Chapter four
AfflictionSerried in rows beneath the gilded ceiling of Strom Dogan’s Great Hall the suppurating sufferers lay festering in their sores. Twin white half-moons shone beside Delia’s mouth; to disappear instantly as she smiled at the person for whom she ministered. Pus, vomit, blood, excrement, filth and muck — all were as one to Delia. She bathed foreheads in the approved stiffly starched yellow romantic way; she scraped the muck off the floor and scrubbed the strom’s boards clean.
He, Strom Dogan nal Mellin, having cowered away in his topmost tower with his family, too frightened to risk contamination even in the short distance out of the town, had been hauled out of it by the empress.
The hauling had been done by Tandu.
“You will give orders to your people, and you will he
