Chapter 15: Oathbreakers

I

It was noon at the end of February, and the summer of 156. The snow in the mountains had already melted from the living sun's rays, the Naie flowed more strongly in its bed  because of the onslaught of mountain waters spilling across the plain below Nanporo.

By the tall window sat a woman in the small room of the city, old but strong, wrapped in black. If it weren't for her blonde, gray hair combed on either side of her high forehead, if the long ends of her black cap hadn't curled around her yellowed face, a man would have said that a shaved male head was sitting there. Her face was large, her jaws strong, her nose long, curled over her mouth, her mouth wide, her lips pale and thin, her yellow eyebrows thick and reduced, and below them stared at the world up to two riddles, up to two pale blue, small gloomy eyes, from which you tried in vain to foretell what feelings are in that heart, what thoughts are shini