A man's voice from the roof interrupted her. "I don't give a good god's damn what your paper says, there's no way you're-" The man cut off with a yelp.

Kip looked up just as a man plunged past their balcony. He landed far below with a huge splash in the bay, and Kip saw him struggle to the surface, spluttering, his rich clothes billowing in the water. He started crying for help.

"This is outrage-!" someone started to shout, then Kip saw another man plunge past the balcony. He splashed in the bay, almost on top of the governor.

There was a gigantic burst of light. "So help me, the next one of you isn't going to land in water," Gavin said, his voice ringing.

Kip expected to hear gunshots-surely the governor had guards-but there was nothing. They took it.

That's my father. That's my father?

Gavin imposed his will, and the world took it.

"So," Kip said, feeling very much like the men floundering in the bay beneath him, barely able to swim and desperate to be pulled out. "So. Will. That's next, right?"

Chapter 59

Corvan Danavis approached Garriston as the sun set. The outer walls of Garriston, of course, had long ago been demolished. During the Prisms' War-Corvan never thought of it as the False Prism's War-he had set men to working on rebuilding them, but there just hadn't been time. The outer walls had been built to shield a city of hundreds of thousands. At the time of the war, there had been perhaps ninety thousand. There had been no way to protect them all.

The irrigation canals that could have been watering all the land between the outer walls and the inner walls were broken, except for one or two. But the inner walls still stood, as did the Ladies.

The Ladies, mostly now stripped of associations with the goddess Anat, guarded each gate. Each was an enormous white statue, incorporated into the wall itself. Each had represented an aspect of Anat: the Guardian was the colossus standing astride the entrance to the bay; the Mother guarded the south gate, heavily pregnant, defiant, dagger bared; the Hag guarded the west gate, leaning heavily on a staff; the Lover lay across the river gate to the east. For reasons Corvan had never understood, the Lover was depicted perhaps in her thirties while the Mother was depicted as very young, perhaps still in her teens. Each was carved of the most expensive, faintly translucent white marble, such as was only available in Paria-Orholam alone knew how they'd shipped so much this far. The statues, luckily, had been coated in the finest sealed yellow luxin-all of one piece. Astounding work. The city had been invaded at least three times, and still the Ladies were unmarked, even after the fiery devastation of the great conflagration.

Anat, the Lady of the Desert, the Fiery Mistress, the sub-red, had been the goddess of all hot passions: wrath, protection, vengeance, possessive love, and furious lovemaking. When Lucidonius had taken the city for Orholam and eliminated the cult, his followers had wanted to tear down the statues, which, granted, would have taken some powerful drafters. Famously, Lucidonius had stopped them, saying, "Tear down only what is false." Several times in the intervening centuries, zealous Prisms had wanted to tear down the pagan relics anyway, but each time the city had threatened war. Until the Prisms' War, Garriston had had enough military power that a threat of going to war with her was daunting.

Corvan had never approached the Lover at sunset. As with the other Ladies, her body was incorporated into the gate. She lay on her back, back arched over the river, feet planted, her knees forming a tower on one bank, hands entwined in her hair, elbows rising to form the tower on the other bank. She was clad only in veils, and before the war a portcullis could be lowered from her arched body into the river, its iron and steel hammered into shape so that they looked like a continuation of her veils. But in the war the portcullis had been broken and never replaced.

The sight of her still took Corvan's breath. With the sun setting, the thin yellow luxin sealing the statue, usually nearly invisible, was set alight. The yellow was like golden bronze skin, fading slowly as Corvan walked and the sun sank, finally leaving only a welcoming silhouette-a wife waiting abed for her long-absent husband.

It sent a pang through him. He could never come here without thinking of Qora, his first wife. Liv's mother. Qora had greeted him like that once, lying abed, clad only in veils, deliberately mimicking the Lover when Corvan had returned to her. Even now, eighteen years later, grief and remembered desire and joy and love twined in his breast. Corvan had remarried in Rekton, two years after Qora's death, but marrying Ell had been more to give Liv a mother than for love. Three years later, Ell had been murdered by an assassin who'd finally tracked Corvan down. Corvan had considered moving, but the alcaldesa begged him to stay, and Kip was there, so he'd stayed. But he'd not remarried again, not even with the overwhelming number of women for every man in Rekton and the constant carping of the would-be matchmakers. He couldn't love as he had loved before. Losing another woman he loved as much as he'd loved Qora would kill him, and it wasn't fair to ask another woman to act as mother to his daughter if he wasn't willing to love her with his whole heart. Corvan no longer had a whole heart to give.

He trudged on, past farms with their thin but ripening crops of spelt and barley, trying not to look at the Lover stretched luxuriously before him. Reaching the gate, which opened through the spilling tresses of her hair, he joined the line of men and women heading back into the city, brushing past those heading back out for the night. He kept his eyes down as he passed between two Ruthgari guards who had still been on their mothers' knees during the war. They were barely paying any attention to the stream of people passing by them, however. One was leaning against the Lover's cascading hair, his foot propped against the rippling stone, his straw petasos, the characteristic Ruthgari broad-brimmed hat, thrown back to hang from his neck now that the sun wasn't beating down on them. "… think he's here for?" he was asking.

"Scorch me if I know, but they say he threw Governor Crassos into the bay. I suppose we'll…"

Corvan couldn't hear any more without pausing, and pausing meant inviting attention. Inviting attention might mean making eye contact, and with Corvan's red-haloed eyes, that wasn't a good idea.

So someone powerful has come to Garriston, but who was powerful enough to throw a governor in the bay? Corvan didn't know anything about this Governor Crassos, but the Ruthgari royal family had half a dozen young princes. Most likely one of them had been sent to help oversee the withdrawal from Garriston. No one else would dare throw a Ruthgari governor into the sea.

An impulsive prince actually might be better for Corvan's purposes than a comfortable governor. Harder to deal with at first, but more likely to prepare for war, and war was what Corvan was bringing, like it or not.

As he passed through the city, he found himself analyzing it like the general he used to be. King Garadul might be a monster, but the Ruthgari were the occupiers. Who would the people of Garriston join, and would they join enthusiastically or not? As Corvan walked, he paid particular attention to the Ruthgari soldiers. At times, the men walked singly, running errands for their commanders or simply heading back to barracks or out to taverns. He saw a soldier get jostled on accident by a vendor closing his carpet stall who backed up too quickly. The soldier pushed past like it was an annoyance, but never checked his back. The vendor, a native Tyrean, apologized respectfully, but without fear.