Vehm followed Kimia's eyes.

“Breakfast.”

“It is afternoon.”

“Zhen lunch.”

“You're drinking again.”

“Slowly.”

Kimia looked at the bottle. He had a point.

By Vehm's standards, this was almost temperance.

“Can I come in?”

Vehm stepped aside.

“Always.”

Kimia entered.

His room smelled of vodka, old books, pipe smoke from someone else's visit, laundry, and the particular stale human - or yinglet - smell produced when a person spent too much time living in one room.

She sat.

Vehm poured himself perhaps two fingers into a glass.

“Want one?”

“No.”

Vehm stopped.

“Zhat bad?”

“Yes.”

He put the bottle down.

“What happened?”

Kimia told him.

Neurologist. Evaluation. Memory. Perception. Reality.

By the time she finished, Vehm had stopped smiling.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Few hours.”

Vehm drank.

Kimia looked at him.

“I don't want to be alone until zhen.”

The sentence emerged before she could improve it.

Vehm nodded.

“Zhen don't.”

That was all. No philosophy. No joke.

Kimia relaxed slightly.

She spent the next hour in Vehm's room.

Warm. Contained.

The kilcane gradually receded from its peak.

Vehm drank slowly enough that he never completely crossed from sober into drunk.

They spoke.

At first about nothing.

Then about the Diet.

Then, somehow, about the divine.

Vehm sat sideways in a large chair with the glass resting against one knee, partially curled into a ball.

“Do you zhink Alsper hears people?”

Kimia looked at him.

“Why?”

“You pray.”

“Sometimes.”

“Zhat wasn't my question.”

Kimia considered.

“I don't know.”

Vehm nodded.

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“Because if you said yes with certainty, I'd distrust you.”

“What if I said no?”

“I'd distrust you for a different reason.”

Kimia leaned back.

“So zhe correct answer is ignorance.”

“Zhe most respectable zheological position.”

“Zhat sounds cowardly.”

“It is.”

Vehm drank.

Kimia looked toward the window.

“What if prayer is just talking to yourself?”

Vehm shrugged.

“Zhen perhaps zhat self needed talking to.”

“Zhat sounds like Kalgkur.”

“I'll take it.”

Kimia thought of the Akalosi philosopher again.

The selves. The actor. The observer. The self imagined by others. The governing voice.

“If zhere are several versions of you inside you,” she said, “which one prays?”

Vehm stared into the vodka.

“Zhe one afraid enough to ask for help.”

Kimia looked at him.

No joke.

That stayed with her.

Vehm noticed.

“What?”

“Nozhing.”

“You made a face.”

“Everyone keeps saying zhat.”

“Maybe you have an expressive face.”

“I am zhe ruler of Peshtul.”

“Parts of Peshtul.”

“Fuck you.”

“Better.”

Kimia smiled.

The conversation continued.

Spirit. Self. Whether divine revelation could be distinguished from madness. Whether revelation that produced kindness mattered differently from revelation that produced violence. Whether Alsper had failed Dinnlan because the prophecy was false or because people had misunderstood what rescue meant.

Vehm's answers were inconsistent.

So were Kimia's.

That made them useful.

Neither was trying to win.

Eventually someone knocked.

A palace servant.

Kimia and Vehm both looked.

“Your Grace?”

“Yes?”

“Doctor Tarkhe is asking for you.”

There.

The time had come.

Kimia's stomach contracted.

Vehm set his glass down.

“You'll be fine.”

Kimia looked at him.

“You don't know zhat.”

“No.”

Better.

She stood.

The kilcane had come down enough that standing no longer felt like a launch.

She adjusted the kaftan.

Smoothed one side.

Then hair.

Tail.

Vehm watched.

“Mask?”

Kimia looked at him.

“Yeah.”

“Good luck.”

“Zhanks.”

The servant escorted her.

The palace seemed different when one was walking toward examination.

Every corridor became measured. Every turn felt like evidence.

Kimia tried not to think this way.

Failed.

Tarkhe waited outside one of the smaller salons.

He looked at her.

“Anything else since we spoke?”