Si'Wren took a moment to find an answer in a mindful of terrors, and shook her head once emphatically.
Negative!
Emperor Euphrates' eyes widened almost imperceptibly at this. Then, thinking further of it, he added, "Have you in fact sworn a vow of silence to the Forbidden One?"
With a pent-up sigh of weariness, defeat, and resignation to her doom, Si'Wren nodded in the affirmative this time. Then, she remembered that it was not a vow of absolute silence, but merely that she should not speak, so she added, lips pressed tightly shut, "Um-hmm."
At this, Emperor Euphrates leaned back ever so slowly, and creased his eyebrows in a bushy frown as he thought this over until he had adequately perceived the precise nature of the vow as demonstrated and interpreted by the girl herself. For while she had not actually spoken, she had in fact made a noise.
A quandary! Pondering this mightily, he worried, for there was something about this whole case that was most distinct and unusual. What was it? He pondered this at length while the whole court waited and watched, scratching at his beard, and finally arrived at an understanding.
This young girl's open and forthright responses to his inquiries seemed too emboldened by the light of inner truth. Furthermore, she had remained utterly adamant in upholding her vow of silence in the face of certain death for disobeying so openly and blatantly his commands to speak, vow or no vow.
The other one, contrariwise, had an attitude.
That was it.
One called Sorpiala exhibited an attitude that was like the undeclared and unpunished crime of having stolen a three-day old fish, a crime whose very nature declared itself to all who happened to venture downwind of the evildoer. It was exactly like that; a stink in the discerning nostrils of the mighty and terrible Emperor Euphrates, whose mercy customarily extended to the tolerance of such attitudes, although it was his desire that only pure worship and obedience should ever be seen or demonstrated in his subjects. He tolerated their impious and disrespectful attitudes usually because ones such as Sorpiala simply did not realize how much their sage Emperor saw and forgave. Often they did not so much as realize that they even had attitudes with which to offend him.