SANJUSTE

The Rival

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

-Sylvia Plath

Key 8. The card showed a rawhide tent poorly lit by smoking torches and golden braziers. The man who stood in the center of this tent wore blue and white, and there was a red hand emblazoned on his snowy cloak. His blond hair was cut so that it barely brushed the collar of his tunic, and his eyes were dark and hard in their shadowed sockets, above a wide, crookedly smiling mouth. In his right hand he bore a branding iron.

The heir to the throne of Amber and director of Amber's intelligence network, Sanjuste is better known as Saint Sangremains, for the red hand that is his symbol, or simply the Inquisitor. Dara had been pregnant with Sanjuste when she drew the new Pattern, and he was born attuned to it. The dark humor of the time suggests that most of the evil inherent in the universe came from Sanjuste's infant mind. Of course, no one says anything like this loudly or in the presence of someone they do not know. The Inquisitor's arm is long, and he is skillful in designing punishments for the disrespectful.

In fact, Sanjuste's power has been steadily growing throughout the Queen's pregnancy. To the dismay of many, he seems to wield as much power within Amber as Dara. The plot to kill Arad was his idea, and it is impossible to think he doesn't have more schemes up his sleeve to destroy his mother's enemies.