rooms, making his way to the end of the corridor, into the noble-sized hearth-hall, Yadovír’s pride and joy. It had more wall-sized Nebesti embroideries of High Beings than Otchigen’s famed collection. It had higher-backed oak chairs than the Dar himself. It even had a chimney, possibly the only one in Vasyllia. But today, it all had a sheen of falsity. Like a doll’s house magicked into abnormally large proportions.

But the two cushions on the stone floor, a hearth crackling and sparking, and a low table laden with a tankard of mead? That was perfection.

“How do you always know?” asked Yadovír.

Otar Gleb guffawed into his eagle-beak nose and said nothing, only pushed Yadovír by the shoulders down on the larger of the two velvet-lined cushions. Yadovír wanted to melt into it, to dissolve into nothingness. But there was mead to be had. Gleb knew how much Yadovír missed it. You could only bear so much of the wine of the rich.

“Gleb, what is wrong with your chief priest? Why does he have such a hard time being human?”

“Ahhhh,” Gleb shook his head as he exhaled a long, tired breath. “Poor Otar Kalún. Do you know what’s wrong with him? He never, not once, allowed himself to sit by the hearth on a cushion to sip the best mead in Vasyllia.”