The plush Azanian-woven pile tickled against the bruised soles of his feet.
A fair reward, after a quarter-league of merciless flagstones. It was the kind of softness that only boundless silver can purchase, and Alpheo savoured every single stride of it.
To left and right the great assembly looked on in absolute breathless silence. The Yarzat loyalists and the Yarzat betrayers standing shoulder to shoulder, the sullen lords of Herculia, the newly bent men of Oizen, all of them watching his passage with faces carved out of impassive stone, giving up nothing of the treason or the terror sitting in their bellies.
Alpheo knew their minds without needing to ask after them.
The proud old bloodlines seethed at the sight of him, as they always did. Their pride had forever come first where utility ought to have held the reins, and it would cost them everything in the end for their inability to accept what never was.
