Onn, the man with the voice like the living sun, was the last of Scyrr’s lieutenants to approach. “Trust,” he said. “Mastery.” His teeth were sharp and he bit hard without even knowing what it was that he did. He looked up and Scyrr’s eyes met his own, smiling, thinking that the pain was pleasure.

Scyrr's body fell to the floor with a sound like a sigh.

The assembly stepped back and there was silence for a while, spreading in waves from the tableau of the sprawled body of Scyrr and the still-kneeling figure of Onn like the opposite of sound rather than its absence. Above, the artificial eyes continued to stare.

Sound, when it returned, began as a hiss of the simultaneous intake of breath by the throng, a whisper that rose to a murmur. Meyr could hear the deeper notes under the muttering that told her what she already knew from the taste of the air. There was an ugly tension here, the sublimated bloodlust that had always attended the brotherhood of the Seventeen was now on the verge of eruption. There had been a perverse beauty in the energy of the marked men, bound and refined by their own exquisite direction and awareness in the person of Scyrr. With the keystone of the arch they made removed, they would inevitably collapse into mere violence. She allowed herself a brief moment of regret, because the passing of all beautiful things is to be regretted, no matter how evil - but she took a step back nonetheless, and then another and another, gliding away into the shadows while no one watched. The crowd was shocked, looking for direction, but she could not provide it as the figure she was without legitimating what had come before. The walls closed about her unseen by any but her select retinue.

In the hall, Onn still knelt by his fallen leader, tears streaming down his cut cheeks as blank realisation without understanding came. He remained kneeling with his head bowed as the sound rose to a yell and a scream and he did not resist as they fell upon him and tore him to pieces.