The woman who moved the Pride's heart. Tabiry-Sen was a smith's daughter from the southern city of Meroë, a growing royal town on the Nile with enormous heaps of iron slag rising on its outskirts. Everyone else in the Pride saw Napata and Jebel Barkal as the true seat in the south. Tabiry-Sen saw a city that would not last.
The Fracture had taught the Pride a hard lesson: it must never again depend on a single seat. So Tabiry-Sen moved half the Pride to Meroë. She brought the watchers who had trained at Napata to the iron-working districts of the new capital, and set up a second house beside the forges. There, for the first time, the Pride made its own iron blades, light and sharp and easy to replace.
For the rest of her 50 years, she ran two seats at once, Napata for the old rites and Meroë for the new work, and she taught the Pride to move between them. When she died, the Pride had two homes, not one.
What she left behind: the iron blades, the second house at Meroë, and the rule of two seats.
