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somehow, a purity of image I can see that comes from the deepest part of you. It is as if when I stare at you in the mirror I see you as a young girl, untouched and unmarked by time, care or worry.’
    Bnak would tell her this so often that quite soon it had become a ritual. But no matter how often he said it Miira made no reply. She would merely smile the soft and dreamy smile she allowed only him to see, the smile he had seen while he was on his sojourn among the Shinju.
    Three months after a son was born to Miira, Bnak’s enemies invaded their villa in the gray and dismal hour before dawn. They slew the guards Bnak had posted and stole the infant from his crib in the small room adjacent to where his parents slept.
    They offered Bnak a choice. Either he could resign his post and leave the capital with his son safe in his arms or he could have the infant delivered blue-faced and lifeless at his doorstep.
    Now Bnak knew what would happen to the government should he be forced to flee the city. The plots would multiply until those who sought to take his place would be overwhelmed. The governmental leaders would be slain, the city – the entire nation for that matter – would be thrown into turmoil and confusion. Rivers of blood would run through the capital and the gods only knew where or when they would stop.
    To stay and fight for reform or to flee and see all that he had worked for crumble to dust and blood. This was no decision that he could make on his own. So he did what he always did with questions knotty and of high import: he consulted Miira.
    Though she was beside herself with grief, still she counseled him to follow the dictates of his heart. (‘I often wonder,’ Moichi said, interrupting the tale briefly, ‘whether she was intuitive enough to have known that Bnak’s goal of a united country was but an unattainable dream of a man of good heart and soul.’) ‘My heart and your heart are one, Miira,’ Bnak said with tears in his eyes. ‘Tell me what I should do.’
    â€˜What does your heart say?’ she asked, holding his hands. She looked deep into his eyes now with that purity he had come to know so well. ‘The truth now.’
    â€˜Loyalty is everything to me. That’s the truth of it, beloved,’ he said. ‘If I betray them, if I betray my loyalty, then I am no man. I am nothing.’
    Miira was unsurprised. This purity of purpose was what she loved best about him, what reminded her most of the best of her own people. ‘Do as you will, husband,’ she said with a voice like the tolling of a bell, ‘for I fear either way our son is lost to us for ever.’
    She meant, of course, that their son’s abductors had no intention of letting him live. They were desperate men, desiring power above all else. What was the life of one infant – especially a half-breed – to them? Less than nothing. They would, Miira feared, simply take pleasure in his death.
    Bnak clapped his fists over his ears but it was too late – the bitter truth was branded into his brain and he could do naught else but to follow Miira’s advice and do what he would. He had to forget his son ever existed, wipe all the precious memories away. Start over.
    Could he carry out such a heinous but requisite task?
    He knew he must.
    He defied his enemies, the enemies of the state. He remained loyal, he remained a man. But at what price?
    The next morning, as they had threatened, their son appeared at the gateway to their villa, strangled with a blue cord.
    After the requisite three day mourning period, Bnak returned to his duties at the ministry. He pulled in all the favors he had been hoarding for years and the directive went out across the length and breadth of the capital: find the abductors, the murderers.
    But on his way home that night he was ambushed, his guards slain, and he was brutally murdered. At almost the same instant life was seeping out of him,