Author's Preface
Down a further corridor bustling with statues of knotty wood and kneaded stone, cut and sanded into unlikely and often unpleasant configurations.
Umin recognizing the belly-churning depiction of Soubra's Hundred Forms of Grief to Felicity .
Opening into a curtained chamber all crimson and coal hangings. The air piquant with disquieting perfumes.
"Pyna! My ghastly morsel! What have you brought me?"
A baritone, greasy like a rolling barrel brim-full of fish-oil.
I have brought you nothing, seneschal.
He is mine and mine and mine.
Alone.
The words soft and colloquial, carry an undertone unreadable, which prods Umin with an edged frisson of fleeting terror.
"Mmm. As you say, my bloodless little sweetling."
A touch of passing displeasure darkens the figure's reply.
His bunch-backed girth menacing, like that of a yoked oxen, aspect unseen and turned away, fussing with something in a clatter of pewter pots and brassy kitchen receptacles.
"Yes! It will gleam black against the brass! Sepet! Bring the ur-saffron on the copper service. Where is Thimblebrom?"
Someone concealed behind the near folds of incarnadine and theater-scrim thick drapery offers an unintelligible, muffling reply.