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silence stretched between them until it quivered. Nessaket broke first. “As you will.” Even now forgetting his title, bowing her head more to take him from her sight than in honour.
    She stepped aside as he stepped forward. The chamber beyond held four of her personal guard, tight around the child’s crib, as if in accusation. If Sarmin demanded Daveed’s life four guards could no more save him than the trio of nursing-slaves waiting beneath the lamps.
    The guardsmen at least had the sense to draw aside quickly, lifting the points of their great hachirahs from the carpet. Sarmin leaned over to watch the sleeping boy.
    “He smiles now, they tell me?”
    “For two weeks, and he can tug on Dreshka’s skirts, reach for the vases in their niches, burn his fingers on a hot lamp.” Nessaket joined him, a tight smile escaping her displeasure.
    The boy lay sprawled in sleep, one pudgy arm reaching a fist above his head, sweat plastering dark curls to his temples.
    “Have the council spoken to you again? That snake Azeem?” She flashed Sarmin dark look, eyes hard.
    Had she fought so hard to keep him from the knife he wondered, when tradition ordered all Beyon’s brothers dead? That she might think he would give up his brother’s life to those old men’s demands—that hurt him more than her attacks.
    When each sun set it was always to draw in the same night, that night of the Knife, that night of slit throats and blood across the courtyard. Sarmin’s mother claimed she saved him from that fate, but Beyon had made the same claim. Tuvaini also, and Govnan of the tower. A good act finds many owners while many a sin goes begging.
    “The council speak to me often, mother,” he said. “But I have many councillors and only one brother still living.”
    Sarmin reached to touch those dark curls, to feel the warmth of the child’s skin. Beside him his mother startled, as if to seize his arm. The closest of his guards tightened hands on hilts, the blued steel of their scimitars showing above their scabbards. Nessaket fell back and Sarmin circled a finger amid the dampness of his brother’s hair.
    “Lift him for me.”
    “He’s sleeping,” she said.
    “Even so.”
    And she drew him from his crib, soft and heavy in sleep.
    I need to see him, touch him, feel the living heat rise off his skin.
    Time and again the council called for an end to this line. “He is the son of a traitor,” General Hazran had said. Azeem would not speak of Tuvaini but when Nessaket was mentioned he lowered his head. “She schemes. Even with the most generous interpretation and with the utmost humility, it must be admitted, she schemes.” “Daveed is the son of a traitor and a schemer, and next in line to the throne. He cannot live.” Dinar, Herzu’s priest, knew much and more about death. “Put him to the Knife.”
    And in a thousand ways, in every way except that which mattered most, they were right, those old men. Sarmin took his brother’s tiny hand, holding it between two fingers and a thumb. Enemies, men with antique grudges, men hungry for power, or for the chances that change might bring, they would all stand behind this boy, seek to own him, aim him. The empire lay cracked and the crack had a name.
    “Daveed.” Sarmin closed the fingers of one hand around the baby’s thigh. Soft, and fat, and small.
    She thinks to protect him from me, but this, this touch, hearing him draw breath, the scent of him. This is what keeps him alive.
    “You forget, mother, Daveed is heir to the throne. My heir. I will not see him harmed.”
    “Today he’s your heir. Tomorrow?” She shrugged.
    Tomorrow. Tomorrow is always a puzzle of many parts. Give me a daughter and Daveed stays safe. And that could be an end to it. I would be happy to raise a daughter.
    “You should be with Mesema, mother.” Sarmin watched his brother, refusing to meet their mother’s eyes.
    “She has women aplenty with her. In any case these horse-girls know more about