The passage in question:
The blond child paused to regard him, smeared blood across his cheek for wiping his nose.
“An-Anas—!” Migagurit sputtered through blood. “Anasûrimbor!”
He could feel the fall pulling at him. He knew that blood drained about his head and shoulders,
glazing the nub of the boulder ... greasing his way ...
The boy leapt upon his chest, where he crouched like a monkey, peering into his eyes. The
plummet pulled upon the tonguewalker’s bulk, threatened to peel him from his every point of earthly
contact.
“Where do Scylvendi go?” the boy asked with insouciant curiosity. The Nail of Heaven conjured
a silver nimbus about his head.
Migagurit croaked and blubbered. With belief, came terror.
The boy nodded. “Somewhere scary ...” he said musing.
“Like everyone else, then.”
The man tried to cry out, but the boy had crushed all breath remaining. The fall continued clawing
at him.
“Leave him,” a feminine voice called from somewhere above.
A rib popped in the meat of him, so violently did the boy leap in reaction.
Outrageous agony, but mealy with the promise of respite. Migagurit somehow drew his head up
from his paralytic misery. He saw the boy, knife brandished, his stance wide and wary, standing
before a figure garbed all in black. A once-beautiful woman growing long in her years ...
The Empress?
The drop clutched at him, fumbled for some purchase ...
“You’re not my mother,” the boy declared.
A cross smile.
“I can be whatever you need me to be.”
The woman reached out her hand ... a man’s hand.
The plummet firmed its grip, then yanked the Son of hard-hearted Shanyorta over the edge.