Wheeling Gull Isle wordlessly watching, he waits by the window

ramesses wanted to rejoin crisply that he was without deformity and so did not need jaes, but even he saw the cruelty in that. and also the lie of it, as maegi went on about the realm of her god. he served those who could not do so for themselves. there was a humility in this that was not lost upon perceptive, arrogant pharaoh; his sharpness cooled beneath the reverent, loving cascade of her words.
"how do you pray to him? i would hear his voice." a challenge, both to himself and to Amun. but perhaps the way that the tooth-bare side of maegi's face had glowed with her words now brought his own. jaes had made of her a vessel, though what the sea-woman held he both loathed and feared.