Their murmuring voices were a constant roll of distant thunder.
The Emperor was dead, and whether they mourned or celebrated, no one
would remain unmoved.
At his side, Ana held his hand. Calin, in a pale mourning robe and a
bright red sash, looked dumbstruck. His eyes moved restlessly over
everything. Danat wondered what the boy found so overwhelming: the sheer
animal mass of the crowd, the realization that Danat himself was no
longer emperor regent but actually emperor, as Calin himself would be
one day, or the fact that Otah was gone. All three, most likely.
Danat rose and stepped to the front of the dais. The crowd grew louder
and then eerily silent. Danat drew a sheaf of papers from his sleeve.
His farewell to his father.
"We say that the flowers return every spring," Danat said, "but that is
a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that
renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient
vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and
untested.
"The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen
forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced.
It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of
renewal is paid.
"And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us."
Danat paused, the voices of the whisperers carrying his words out as far
as they would travel. As he waited, he caught sight of Idaan and Cehmai
standing before the pyre. The old poet looked somber. Idaan's long face
carried an expression that might have been amusement or anger or the
distance of being lost in her own thoughts. She was unreadable, as she
always was. He saw, not for the first time, how much she and Otah
resembled each other.
The rain tapped on the page before him as if to recall his attention.
The ink was beginning to blur. Danat began again.
"My father founded an empire, something no man living can equal. My
father also took a wife, raised children, struggled with all that it
meant to have us, and there are any number of men and women in the
cities or in Galt, Eymond, Bakta, Eddensea, or the world as a whole who
have taken that road as well.
"My father was born, lived his days, and died. In that he is like all of
us. All of us, every one, without exception. And so it is for that,
perhaps, that he most deserves to be honored."
The ink bled, Danat's words fading and blurring. He looked up at the low
sky and thought of his father's letters. Page after page after page of
saying what could never be said. He didn't know any longer what he'd
hoped to achieve with his own speech. He folded the pages and put them
back in his sleeve.
"I loved my father," Danat said. "I miss him."
He proceeded slowly down the wide stairs to the base of the pyre. A
servant whose face he didn't know presented Danat with a lit torch. He
took it, and walked slowly around the base of the pyre, cool raindrops
dampening his face, his hair. He smelled of soft rain. Danat touched