The slop Mila now shoveled into her mouth was so thin and watery that a good portion of it slipped through her fingers, dirtying her already sullied rags. Still, every mouthful left the faint residue of a smile sticking to her lips, for not even that tasteless, slimy protein paste could spoil the ecstatic joy that came from once again being treated to solid food.

Well, mostly solid, anyways.

The ship did not boast much in terms of accommodation, and it had scant reason to. It was a slave vessel, one amongst a myriad, criss-crossing the northern ocean between Vitharr and the colony, enabling the mass exodus of a starving, war-torn people. The wealthier jiaren and more prescient Vidar Cassians had left aboard these ships many months ago and rocketed away through the imperial starport at the very first sign of trouble. Now that times had grown far more desperate, the lushly furnished cabins had been refitted with crowded bunks, the spacious cafeteria stuffed with overcrowded benches and every lounge, exercise room, pool and theatre had been hastily reorganized to smuggle crates of supplies only Mila knew were secretly bound towards the Red Jiaren Army. Only the dark mahogany panels lining the ship's hull and interior walls gave any clue as to the vessel's former splendour, a trifling relic of some glamorous past that seemed entirely forgotten on the faces of the pale, distraught women around her.

"What are we going to do once we reach the colony?" one of them asked, as they all awkwardly jammed themselves around their little bench to eat.

"Did thou not at all bother to read the contract placed before thee?" another woman asked, raising her plush eyebrows.

The whole table shook their heads. There was not a solitary one of them who could in any sense be called literate, and Mila found herself nodding along to prevent drawing any attention to herself.

The girl sitting next to her grew as bleached and pasty as a ghost as she confronted the speaker in frightful hysterics. "How can thou discern the demon script? Are thou not a demon thyself? Have we been made to board with jiaren monsters? Stars save us!"

The first woman rolled her eyes, resting her chin lazily on a fist. "I may not be a jiaren, girl, but I was married to one for nearly ten years, and in that decade, I can fully attest to having never witnessed but a speck of blackhellish behaviour. But, thou have no reason to believe in me, and I have no reason to prove myself either. We are all headed to the colony on this ship, and you will all see the jiaren for their true selves one way or another soon enough."

"Will they make us eat the flesh of children there?" another woman asked, much older and more hardened by her years and yet no wiser than the frightened girl. "I know food is scarce, and the whole world is hungry, but even then, I do not think I could do that. I do not want to starve, but when I heard the jiaren devour their very infants, I just-."

"No one is eating their own babies," Mila interjected. Suddenly twenty pairs of eyes all descended upon her, and she immediately realized the inadvisability of the outburst. Even after all they had done to her, the Party dictate -never allow thy fellows to languish in ignorance­- was too strong to ignore.

Mila backpedaled. "...from what I saw, anyways. I used to sing jiawen poetry at a tavern in the capital. We served imperial clients on many occasions. They are mostly the same, a little taller, skinnier, paler in their face and always dressed very strange, but mostly the same as us."

"Do thou read jiawen too, then?" the lady raised her chin just momentarily, as if in utter shock at the possibility she might be sharing a bench with someone in same class as herself.

Mila knew it was impossible to admit that, however. "No," she hung her head in imagined shame. "That is not the way of such places. I knew a few poets who were attached to our establishment; they would tell me what to sing, making me carefully repeat back to them what they said. Often, in the process, they would change and rewrite the text so it sounded better out loud until eventually the poem was ready to sing to the bar-tables."

An almost middle-aged woman near the end of the bench nodded sternly in agreement. "That is all for the better. Women reading never leads to any good. I was a healer for many years, and I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the same syndrome in poor, afflicted girls over and over again. The instant a lady is taught those letters, they lose all appetite for life; they cannot sleep, cannot eat, their wombs dry up and they are absolutely no use to anyone. It's like every spark of life is suddenly exhausted from them, smothered by the pages of a book." She turned her wise, caring eyes directly to Mila, smiling at her. "What a tragic waste it would be for such a young, fruitful beauty like thee to befall such a fate?"

Mila gritted her teeth into something resembling a smile in return, though beneath the table her nails were digging deep enough into her clenched fists to draw blood.

"But what of these taverns," the jiaren's wife inquired. "We should all be more interested in those. The contracts we signed specifically mentioned we are to be assigned to an appropriate brothel, inn or tavern upon arrival."

"Brothel!" a round-faced, now flushed-cheek lady screamed. "What sort of outrage is this? What offence on our womanly characters!"

"C'mon!" another shouted back, her skin much darker with grime and her accent that bizarre combination of clearly standard but irreparably broken: the Vidar of the capital slums. "Thouthink no reason forwhat us chosen and uglies not? Sortin' wheat from chaff, they did. Sorted-us."

"But that does not necessarily have to be the case," the jiaren's wife pressed her lips together, hoping so desperately her face was wrinkling from the strain. "The taverns are not so unpleasant, are they? I heard so long as one's voice is fair and face is pretty, one need only sing their songs. There's no need for them to..." she gulped, "love the clients."

"Mean 'fuck', say 'fuck'," the riff-raff responded. "Done it whole lot of time without no love to it."

The women on either side of the miscreant attempted to push themselves as far away from the soot-covered blasphemer as possible, but the bench could only support an extremely limited amount of snobbery.

"But what of the demon-bedder's question, barwench?" someone asked, her features rough-hewn, strong, tanned and speckled, clearly hailing from the flat, sunny farming plains of Vitharr's vast centre. "Will we be whored out or not?"

Every ounce of Mila's being wished to wrap her paws around those listless, cowering women and shake them from their stupor, to shout and clamour and beat her chest until they all recognized their power, saw their potential, came to the realization it did not matter whether the taverns wanted to whore them out or not, they were their own people, their own masters and they would never be bound by the words of another so long as they fought with all they had and were ready to kill, to die in the name of their own freedom.

But what had that thinking ever gotten her? Nightmares of sliced throats and tortured cries even decades of Party mind-tuning could never fully erase. It had gifted litanies and doctrines, logical fallacies just as patently absurd as the healer's conviction reading made one barren. It had put Mila in the service of the revolution, a revolution that only ever seemed interested in how many times she could spread her legs or loose bullets.

So, perhaps, there was no choice after all? After all the fighting, all the bloodshed, all the purges and education and re-education, she was somehow still stuck in exactly the same boat as all the other ignorant kulaks. There was not any point in lying about it; the best she could do now was prepare them.

"Among the most talented, the most beautiful, that is indeed true," Mila nodded, offering a glimmer of hope, "but such angels do not grace those stages that can bear our feet. No," she sighed, lowering her head, "I have never enjoyed such fortune, and none of you can expect it either. We are not angels, true, and we are not bound for paradise, yes, but that does not mean this ship sails for Blackhell either."

"There are things you all must do, terrible things, things that will soil your bodies and haunt your souls. In your darkest, most harrowing moments you will become so possessed with guilt, so wracked with disgust and despair that you will ponder long and deliberately, painstakingly even, on whether it is worth drawing just a single breath more. How can it be, after all, when the simple, seemingly defiant act of living itself exacts such a terrible price? But you cannot surrender yourself to such fancies. There is no shame in what one does to survive, you understand? No matter what you feel, or what you think, no matter what the priest has told you or what you believe, you must know that one universal truth, and yes, it is a sin to say it, but it is a sin that you will keep you alive: there is no shame in survival."

"But what are we to do?" the teenager asked. "We are not all whores like thyself and the street urchin."

"Women cannot fend for themselves," the healer broke in. "There is not but a one of us who tells not the same tale: our husbands died, our fathers were killed, our sons left us abandoned. We have no one left to turn to. How can we survive, shameful or not, without the strength to save ourselves?"

Mila wrapped her arms around the women closest to her and pulled her face in. The whole table followed into a hushed, twenty-person huddle. "What thou say is true is enough. A woman on her own is never out of danger. Just look at the jiaren girl seated over yonder."

A woman at the far edge of the table turned around to peer at the frail, hollow-cheeked, apparition whose barely twenty years had already worn down the marble pillar of her shaky body like a hundred centuries of acid rain. Her long limbs hung as limp and skinny as twigs, and her eyes were sunken far below the surface of her sharp, protruding skull; glazed over and empty, they had become blind to a world that was just as blind to her.

"No, do not, in actual fact, look directly at her!" Mila chided, pulling the huddle together once more. "I only mention her to illustrate a larger point, to... paint a picture. We all know what happens to her; I have heard you speak of it in whispers but now I shall make it plain: every night, the captain comes down below deck, removes her from the bunk and ravages her. I have heard you praying about it. You wonder why the captain so marks her and not some fairer beauty when there are so many others from which to choose. You think your prayers will stop it, that the stars reward your faith while punishing the infidel, but if that is true, it is only true on the margins. What is of far greater import here is that the girl stands alone. She is the only jiaren aboard. She eats alone. She sleeps alone. She shits alone, and so alone too, she is plundered."

"Men, I have found, for the most part, do not concern themselves with beauty so much as we do. There are men, yes, who only desire a taste of love and companionship, and those, often, I will say, are the preponderance of the clientele: kind, generous and often enjoyable to love, though it might be sinful to admit it. Those men care for beauty, both outside and within, and they will never cause any trouble."

"It is the other kind of man - the men I find who disproportionately count themselves higher up the rungs of privilege, the chain of command, the rolls of citizens, the ones you will spot immediately by the way they hold themselves and condescend to all - those are the men that will challenge your will to survive. These are men who do not find excitement in beauty, but who prey on weakness. Their lust resides not within the flesh but in holding power o'er the flesh. They need to prove they are stronger, they are bigger, they are more dangerous than you, and they will lose every tool at their disposal to do it. Hence the captain does choose that wretched jiaren girl each night. He does not ravage her despite her sickly body and helpless stature; it is her very helplessness that attracts him. He is the lion and she the injured gazelle; to him, it is only natural that he should devour her."

"But we women are not so bound to the tenets of unthinking nature. Men prey on weakness, yes, but we together can decide who is strong and who is weak. A woman watched over by another woman is just as strong as a woman protected by her man, but a woman defended by a group of women is even stronger yet. It is only by dividing us, pitting each of us against the other that men have made us weak, convinced us we need them for our protection, that we cannot do without them, but that is an evil and demonstrable falsehood. Our reliance on men as individuals has made us feeble. Our unity as women shall yield us invincibility."

Mila bit her lip, hesitating, before she continued. "Do not think this comes without some cost, however. The prey will never cull the predators, but together, we can decide who is and who is not to be fed to the lion's maw. If we stand apart, we will be picked off individually and most stand to lose, and some will lose everything. However, if we all stand together, the frailty of the weakest will demand the sacrifice of the strongest to defend them, in which case the whole will lose even more. This is the terrible cost of our survival: we must choose which of us shall be preyed upon and which we will fight to defend. When we offer up the weakest, the whole becomes stronger, and when the whole stronger, one day, even the weakest can be protected. But if we make no sacrifice at all, the whole is left to suffer, and we will never, not in one hundred thousand years, find our salvation. To overcome our weakness, we must foster our strength. There is no other way to liberty."

As the table looked back up at her, they could see in Mila's chilling eyes that she spoke earnestly and from experience. She scanned the gaunt, hungry faces about her, and Mila could see again those terrible choices, those inhuman decisions that had marked her early adolescence.

She remembered the famines on Cassian Prime, how families would often choose which child to feed and which to let starve. The famished babes would cry and moan, holding their bloated stomachs in pain until their miserable parents fed them mounds of dried clay or baked mud, shaped just convincingly enough to pass as loaves of bread, hoping to stifle their cries, if only for a blessed moment. Then, they would watch in horror as their innards solidified, their intestines slowly burst and their progeny died howling over the course of several agonizing, torturous days.

The was no fate worse that could befall a parent, but such was the cost of life: spread food equally and all would die the gradual, withering death of starvation; pick and choose who to feed and one could spare the lives of some while hurrying the demise of others. It was a mercy in its own, terrible way, and as Mila thought of the hunger now washing across the blistering fields and smoldering cities of Vitharr, she wondered how many families might one day, very soon, find themselves in the same, irredeemable dilemma.

She wondered how many of the women about her already had.

It was not often that Mila stopped to wonder just how thoroughly those early traumas had shaped her, but now, finally outside the tank but still very much locked in a pitched and implacable battle to reclaim her very mind, she had little else to do but meticulously dredge up the memories of her blood-stained past and stitch them back together into something resembling an identity. How odd it was that even after all the Party had done to her, all the pain they had heaped upon her, all the times she had been selected to bear the suffering of the many, she found herself repeating, unprompted, those very lessons she had learned so horribly so long ago.

As much as she wanted to blame the Party for her thoughts, she knew the causal link was much more likely the other way around. The Party was just a collection of people, after all, people like her, all with sufferings identical to hers, and it was in the amalgamation of their trauma that they had birthed a monster.

But even in knowing it a monster, in looking upon its hideous deformities and unspeakably cruelty, the sobbing mother could not help but pull that beast from her bleeding womb to suckle its carnivorous teeth on her aching bosom. What else could a parent do? When they had sacrificed all other children for the sake of one, they were forever tied to it, they could never abandon it, no matter how terrible, how tyrannical, how appalling that child became.

That was why the Party stressed collective leadership, collective decisions and collective actions. It was not just an ideology; it was a matter of survival. Denunciations must be heard from every throat, death warrants signed with every pen, blood stained to every hand. All will be hailed for success, and all will be implicated in failure.

As much as Mila hated every measly gram of tissue in that mound of human-shaped flesh known as Valentina, she understood the extremity of her actions. In her place, Mila would almost certainly have found herself doing the same. She had done the same, in fact. She had fingered out colleagues during purges. She had tortured comrades into confessions. She had stoned her friends to death. When there was no room for error, when there was no possibility of compromise, only the most fearsome, the most grotesque, the most destructive methods could be relied upon to succeed. No matter the misery she had faced at the hands of Valentina, it paled in comparison to what would await that chairwoman on Cassia Prime if she returned empty handed.

And even then, could she blame the Presidium, the General Secretary, or anyone in the highest ranks of the Party for having done this to themselves? When ships stuffed with women, sexual slaves to be battered about like human puppets were so ordinary and commonplace that they could be freely used to smuggle contraband without ever so much as a glance from the imperial authorities, how could even the most extreme of measures not be justified? Who could look these women in their frightful, wavering eyes, their chattering teeth and tear-damp faces and not pledge everything, up to and including their only soul to help them?

What was morality except an individual's final and ultimate demarcation between themselves and others, a line in the sand that existed only in their minds and nowhere else, an invisible metric whose sole purpose was gifting one the fleeting, ambiguous sense of superiority over their fellow men. If one truly believed in something, they would be willing to sacrifice anything for it, up to and including that egoistic grip on morality. They would bet their very soul on being right.

There is no shame in survival.

It was only a few days after the first few tell-tale icebergs had buoyed up on the horizon that the ship finally docked along the icy colonial coast. The harbour was still dotted with dragon flags and patrolled by black-clad soldiers Mila did not recognize, and who spoke jiawen much too crisply to be members of the red army. That was good news for now, since she was meant to penetrate behind enemy lines, but she could tell from the near constant gunfire and flapping red banners just a few kilometres in the distance that the revolution, here at least, was well underway. She would need to head quickly towards the city if she was going to reach the governor before the rebels did.

As they disembarked, almost all the ladies were carried away in flat-top trucks idling along the docks, waiting to ferry yet more human cargo to the already overflowing bawdyhouses in town. Mila stayed with her group of twenty right up until the very last step onto those humming vehicles. She made a move to leave, but a man attending the truck grabbed her arm before she did so.

"And to where exactly do thou move in such haste?" he inquired, gruffly.

"I did not sign a performance contract," Mila sighed, annoyed she was being forced to admit it so publicly. She withdrew the ticket from her breast pocket, "I am a passenger; thou can see it here with ease."

The man glanced at the document only slightly. Evidently, he was no master of letters himself, but he could recognize the captain's seal well enough and let her through. Now it was just those women holding her back, staring wide-eyed and agape at her, wondering what they had failed to see.

"So, thou can read after all," the jiaren's wife asked, clearly vindicated to have not shared the voyage in the complete company of idiots.

"Yes. I am most sorry." Mila just grimaced and turned away. There was nothing else she could say to them. This was always how it was going to be: her leaving them to suffer, the same way she had left Alfred, the same way she had left her denounced comrades, the same way she had left all of Cassia Prime. The suffering had to be borne by one; she just did not want to be the one again.

"Please!" cried out the teenager, leaning over the half-rotted clapboard siding of the truck. "Please, just tell us one thing. What is thy name? How can we turn to thee when we need thy help?"

Mila stopped. She retraced her steps just a little so that she would not have to shout and said, "Remember what I have taught you all, and you will never need my help. As for my name...."

For someone whose very identity had once been almost entirely erased, that was perhaps the hardest question of all. Though it was a lie, Mila felt that even in her telling it, she was revealing a part of herself, that part that Alfred had so keen to see. When one is nothing but a liar, after all, are not lies - and the way the lies are the told, more importantly - the only truth still left to bandy?

She said the first thing that came to mind, the new Mila she would build from the ashes of the old, the Mila that had been there all along, only too afraid and too overwhelmed to assert herself. It was the Mila who was the greatest spy the Party had ever known, the last hope of a hopeless cause. It was the Mila who was going to survive.

"Ethel," she said. "My name is Ethel, and I sincerely hope to see you all happy and well soon enough.

The convoy of vehicles sped away before they speak another word.

Mila never saw a single one of them again.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

It was the largest gathering since his coronation, but even with the slaughtering of a hundred bulls, the stuffing of a thousand pigs and the baking of nearly a quarter million pies (one for each resident of Vihorr Castle), the event still lacked that final, illusory, near mystical element which would separate just an ordinary party from a true spectacle. Edward knew exactly what was missing, knew who was missing, but he could not allow himself to name him, not even in the silent privacy of his own mind. That name was gone forever, and there would be no hope of ever retrieving it.

The Legion demanded its celebration, however, and Edward was all too happy to comply. The abundance of well-muscled, musky-scented, ruggedly handsome officers adorned in strapping, crisp sapphire khaki certainly led to some ebullient spirits, after all. The prince had little knowledge of imperial taboos (and perhaps naively hoped that they did not even exist), but now that the Legion had freed him from those filthy-faced mountain dweller fanatical clutches that had suffocated him all his life, he was more than happy to let the ale flow and his inhibitions flow away with it.

Once Edward had ordered his guards along the mountain fortresses to relent, the two legions had needed only a few days to span the whole of the northern continent, enveloping Thunorr in its steely grip. Even the forces controlled by Cuthbert had been clever enough to read the winds, melting away at the first sight of the Emperor's armoured divisions. Most had surrendered, and Edward had used to the opportunity to replace their commanders, reasserting his own pre-eminence over the VLF's disparate cells.

A not insignificant amount, however, still remained compelled by their inner guerrilla nature, retreating back to the protection and obscurity of their mountain homes, and the prince feared they would prove disastrous to his budding, imperial partnership. Still, he still knew enough of the hide-outs and safehouses that together he and the legion could sweep out the stragglers eventually. It would need to be discussed with the foreign general as soon as possible.

Looking that jiaren in his deep blue, iridescent eyes, however, Edward found there were oh, so much more about which he wanted to first discuss.

The castle's courtyard hosted a giant, raging bonfire over which the fattest, most succulent animals were being spiced, basted and roasted with long, flavourful sticks. The prince called out for a particularly luscious hog to be removed from the fire and diced up for him and the legion command to share. The butcher's cleaver hacked away with perfect efficiency, only stopping once or twice for the chef to taste a sampling or two from the oozing, juicy ham. Such behaviour was hardly uncouth to the rustic northerners, but Edward could see his guests cringe quietly to themselves as the cook's saliva-stained fingers plated the roasted pig, and so the Prince made a show of castigating the butcher before the legion staff, petulantly ordering a fresh animal be brought before them.

It struck Edward as odd, in that moment, to see the overwhelming, wasteful, almost obscene abundance around him and reflect on how just mere months ago these provinces had been the hungriest in all of Vitharr. It had seemed for all those many years as prophet of his scraggly Old Believer band that all they touched turned to ash: every town fell to ruin, every field went to fallow and every market dried of silver. The VLF's decades of continuous campaigns through the northern country seemed to always cleave a path of devastation and famine like a giant quill marking the land in deadly ink.

And yet, though the conquest and establishment of his beloved Thunorr had been perhaps the greatest disaster to yet befall these primitive northern people, it did not take long for Edward to notice the bony cheeks and chicken arms had fattened up and filled out. Gaunt, lipless frowns were tilting on their axes to full-faced, red-cheeked smiles, and even in trying to maintain an air of regal ambivalence, the prince could not help but smile back. Everywhere he went, his people seemed to cheer and applaud him, and that fervour only grew when he had marched at the head of twenty thousand legionnaires down the cobbled stones of Vihorr.

Was it partly due to the summer's long-awaited entrance, the deathly chills of winter now swept away by the floral scents of an immense, promised harvest? Most undoubtably, to be sure, but Edward could not preclude the fact that that a certain part, in all probably the much larger part, was due entirely to his own personal genius as a leader.

He did not intervene. He did not interfere. He just assigned men to guard the roadways and frontiers, and then he sat around his ever expanding apartments within the castle, seeking out pretty boys who might not complain too loudly when he explained it was the Stars' will to fondle them beneath their undergarments.

The people knew what was best for them, and from Edward's perspective, the less he ordered them around about the better. It was a fact so patently obvious to the prophet, it often baffled him beyond any hope of understanding how other, even admittedly less intelligent princes, seemed so unable to comprehend this inherent truth about their subjects. Cuthbert clearly did not; he was a natural busy-body if there ever was one, always up to some scheme or another.

Edward really had not the faintest idea what sort of machinations his general had endeavoured upon these past few months since he had blackmailed himself into de facto command of the VLF, but he knew it could not be anything good. There were only ever two acceptable activities for a true leader of men: speech-making and recovering one's energy from speech-making. Everything else was almost always entirely superfluous.

These legionnaires understood it well, it seemed. All his life he had been taught to resent them as foreign demons – and he could not fail to notice his own generals sulking in the corner as their prince's attention rested on the blue-clad officers – but here, at this spectacle-that-wasn't-quite a spectacle, Edward finally felt for the first time in his life that he was truly among friends. Here was a group of gentlemen who knew how drink and be merry, so distinct from those grim-faced barbarians who seemed only to awake each day for the sole purpose of fresh griping and solemn prayer.

By contrast, the Legion command laughed happily as Edward regaled them in his broken jiawen, and the legates produced their own bottles of spiced imperial rum to drench the overdried exterior of the barbequed pork. The whole party intoxicated themselves so thoroughly they seemed to forget their jiaren manners, plunging greedy hands straight into the stuck pig's delicious carcass, and Edward was only too pleased to meet some of their rough-hewn fingers in that sticky, swirling mess of a meal.

Though it was clear he was holding himself back from the point of over-indulgence, their commander, Haig, drifter closer and closer throughout the evening towards the prince as Edward, assisted by an oversized helping of the liquored meat in addition to other spirits more conventionally imbibed, made clever, almost joking renditions of the Revelations in jiawen. Eventually, as the fire began to die down, and all the VLF generals had long since retired grumpily to bed, they found themselves sitting right next to one another on the silken pillows on which the jiaren sprawled in their humorous cross-legged style.

Haig winked at the prince, subtly, just enough that Edward was sure to see it but not quite sure he could trust the memory of its existence. The prince felt his knees begin to tremble, that slight bit of skin now making contact sparkling as if it were a bottle of champagne uncorked after a century of building pressure. The electrical storm within his brain drowned out almost entirely the sound of the general suggesting they retire to His princely apartments, and by the time he did finally hear it, he did not know if the words had been true or a mere delusion of drunken delight.

"We have much to discuss before the dawn rises, you and I," the commander said, and Edward felt his heart leap with near terminal velocity into his throat. The words could be innocuous, but that wink was not, and Edward was as determined as any holy martyr had ever been to follow that wink as far as he dared.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

"Contact! We have made contact!"

The signals officer was so ecstatic at the news, he seemed to lose all sense of propriety as he raced through the Governor's hastily erected headquarters, secreted away within Hui's extensive magisterial palace. The centurion tore past the temporary dividers and screens demarcating the ever-shrinking desk space, waving about a paper print-out of the message like it was the Emperor's standard in a victory parade.

Lady Ci rolled her eyes, but with so many of her officers evaporated in nuclear waste, she could ill afford offending those who remained at her side. She chose not to reprimand the man, but instead shooed him towards a private suite adjoining the bustling command post.

"Attendant!" Her discordant shriek of a voice sliced through the bedlam of the overcrowded room, "call for Citizens Hui and Pan to meet me in my study at once."

With that, she had the centurion awkwardly walk around her to slide close the panel door (much preferable to doing such indelicate work by herself), and she slumped against a wicker-backed, chaise lounge which was legged with enormous, abstractly shaped sandalwood tendrils and lined with a silk-stuffed satin cushion: the perfect remedy to an already aching spine. She breathed deeply, placing a wrist over her flaming temple, in complete ignorance of the officer tapping his toes in nervous, but excited energy.

Lady Ci gestured for her pale painted slave in the corner to begin massaging her feet. It was only after those numerous sores and discomforts of the long, grueling day were well on their way to oblivion at the skillful hands of her favourite Cassian lad that she allowed the legionnaire before her to speak.

"So, Officer," the governor waved a silver encrusted finger at him, "of what do thou wish to inform us?"

The officer straightened his spindly spine and saluted. "The Third and Fourth Septimi Legions have made contact once again, your excellency! The storms have lifted momentarily, and Haig can communicate with us freely once more, for a time."

This was excellent news, but Xiao still guarded her emotions as closely as possible; a message was better than none, but that was only when one knew nothing of the misery that was about to be communicated within. Seeing how the First and Second Legions had been completely decimated in the blink of an eye, she was prepared now to hear the rest of her army had been annihilated at any moment. Every second they remained deep within enemy territory kept her filled with dread, not to mention her an increasingly uncomfortable dependence on Pan and the "Black Hundreds".

"What is the condition of the legions?" the governor asked, hoping the centurion could not hear the breath apprehensively catching in her throat as she asked.

The officer positively beamed at this. "Unmolested, your worship! The whole of Thunorr embraced our troops as the Prince said they would, and the Legion has captured the entire continent without the firing of a single shot! It seems the VLF has been better stewards of the north than we expected; they have rebuilt the continental roadways and rails, and our forces have used them to march nearly to the south-eastern isthmus. Commander Haig... Commandant Haig, I should say, expects every city and town within the central valley to be pacified within the next few days, and only a few months will be required to take the mountains if requested."

"Well, it is a true rarity these days to be welcomed with such excellent news," Hui announced upon entering the study, and the governor nodded, both to acknowledge her presence and the resounding good fortune which had been visited upon them.

Hui occupied the teak and red Tsubaki checkered desk (it was nominally still her office, after all), and, folding her arms in contemplation, called out to the governor, her voice passing right through the centurion as if he were not even standing there in the ornate room. "Should we await the glorious presence of our commander and chief or order the Legion back ourselves?" she asked, a smirk of ivory coated teeth twisting about her face.

The irony in Hui's voice was impossible to mistake. If it had not been for Quentin's mob of dark-clad militia, Lady Ci and her entire administration would easily have been swept aside. It was a reality of which all were painfully well aware, but that Pan had also refused to allow anyone to forget.

Within a few days of Wang 's mutiny, nearly the whole colony had risen up in a general strike, and the rag-tag Red Jiaren Army had encircled Xiao with slow-moving her retinue as they fled to the magisterial palace. She had probably been mere minutes away from surrender when the Black Hundreds descended upon the strikers and Reds, sending them on the run. The Red Army enjoyed a massive superiority in numbers, but Quentin and her supporters had managed to empty the imperial armory before being overrun, and that, combined with her sheer ruthlessness, had provided an irrepressible advantage.

Neither force was disciplined, and so they each crumbled at the first impact of any significant opposition. So long as the Black Hundreds kept the heavy guns, the twelve thousand or so of Pan's troops staying close enough together in something resembling a formation, they could manage to hold off the insurrectionists. However, the governor had known full well the situation could not hold; Wang had occupied the starport and harbour, so it was only a matter of time before the Red Jiaren Army found itself better equipped and in the most vengeful of moods. Not only that, but the striking legion staff could always be redeployed to complete the orbital cannon, and if Wang had launched that, not just the colony, but likely the whole planet would be his.

So, the governor had spent every tael of political capital she had left and ordered Quentin to capture the port, and, considering the calamity that befell that expedition, something within her openly doubted whether she would ever command the Black Hundreds again. The operation had been a mad dash, breaking the careful perimeter around the palace to cut through several kilometres of enemy formations straight down the ocean, against which retreat was impossible. The assault had succeeded, but it had cut Quentin's forces in three: one part to defend the palace, one to defend the port and another to patrol the stretch of monorail (now recommissioned once again) between them. The attack had cost all her momentum and flattened her forces to the thinness of a translucent crepe, with whole centuries dying each day to protect the long, narrow frontier.

With two thousand casualties lost in the initial skirmish and more than a thousand to attrition in maintaining the line, Pan had seen more than a quarter of her faux legion fizzle out in less than a week. Given that merchants had also now chosen this time to stop landing at the colonial starport, and the only shipments from Vitharr were more refugees and slaves – in other words, additional liabilities – it seemed the sacrifice had gained her absolutely nothing. And through it all, Wang was somehow still receiving more supplies and weapons, growing stronger just as his opponents were withering away. It was a stalemate that only delayed an inevitable defeat, and that was a defeat the governor was now wearing squarely on her own two shoulders.

It was nearly impossible not to dwell on the ineptitude of her bargain. Three thousand dead and injured had been exchanged for a port with no ships to dock in it, a cannon with no workers to complete and a long, unwieldly defence perimeter with no legion to defend it. True, Wang had lost far, far more in losing the starport, but the difference between them was that while he could readily afford to lose even the largest part of his red-banner-waving mob, Lady Ci could not.

With Wang occupying the military palace and the adjoining interstellar transmitter, there was no way of contacting the Joint Chiefs for reinforcements from Home. And even if there was, Haig and Rao bore the only Legion Eagles, codebooks with which to communicate back to the central command. Rao's was almost certainly incinerated, and Haig would never entrust a messenger to send his copy back to the governor and risk losing any leverage he held over her as well, so Xiao knew her options were limited to merely waiting out the revolt until Haig returned to crush it.

That was not to say the situation was as hopeless as it had seemed at first, however. Wang had made his fair share of mistakes, allowing his prey just the gasp of breath it needed to escape the cruel agonies of fate. Lady Ci's decision to place able administrators in positions of power was paying dividends when she needed them most.

First, Quentin had identified and explained how Wang had systematically displaced women from his labour movement. Probably, this had been at the behest of the more conservative-minded union leaders who preferred their wives stay home and raise children instead of competing for wages on the labour market. Before the mutiny, Wang and Pan and argued relentlessly about this, but the man had ultimately succumbed to such demands, leaving an excess of dissatisfied female workers the governor was all too happy to pry away from him.

Hui, for her part, had donated her household staff and an entire wing of her palace to serve as a sort of childcare centre, encouraging these disenfranchised wives to entrust their children to the magistrate's relative safety, and take the place of their striking husbands. Without the influx of new labourers repairing the city's solar arrays after each Red Army bombardment, shipping in food past enemy lines from the surrounding hinterland and even taking up arms in the Black Hundreds itself, the general strike alone would have gobbled up Ci's administration.

Wang had, however, proved the justice of his appointment as well, and he had ordered his brutally efficient work teams to raise up the permafrost and rubble of exploded buildings into a wall more than three metres tall, almost entirely surrounding the parts of the colony Xiao still occupied. With the exodus of women from his camp to hers, the purpose of the barrier became self-evident; it was designed just as much to trap his own people inside as it was to keep the governor's troops out. Even so, the embankment had greatly fortified his position, and with her air-force entirely lost, Lady Ci knew she would be left to blindly batter her own city with artillery shells even once the legion arrived. With several million inhabitants - imperials, Cassians and half-breeds alike - living within the occupied region, it was a prospect which she did not enjoy considering.

The governor wrapped her hands together, her long, acrylic nails making little jabs into her nose as she pondered. "Yes, we think so," she finally replied to Hui. Xiao then turned her attention back to the centurion and ordered, "inform Haig he is to disengage all his forces and return to the colony at once. We shall relay battle instructions in the coming days as he nears the Red Army."

The officer's cheery mood seemed to suddenly abate at this, as an uncomfortable grimace formed across his features. "I am afraid, I cannot just accept orders outside my chain of command, your excellency. We really should wait for the acting Commandant," by which he meant Quentin. "She can issue an order to my immediate superior, and then a message can be more formally offic-."

"Silence!" The governor snapped. She had been lenient before, but now she could not hold back even the most brazen expression of her fury. She was well aware of Pan's maneuvering in the remnants of Legion command, how she would corner officers in the hallways, pulling them aside to secret conferences and hushed conspiracies. Xiao suspected she was already plotting strategies with the officer corps; she always entered her meetings with Hui and the governor with a plan well at hand and seemed much more interested in informing the two of her designs than fielding any discussion of it.

"As governor, the Emperor Himself granted us military imperium over the whole of this planet, the Province of Septimi, lowly centurion," she stood, condescending to him. "So unless thou has discovered, in thy divine revelations, how to receive commands from Heaven, there is no authority here higher than our own. No other!"

She flared her nostrils, eyeing the trembling man in the same way a spider must hungrily drool over a plump, little fly caught in its web. "Now go," she said, her words crisp and resounding, "send the message and return to us – no one else, thou understand? No one else! – when thou receive a response."

The centurion quickly bowed and rushed away, but just as he was about to leave, he abruptly grew deadly stiff and nearly as pale as the powdered Cassian slave in the corner. His exit was barred by the acting Commandant herself, Pan Quentin, standing amidst the open doorway she had not even the decency to knock upon before opening. The sight of her - wobbly, thin ankles hidden by stumpy, oily black fur-lined boots, a dark leather trench coat wrapped loosely around her like an aristocratic cowl and her onyx-coloured nails clutched tightly about a blood-red marshal's baton – could excite nothing but intimidation in the heart of any onlook. The officer tried to clear his throat, bow his head, but he was unsure if he should barge through or not.

"And what business do thou have with the governor, Centurion Singh," Pan barked at the cowering figure before her, "that is so urgent, it demands thee dismiss thyself from a command meeting when thy prefect has called it!"

"By Heaven, excuse us!" Lady Ci protested, pushing her back straight up and off the delicate cushions. "This officer bore messages of the highest import, and there can certainly be no 'command meeting' until thee, acting Commandant, have read it thyself." Xiao now leaned forward even further and looked the centurion straight in the eyes. "Now, run along and carry out thy orders. We shall see thee excused before thy commander for thy absence."

The officer was frozen in place for just a moment, unable to move under the sheer intensity of Quentin's glare, but after Hui smacked the table to emphasize a resounding, "away with thee!" the man was woken from his stupor, and he hurried off, leaving his commandant in a startling rage.

She threw the door behind her, barely waiting for the door to slam shut up before she shouted, covering the governor's face in hot, angry fresh saliva, "how dare you interfere in my command!"

Lady Ci leaped to her feet. "We served the Emperor's Legion for longer than the entirety of thy half-witted, plagiarised academic career. Thou were chief of the medical corps for little more than four months before thou began play-acting as our crusading Commander-in-Chief. Give us no half-thought badgering as to the sanctity of thy 'command.'"

It was only after she had pointed the accusatory finger that Xiao realized the ridiculousness of standing up to the woman who stood more than a foot taller than her, and Quentin seemed more than happy to force whatever humility she could down her throat.

"You served as Chief of Defence Staff," she replied, "precisely the same position as our mutual friend Wang Mang as well. Now the origins of his discontent with military discipline no longer seem so obscure."

"Thou admitted thyself just now to be holding command meetings without the presence of the governor!" Hui exclaimed, straining to sound more indignant than her patron and thus maintain the sycophantic performance that kept her in her post.

Pan ignored the remark and continued to address Lady Ci. "You chose to appoint me Commandant, your worship; no other forced you. Do not be surprised when I choose to command - something I cannot do if you continue spiriting away my signals officers to private conferences." The woman crossed her heavy arms which somehow seemed large and muscular under the masking of the leather robe. "So, decide and decide now governor, will you tell me of this message or will I inform you of my resignation? You can only choose one."

Hui was fingering a pile of tax records on her desk, ready to hurl them out as projectiles, but the governor signalled for her to relent. Lady Ci instead sighed and fell back down to the couch. "We were never planning to keep that information from thee, Commandant. Take a seat and let us speak like reasonable people once more."

For a moment, Quentin thought of extending her defiance further and choosing to stand, but instead her aching legs spoke for her, and she collapsed into the armchair nearest the wall and as far away as possible from the Cassian in the corner.

"Remove the Hamite," she demanded.

Ci breathed in a long, laborious suck of cold, colonial air, letting it whistle out through her teeth. "Fine."

"Ilya!" the governor snapped two silver rings together like a clicker as she said it. "Away with thee as well."

The Cassian's footsteps were so well-muffled from years of practice that no one could hear them as they dashed away.

Quentin's whole body seemed relieved at his exit. Her chest drooped downwards, arms unfolded to flop at her knees and her head seemed to rest more comfortably in the once-appearing rolls of fat on her cheeks.

"The centurion (Singh, thou said?) informed the magistrate and us that we have re-established contact with the Third and Fourth Legions."

Pan nodded, though there was something strangely reluctant with how she took the news. Her double chins receded again as she raised her face to a sterner position.

"This is excellent to hear; it will provide a failsafe in the event we fail in our assault."

Lady Ci tried to keep herself composed, but Hui was already hunched over her desk, mouth agape, asking, "what assault?"

Quentin crossed one black-panted leg over the other, rubbing her hands together and smiling in an almost diabolical fashion. "I have some news of my own, your excellency, and unlike the legions, which still demand we outlast Wang 's chastisement awaiting their return, this secret furnishes us finally with an opportunity to strike back and smother the belligerent toddler of a revolution while it is still confined to its cradle."

"You see, your worship, it seems we have found ourselves a turncoat: an insider now lost on the outside and ready to reveal a great many treasures of whose burial only she remains privy. The woman is a smuggler posing as a prostitute who has regularly crossed between Vitharr and the colony, blended amongst such ships' human cargo but actually carrying weapons and ammunition for the Red Jiaren Army. The Party, rather predictably, found market principles - i.e. paying this woman's contract - to be far too ideologically strenuous for them to bear, and now this smuggler has sold us the location of the Red Army supply depot and delivery schedule all for a paltry fee!"

Somehow Ci found herself even more elated than when she had learned of her legions' return mere moments ago. "This is delightful! Let all be forgiven and us be friends once more, Commandant! The war is won and rebellion all but put down in name." She shook her head, smiling, trying not to get too swept away in the sudden wave of euphoria.

"Thou can well guess what our next move must be, Miss Pan, no?" Xiao asked, fluttering a silk fan over herself to prevent the joyous heat welling within her to melt the make-up her slave-boys had so carefully matted on her face this morning. "We must destroy their supply, capture the baggage, and cease any further smuggling from that route. Then, we wait out the legions' arrival and attack a critically weakened force from two fronts."

Quentin's eyes did not seem to even acknowledge the idea for a moment; they were entirely glossed over, thinking through other things. An awkward silence befell the gathering as Pan realized it was her turn to speak, and when she did, she seemed determined to negate nearly all that the governor had just said.

"The command staff and I have come to a very different conclusion, I am afraid." She uncrossed her legs, and her gaze focused on shifting her coat, refusing to meet the eyes of her colleagues. "This revelation is an intelligence coup, and it demands we make use of it in a far more aggressive fashion. We know when Wang expects his next shipment. Our soldiers can steal themselves away in shipping crates, only to be smuggled in behind the Red Army lines. Once there, they will set charges against the crude defensive wall, destroy it and allow the Black Hundreds to surround the supply depot."

"Another force can attack from a separate direction, sending all Wang 's fighters to the armory to equip for a counter-attack, where they will be met by our guns, picking them off one by one as they file towards their doom. We've already been assured there are no other substantial supply depots anywhere else, so what use is there is merely destroying it? We can capture it and convert it to a death-trap: the noose by which Wang will be unable but to hang himself."

Ci clenched her teeth but attempted as best as possible to remain calm. "Acting Commandant, as bold and electrifying as this strategy may be is in its delivery, it presents a needless risk. We have instructed thy centurion to signal the Legion back to our aid; and it will only take a few days, a week at most for them to arrive. What can we possibly gain through assaulting now that we do not get from waiting, apart from inviting catastrophe?"

Pan removed her glasses, sighing. She produced a thin, cotton handkerchief to clean them as she responded, nonchalantly, almost under her breath, "I suppose it is difficult to see the risk when it isn't your troops sacrificing themselves in droves each day to defend an indefensible perimeter."

Hui rolled her eyes. "Of what are thou speaking, Quentin? The Legion, the Black Hundreds, the countless other volunteers we have conscripted during the short course of this rebellion - they are all our troops."

Pan scoffed. "Oh, thou have my deepest apologies. I suppose I must just have neglected all that hard, diligent work you two did in recruiting, training and organizing thousands of ordinary, patriotic citizens, converting a mere social club (an interest group!) into a formidable, mobilized army."

She laughed a bitter, sarcastic laugh, staring up at the sky while her glasses still remained unpolished in her hands. "And that finally explains how willing you were to toss away three thousand lives in capturing a worthless port. Those soldiers were just as much yours as they are mine, so really, are they not yours to waste? By all justice, it would seem so!"

"Commandant, please!" Xiao implored her, "thou speak without cause. The port expedition was a mistake, we shall be the first to acknowledge that, but thou have read the same treatises on strategy that we have. We mandated thee to read them. Thou know precisely as much as I why we had to seize the harbour, and thou also know why we must be cautious now. Let us not let one error compound another. We wait, and we survive. The outcome now is certain. There is no reason to see it jeopardized."

Pan grimaced, shaking her head. "I fully expected ignorance from Wang , but from y-, from thee, it is infinitely more painful to my ears. Do thou truly not know, do thou, in all reality, not comprehend in any way, how much it costs - both me and my squadrons, my family - to patrol along that old man's walls? It is a slow-motion disaster, eating away at us with each passing hour. I have been burying a new comrade almost every minute. A thousand each day, Xiao! Either dead or incapacitated, and not anywhere near enough to replace them. So, sure, speak more of how we can wait and survive; just ask thyself, who waits and who survives, because it won't be us, your worship. It shall not be the Black Hundreds, and since I did forge this force and thou did not, I actually care for its wellbeing."

"They are not bodies that I bury, but people, friends, colleagues, fellow ideologues and brothers at arms. I will not have them march around the monorail like fodder in a cannon for one single second longer than is absolutely necessary. I will not betray them. Their lives have value to me, and I will not bandy them about like tokens on a game board."

Lady Ci could see her rather flagrantly scurrilous protégé was becoming dangerously close to arriving at the point. The monorail was a meat-grinder. It strategically did not serve any purpose whatsoever, especially since there was precious little cargo to move back and forth (this smuggler turned spy happily excepted). Xiao's sole desire in defending that long, narrow stretch of territory was ensuring at least avenue by which the severely undersupplied and almost entirely unarmed Reds could possibly cut Pan's ego down to size. The harbour assault was far too glaringly miscalculated; it impugned the governor's judgement, if not in theorizing than certainly in execution. A cautious, deliberate, seemingly strategic bloodletting like the monorail, however, that was far more politically expedient.

With the harbour secure and still enjoying a massive artillery advantage, the colony could wait out the Legion's arrival just as easily with five hundred soldiers as five hundred thousand. Now that the Legion was almost certain to reappear, the rowdy, unruly and uncontrollably dangerous Black Hundreds had truly outlived their usefulness. Allowing just one single more of those misty-eyed murders to survive the conflict than necessary was not merely an egregious, unforgiveable error; it was practically dereliction of duty.

"Thou will do precisely as we order, Citizen Pan," the governor cursed. "We are not Xiao to thee, ungrateful, common, putrid egg. We are imperator, and when we speak, thou shall hear the Emperor's voice echo through our words. If we ask thee to march, thou march. If we ask thee to attack, thou attack. If we ask thee to strip each and everyone of thy men naked and rush headlong into the enemy bayonets, screaming the poetry of Li Bai in perfect meter as their flesh is torn from their bodies, we will expect each and every one of thy nine thousand to run to their fate with dutiful smiles on their lips. Our orders are not consultations, Quentin. They are commands!"

"And if we ever hear thee addressing our person is such a blatantly disrespectful tone ever again, a letter of resignation will be traded in for a formal dismal. Thou can spit at us all thou like, acting Commandant, but once the Legion returns, the revolt will end either way, and thy insubordination can very well be adjudicated by Haig as he and every other imperial commander is wont to do: the lash."

The governor stood for the last time, opening the door and gesturing for the Commandant to leave. "Destroy the depot and nothing further. Report to us when thy task is complete. Now, do make way and depart. Thou clearly have a spate of funerals with which to attend."

Quentin was boiling as she retrieved herself from the chair, her face flush with undisguised rage. The governor just closed the door directly behind it, never wanting to see that face again.

"Hui," she called out just as she collapsed back onto the chaise for a long, rewarding nap.

"Hmm?" the magistrate replied, still a little lost in thought from the disruption of the encounter.

"Find us that smuggler, the source of the supply depot. I wonder what other secrets they might be hiding."

"Of course, your excellency. I shall look into it right away.""

"Perfect," she assented.

At least one person still knew to obey her. That was enough to keep a smile on her face just as she drifted away, doing her best to ignore the ever-present rumble of the firing guns.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

Though armed conflict was new to Quentin, hers was far from only the organization that had rallied around the principle of eradicating the Hamite menace. And unlike her more academically inclined followers, these other groups were peopled by ex-legionnaires, police officers and other militia who had been contemplating – and preparing for – the outbreak of violence for quite some time.

They were a hulking, brutish, unsavoury lot, with stark, bolded characters inked across their shaven heads, the half-hearted imitation of an overly romanticized ancient warrior still trapped within the confines of a fraying, bleached and forgotten painting. They used to roar and chant, marching in full armoured regalia down the colonial promenades, surging biceps wielding jagged-edged longswords with a single hand and often carrying the carved-out shells of empty gas cannisters in the other, home-welded shields which they battered in a terrifying clamour at any opposition that came their way.

Pan had never liked them, and she never would; their anger towards the Cassians and half-breeds had none of the intellectual fervour and deeply researched conviction with which she and her followers anchored their beliefs. In stark contrast to the educated eugenicists, they were almost all of the laobaixing, some even bizarrely unable to prove even their own parentage, yet that hardly stifled the immensity of their hatred towards the certain, despicable ancestry of the other.

Seeing the smile on their faces, the lechery of their cries, she wondered if these people had been waiting all their lives for this moment, that for them, the revolution was far from the nightmare with which Quentin and the rest of the governor's administration contended, but the ultimate fruition of their greatest, possible dream. Here, finally, was an enemy, an inhuman, a corpse that did not yet know it was dead, and this enemy, very much unlike the evil Hamite they defied in the streets, this enemy was not a vengeful fantasy, not a flight of fearful fancy or a figment of their crazed imagination. This enemy was real, and they had every license to kill it.

To her, to them even, that was their only agenda; they wanted to kill something, anything, and so long as they were pointed in a direction, any direction whatsoever, they would destroy whatever lay in their path. In the days when Quentin had wanted to grow her movement and let it slowly, peacefully grip its talons around the exposed, beating heart of the state, she had had little patience or interest in such people. Now that she had something to destroy, however, it was time to unleash them.

No one else in the Black Hundreds was even remotely qualified to penetrate the supply depot and destroy Wang 's walls, anyways. These men, these horrific, shark-toothed, crazy-eyed men, they had not just been qualified; they had volunteered.

The Commandant watched through a pair of binoculars as the caravan of shipping crates, each one secretly containing one of these fanatical militants, stopped at a small red marking on the high wall of frozen earth and rubble. The trucks silenced their engines and tooted their horns three times (Quentin was just close enough that she heard its faint screeching a few moments after she saw the drivers tap their steering wheels).

A swarm of Red Army recruits sprang up in response, seemingly from nowhere. As Pan surveyed the field more closely, however, she saw that they were springing from a huge mound of upturned dirt – an inconspicuous-looking hillock jutting out of the snow – only a few dozen metres from the wall. The Reds carefully unloaded the crates, but crucially, critically, they never once inspected them before doing so.

Quentin smiled to herself. If one need have a competitor, always choose an amateur. Let the weakness of the foe become the strength of the other.

She waited almost breathlessly as she watched the red-capped soldiers unload each crate from the trucks by hand, a group of twenty or so all shouldering the undoubtably crushing load on their backs, vanishing with the container as they returned to that dark pile of earth. She waited just a little longer after the final crate had disappeared under the walls, giving enough time for the commandos to be put in place before she signalled the centurion at her side.

The officer nodded, speaking only three words back into his radio:

"Turn it off."

It took a few seconds for the order to be relayed to the colony ship far above them in geostationary orbit, but once it was, the vessel immediately retracted its huge, reflecting mirrors, and the early summer sun decided it was at last time to pack up and leave 'til next year. It was if Heaven had flipped a switch, the bright, artificial bask of afternoon glow suddenly sliced off by the oppressive darkness of the blackest night.

For a moment, all Quentin could make out at all was the blinking lights of the shattered military palace's radio tower far in the background, but once the initial shock of the instantaneous twilight had worn off, she found herself awash in the soft, crimson glow of a sea of night-vision visors all flashing as they powered up, before once again returning to total darkness.

They would have to act fast now. The Reds could not miss that something was afoot, but now their long, unwieldly perimeter became a liability instead of an asset. Wang had to guess he was about to be attacked from somewhere, but as long as the night lasted, he would be unable to know just where exactly that might be. The Commandant, on the other hand, knew precisely where the Red Jiaren Army would be congregating: tens of thousands all clambering towards the armory for weapons, right in front of a wall that was moments away from crumbling into dust.

From the starport to the magisterial palace and every point in between, the whole remainder of Pan's black legion sprinted towards the depot as fast as their legs could carry them, weighed only by their arms, ammunitions and the occasional hand-painted portrait of the Emperor. These images, carried overhead on heavy posterboard and entirely pointless in the dark, still enlivened the Hundreds nonetheless. It was if just knowing the His Majesty was watching their back provided a sort of mystical protection all in of itself.

Timed perfectly with her advance, a barrage of artillery began blanketing Wang 's territory from the completely opposite side of the contested zone, scrambling whatever Reds had been lucky enough to arm themselves already. Quentin and the bulk of her army had now reached the walls, and though she had never run so quickly in her life, she found her lungs still full of air and her heart racing with almost unquantifiable dosage of adrenaline. She watched helplessly as the men on her side flummoxed about, unable to hold a stable formation against the ever-growing influx of incoming reinforcements, but it did not really matter all that much to her. Pan had never been expecting her black-coated throng to parade before the Praetor; they merely had to charge.

As the wall finally came tumbling down, that was exactly what they did.

The whole embankment seemed to leap several feet into the air before crashing down into a hail of fire and ash. The ground quaking beneath their toes was the only signal the army needed to rush forwards, though Quentin still found occasion to theatrically thrust her marshal's baton forward in front of herself anyway. The militia burst through the still blazing wreckage of the ruined wall, the flames illuminating their shadowy figures just briefly enough that a few were strafed with gunfire, though it was nothing compared to the havoc they wrecked upon reaching the other side.

The Red Jiaren Army was in complete disarray: thousands of men running in all directions, unable to see the invaders except for the brief flashes of their machine guns that seemed to further encompass them with each passing second. Soldiers stumbled over other soldiers, shooting wildly into their own formations, collapsing over corpses only to become corpses themselves. The units farthest away from the fighting were still rushing towards the smoking armory, unaware that it was nothing more than a glowing hot crater burned out of the earth, trapping those regiments closer to the ruined wall which were now so desperately trying to escape.

Through it all, the Black Hundreds just penetrated as deep into the enemy as they could, splashing the whole field of their vision in bullets. They laughed like little sadist children, holding a blowtorch to an anthill.

As more and more of Quentin's force established themselves inside the walls, a flurry of mortars and rockets began hurling down from the sky, peppering the horizon with enough flashes of light the city before them began to resemble a circuit board overtaxing itself and sparking as it calculated pi to some unfathomable digit. Bubbles of dust, snow and human body parts began bursting all across the battlefield, spraying the fleeing Reds with the innards of their comrades and enough shrapnel to splash their own blood about the soldiers several ranks behind them. This only further panicked the stampeding army, whose regiments, still unable to make out one another in the darkness, elected to trample each other instead.

The Black Hundreds were pouring in now, their progress impeded only by the steady accumulation of bodies at their feet and freezing blood that turned the cold, icy ground slick and unwalkable. The cleverer amongst them activated the grips on their legion boots; the eager just ran faster, scattering bullets and screaming vengeance with every step, kept aloft by nothing more than pure momentum.

Quentin was just about to order her heavy artillery to end the false attack, focussing all force on their current position when, just as victory was at hand, the sun miraculously returned. The light blinded the eyes of her soldiers. They quickly threw their visors to the ground, halting their advance, but even without that, the sheer horror of the battlefield would have arrested the even surest hearts among them.

In the centre of the carnage, so many bodies had piled up, so much life gouged from their veins, that the blood had pooled into an enormous, macabre lake. It was so warm and fresh that iron-scented steam rose through the afternoon mist, the red waters melting the permafrost beneath it into a grotesque, muddy morass. From the outflows of this great, vermillion ocean, rivers of blood and spilled organs were gushing to fill the dotted landscape of exploded pits and newly formed depressions.

The banks of these twisting, meandering streams were just as mobile, however, as the mounds of bodies feeding the grisly current moaned and writhed in mortal agony. Men cut off at the waist dragged themselves by handfuls of frigid dirt, slopping their bleeding guts across the ground after them as they searched for their missing legs. Decapitated bodies danced and wriggled, as unfeeling hands spasmed and whirled at the loss of their heads. The injured howled and screamed, begging for mercy as the thawing muck beneath them slowly devoured their immobilized forms, gradually but unstoppably drowning them in the mud.

It was all too much; Quentin's mind did not have even the slightest understanding of how to process it, so she simply chose not to. Instead, she turned to the officer standing breathlessly next to her, a blockish, heavy radio-pack sitting ready on his back. He already had the phone to his ear when she screamed.

"Why in the Emperor's undying name did the sun come back to us?"

The centurion kept shouting into his radio for a moment before he finally replied, "it was the governor, sir. Lady Ci! She said she never authorized the station to shut down, so she ordered the lights put back up."

"That bitch!" Pan bellowed, smashing the skull of a nearly-dismembered cadaver beneath her heavy feet, not checking to see if it was one of hers or the enemy before she did so.

The radioman quaffed, his nerves starting to betray him as he began to quiver, asking in a broken stutter, "do... d-, do you want me to-."

He never finished the line. In a sudden flash and burst of deafening sound, his jaw was blown straight off, leaving an absurd, confused expression on his eyes as his hands tried to reach his long, nearly shorn tongue falling out of his face and bleeding down his neck, lacking any mouth to hold it in. Mercifully, his pain was not prolonged, and before either him or Quentin truly understood what was happening, another bullet penetrated straight through his left ear, leaving almost nothing of a head in its wake.

"Take cover!" screamed the prefect just to Mila's right, and an of echo of centurions carried the order across the battlefield, trying their hardest to shout above the din.

A newly-minted officer, one Pan had commissioned just before the outbreak of the revolution, seemed to completely lose his nerve under the pestering of the snipers, and he tore up from his crouching troops, hobbling towards the ruined wall as he shouted in a shaking and hysterical voice, "retreat! Retreat!" No one was ever given the chance to admonish him, however, because an arrow lodged itself straight his neck before he came within even a hundred meters of his freedom.

The air grew thick with arrows, rocks and spearpoints, homemade projectiles being tossed on them from the vantage of five colossally tall apartment buildings, all standing in a neat semi-circle surrounding the desolated battlefield. More worrying to Quentin was the coalescing of Wang 's forces around those buildings, the armed men climbing quickly up the stairs, finding a window, balcony or rooftop, and pelting the Black Hundreds from an unassailable height. At the foot of the complex, it seemed the melee force was converging, hardly a uniform in sight, but an uncountable mass of human beings. Their steel pots, pans, knifes, cleavers and every other even remotely plausibly lethal detritus glinted in the fresh sunlight.

"Bring up the cannons!" Quentin shouted over to the prefect.

The flurry of bullets and arrows tore through the unlucky patriots who were still holding up black-smeared banners and portraits of the Emperor, but the mortars had cleared such a wide field of battle that Pan's forces could spread enough and – finding cover behind the impromptu walls of dead and dying bodies –withstand the impact. For some, the whizzing of bullets overhead, the anguish of their injured comrades and the tortured moans rising from their human barricades was all too much, and they felt no choice but to turn tail and run. Those people, though, the least reliable, the least motivated, and the most fragile in their disposition, they were also always the first to be brought down by enemy fire. Watching as the cowards fell dead about them, the Black Hundred's esprit de corps became much more than a code of military honour. In that moment, it was a pact of suicide.

In the distance, then, the batteries of the military palace began to grumble. The first few shots only raised the earth, not even making contact with the troops, but they smashed with such heavy force, smacking their faces with so much sound, shock and dirt, the vanguard seemed to be struck deaf, dumb and blind from that single blow. After that first devastating impact, just as the Red Army had totally scaled the apartment complex and begun unleashing an uninterrupted stream gunfire from five directions, the shells started to slam directly down on Pan's line.

Now, her forces finally broke. With militia still pouring over the walls towards the battle, and more and more soldiers desperately attempting to flee from it, the Black Hundreds found themselves caught in the same trap they had so delicately laid mere moments earlier. The blood-soaked, icy, mud-caked fields surrounding the wall became a congested, slippery, unscalable deathtrap, a perfect target for Red sharpshooters, with every freshly slain body becoming a new obstacle, only bottlenecking the field further.

Officers bellowed and hollered, whipping and caning their units to hold formation, only for their discipline to be awarded by an artillery strike. Each firebolt cratered to the surface like a meteor, vaporizing whatever dared stand in its path. Even the good soldiers, their bellies pressed to the ground, hands on their ears in a vain attempt to filter out the ringing of Armageddon, felt themselves being buffeted back and forth so much with each blow that they became sea-sick on solid land, vomiting from a sickly mixture of nausea and fear.

"Call our artillery!" Quentin screamed at the nearest radioman she could find. "We need to bring down those apartments."

"Belay that," the prefect called back, crawling on his stomach up towards his Commandant, an arrow just missing his leg as he did so. "The governor has forbade any strike of civilian areas."

Pan was incredulous. A nearby impact dislodged some ancient rock deep within the ground, sending it hurling towards them, yet she could not even move her head back in reaction, so stunned was she at the officer's insolence. "We cannot retreat, Prefect. The way is blocked. Our only way out is through the enemy."

She continued to speak, low and hushed despite the chaos around them, even as the loosed rock collided directly into the chest of a man not twenty yards distant, cleaving his spine right out of his back. "Civilian or not, they are all enemies now."

"Those are not the rules of war. We-." The prefect clearly had more to say, but a hunter's knife suddenly pressed against his neck and then pulled across his throat finished the thought with a wet, bloody spectacle.

A completely shaven, heavily tattooed man, half-naked despite the cold and wearing pants so stained with red that seemed their natural colour, held the soaked blade to the shivering radio man. "Call them," he ordered flatly. "Obey the Commandant."

Quentin bowed her head. She wanted to be appreciative but was much too petrified of the grisly man to make a sound, and so she just watched silently as he solemnly returned her gesture, leaped over the barrier of piled bodies and rushed towards the enemy, screeching the death knell of a banshee.

The Red Jiaren Army had now fully amassed, and even after the devastating blows Pan had landed, they seemed nearly infinite, like a constellation of heads and weapons that was now surrounding her on all sides. And on all sides, all she saw ranks as deep as the eye could see and impenetrable as glass to water. She might have commanded the Black Hundreds, but they were the hundreds of thousands.

And they were beginning to charge.

"Where are my cannons?" Quentin shouted, but the prefect was dead, and no one was answering.

An artillery shell finally struck the congested mass of retreating soldiers, and the resulting cloud of singed flesh and upturned soil was so massive, so alarmingly, unnaturally huge, it caked nearly every remaining trooper in the pungent, sticky, minced residue of their exterminated comrades. Quentin wanted to scream in horror, but the Red wave was rushing forward too quickly, the fury of their bootheels now replacing the shock of the artillery barrage, the gleam of their steel coming ever closer, and so all her mouth found strength to say was:

"Cannons?"

Behind the gargantuan encroaching army, a rain of friendly missiles began touching down across the neighbourhood, most only trivially in relation to the five, belligerent towers, but destroying everything in their wake. Wholes blocks of shops, banks and studios were laid to waste. The careful grid of the streets was violently redrawn, torn asunder and haphazardly reattached: a cubist painting now unexpectedly abstract. A single arc of light ripped through a tenement's roof, lacerating the centre of the other, causing the second building to crumble into a million, shattering concrete pieces, battering the Red Jiaren Army as it scrambled away.

The barrage did not halt the enemy advance, however. With the explosions at that their back and the Black Hundreds before them in complete disarray, it only provided more incentive to run. The fanatics around Quentin leaped up from their position, drawing swords and readying their axes. Just in front of her the first few sprinters were crashing into her fragmented, scurrying lines.

"Cannons!"

Just as a whole squadron of knife-wielding Reds were about to descend down upon her, an enormous pillar of red light sliced through the air, shredding them apart atom by atom, until they were nothing but a squad of ash. Two stiflingly hot, humming cerise lines jutted through the battlefield, vivisecting every man, woman and child within several yards of their sweltering power, dancing across the horizon like a god's eye discotheque: the screams of their victims racing frantically to escape their wrath forming a sort of morbid soundtrack to its furious dance.

The laser cannons had been set up too far too hastily, and they sputtered and gyrated across the battlefield without even the most limited sense of control, often carving through Quentin's forces just as often as Wang 's. Her opponent's rank stretched far further back, however, and the laser cut all the way to his rearguard, incinerating thousands at a time.

So inaccurate and so devastating were the beams that they tore through the alleys and streets, vaporizing every edifice they touched and setting fire to all else in a wide swath of its rippling heat. At their surface, the lasers were hotter than the core of Septimi's local star, and so the reddened arcs touched down like solar flares onto a dying planet, leaving behind nothing but molten metal, shattered cement, charred wood and cindered flesh. The heat baked a path so wide and indiscriminate, it seemed nearly the whole city was screaming and shouting back in response. Four million people who had all been excitedly seated in their windows and ledges watching the battle one minute, were now racing for their very lives the next, their homes, businesses, salons and workplaces nothing more than a fireball chasing after them in devouring appetence.

Still, they had only had set up two, and the Reds were now slipping over the bloody lake, engaging the rump of Pan's army directly, racing so fanatically, fighting so frenetically it seemed that twenty were willing to be shot down so that only one could break the line. In front of her swords clashed with cleavers. Bullets returned arrows. Grenades replied to spears. The lasers drenched the city streets in floods of red anew, and still the jiaren army would not stop advancing.

Finally, a shout: "look the flag!"

A verification: "yes, white. They fly the white flag!"

The whole battle grew silent, each side staring at the other in confusion. The better part of them were so new to war they had not the faintest inkling as to the meaning of such a flag, but they saw their commanders disengage, and so, after the last of the engaged had settled their grisly contests, they stood awkwardly, arms at their side, eyeing the enemy in suspicion and ire.

Once she saw the flag herself - a huge white bedsheet Wang was waving as he rode atop his excavator towards her - she ordered a centurion raise her black banner and rally whatever remained of the army. It was a dismal offering.

As the mayhem broke away, the dust settled and smoke cleared with the wind, it became clear that the vast majority of both sides had been completely destroyed. It took some time for everyone to cross the Heaven-trampled battlefield, but when they did, Quentin realized she would be lucky to count two thousand at her side.

And to think she had started with more than eight.

Wang 's counting was far worse, and it was written all over his weathered, aged face. His eyes were puffy, purple-greenish welts of exhaustion underneath them and lines of utter despair dragged down his skull like a sort of existential gravity. He did not look like a man who had simply witnessed the annihilation of an army. No, it was clear from the lifeless, dreary stupor of his gate, Pan had murdered much than mere men. It was not his just cohorts and regiments and multiple, entire divisions which laid dead and desecrated on that bloody field, but the whole of his glorious, imagined future.

The earthmover halted a few metres from where Pan still proudly, defiantly stood, her foot resting on a red-capped corpse she assumed had been her enemy. Wang was helped down slowly onto the muck, his friends holding his sides to steady him, and a soldier grabbing his arm to keep his balance in the mud. He crossed the flowing river of human remains that now etched a grotesque border between them, wading into the refuse of his abortive revolution.

"What have we done, my child?" he rasped, barely able to keep himself from crying.

Pan sneered. "I paid the price I needed to pay."

Her opponent was silent, his face twitching in consternation.

She scoffed, adding a little defensively, "and if I had to do it all again, I would. I would, I tell thee! There was no choice. No choice! The stakes are too high, Mang. Thou know that."

Wang shook his head, little tears dripping down the corner of his left eye. "The stakes cannot justify this, Quentin." He held his arms out at his side, gesturing towards the slaughter that engulfed them. "Nothing will ever explain this. Nothing in all the cosmos."

He grimaced, spitting out a over-large hunk of bile to the ground. "Please, my friend (if I can still call thee as such after all we have done this day), the bloodshed needs to cease."

She scowled at that. Tens of thousands of lives she had stole from him, and still she could not stop being condescended to. She stamped her foot in frustration, shouting at him, "thou know the difference between the two of us? Do thou? It is a simple one, one we have marked here on the battlefield. When it comes to those things we believe, those principles we hold dear, those visions we most cherish of our race and people, for them I am willing to sacrifice anything, absolutely anything, and thee, thou are not."

The old man just bent his head, gazing at the gruesome earth beneath him while he whispered, "no. It is true. I am not."

Quentin crossed her arms. "Will you surrender?"

Wang looked up, the remnants of a spark returned to his eyes. "Will you stop the killings, especially of the civilians?"

Pan nodded. "Of course."

He pressed. "No reprisals, no jail sentences, no lost jobs or blacklisting, Just blanket amnesty and life returns to normal. Back to before the revolution. Can you do that?"

The commandant smiled almost warmly, an expression entirely out of place in that apocalyptic landscape. "Certainly."

Wang took a deep breath, and as he released it, he looked as if the burden of a thousand lifetimes had been lifted with the respiring of his lungs. "Very well. Then we surrender."

He made a signal, and the last of his soldiers still carrying any weapons at all dropped them the ground, raising their heads to their head. A whole ruckus was raised with the clanging of metal on metal as everything from rebar, steel-rods, kitchen utensils, broom-handle spears and harvesting machetes were dropped to the ice.

Quentin nodded, acknowledging the surrender. She walked up to Wang , as calmy and collegially as she had once done at their first meeting, but now she stopped short, choosing not to meet his outstretched hand and shake it.

"I'm finding it ironic, now, as I pause to think of it, Mang." She sighed, almost wistful, her gaze moving past him entirely, as if she were somehow seeing the entire sweep of history before her. "What a peculiar, almost comic coincidence we have witnessed here, in your 'cultural revolution'. It is strange, no, that both thee and thy most favoured philosopher shall share in yourselves the same fate? For though he had more success in his lifetime, ultimately the Red Emperor, that Terran man Mao, he just as thee, tried with his all might and desire to eradicate our culture only to fail, to stop short and watch, helpless and alone, as our culture came to eradicate him instead."

She waited there, just a few feet from her enemy and friend, the subject of both her greatest ire and admiration, the kindest of men and most mean-spirited of foes, and as soon as she heard the last knife clatter to the ground, she pulled out her pistol and shot him right through his heart.

Some in the surrendered army tried to make a grab for their arms, but the Black Hundreds raised their guns, hungrily. The Reds still outnumbered them at least ten to one, but there was not even a revolver in sight now besides those in her possession. The five apartment towers of snipers were now nothing but heaps of rubble, their smoke rising up into the tarry, bleak blackened sky.

Pan took a megaphone to her mouth and addressed the traitors. "Hello, surrendered rebels. Your leader is dead, and your revolt is crushed, never to be seen on the face of this planet again. I, Pan Quentin, Commandant of the Black Legion and servant of the Emperor, have defeated you, and to those who will still outlive this day, you have me and me alone to thank for it. For in all honesty, considering your treason and belligerence to the state, all your lives might well be forfeit, but I, in my infinite mercy, have decided to moderate the worst of my impulses."

"The simple truth is, you wayward colonists have been victims of a terrible, Hamite conspiracy, and so many of you I cannot blame for your participation in this revolt. Your leader was a half-breed charlatan, taking bribes and assistance from the evil, freedom-hating, totalitarian Cassian Party, and you were nothing more than pawns in a wider Hamite plot to destroy imperial society and degrade the whole of the human race. Thankfully, you have been saved from this ignominious fate and been granted the ultimate reprieve, a chance to understand the true nature of your actions and to make amends by uncovering the real, shared enemy of our people: the Cassians!"

"To those of full imperial blood, you have nothing to fear from me. You will face no reprisals, no judgements, no consequences of any kind. Just prove the sanctity of your blood, finger out all the impure and Hamite around you, and you shall go free! Fail to substantiate your heritage, however, or worse, refuse to point out the race traitors and Cassians among your ranks, you will find yourself sharing the same fate as your half-breed commander."

The bald-shaven men seemed to lick their lips as they drew their swords, marching up, step by ponderous step towards the frightened POWs before them. Quentin just smiled. She was finally beginning to understand those fanatics. They were not some uncouth savages just intent on killing anyone. They were people too, people like any other.

And more importantly, they were her people now.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

"Thou must speak in jest. You cannot leave me!"

Haig stood emotionless and unconcerned, an awkward confused expression on his lips, briefly obscured as he draped his simple cotton shirt over his head. For a moment Edward could not quite decide what was the greater tragedy: that he had been liberated from Cuthbert's maniacal grip only for the Empire to abandon him or that, with one curt, unceremonious gesture, that rippling, well muscled chest and firm, bulging belly would forever be lost to his famished eyes.

The prince burst from under the bed covers, clasping himself around his legionnaire's thick, brawny arms, enjoying that salty, sweaty, sweet and spicy imperial scent as long as he could hold it down. But the touch was not returned. Haig did not even look back at him as he carefully, mechanically pried away Edward's fingers one by one, while he bent his torso over the bed, trying to account for each item of his discarded uniform underneath it.

"There is no room for discussion, War-war," the commandant said, finally tilting his neck to meet the longing, desperate eyes behind him. "I have been commanded, and so I must go. It is my duty."

"And what of thy duties to me, thy lover?" Edward nearly shrieked, indignantly flaring his nostrils. "And why do thou still call me by such jiawen nonsense? My name is Edward. Hear me! Edward! For the sake of the Stars and all that is holy, Edward!" He pawed teasingly at Haig's back while he screamed at him, and though he at least made an attempt at playfulness, his voice was undeniably twinged with malicious, bitter scorn.

Haig scoffed. He left the bed entirely now and began tugging at his trousers while he continued the discussion. "You have my apologies, Edwardddddd, my most Majestic, Awesome, Unimpeachable Prince," he intentionally, irritatingly placing emphasis on the final "d" sound. "In truth, your Cassian names still confuse me greatly, and thou have my promise I will endeavour to improve before I next meet thee, but first thou must understand one thing."

"This," he pointed at himself, then Edward and wagged his finger between them, "this bears no obligations whatsoever. I fuck thee. Thou cum. Duties resolved. That's my poem."

Haig then held his uniform aloft, dusting off the command pips at the shoulders, glancing at it with the short of tender affection that could spurn in his lover nothing but jealousy. "This on the other hand," he said, pointing to the Legion dragon on the shirt's breast, "this weighs on my backbone more heavily than all the Home Worlds combined. This is the only responsibility I can and ever will bear."

"HeiWang !" Edward yowled, jumping off the bed and shoving his face as uncomfortably close to Haig as he dared. "Do thou not understand, you will kill me! Thou do murder me! This is a sentence, thou carry, a sentence of execution, of immediate death!"

"Firstly, if thou will criticize the utterance of thy name, I will police the speaking of mine," Haig shot back. "From now on, Haig or commandant will do. It pays no dividends for one to be with foreigners on friendlier terms than that. As to thy death, how can I comment on such melodramatic overstatement as that? I'm an officer, not a theatre critic."

He turned away, fastening the brass buttons around his frilled collar and twisting a gold coil about his right shoulder. Edward grabbed him by those shoulders, so suddenly and so powerfully, Haig was forced to look back at him once more.

"Please, commandant, Wang -Wang , my lover! Please," the prince sobbed, his cheeks growing red and puffy, his voice hoarse and squawking. "Thou know not what they say. My commanders ... they ... they know now. They know, and they will not obey me when thou are gone. They'll kill me, Haig. They will kill me! I need thy legions now to survive."

The commandant scrunched his face in bewilderment, lifting a skeptical eyebrow as he asked, "what do they know, Edwar ... Edward, what do they know? Thou have replaced the disloyals, removed the malcontents, I watched thee with my own eyes. What more needs being done by my forces now?"

"They've seen, Haig. They've seen!" Edward pressed his fingers to his temple, exasperated tears flooding down his wrists. "How can thou not understand this?"

"What have they seen?" Haig barked, his frustrated confusion exploding into anger, arms flying out at his sides, head tilted forward, awaiting an explanation, any explanation.

The prince was flabbergasted. He truly had no idea. His throat seemed to fight against him, seizing and contracting as he tried to get out whatever piddling, pathetic words he could. "I... I do not know the word in j-...j-...jiawen."

The commandant spat on the floor in disgust, shaking his head as he did so. He turned his back on the man once more, tying a purple cape to his neck. "I'm leaving, Edward. We are leaving. Thou will have to make due. There is no alternative."

"Please!" Edward screamed, dropping to his knees like all those worshippers had done to him for decades, turning to their last beacon of hope and relief in the cruel, unforgiving darkness of the world. "They know I like ... like men. They saw us; I, I... I wanted them to. I was stupid, but I wanted them to. That was all Cuthbert had on me. That was all he ever needed."

"I know, it was rash. I know I should have hidden it, hidden us, hidden how I felt, how," the breath caught in his throat, "incredible thou made me feel, but I wanted them to know. I wanted to break their hold over me, to be free, to be myself. I am their prophet, Stars damn it! I should decide what is sinful and saintly, not them, not some dusty old book. I should decide, and I did! I decided! For once in my life, I decided. But now, they know it, Haig. They know it! And without you to protect me, they will kill me for it. I swear it, Haig. They'll kill me!"

The commandant pinched an aching vein at his forehead and sighed as deeply as a monk experiencing some great, theological epiphany. He still did not turn to face the prince. "You barbarians do have it coming. You mud-fuckers, you have it coming. I mean that sincerely."

"Haig!" Edward cried, falling to the floor and grasping at the officer's boot like a moaning child. "Have thou no heart? Have thou no soul? If not me, if thy lover and bedmate can conjure no feelings, no love, no sentiment, then what of thy people? What of the jiaren, my dear? Cuthbert is the one who hates them, not me. If I am gone, they will surely die. They're dying already! There aren't many left. If not for me, please stay for them! Have a heart, dear Haig! Do thou shed no tears over the suffering of thy fellow men?"

Haig pressed his bootheel to the prince's fingers and when Edward still refused to unhand him, he stamped until at last his feet were free, the prophet's squeals of pain only fueling his migraine further. He made for the door, but before he left, he ensured a final word let slip to the weeping Edward as he curled up in a foetal position, cradling his lightly bruised hand to his bosom.

"Thou imprisoned the jiaren, not I, Edward. 'Twas thee who set the flames, not me. Do not place thy moral burdens on others when the rightful suffering rests with thee. My orders are to return to the colony, and that is where I will go. I will return for the jiaren if and when I am told to do so. If they die, or are raped, or tortured, set alight, eaten alive or suffer any other horrific, barbaric practices to which you jackals subject them, that is your business, not mine. Whatever is done is done under Heaven. Though there be no Legion, thou will be watched. Be assured of that, Edward. Thou will be watched."

The door had nearly closed before the man shook his head and added, "now, do us the favour of keeping the roads and mountain-passes cleared for our departure, and I will personally ensure our forces return as soon as we are able. We will meet again, my prince. Hold fast, and we will save thee."

"I do care for thee, little prophet; and I am sorry to leave thee, sorry to have made thee suffer, for I see thou are more fragile than I could have ever guessed before. That fragility, annoying and irritable as it may be, Edward, it is also beautiful in its own peculiar fashion, and I cannot say that I will not miss such beauty on my travels. Just hold fast. Hold fast, and I will be back before Cuthbert returns. I promise."

Edward could even not hear the door close above the cacophony of his own lament. He howled and howled, wailing curses into the carpets beneath him, their stitched eloquence soaked with tears and spittle in repayment for the muffling of his cries.

He felt as if he were being born in reverse, that with every new scream of fright and burst of fluid from his lungs, the floor engulfed him further, the air grew heavier and the hearth ever hotter until finally he was being squeezed to a point of infinitesimal minuteness, pushed through the scorching womb of Blackhell itself. He pressed his knees to his chest, huffing rapidly in one minute, forgetting to breathe the next, the ceiling orbiting around him all the while as he sputtered and coughed, hacked and moaned.

When the spinning had finally stopped, Edward groaned a deep, heavy sigh of relief and resolution. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and it started with a fire.

Gone were the sweats and welts of imagined heat. Now he shivered, tossing one, two, three logs onto the fire, letting it swelter, though still it could not break his chill. He threw on every log he could find in that dingy excuse for a royal apartment, and when that failed to produce a roaring inferno in any way equivalent to the flames raging with his fiery heart, he turned to other measures. He fell to his knees, smashing his solid gold slippers against the floorboards until they cracked from the blows then pried them from their nails, more feed to flames.

After the fire had finally escaped its hearth and began its first tentative licks outside the porcelain tiles of its outgrown, childhood home, Edward ran to his desk in search of more fuel for its ever-expanding appetite. First was the letter Haig had helped him compose, ordering the concentration camps be emptied, and the executions of jiaren be halted. Hours to compose it, countless breaks of kisses and debates, tenderness and acrimony, only to ever be posted in a single mailbox: the hearth.

Next came an order on the dissolution of marriages between all the jiaren women to VLF soldiers. Haig had been particularly adamant about that one. In fact, he seemed to almost care about it more than saving the lives of his own countrymen in the camps. A truly peculiar people, those imperials were. No matter, their words all burned the same.

Oh, and then there was the proclamation, demanding the Third and Fourth Legions of some place the jiaren called "Septimi" be given indefinite passage and mobility rights through all Thunorr territory. On that, Haig had not even consulted the prince in the slightest. He merely plopped it down besides his quill, in perfect expectation that Edward would sign it like the obedient pet he ought it to be. That was the piece of parchment he most relished watching be devoured by the ravenous flames.

The smoke was becoming so thick it was nearly impossible to discriminate between letters now, so he decided to err on the side of caution and simply toss the entirety of his correspondence, sent and unsent, onto the growing fire.

That really was all he ever was to him, Edward fancied. A puppet. A plaything.

He ran his fingers along the wood of the bedframe, watching it blister and bubble, sputtering in the heat. He could still see the notches where the commandant had tied him in place. Had the rope been but a symbol as well? The bondage of the ties signifying his far greater, less pleasurable bondage to the Emperor?

Edward hated himself for enjoying it. Even now, after all the betrayal and all the empty promises, he found in himself that disgusting, base, vile longing to be bound over that bed, his lover breathing warmly over him.

He hated himself for a great many reasons. Now, it was for different reason, a more familiar, more intimate of reasons; it was because of the identity of that lover, that man who still penetrated his mind, who still haunted his thoughts. It was not the officer who had just slammed that mighty oak door, but the one who had softly opened it for the first time after they had taken the castle, hoping to make Vihorr their new, loving home.

He held the bedsheet to his nostrils, trying in all desperation to smell beyond the smoke, to sniff past the bay leaves and mysterious spices Haig called "peppercorns", to remember the fragrant odour, the beautiful stench of that kind, adoring man whom no foreigner could ever hope to replace. He recalled it so clearly, how he had loved that scent with all his life, but that it was not until his first encounters with jiawen that he finally learned the words to label it: the sweet, but crisp floral aroma of artic lupine and mountain lilies.

Edward pressed his face into those sheets, hoping if he did so hard enough the fabric would transport him, a membrane between now and those happier times, one only permeable through the power of sheer hatred or profound, undying love. As he pushed harder, he could almost feel the magic take effect, his mind and body captivated by the backwards flow of relative time, hurtling him down to his most cherished of memories and repressed of desires, for they were one and the same.

Had it been him who had touched Edward first or was it the prophet who had made the first tentative explorations? They had both been little more than children, he remembered that, sleeping next to each other on the ground at night, cuddled up against another for warmth, first out of necessity, but later, as they grew older, from genuine affection. After his father had died, the old prophet had taken him in like another son, a brother to Edward, the prophet-to-be, but it had not taken long for the two recognize in each other things that were far beyond the reach of any ordinary sibling.

In those nights, - those cold, bitter nights - the wind flapping at their tent, threatening to tear the ger straight from the ground, Edward remembered how their arms wrapped together had formed some sort of telepathic connection, that through the sensuous, seamless transfer of their touch, thoughts could flow from one mind freely to the other. They were in perfect harmony, in perfect union, as inseparable as the earth and the moon, their path written out in the stars, twinned to one another for all eternity.

In the other had been an escape, an evasion from shame, from distrust, from self-loathing and revulsion. So long as the one could look on the other with only love and dignity in their eyes, no matter the text of the Revelations, no matter the sermons of Edward's father, no matter the deviants burned at the stake or prodded and stoned to repentance, they knew their actions were good, their hearts were true and their destiny was clear. It did not matter how wracked Edward became with doubt, how flustered with confusion and guilt, how despising to his own loathsome, miserable, sinful body, a single kiss could always make it disappear. Such was the magic of that man, a mystery as clear and divine as any prophet had ever brought forth from the Stars.

How could he have cast him out? How could he have betrayed him? How had he let Cuthbert inject himself between the only thing in the all the universe he had ever loved? He had to make amends. He had to pay his penance. He had to bask in the sunlight, uncover the truth, refuse to live in fear.

He was the prophet! The Revelations could change. They had changed before; they could once again. He would force it through. He would fight his way back. With that man at side, anything was possible. With that man at his side, his life was saved. A single kiss, and it would all go away. Of course, that was what he needed.

He ripped his head from the blankets, only to notice they had caught fire all around him, their flaming fabric singing his flesh, melted and welding to his skin.

"Alfred!" he screamed, but his shouts came too late.

The fire had long since consumed him before anyone had even the faintest hint of what was the matter. The whole apartment had been burnt to a cinder, nothing but an ashy skeleton on his knees. The prince had gone up in smoke, too devout and intent on prayer, it was said, to notice the fire had been creeping up behind him.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

When Alfred heard the high-pitched wail of the rusting dungeon door scraping against the iron catwalk, his eyes were too overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of the bunker's dim, flickering (but in that moment, entirely overpowering) light to see that in addition to his regular torturer, three other Party cadres had marched in as well. Even as the four pairs of snapping bootheels met his weary ears, however, it made little difference to him. Whether it was one, or two or even a hundred of those grim-faced, uniformed sadists, there was only one thing ever of interest to them:

Pain.

Alfred's chains rattled with the drone of a smoking engine it lowered his shackled body down to the point that where he could stand again without his limbs being deliberately, uncomfortably stretched out like a living anatomical diagram. He never allowed his muscles even a moment of relaxation, though, for he understood the trick all too well. It was into these gentle respites that the Party always plunged its most agonizing inventions.

The mind and body adapted too quickly to a steady dose of even the most excruciating pain. It was the random shocks and surprises of both pleasure and torment – separately and together – punctuating the dreary, silent symphony of numbness that truly broke the human spirit.

Alfred tensed his bleeding, haggard body and prayed the jab would come quick.

Instead, he only heard a voice, the same ideology apparatchik who had so fervently butted heads with Valentina before Alfred had been led down here and locked away.

Alfred nearly caught himself smiling. After hearing nothing but the monotonous mumbling of his torturer as she checked off an endless list of repetitive, ludicrous, pointlessly ideological questions, it was an unexpected privilege just to hear someone, anyone else.

Damn it! Even at his most prepared, they could still find ways to cut through his defences.

"Commander," the man began, "I know this holds precious little meaning to thee in thy current circumstance, but we wanted thee to know that there many of us – many, many of us – who are nothing short of appalled at thy treatment here."

Alfred gritted his teeth, trying to steal himself and not betray any emotional change on his face. The voice sounded sincere, but they always sounded sincere. The mind was just a plaything to these people, and whenever the torturers grew tired of the routine they would toy endlessly with the emotions, aspirations and fears of their terrified subjects. Alfred could not surrender even a hint of his true thoughts; he knew fully well they would be used against him to their most devastating potential.

A woman in the group stepped up into the light so that he could see the rows of shining brass medallions stapled across her wide, strong breast. Though these people held no ranks, it was clear from the way she held herself that she was the leader of this little cabal.

"Do not misunderstand our sympathy, Alfred," the cadre folded her arms and scrunched her lip rather sternly. "Thou are a zealot of an unsophisticated and counter-revolutionary sect, and for that, there is no treatment, no matter how brutal or how harsh, thou do not deserve in thy re-education and correction. That being said, most of us members of the Cassia Quartus Committee do not believe thou suffer here in any way that could be construed as 'instructive.'"

"Comrade Nadia speaks too strongly. We think thou were right about the jiaren!" another woman behind her piped in, though too shrouded in darkness for Alfred to see. "We should be doing as thou said, emptying the concentration camps and enlisting allies to the Party!"

"The doctrine is clear," the male ideology chief affirmed. "All lives must be weighed equally on their revolutionary potential. We cannot turn away so many that we have the power to save and educate for the good of the human race."

Their leader grumbled slightly at this, batting her ponytail back and forth in mild frustration. "More importantly," she contended, "We think the Chairwoman is using Song's loyalty and resources to subvert the natural order of collective leadership. She has brushed thee aside to fulfil some secret pact with the jealous Song, we think, and now the whole has been weakened by her selfish impudence."

"We want thee to return," a third woman said, and this time, Alfred jerked violently upright at the sound. It was his torturer, though in the shallow light she now was trying her best to seem benign and contrite, holding her hands together at her waist, palms outwards like an obnoxious child, indifferently asking for forgiveness out of some filial obligation.

"Thou seemed rather intent to suggest otherwise mere hours ago!" Alfred spat back her, contorting his face into as fearsome a displace of hideous anger as he was capable of forming.

The torturer merely shrugged in response, but their leader, Nadia was clever enough to walk towards the single, twinkling light from outside and block it from illuminating that frightful menace. "We almost have the votes to remove her, Alfred. A single conference and this all can end. Valentina deposed, a new chair designated, and thyself freed and saving lives once more. We only ask one thing of thee, Alfred: one simple, symbolic morsel of fealty to assuage the committee, put everyone on our side."

Alfred pulled at his chains, grimacing. "You have me drawn, naked, shivering, bloodied, wailing with every other breath to end this ceaseless misery. What more could you possibly ask? What more could you possibly take?"

Nadia smiled, bitterly, her grey eyes glinting with the acidic remembrance of something she had spent her whole life trying to forget. She bit her lip, stating glibly, "strange as it may seem, many of us know all too well the particulars of even thy most lamentable of conditions."

She walked up so close to Alfred that for a moment he was almost certain he was about to be kissed (something her fellow cadre had once done for little reason, it seemed, besides merely berating him), but instead she just stared as seriously and directly as she could. Her pupils were brittle, black and sharp as pure obsidian. "So, when we say it, we know it for a fact: thou always have more to give."

"What is it?" Alfred hated himself for being so overcome, but even if there was a chance, he knew he had to take it. The dungeon was too terrible. The number of lives in the balance too many. He had to take a risk. The worst had already happened; now he was just gambling with a prolongation. "Anything, just say it."

The torturer stepped back into the light and withdrew her notebook from a satchel at her side. "Will thou pledge to surrender all previous doctrinal misconceptions and pledge absolute loyalty, of both body and mind, to the interplanetary, atheistic socialist revolution?"

She had read the line word for word before. Alfred felt a wetness forming at the bridge of his nose, but he stifled his cries with a look of venomous ire. So, it had been just a trick after all. "No!" he repulsed.

"Alfred, please!" The leader seemed almost genuine in her entreaties, her eyes suddenly softening into something mirroring compassion. "I understand thy reticence; we all do, but there is much more at stake here than the private musings of one man and his holy stars. The lives of half a million jiaren hang in the balance!"

"Do not play games with me!" he thundered. "You do not care about the jiaren. This is nothing but an exercise for you, a pleasant way to occupy your time on our wretched planet!"

Nadia's mouth hung open in bewilderment. "How could thou say such a thing. Of course, we care about the jiaren! They are humans, are they not! Can anyone watch five hundred thousand be burned alive and feel nothing? For certain, we care for those people; we only care about the revolution more!"

He could not bear to meet the woman's gaze, choosing instead to bury his face into his shoulder like a sniveling child. "They're going to die anyways. You're going to let them die! It's all a trick, just another trick." He shouted straight into the smirking image of his torturer now. "They're going to die no matter what, and thou just want me to give up every last piece of myself before they do it, right? Is that the game? Is it!"

The ideology officer brought himself up to the forefront and gave a stern reply. "Grab a hold of thyself, good man! Can thou not see the greater picture when it is painted clear all about thee? Repent thy ways, save a race! What could those short, simple syllables - the repudiation of a false, invisible god - really mean in the face of such calamity?"

"It is all I have left!" Alfred begged, his shouts only becoming more pathetic and his eyes more reddened and deranged.

Nadia grew close again. "That is precisely why we ask it, commander." She squared up her jaw, steeling herself to the harshness of her pronouncement. "Something must be given, Alfred. Their lives cannot be bought for free. How can thou call thyself a lover of mankind and not pay the smallest price for your fellows' salvation?"

"But must I make the sacrifice?" He was almost screaming it now, pulling as hard as he could against the chains, shaking the wall behind him and dangling pitifully as he tried to pull himself forward. "Haven't I given enough already? Haven't you taken enough from me? Why can you not make the compromise? Why cannot you negotiate your doctrine while I keep intact my conscience, my own remaining possession in all the universe?"

"Because we are right!" the woman bellowed back at him, forcing his body against the wall as if her voice had carried the shockwave of a bomb blast. "There can be no compromise when one side is correct and the other is not! Right can never meet halfway with wrong, for half-right is just as bad; worse even, for half-right has not even wrong's obstinate strength of conviction. If the righteous taint themselves with wrong, even in the service of greater goods, they turn those goods to evil, and the whole endeavour is corrupted, no matter how noble or humanitarian it may seem in the outset. No, there is no common ground between us, Alfred. There can only be capitulation!"

She was nearly foaming at the mouth while she said it, but she began to pace, hoping to calming herself. "Now, we have been gentle with thee, Alfred. I know thou do not believe it, but it is true. We have, in view of thy service to the cause, been more lenient than thou could possibly imagine. But now, we have come to a moment of inflection: thou must repent and be free or face the wrath of righteous torment!"

Alfred's cheeks started wavering. Every bone in his skull felt like it was shaking so hard it was about to shatter. "But what you ask... it, it's... too much. Don't you understand? Those are not just words! If I say them, I shall forever lose my eternal soul!"

Nadia came just close enough to whisper directly into Alfred's ears. "And the exact same will happen if thou let those jiaren die too."

Tears sprouted down Alfred's fractured face, cries of anguish screeching through the claustrophobic dungeon. "I'm sorry," he sobbed, his throat seizing up, barely letting him pass those final, terrible words: "I ... can't."

The four cadres looked stupefied. Even the torturer appeared to be just as moved, just as disappointed.

Alfred swallowed, snot mingling with his teardrops as his wretched form was wracked with coughs and shudders. "I just can't."

The leader bit her lip, scanned the shackled man up and down one last time and then shook her head. "I do believe thee," she said. "But understand me when I say, no matter how fervent thy beliefs or passionate thy convictions, there will come a time when thou will truly, deeply, profoundly regret the choice thou have made here today, and when thou do, it may just be too late. Not just for thee, not just for us, but for all those thousands of innocent lives as well."

"Humanity demands our sacrifice, Alfred, and it will never forgive the selfishness you have shown today."

As the four began to file out of the room, Nadia placed her hand on the torturer's shoulder, bidding her to stay behind. She did not seem to care that Alfred was still in earshot when she said, "make him talk. Make him confess. Make him repent. Do whatever thou have to do, but make it quick. Time is running short."

"Worry not, comrade," the torturer smiled. "He may be a stubborn one for sure, but once you clip their balls, even the most rambunctious boys can hit the high notes."

The lights dimmed as the cadre finally left, and Alfred was once again left alone, hearing only his tormentor as she rattled her instruments in the dark.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

"The city is lost."

Lady Ci fell with a thud to her chair, her spine laying crooked and ungracefully on its back. The news hit her like a bullet to the chest, instantly emptying her lungs until every breath became a mortal struggle against impending wave of panic.

Xiao had just been on the cusp of refilling her inkpot when Hui barged into her offices, flinging herself at the governor's desk like some typhoon wind had gusted her away and deposited her there all in the space of a few harrowing moments. Now the well still laid empty, a puddle of black quickly soaking its way down into the very heart of the precious wood.

As soon as the artificial sun had been brought offline and Pan's mutiny made clear, the magisterial palace had become awash with frenetic anxiety. A flurry of communiques had been sent out all across the colony, announcing that Pan Quentin was no longer the acting Commandant, that she was to be arrested and held for military court-martial and, most importantly, that the gubernatorial administration was still firmly in control, the leftist terrorist agitators had been defeated and all business was to resume as normal.

Only a handful of outer fishing villages, mining towns and refineries had even bothered to write back, expressing almost uniformly they had never even so much as heard of the Red insurrection but were grateful for its disappearance. The response from everywhere else in the colony, the parts of the colony Lady Ci cared most about, had been resounding silence.

Thankfully, the Legion command staff had remained fixed in Hui's palace, but they were solely occupied with the hopeless shouting at the static in their radios, screaming for their colleagues to return, though it quickly became evident they would not. No one knew if all the field officers had merely vanquished in the battle or if they had been murdered by the mutineers. The only certainty was that whatever officer corps still existed outside the palace; it was firmly under Pan's control.

Try as she might, Xiao could not gauge the mood of the Legion she had left. Each time she passed their makeshift command posts, it seemed like all conversation fell to a hush and all eyes stared emptily, suspiciously even, up at her. They stared at one another as intently as an injured bear crossing a starving wolf, each unsure whether it would be wiser to walk past, trusting their gaze forward or pacify the other in the nadir of their strength.

Only the most preliminary, distressing whiffs of smoke had reached the palace when the first wave of refugees came rushing to its heavily fortified gate, and each new mob, more wretched than the last, seemingly invited a fresh, new catastrophe in their wake. The first, for example, had arrived laden with suitcases, valises and luggage of various kinds, hailing from nearer the palace and clearly taking refuge from an abundance of caution. These being a more civil and organized type of folk, they were accommodated easily enough.

Then the soft, rhythmic rolling of artillery exchanges the city had learned to reluctantly accept quickly descended into a deafening staccato. Shockwaves pierced through every district and pushed torrents of ruder people onwards to the magisterial residence, these ones all running as fast as their feet could carry them, not a piece of baggage in sight. The remnants of Ci's colonial administration had been still sifting through that batch of refugees when the smoke no longer just teased the nostrils, but now grew thick, sticky and black throughout the city, permeating every street in a hazy darkness, a veil broken only by the penetrating blaze of enormous, block-engulfing fires, jutting up at random intervals all across the horizon.

The last surge of human refuse did not only come bearing no luggage, they were often missing pieces of themselves as well. What few forces Xiao still controlled were deployed out onto the adjoining streets, patrolling up and down, seeking with all their might to establish some semblance order, some control over the crowd, but soon they too became inundated in the all-encompassing quicksand of shambling bodies.

The crowds kept growing, ever ambling, crawling, dragging, pulling themselves up by any means possible towards the palace. They meandered up towards the castle steps like mummified corpses, stumbling on broken legs, omitted limbs, and frayed nerves, their only clothes soiled beyond repair with indiscernible combinations of the most rancid bodily fluids, and smoking, dusty, singed urban detritus. So many arrived with skin nearly burnt to a crisp, flayed off from fire, acid and some, most horrifically, by the stroke of a knife, that it was entirely impossible to identify their origin, much less their name. The luckier ones, the one's still recognizable as at least some form of human being, their hides were all far darker and more tanned than the average imperial.

It was that last point that disturbed the governor most, the reason why she had bidden Hui, her lieutenant and seemingly only loyal friend in all of Septimi, to investigate further. Their skin made it clear this last and latest batch of refugees were almost all native Cassians, and from the look now despairing on Hui's face, it was far from any accident.

That woman could no longer even look upon the governor's gaze as she spoke. The once indefatigably elegant magistrate now appeared drab and disheveled, her visage bare of any ornamentation whatsoever, and her eyes, whenever they did shamefully cross up to her superior, were devoid of the colourful, sumptuous ambition and poise of which they had once been stunning turquoise reservoirs.

Instead, Hui talked with a forlorn, tired monotone, trying her best to expunge even the faintest hint of emotion from her words. She knew the instant she allowed herself to feel, even the slightest, most minute part of that terrible tragedy, she would begin cry and in all likelihood, she would never be able to stop.

"The city is lost, your excellency." She repeated. "No one knows just how many Pan has now, but it's enough, and more are joining her. Every hour, every minute, more are flocking to those black banners, and they are destroying everything in sight."

"I have been told they move house to house, your worship, going street by street, block by block, and few squads go ahead first, marking the buildings with either the character for 'Home' or the character for 'Foreigner'. And, whereas generally nothing happens to the first kind of dwelling, the people at our palace, the refugees, the victims seeking asylum here, they all emanated from the latter. Once their homes were marked, they had no choice but run, they had to leave everything behind because the people who did not understand this, the Cassians, the half-breeds, the Reds, all the people who slighted, confounded or impeded the Black Hundreds in anyway – your excellency, I cannot guarantee the accuracy of these accounts for certain, but it comes now from a multitude of sources – these people, these many, many thousands, tens of thousands of people, they have not survived."

"Once a house is marked 'Foreigner', there is no limit, no bounds imaginable nor laws defining the miseries that can be visited upon it. The homes are being looted, ransacked, pillaged, burned and otherwise desecrated in the most vile and disorderly of ways. The inhabitants who do not escape have been subjected to numerous atrocities: reports of hangings, beheadings, torture, tarring with feathers and other humiliations. Sometimes, it seems, the brigands nail fast every door and window, ensuring not one can slip the noose and then torch the whole structure with whole families, multiple generations, all still locked inside."

"And the women...," Hui tried to force the next syllables from her quivering mouth, but she could not. She sniffled, pressing a firm hand to her cheek to callously chase off the encroaching tears before continuing, "they're ... being raped, your worship. Almost every woman to whom I have spoken has admitted to me thus, and even those to whom I have not spoken, I see it in their eyes, Ci Xiao. I see it in their eyes. Those terrified, frozen, petrified eyes, your worship. I have seen them. I have seen hundreds of them, just at these very gates."

"I just...," her words were stifled, softer and more choked as her efforts to block out the sorrows were shown to be in vain, "...I just do not understand how ... how can she do it, Xiao-xiao? How could she let it happen?" Hui finally met the governor's stupefied look, her eyes inflamed and distent, hair-thin, red cracks seemingly on the verge of fracturing them entirely. "How can could one woman do that to another?"

Lady Ci was too stunned even to contemplate a response, much less make one, and thankfully the door to the study burst open one more time, the ever reliable Centurion Singh with another update to break the silence.

"This message is of a classified nature," he straightened his shoulders and pointed his nose high in the air, almost in direct insult to the magistrate. "I would suggest we take this meeting alone, governor."

He, like the rest of the command staff, had lately taken to addressing the Lady Ci in a far less formal style, and though she longed greatly for the Legion's return, when she would be mercifully at liberty once again to discipline the now often openly contemptuous officers, she realized such a return to normalcy was no doubt relegated to the unforeseeable future. There was no other reason for the legionnaires to act in such a way; they both knew Xiao could not admonish them. Perhaps she would never be able to do so.

She gave her magistrate what was meant to be a reassuring pat on her shoulder along with a twisted, poorly forged smile that was far too blatantly insincere, and bid Hui on her way. The woman left her like a phantom might exit a dream, floating carelessly through space and time, unsure if it was even real.

The governor, then, turned her full attention to the centurion and hoped to high Heaven he would find himself capable of breaking some good news. The officer's face was far more inscrutable than the magistrate's had been, but it did not take long for even the most modest of Ci's hope to be dashed.

"The Third and Fourth Legions have radioed a distress call to our headquarters, madame," Singh. "It seems the political situation in Thunorr has... devolved, disintegrated even, overnight. Every town, every roadway, every mountain pass is now closed and heavily defended. They are likely in no great trouble, thy worship. They can still battle their way to the colony; the Majestic Imperial Legion is the greatest fighting force mankind has ever assembled, but," he grimaced, "they will need time to fight their way back now."

Xiao's kept herself as still and expressionless as possible, not betraying a single detail. She merely asked, as casually and indifferently as she could make herself sound, "how long?"

"Until they return?" he asked.

The governor nodded, slowly, deliberately, her eyes perhaps just too eager, too desperate as she did so.

The centurion winced, shuffling his feet about in an awkward, uncomfortable gesture. "More than a month, at least."

Ci had never felt such nausea in all her long, eventful life. She felt the room warping all around her, like her mass had suddenly collapsed into a single point of infinite density, that her gravitational pull was bending the very light down towards her centre, grabbing it, trapping it and melding it to darkness. She breathed long, nervous, exasperated breaths, gripping her desk as tightly as she could, looking for something, anything that could anchor her, pull her back, something that could resist the frenetic attraction of that incalculably massive weight.

Thoughts spun out and orbited around her - a frenzied mental form of Hawking radiation - each flash and flurry gutting her just a little bit more, emptying to her as a little bit further, threatening to disgorge her very body in a tempest of controllable, anxious thought. Could she really hold on for a whole month? More than that? A month of unpaid administrators separated from the palace by a rampaging army? A month of grumbling officers wondering if they'd be better off selling her out? A month refugees flooding every courtyard, apartment, corridor and cellar in the already swarming palace? A month of pogroms and rioting? A month of anarchy and violence? A month of panic and hysteria, clutching so hard it squeezed the very life out of her like juice from a lemon, all day, every day, without fail and without stopping?

There was no way it could possibly hold, and yet, the governor found herself with no choice. She eased her grip on the desk, barely noticing the visible dents she had carved from the intensity of her grasp, lowered her voice and spoke as clearly and seriously as she could.

"Mr. Singh," she said, "I must ask you this will all every scrap of strength and determination left in my heart. Tell no one of this. Not your superiors. Not the magistrate. Not even closest of confidantes and most of cherished lovers. Please," she bowed her head, still bickering under her breath with herself as she did it, "please, centurion. It is not often one finds a governor pleading with her charge, but I am begging you now, begging you as I have never begged anyone in my life, do not tell anyone of this!"

"We will persist!" She slammed the table, not flinching a muscle as a glass of distillated opium water shattered to the ground. "We will fight on, and we will be victorious. But please, Mr. Singh, please, dear boy, do not let this news escape these walls. You were wise to tell it to me in secret. Now, for sake of their morale, for the sake of our eternal nation, our beloved Emperor and our still very much inevitable victory, I am begging you to seal your lips, and keep them sealed forever."

The centurion kept his eyes on the ground and just sighed, a long, exhausted, almost genuinely remorseful sigh, before eventually looking up and shaking his still shining blue beret from side to side. "I am most sorry, governor. I truly am, but I did not tell this to you as a secret. Instead, I merely meant it as a favour, a token of goodwill before we part."

His expression grew far flatter, far less emotive as he produced a single sheet of parchment from his within the folds of his uniform. "Once the Legion's message was heard, command was put in contact with the Commandant Pan Quentin. Her requested court martial has been permanently postponed, and in the meantime, she will be occupying a newly vacated office," he winked, though the expression was sour and humourless, "thine."

Singh placed the paper on her desk and unfurled it. "Thou, for reasons of ailing personal health, shall undertake an indefinite leave of absence, whereby Pan will be serve as acting Governor in thy place, thus negating the need for any imperial credentials on her part."

Ci scoffed, nearly spitting on the document from all the sudden, hideous vile sentiments she felt towards it. "This is a mockery. I will not sign it! We will not sign it."

Singh removed a pistol from a holster at his side, and though he did not cock it, did not wave it about, point it or otherwise threaten her, the point was clear enough. There was no scenario where he would accept "no" as an answer.

Xiao looked over to the inkpot, now ringed by deep, almost deathly black that had stained the desk so thoroughly it seemed almost as if the tree itself had been rotten to the very core. The thought of fighting did occur to her, futile though she knew it would be, but still the fancy had its pleasures. In the end, though, as fleetingly pleasant as the fantasy might be, there was no point in bringing herself any lower than circumstance had already done itself, and so she found, as if by unconscious act, the quill gripped in her clenching hand.

The well was still empty. She shrugged. Now was as good a time as any to refill it.