![]() When he was scarcely three years old, as a sort of experiment, Tulim drowned one of the other young princes in the bath they shared. The unfairness of it, that the attention which should have been for him alone was also given to others, burned inside little Tulim like the flame of the lamp he stared at each night before he fell asleep-a flame that he watched so carefully he could sometimes see it in his mind’s eye at midday, so bright that it pushed everything real into shadow. The child’s only moments of sadness came when he was placed back in his cot and another of the monarch’s youngest children was lifted out to be cosseted and caressed in turn. The first things the boy remembered were the sunset-colored hangings of the Seclusion where he lived among the women for the earliest years of his life, where kind, sweet-smelling nurses held him, sang to him, and rubbed his tiny brown limbs with expensive unguents. “Call him Tulim.” It was duly noted down as he was taken away from her and given to a royal wet nurse. As a girl, his mother had often watched the herd come down to the river to drink, so lean, so bright of eye, so brave when she first saw her son, she saw all those things in him. He was named after the tualum, small antelope that ran in the dry desert hills. Super, extra-big thanks and love also go to my awesome wife Deborah Beale, who put in a staggering amount of work helping me revise the late drafts of this book when she could have been doing something else fun, or at least non-Tad-related. Nobody has died yet from too much Tad, so you probably won’t be the first. Please come and join us there, or see me make a fool of myself on Facebook at Don’t worry. I also want to thank our fabulous assistant Dena Chavez and my wicked-cool agent Matt Bialer, as well as the lovely Lisa Tveit who has put in tons of work making our website, a fun and informative place to visit. Acknowledgmentsīetsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert and everyone at DAW Books receive my overwhelming gratitude as usual as we finally steer this monstrous story into port. Actually, it’ll be fun watching them no matter what.) Remember, you wonderful beasts, we love you hugely-but don’t make me come back there. (It’ll be fun watching them learn better. I told them that one day they will be grown-ups just like us, but they refuse to believe anything so horrid and unfair could happen to such nice children. Our children Connor and Devon still think that getting a grown-up book dedicated to them instead of one of our more kid-oriented books is kind of a rip-off.
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