"Do thou know why most Vidar children fear death not?" asked Edward, gingerly clasping the delicate iron brace around the little soldier's scaled, leather armour.

"Hmm?" he asked again, lowering carefully the heavy, conical helmet onto that tiny head, a head so small and fragile that only the weight of the mail coif kept the plume upright and that bird-boned neck from snapping forward.

The child was far too entranced by the magnificent aura of his prophet to even contemplate the question, much less respond to it, so Edward smiled paternalistically, patted the boy proudly on his shoulder and said, "it is because, my dear, they have known only happiness and bliss all their life. They have seen only full bellies, caring mothers and lots of children and toys with which to play, so how could they ever know otherwise? Their only fantasies, only glimpses, only cosmic understandings of the universe are transcendent and ebullient. They float in their heavenly, privileged clouds entirely ignorant to what lies beneath them."

"Then, as they grow, they begin that fatal discovery, that object of which thou and thy fellows are sadly only too familiar, the quest of pain. Perhaps it is first the death of a treasured pet. The breaking of a wandering leg. Grandfather's heart attack. Brother's run-in with the law. Missed meals from a bad harvest. They know of pain, and they, even with both feet still firmly planted in that carefully cultivated paradise of peaceful infancy, can now conceive of a hell below: Blackhell."

"They recognize both pleasure and its opposite, and now there are stakes to the universe. Life has its odds. One knows nothing of the life after this one, so it could take any conceivable shape. If one can conceive nothing but happiness, the afterlife is infinitely positive and thus this life can be no different than its cessation. It shall either continue infinitely or be immediately ceased, and at such an age they are equivalent. Infinite bliss for the infinitesimal moment or infinite bliss for an infinity of such moments, by the very laws of mathematics (though we cannot hold thou to such a standard of education) they are the same!"

"But once pain is conceivable! Once Blackhell is possible, the afterlife has consequences. Life becomes precious because one knows not what lies behind the mirror! Pleasure or pain. Infinity or infinitesimal. God or no. The span of imaginings is now terrifying large and the small percentage of terror, horrific and dreaded as it is, it may still be no more than a few dark drops in a sea of pleasantry and happiness. But so weak and ignoble is the human soul, that it dwells and frets over the slightest presentments of torture and overlooks the preponderance of everything else."

Edward gripped the boy more tightly now, clutching him so fervently the child became almost overwhelmed with the intensity of the emotion, feeling his knees quivering under the strain of his brave façade. "That's why we especially honour thy sacrifice, my dear," the prophet asserted. "For we know thou and the other children are not of the same ilk. The others may dance in flowery meadows or recite poems in dusty schools or sing choir hymns in glorious cathedrals, but that was never the fate for thou and thy fellows. That was never the life we could bestow in the mountains: scrounging through frozen dirt for tasteless roots, hiding our fraying tents and shivering bodies in mounds of snow and ice, aiming rockets and wielding swords before some of you could even walk. That was never the life we wanted, never what the Stars had written for any of you, and it broke our heart, it shattered our will and defied our compassion each and every day we saw the life that had befallen you."

"But now, look at us!" Edward cheered, holding his arms out to the display the grandiose expanse of what had been but a short time ago the personal study of the Walder Vihorr. "We have exchanged our frozen roots for fresh meat. We replaced gers with castles! We've traded our mountains for a whole new country! And you, you boys unlike those born to rank and privilege, those children swaddled and spoon-fed from womb to tomb, you know the price of such things, the cost of your feast and demands of your station. You know the stakes of this life: the miraculous heights and the terrifying depths, and even so knowing thou will risk the greatest of despairs each time thou don this armour and defend thy homeland."

"And it all shall be worth it, for as lush and divine as we shall make this luminous new principality, it shall be nothing to compare to eighty virgin planets among the Heavenly Stars. We must now persist in our divine mandate so that to those of us who live, we forge paradise on earth. To those who die in its service, a paradise among the stars. Those are the stakes, brave soldier, and do not let any unaccustomed luxuries lead thee to think otherwise. The mission remains, and the Stars have yet a role for thou to play."

Out of the corner of his eye, the prophet noticed his trusted lieutenant Cuthbert was being admitted into the study, and so he patted the boy once more and sent him off.

"A fine warrior, that one," Edward remarked, pouring two steaming cups of white-bark tea and offering one to his visitor. "Perhaps you may have competition yet, general," he winked.

Cuthbert scoffed, his hunched, skeletal frame disconcertingly contorted in a grotesque approximation of humour. "They are all fine warriors to their own esoteric fashion, but the road we travel is not so simple for one to cross..." he paused, scrunching his face so that his bobbling glass eye would slink back into place, "... bloodlessly."

"Well," Edward sat down on a throne-shaped armchair left by the Walder seemingly for nothing else but his princely rear, "let us two hope that such gore can all too soon be behind us."

"Of course, thy Eminence," Cuthbert concurred, though almost mockingly, "of course."

Sensing the barely concealed contempt in the general's voice and being immediately set ill-at-ease, the prophet quaffed, coughing to smooth over the uncomfortable silence before asking, "so, what is it that you bring before us this day, my servant?"

"Ahhhh," Cuthbert replied, smiling distantly as if caught up in some quaint recollection. "Yes, that. Thou do remember, thy Eminence, when thou did ask me to surveil and protect the General Alfred in his dealings with the Party witch?"

Edward nodded, intrigued.

The general's shrunken, crow's corpse of a face collapsed even further in on itself as he grinned, continuing. "Yes, of course, well, it seems the Stars have to thee spoken true once more. Thou were wise to have him followed, and I bear news of his conferences most distressing to us both."

"Stars forbid! Pray tell!"

Cuthbert plunged his stalky, bone fingers into his tunic and from a hidden pouch, sewn around his breast, he retrieved an aged, grime-laden, rust-smeared recording device whose unlabelled, half-broken button required tremendous force to fully press. "Listen," he instructed.

The recording was of Mila and Alfred.

"...documents make evident the Walders will attack from the south-east, amphibiously. Vihorr didn't confirm, but he said 'Gretwalder would attack', so my assumption stands. They're acting without the legions and will come from the sea, not the mountains as we first suspected."

It was the Party woman, for certain. Edward was still somewhat irked merely to hear her voice, but the pregnant, almost sultry pause in the recording began to stir up a new set of emotions in him.

The steady pouring of some liquid into two, bass-sounding, clearly heavy vessels was heard. "Something else plaguing your mind, my lord?" Mila asked.

"Hmm," Alfred mused, his garbled voice seeming humorous but flat. "I had hoped the night would yet yield a serious discourse, but I find now the words won't leave me without some form of lubrication."

"Take thy time," Mila spurned, dropping the professional monotone, a touch of comfort and compassion on her lips. "I've nowhere to be this night. With the chaos of the evacuation, I can likely stay as long as thou need it and not be too dearly missed."

"It is not a lengthy subject, Lyudmila. Merely one I know not how to broach." A slurping sound, as he drank deeply and with some haste. "I..." another guzzle "I think I'm in love."

"With me?" The shock seemed as genuine for Mila as it was for Edward overhearing.

"No, not with thee, but..." there was a long, breathlessly silent pause and then, "but then again, not exactly not with thee either."

A violent pang of jealousy thrashed through the prophet's core, but remembering his station, he puffed red in the face, feigning as much rage and indignation as he thought warranted.

"I thought I was in love anyway..."

"With whom?"

"It matters not."

"Unless it is me."

"It isn't thee.... It is and ... it isn't." A squeaking of a moving chair, two thumps falling on a wooden table. "Dear stars, I just don't know anymore. I have thoughts and feelings I cannot put into words, emotions and ideas of whose origins I cannot trace. I've prided myself all my life on my dedication to the truth, my persistence to my path, and for so long the stars how been so clear, their light so transcendent and illuminous, it seemed I had no choice but to follow. But now, in these deepest and darkest of nights, they have shuttered themselves from the evil and sin of this world and left me alone to torture myself with thoughts and uncertainties, bitter self-recriminations and agonizing introspection."

"I understand this better than thou can possibly imagine, Alfred. For me too, the longer I stay here, away from the teachings and the prognostications of the Party, I feel my hold on their mission slipping, slowly forgetting the scripter but remembering the script, losing sense of who is actor and who is acted. The more I perform, the less I feel a performer."

"Then thou do know it! When I read as a child of Thor's voyage to the Blackhell, of his seeing the two monstrous masses swirling endlessly and endlessly about one another, shredding the universe between the two as they each pulled every star, planet and atom asunder apart, I was astounded! Euphoric! I wanted only to reach to the stars and find those very deathly gates myself and make the same fatal trek as he had throughout the cosmos! But now, now as I feel that heart, that love pulled so frantically, so powerfully, so ungraciously between these two ... unflinching personalities, I know I would never withstand but even the most minute fraction of the Blackhell's pull."

"There's nothing of which to be ashamed, Alfred. I know thy faith is true and thy mission is pure. I would never wish to pull thou away from-."

"He has already pulled me away from it!"

Edward suddenly turned deathly pale.

"He...?"

"I know it is wrong! Man and woman are earth and moon, each balanced and proportioned to orbit in harmony for all time. A moon cannot hold another moon, and one earth can only destroy its brother. It is written, and I know it! I know it means death in this life and to be drawn and pulled asunder for all eternity in the blackness. I know! But I could not help myself. I could never help myself. The stars were clear, even guiding me to where I should never have dared to tread."

"Who is he, Alfred? It's all well; thou know our creed and will find no judgement from me."

"I needed his strength, Mila. His determination. His will. Every time the stars would fade, he'd hold me close and reinvigorate the light. He knew, Lyudmila! He knew everything. He could recite the Revelations forward and back, every line coursing through him like angry ants defending their endangered queen. There was nothing but courage and conviction in him, a love not just of his vision, but of me, of my place in his vision!"

"And then there was thee. The fearless, dauntless, intrepid crusader just as firmly attached to thy own mission as he, every bit his foil and equal, but though thou shone proud and brightly in his flame, he shrank and withered under thine. His rage contorts him, disgust beguiles him, and jealousy befalls him. His strong arms waver and his will evaporates. I want only to look upon his face and witness there but one measly scrap of the love he once had (for life, for me, for everything!) but instead I see only hatred of you, you and all that you are."

"And what am I to do? I cannot leave him. He is my very life, my very soul! Without him, there is no me, either now or eternal, and so no matter the pain or indecency, I cannot withdraw. I've resigned myself in my fragility; perhaps I am bound merely to accept the unacceptable, and spend each day confined to my infernal misery. Perhaps I could kiss his cheeks and just learn to forget how he would kiss them back. Perhaps I can touch his skin and just hope to erase the memories of his hands in mine. Perhaps I can fuck his absent-minded body and just pray I think of those times he would pin me to my bedside and show all his majesty and strength in one giant burst of passion. Perhaps...."

"Until I met you. The real you. Not the you who trades secrets and delivers warplans, but the you who sacrifices, the you who fights, the you who seduces Walders and enthralls poets and slits throats all in service of some higher, unquestionable goal. I see that ambition in you, that might in you, and I cannot but be held in awe."

Another long, uncomfortable pause. Edward was gripping the arms of his throne so tightly he could have been mere moments from disgorging the furniture's wool padding.

"And, thus, I am of two minds, two hearts and two paths, and I cannot choose either."

"What do thou want of me, Alfred?"

A cynical, depressed huff of a laugh. "Well, perhaps the simplest and most easy solution is that this is all an illusion, all a curse inside my head, and that thou hold no love for me whatever and having so been established, we can return to our respective paths, each of us acting as though we were none the wiser."

"Oh, Alfred...," it almost sounded as though Mila were sobbing, but the tears were too distant to be made clear. "If that is what thou want, that is what I will tell thee."

"But it isn't true."

"I want only for thee to be contented."

"Then do not let me live this lie!"

"Very well, my dear." A pause. "I will not. Thou are right, Alfred. The admiration is mutual. I, as a girl weeping over my desolate village, watching the men rape, slaughter and burn all that moved and most of what did not... I never once thought for even a moment I could find a man as caring and thoughtful as thee, Alfred. A man so open, so devoted, he could see past even the most fervent and demanding of his beliefs to serve the greater good. Never in all my dreams did I think I would find a Cassian such as thee, and never, not even in the wildest and most esoteric of my fantasies, find one among the Vidar."

Alfred took a long, deep breath, and Edward could almost feel it through the recording, gently bristling down his taut, anxious back. He closed his eyes, close to tears, begging silently that this torture would soon end.

"So what do we do now?" Mila seemed to laugh through her tears.

"I know not, my love. I wish thy confession had settled my heart, but all I feel is yet a tighter tug still wrenched in two directions."

"How to settle it, then?"

More pouring. "A kiss, I think. Just a kiss."

"Oh, Alfred. Why just that? Please, why just tha-."

"A kiss, and we will know. One kiss, and we will delight and excite ourselves, falling into a night of pleasure, forever ending one path and opening another. Or, the spark will sputter, the flame will dissipate, and our lips will leave the other's feeling the curiosity sated, the tension eased, and the ecstasy abated. Just one single kiss, and we will etch our futures from there."

Edward could hardly breathe. He wanted so desperately just to cry out and moan, this unseemly, unflinching posture now exacting utter agony, but he held together under nothing more than the sheer weight of rage.

"As thou say, Alfred. I will accept. But before, do me one favour. One thing and nothing more."

"Of course, Mila. Anything."

"If I am to embark on this path with thee, I must know my competitor."

"Thou cannot guess?"

"I need to hear it said. Hear it acknowledged. I need to hear thou rid thyself of him and for this one moment, just this one moment, gift thy full and entire self to me."

Edward gulped.

The pause was excruciating, the stony, unyielding face of Cuthbert revealed absolutely nothing as to what the recording would next say, and yet the prophet dreaded it all the more.

Finally, choking back his tears, Alfred admitted it. "It's Edward, my prophet. That is the man who held my hear-."

Cuthbert clicked off the recording.

"I'd say that's quite enough, wouldn't you?" he asked, mockingly, leaning comfortably back into his chair.

"What in the Holy Stars' path could thou possibly be thinking, Cuthbert?" Edward snarled, a well of futile hatred sinking deeper and deeper within him, though of that bottomless, freefalling pit of ire, only a tenth-part at most was reserved for the man before him. No, though he gnashed and roared, his very life now grasped in Cuthbert's jaws, still his gaze yearned for one man and one alone. There was nothing those piercing, puissant teeth could tear so long as Albert did eschew that bite.

"I think now a great many things, my weary eminence." Cuthbert absentmindedly dusted the filthy snow from his jacket, spattering it against the extravagant and unconscionably precious, but already unraveling, desiccated scales of wyrm-hide with which the prophet had found need to furnish the study. The enormous skin stretched out across the room for as far as the eye could see, intended to remind Edward of the unsturdy, men-killed and woman-woven gers of his childhood, but with every snowflake Cuthbert flung against it, soiling and belittling the felt below him, the prophet saw that memory slip away, unable to obscure the grim reality of those suffocating, oppressive castle walls now closing down upon him.

It was only now, staring into his general's icy, unflinchingly nonchalant eyes that he understood the true folly of that garish, over-stretched carpet. He could furnish himself with all the trappings and symbols of the life once known as he pleased, but once placed in the castle, they would never hold even the most minute part of the meaning they had commanded on the plain. In the ger, on the run, banished from all society and straining wildly each day but to survive, such items were bitter necessities, potent mementos of all he and his Old Believers had sacrificed in the name of the true Faith and the Holy Stars. Now, they served as tumid décor to a firmer, more complex encampment, and one which ideals alone could never protect.

The castle had not been so empty after all, not easily accepting of the Faithful ghost as its spirit. No, the walls and roofs and fortresses came with a spirit of their own, and beneath their imperious shell, all became an infidel eventually. Edward had known it for some time, and felt it even longer, that thought so inarticulable in words but undeniable in emotion. He felt it every time he had laid with Alfred and every time he dreamed of conquest (secretly dreading it all the while)

The fight was pure; the fight was simple, and though it was cruel and unending, it provided just the focus and clarity the prophet had needed to see his mission. The fight had been savage and scornful, true, but like the whip of a zealous sergeant, it could motivate and reward, the fear of great torture reinforcing the resolve against mild discomfort: a cadet afraid to lower his aching arms lest he tempt the master's rod. And each time the rod was lowered, each time Alfred calmed his soul or his forces reigned supreme, each time the battle waned and conflict laid to rest, Edward's feeble mind sought the temptations of the wicked, his left foot straggling the way of the unrighteous.

And now, he had no choice but to travel it forthrightly. The Revelations could steel the gers. Only compromise would solidify the walls.

"What do thou want, general?" the prophet begged, the two knowing clearly, yet unspoken in that moment, there was nothing he was not prepared to give.

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Lady Ci had hoped her colony would evidence itself to be a hard-set gem of civilization in an otherwise tattered, debased Septimi crown, but the platter served before her now pointed rather undeniably in an opposing direction.

The north pole was certainly convenient for a colony. Barren, rocky, shielded on one side by colossal, snow-capped, nearly impassible mountains and on the other by treacherous, iceberg-littered seas, the settlers had established themselves among the scattered remains of continent-scraping polar glaciers that had melted away during a forgotten climate catastrophe many millennia past. Without reliable interstellar communication, it was also a natural, even providential place to make one's mark, awaiting rescue or resupply. And, given the immense, immaculate northern plains driven to pristine flatness by the brutal march and then miraculous retreat of the ancient glaciers, there was nowhere better to erect the stupefying, infrastructural majesty of a true, imperial-style space-port.

What the colonists had never seemed even remotely interested to consider was that nothing, absolutely nothing known to man or beast, could possibly grow there. And so, after travelling for months aboard a foul-smelling, claustrophobic, miserably mundane space vessel, Xiao found herself on land eating precisely the same dehydrated, unpalatably salty meats flavoured with shrivelled-up, flavourless spices her ship had carried here in its cargo hold. Her only mercy was the presence of the native Septimi potatoes now leavening her entirely tasteless curry, and the freshly milled durum that tasted almost sweet and succulent in her roti, but she heeded well that wheat and tubers providing the lions' share of a dish's flavour was scarcely propitious in the least.

Even the roti with which she scooped and scraped that pale, bland, odourless sludge was little more than an insulting monument to colonial compromise. On campaign, the legionnaires ate with roti or injera purely for the sake of efficiency, never adding one more scrap of waste or dirty dishware than was absolutely necessary. On Septimi, to do the same was merely a necessity of submission.

The first colonists had tried to plant a bamboo forest in the rich tropics of the equatorial region, and they had even found some small modicum of success in doing so. But, before the stalks had even grown above their children's heads, they were discovered by a band of fetishist fanatics who, convinced such plants were possessed of foreign devils, carved the whole countryside to its very rock-bed and torched all the remains, shoots, roots and all. And so, there would be no chopsticks on this planet, and unless this ignorance would be overcome, the governor had no doubt her people would descend to eating straight from their hands in the Cassian fashion within but a generation more of passive imperial oversight.

The people of this little colonial county (and it would be a county once the Walders were gone and the planet united) were hardly so contemptible as the Cassians, though the rife mixing of imperial and Cassian blood here remained irksome. At the very least, unlike the few imperials Xiao had seen in Vitharr, they managed quite well to maintain the rituals and cultural auspices with some degree of regularity. One could even find their determination admirable, set against the stark, grueling desolation of the north.

They forged expansive (though low-levelled), intricately planned and straightly cleaved cities, each modelled precisely in four quadrants and visibly prostrated before heaven as a model is viewed from the vantage of its builder. Along its streets they laid ornate boulevards of plastic trees and sleek, firm walls of permafrost and rock. To block the undying sun of winter, a thin film held aloft by a flotilla of weightless balloons floated up to the sky, encompassing like one technological tsunami the whole of the county in its embrace of artificial night. During the long, unyielding darkness of summer, on the other hand, the shying star's light would be reflected down to the city from the old, but still orbiting colony ship, a giant mirror stretched across its huge wheel-well that had once gifted gravity through centripetal force.

These people were industrious, yes, but of nothing more than the common, charlatan variety. They deluded themselves into thinking that so long as they kept the veneer of the Empire, they would retain its spirit as well. To them, there was no difference between plastic trees and living ones, between stone walls and earthen ones, between day-break and day-creation, but to Lady Ci the contrast could not be clearer. This was not how imperials were meant to live, and everyday spent huddled in this cavernous corpse of collective delusion was another day closer to annihilation.

Her people needed Vitharr. No icy plains nor frozen wastes could ever nourish a people like that country's rich forests and fruit-filled tropics. They could not survive without it.

Xiao's eyes were restless as she polished off the faint orange stains of her bowl with another measly scrap of bread. They settled momentarily on a holographic display screen flickering intermittently into an alley outside the restaurant. Its siren song called alluringly with neon mauves and flashing lime greens, displaying explicit but artistically straight-edged and abstracted images of a naked couple storming through the dance of clouds and rain, enmeshed in vibrant, colourful ecstasy. Although the full message was difficult to scrutinize with the characters blinking in and out of existence at random intervals, finally the governor was able to read:

ON CASSIA PRIME,

IMPERIALS ARE CASTRATED.

HERE ON SEPTIMI,

THEY STEAL OUR WOMEN INSTEAD.

DO YOUR DUTY;

BREED THE CASSIAN HAMITES AWAY!

Xiao smiled. She had never cared too fondly for the Eugenicists back on the Home Worlds. They had seemed impotent, impractical people, irredeemably preoccupied with ephemeral concepts of racial purity and barbarian degeneracy, men willing to spurn loyal vassals and upraise social order all for the sake of an illusive scientific agenda. Back Home, the Empire could not abide by this. Barbarians must always contain barbarians; it was not the Emperor's place to reform the unwilling, but to lead by example and so attract the willing to reform through Him.

Out here, however, in the cold, unforgiving wastes of Septimi, Lady Ci was beginning to feel the first winds of change blow steadily past her cunning mind. The Cassians had not taken even the most minute and benevolent of reformations well, choosing to burn their translated scriptures rather than read them. How they might react to more aggressive shifts now plagued the overactive regions of Xiao's grisly imagination. Her legions were maladroit and their leaders unfaithful; she knew she would need to equip herself with better soldiers and truer generals sooner rather than later. Perhaps the purveyor of these posters was the most natural place to start.

"Your excellency," a cerulean-uniformed officer entered the abandoned restaurant, saluted then bowed with perfect composure, announcing, "your guest awaits admittance."

"Of course, send them in." Good, MacGregor had finally arrived. Defenestrating him was just the dessert Xiao needed to wash down this miserable meal.

Yet, when the doors parted and a humbly cloaked man flanked by two guards stepped through the lobby's iron doors, it was not MacGregor's face the governor saw, but that of some local official she only barely could recognize.

"Thou are not the commandant!" She accosted him.

"Our apologies!" cried the officer, kowtowing along with the guards. "We'll remove this man at once. He had told us-."

"Please, your worship, my lady!" the supplicant pleaded, the two guards now dragging him back towards the entrance. "I am the magistrate of this colony! I deserve to be heard!"

Xiao rolled her eyes, but she supposed the man had something resembling a point. Though she distinctly remembered having appointed her own magistrate to replace whatever dawdling native this was, he had been a magistrate once just as she had once been, and no matter his crime of indecency, it simply wouldn't do to have such a man be tossed out into the streets. The rituals were the rituals, customs were customs, and even Xiao (from time to time) could be made to abide by them.

"Bring him hither," she signalled the guards dismissively with one hand as she drank deeply, nonchalantly, her glass in the other.

The soldiers did not unhand the intruder, but instead hauled him by the scruff of his cloak up to the governor's table, and forcibly plopped him down on a seat far across from her on the wide, circular glass table.

The governor continued to eat while she spoke, intentionally not giving the man the courtesy of doing otherwise. "Thy antics have caused us to remember thee, Wang, though one would not consider it a benefit in this case."

Wang Mang fidgeted with his collar, giant droplets of sweat pouring down his face and pooling uncomfortably heavily around his moistened neck. "I really wish not to impose, your worship-."

"In that, thou have already failed," Xiao lashed back snidely, scanning the man before her through the bottom of her raised, crystal chalice.

The petitioner grimaced. "I know I will never rise to the storied, erudite stature of an Enlightened One such as yourself, my lady, but even a grass-roots man like me can identify injustice wherein it is seen."

The governor set down her glass. Finally, there was someone on this bloody planet who seemed to understand their place. She smirked, "and of what injustice does thou speak?"

"Your magistrate, your excellency, the one who accompanied you on your travels and now occupies my office, her tenure is proving nothing short of disastrous."

Xiao rolled her eyes. "Before this conversation devolves into a pitiful plea for the reinstatement of thy former title, we are to make perfectly clear that any such thing is entirely, thoroughly outside the realm of possibility."

"But your worship! She threatens to drive the colony to extinction!" Wang was begging now, earnest frustration written plainly across his face. "She ignores the counsel of the locals, imposing new ways and new techniques on a land that cannot bend to her will."

"Yes, no one much enjoys it when after nearly seventy years of being overlooked, they are made to obey the forms instead of shirking them, as sadly became your colony's habit in our absence." The governor scoffed. "I empathize with your plight, but Hui is more competent and more loyal than all the heads of your previous administration combined, Wang. I won't fault her for following the law where thou may have thought it more prudent to ignore it."

Wang gritted his teeth, clearly swallowing some rather bitter protests welling within him. "It is not merely prudent to skirt the rituals, your worship. On Septimi, it can be imperative."

"We will listen, citizen, (if thou are indeed even that!), but there shall not be effected any change in this colony's administration."

"No change!" the man huffed like a bull about to charge, gripping his hands so tightly against the table, Xiao feared it might crack. "My lady, after generations of order and stability in this colony, your magistrate brings nothing but change! We never broke the law, your excellency; we merely reinterpreted it for the cold realities of our unforgiving homestead. Silver was hard to come by, so we paid our taxes in work and kind. Now, your woman Hui sells publicanus contracts to most unscrupulous and bloodthirsty of creatures! These are men who will happily exploit our most impoverished and under-privileged, men who produce spurious documents that claim colonists are delinquent on taxation or who refusing to accept any payment but hard cash, and they are liquidating every scrap and morsel these poor, wretched settlers have to their name. They are pilfering our land and stealing our homes, banishing us onto the streets by our hundreds!"

Lady Ci folded her hands, pressing her fingers to her chin in contemplation. "It would be deceitful of us to say we are not moved by this tale, Wang. If this is true, and the rituals have been obeyed in spirit though not in precisely legal practice, then some leniency may need to be adopted. We shall order Hui investigate the matter as well as hear a petition of your grievances, filed in collective suit for your class."

"Thank you, my lady," Wang bowed his head. "That is all I ask."

"That, and a return to thy post?" Xiao grinned again.

"Were it just for the fortune of myself, it would be one thing, but when the health of my people is at stake, it is quite another." Wang 's eyes shone suddenly brave and determined. It was not a look Xiao welcomed in her subjects, but one that could be must helpful in her subordinates.

The governor still shook her head, however. "This is not a question of competence but qualification, citizen. Hui passed the imperial exams. Thou have not. There is no further discussion to be elicited on this topic."

"But, your excellency!" wailed Wang. "Our people are scraping the marrow from stones just to survive. There are no spare taels for schools and universities, not for the grassroots like me, and certainly not for the long and ponderous voyage to the Home Worlds to sit for the examinations."

"What are thou asking, Wang? Even with our powers of state, we cannot travel backwards through time to endow thee with an Enlightened pedigree."

The man traced his fingers through his greying, delicate, matted and balding hair, pain contorting itself along his harrow, jaded face. "But what of the Chairman Emperor, my lady? Surely, you have heard of him? Did he not say that experience is the best teacher, that the more books you read, the more stupid you become? Surely you can see it, a humble craftsman magistrate like me, my hands trained in the soil, my mind shaped by my labours, toppled by the arcanely educated, gentry-born, imported technocrat. This is not the vision on which our society was founded."

Xiao could not contain her laughter. She chirped loudly, giggling like the gossiping schoolgirl she had never had the chance to be, wiping a napkin at her eyes to soak away the joyous tears. Wang was clearly not impressed, so after she had regained herself, she lowered her voice and explained, "thou are not quite the provincial dullard to which I had thee pegged, I must admit, but even still, thy argumentation begs greater form, and in that, perhaps I can be of assistance after all."

She folded her napkin and rested her hands on her lap, returning entirely to seriousness. "We shall make thee an offer, Citizen Wang. Thou have read thy Mao, now we must study our Plato, for we aim to make ourselves guardians. Thy talents are true - the city is clean and ordered, the colony prospers in our absence - and though thou cannot yet be magistrate, we will have need of thy abilities elsewhere. Serve us when I holler, be at my every beck and call, and I shall instruct thee in thy education."

Wang hung his head. "I cannot refuse such an offer, my lady. I only fret I have not time enough to master the Twelve before I perish from the cosmos."

Xiao smiled, finally obliging the man with her first look of genuine warmth. "Worry not, good Wang. Pass just the first of the examinations, and thou will live a multitude of lifetimes more than thou could possibly imagine."

Shock rippled across the old man's face, but the governor was now too occupied to resettle him. She saw the commandant finally striving through the iron doors, and she elected to rise.

"What can you mean, your worship?" Wang asked, so awe-struck he could not leave his seat. "Are you people some kind of ... immortals?"

Lady Ci plodded over to him, indicating he was to rise, but as he did, she whispered softly in his ear, "we are all immortal, right up until the moment we die."

With that, she bade the bewildered Wang to take his leave, only to be replaced by an equally befuddled MacGregor, stepping into his still-warm seat.

"And who was he, my lady?" the commandant queried, ignoring his customary bow as if his very lot in life was to irk his mistress.

"The man to whom I'm soon to award your post," the governor stated, matter-of-factly, as if she had not even conceived of anything even resembling controversial in the statement.

MacGregor's brow furrowed. "You jest, of course."

"Really?" The governor asked, leaning in against the table. "A rather despicable thing about which to jibe, think thou not? Why, to lose thy post in such a place, in a such a way, that would bring rather swift and terrible besmirchment to an already tarnished reputation, I surely can imagine. A lost livelihood, lost dignity, lost pride in one's service to the nation. What a callous habit to joke of such things. Thou must think me awfully cruel."

"No, I..." MacGregor was delightfully confused, completely ill-at-ease and unable to usher forth a single sensible response.

"Thou what, Commandant?" Xiao inquired, slurping a rudely condescending stream of water from her glass, emptying it entirely before wiping her mouth with the tablecloth.

"What sort of unwashed impropriety is this!" The man spewed invectives, incensed beyond all polite bottlings of rage. "I am Commander of four imperial legions. I will not be treated as a common street urchin!"

Lady Ci plunged her fingers back into her dish, muddying them with a thin, gruelly smear of curry which she sloppily, disgustingly suctioned away with the pressure of her lips, her eyes rolling into the back of her head as is she were pleasing the body of a lover. She couldn't see it, but MacGregor's red, swelling cheeks painted a glorious technicolour picture in her mind. Finally, she returned to the mortal plain and smiled in the face of that commander's furious glare, removing her fingers in a warm, goopy trail of saliva that fell contemptuously about her napkin.

"We shall treat thee," she began, tossing the soiled napkin at his face, "however we wish."

The Commandant made to rise. "This is becoming unendurable. If thou are to handle me with such disdain, I will not hesitate to write to the Joint Chiefs and allow them to settle this matter for us."

Xiao laughed. "Oh, and will you or will you not admit to your failed prevention of an imaginary Party invasion? I'm quite certain they would love to hear a great many tales of that."

MacGregor settled himself back into his seat, but he was still turned away, unable to bear even looking at his tormentor. "How could you possibly know before I had even debriefed you?"

The lady leaned forwards, resting her chin against her long, bony fingers folded together in a tight-knuckled phalanx. "Because I knew it wasn't real from the instant Kang mentioned it, and thy inability to see the same is precisely why we - both ourselves and the Empire - cannot afford to have thee in command."

MacGregor's face seemed nearly on the verge of tears, his whole countenance ensnared in a web of emotions pulling and sticking him without even the slightest hint of self-control. "So, it's true? You do aim to sack me?"

"We wrote thy dismissal papers before thou even set out on thy spurious quest, Commandant. The case against thee is rather strong." The governor fished around in her spotted, snake-skin briefcase before producing a crisp sliver of parchment already conspicuously bearing the Legion's seal. "I will, however, afford thou a more merciful sword on which to fall. Sign this letter of resignation and keep thy dignity at the very least."

MacGregor's sheepish eyes tiredly scanned the characters before setting the paper back on the table, cradling his head in his hand. "You can't appoint some civilian to head the Legion here. The soldiers will revolt."

Xiao didn't let her resolve drop for a single second. "That is entirely no longer thy concern."

"I only mean to say you may need me ye-."

The governor rolled her eyes. "This is becoming pathetic, Kanshou."

"My lady, please," the man was pleading now, bereft of even the slightest hint of belligerence, a man willing to choke on a thousand spit-ridden napkins for just a chance at avoiding this humiliation. "I... I made some terrible mistakes before I was sent here. I cannot give up this post. I'll be ruined!"

"We are well aware of thy past foibles, Citizen MacGregor." She slid the parchment directly into his chest. "Now sign it!"

The anger was returning. Xiao could see the rage stirring in him as he held his pen, muscles clenching tightly around the instrument.

"Sign it," she offered, softening her voice, "and there may still be hope for thee yet."

His tortured gaze wondered up to her again, desperate for any mouldy fruit of good news from which to suckle sweet fantasies. "What are you saying?"

The governor's face stiffened, the childish delight brought on by her cruelty swiftly replaced with stern professionalism. "Though the Party did not invade this time, that something is amiss should be apparent to all."

"My thoughts exactly, your Excellency!" the disgraced supplicant parroted back.

Lady Ci glanced down her nose at the man before her, weighing him with all the subtlety and compassion of a grocer handling melons. "While thou were traipsing across the stars, our satellites noticed an enormous operation, some nearly one thousand Cassian soldiers landing in the North. Yet, not a single mention to my office, not a word in the press and now it seems the whole Vitharr government is in chaos, the Gretwalder either dead or indisposed."

"Something happened or ... is happening. We cannot be certain which. But either way, it appears that thy most dear and beloved companion, our dear and beloved Kang, is intimately involved. I think, or perhaps, I should say, I suspect, he has allied himself with the VLF and is using them orchestrate a coup."

The Commandant shook his head. "No, it isn't possible. That is absolutely, steadfastly not the man I know. Kang is loyal to a fault, not just to his master but also to the whole of the Em-."

She cut him off again. "The man thou knew just lied to thy face, Shou Shou." (She couldn't help but be demeaning sometimes; it was just too terribly enticing.) "And besides, it seems that while the Gretwalder is indisposed, he has seized power for himself. It is uncertain if the Gretwalden has been eliminated, but the Walders in contact with us tell that Kang barred them entry to the Great Hall and is routing all communications and administrative affairs directly through his office as Chief of Security."

"Surely this is simply a precaution until the Gretwalder recovers! Vitharr is highly unstable, and there are terrorists and Party plots with which to contend. We cannot expect him to abide by every ceremony-."

The governor slammed the table so hard and so suddenly, MacGregor nearly leapt from his chair for fear of outside attack. "There is nothing but ceremony, MacGregor. Nothing but the rituals. I am the governor, here. We are the leader, and if we are not informed, if we are not making the decisions, there is no order, there is no society and there will be no Empire." She gritted her teeth. "We need to rein in this little fiefdom of Kang's, and we need to do it now."

Xiao fingered the resignation letter still in front of her. "Here is our proposal. Sign this, and we will not distribute it. Take it, instead, with you to Kang and present it to him. Tell him thou have been dismissed and thou are in a need of a new command. At the very least, he should be more willing to be frank with thee than ourselves. At the most, if he and the VLF are planning something, he may entrust you with its operation. Whatever the case may be, tell us everything and frustrate him as we deem it necessary. Do this, and we will address the Joint Chiefs ourselves, asking thou be reinstated to the Home Worlds."

MacGregor could hardly contain his excitement. "You would, my lady? You really would?"

"We are not vindictive, Kanshou. We will always reward loyalty, no matter from whom. We have made no secret of our distaste of thee, and so have no doubt it will be a long and gruelling climb back to the summit of our favour, but the pass is open to thee yet, and thou are free to climb at thy discretion."

The Commandant stood from the table and bowed. "Of course, my lady. And thank you, thank you so very much."

"Commandant," the governor called, sweetly, but imploringly so, forcing him to halt and plaster a grotesque smile about his face just once more. "Remember, there is only one way back and it is through me. Kang might be motivated, he may even be organized, but if he thinks he can win, he is delusional. With the two of you together, maybe, just maybe you have a shot at winning against me, but never, not in any possible world now or hereafter will you have any chance whatsoever against the Emperor."

"And this is who you'd be fighting, Kanshou. There is nowhere else for our people to go. No new frontier. No new Homeland. If we fail here, we lose everything. The Empire can afford to lose a governor, but it will never stand to lose this planet."

She settled her hands in her lap and stared straight into the man's anxious, uncoiling soul. "We're playing a on board infinitely larger than thou could ever possibly imagine. Just try to not become distracted with the size of thy pieces."

MacGregor dipped his head.

"Of course, my lady," he said, and with a final bow, he left.

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"And now, we take you live to our reporter on the ground."

"Thank you, lord anchor," the journalist began, customarily bowing his head to the camera before he began his presentation. "I'm here in Heavenly Square, beating heart of our great, prosperous Vidar nation, where ruthless jiaren mobs this afternoon, sadly made a desperate stab at that heart."

The angle cut away as he donned an air of serious but still collegial composure, walking towards the camera with his arms outstretched and gesturing with every word as a boom mic was sloppily dipping in and out of frame with every step. "At exactly 7:37 this morning, crowds of lowly jiaren beggars, thieves and other vagabonds began gathering outside the Great Hall. Ostensibly this was in support of radical Walder candidate Theodore Song, but as the hours passed and these degenerate mobs grew more restless, their true intentions became far more transparent."

The television showed footage of a jiaren rally, a sea of angry faces chanting furious slogans over which the reporter narrated while the camera focused on the most crooked, decaying teeth, furthest slanted eyebrows, most grime-covered cheeks and most vicious-seeming snarls. "Although it began mostly peacefully, the protests quickly took an insurrectionist turn, with Song leading his supporters in cries of 'death to the Gretwalder!' 'down the state!' and other similarly violent, traitorous language. And once those slogans were released, it didn't take long for despicable words to become deadly actions."

The screen now showed grainy, barely decipherable footage of a group of black-cad, entirely nondescript group pulling the yellow-starred banners of Vitharr from the Great Hall, dousing them in fuel and setting them alight. "Miscreants began vandalizing public property, attempting to set fire to several government buildings adjacent to the Heavenly Square, and when they were confronted by peace officers, all of Blackhell broke loose."

The shot returned to the reporter walking through the Square, but rather than the brutalist, grey background of before, he was now trudging past a wall of bodies, stacked nearly as a high as his head, blood gushing from swelling pores in the tarpaulin, cloth and other fabric that been fruitlessly employed to enwrap the corpses. "Security officials tell me that by around 10:30, the situation had become entirely untenable, and drastic measures had need to be taken, but when rioters were arrested, mobs began to attack the peace officers. Bloody clashes broke out as the Square fell into chaos, but somehow Song and his entourage took advantage of the anarchy to escape his treachery. Intense street battles continued for hours, with jiaren rioters using a variety improvised weapons such as bricks, stones, kitchen knives and even their bare fists to cause as much mayhem, destruction and misery as humanly possible. All told, once order was re-established, some ten thousand laid dead in the public square, mostly loyal peace officers and unfortunate Vidar who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The footage suddenly cut entirely away from the report without explanation to a stable framed, well-centred shot of Kang sitting as comfortably as he could in the padded leather, oaken chair of the Gretwalder's office. It was a throne which echoed of marvelous, sleek and under-stated authority in person, but appeared comically tiny in comparison to the man's enormously tall frame on camera, and the security chief was seen shifting and readjusting every few seconds in obvious ergonomic agony.

"Our fellow countrymen of Vitharr," Kang began, compulsively twitching his mouth every few words, he and his body interlocked in a titanic struggle to constrain his natural tendency to smile. "My name is Chief Kang, and though I have served as head of this nation's central security force for many years, this is the first time we have ever had reason to address you so formally... and in such dire fashion. It is an act that brings nothing but sorrow to our heart, but it is a necessary duty nonetheless."

"As you are all already aware, Vitharr has been under high alert for the past several days due to credible threats of an impending Party invasion from the Inner Worlds. Yesterday, the first wave of that invasion crested on our shores, and it has shaken the nation to its very core. Working, we suspect, in concert with Party spies and reconnaissance forces, the merchant Song and Walder Vihorr engaged in a covert conspiracy to seize control of the government through a violent coup d'état, a coup that, though averted, still has wrought terrible suffering all throughout our country."

"As angry jiaren mobs incited to violence by Song descended on the Great Hall, the Walder Vihorr smuggled a weapon into the Gretwalden chamber and fired at our fearless leader, the Gretwalder. Thankfully, both plotters were subdued, their actions foiled by the heroism of our superior security and medical forces. Peace officers successively disarmed and pacified the rabble while Vihorr's shot has so far remained unfatal. That Walder, on the other hand, was quickly and summarily destroyed before he could harm any other member of this administration."

"These have been dark days for our country, and it gives me no pleasure to prophesize greater hardships yet ahead. Though our Gretwalder yet lives, he remains in the severest of physical straits. Our leader lies comatose, unable to serve in his official capacity as this time, and his would-be co-assassin, Song, remains at large and on the run. With the stakes so great, and the anticipated invasion fleet so near, we can ill afford any deviations from the rigid stability and courageous vision of our esteemed Gretwalder, even in his absence. That is why we have decided to form the Gretwalden Committee of Emergency Protectorate, with ourselves as chairman."

"For the preservation of the general order and for the continued safety of all Vidar people, the Committee has moved this day to dissolve all local Walden parliaments and administrations into the central repository of the Gretwalden. All the vast and unimpeachable forces of this land will be commanded by the Committee alone to create a common front against the enemy. Furthermore, every able-bodied man above the age of sixteen shall hereby be required to register with their local recruiting post to be trained and impressed for service. Should the invaders land upon this wild, pristine planet, we will need every roofer, tiler, tanner and baker to dispel the tools of his craft and defend his homeland from the ruthless enemy."

Kang could not help but allow just the faintest smirk to slip through. "Though this is a time of great difficulties, we have not even the faintest of doubts that with the valor and determination of the Vidar on our side, there is no adversary so great in power nor horde so great in number as to defy the unbreakable spirit of this eternal land. Our ancestors for a thousand generations have-."

The television exploded. Mila shot up from her bed of mildewed newspapers and bagged garbage and rushed to the filthy tavern's moth-eaten tables. She pulled one down to form a makeshift shield as bullets began ricocheting and splintering off streaks of ale-soaked wood and shattering glass bottles. Song's guards crouched around her, pistols removed and loaded, exchanging fire with the still unseen assailants.

"Let us take our leave!" Song screamed into Mila's ear, barely able to make himself audible above the shrieking, vicious cacophony. He pulled her by the scruff of her collar, dragging her bloodied, muck-drenched robes through the detritus of shattered glass, frayed wiring and fragmented bone that littered the pub's bursting floors to squeeze down the shaft of a dumbwaiter. Though Song's tall, but lithe frame easily slithered through the narrow opening, Mila had to be convinced first by screeching barrage sailing just past her arm and slicing the delicate skin of her wrist.

She breathed deep, and plunged her compact but full figure through the tight crevasse, unable to take a single gulp of that rank, putrid, acid-burning air until she clawed her way out the garbage shoot.

It took only a few moments to wonder if she had been better off suffocating inside.

The landscape enveloping her was nearing its veritable descent to the deepest fusion of Blackhell. The early morning sky coughed great, heaving lungfuls of pale grey, plastic-smelling, caustic smoke from countless infernos raging wildly across the horizon. Lights flashed and thunder cracked from every tree, hill and doorway, an incessant scattering moving in every direction and covering every step, from the mad charge of a loose brigade far into the distance, to the cracking rifle-fire just up the tavern's back alley. A rugged, hill-capped, uneven terrain of rocky cliffs, tall trees, jagged bushes and the occasion cottage or windmill crept along for as far as the eye could see and as far as the eye could see in those ember hours of dawn, the country was ablaze.

At every dug-out and overpass, a pile of sandbags or barricades of furniture, felled trees and any other miscellany were being rapidly erected only to be vaporized by the rain of random artillery fire, carving out fiery craters in the pock-marked hills. Women screamed and babies wailed as they were pulled from their homes, the clothes stripped off their bodies, the hide torn from their backs, breasts sliced off their torsos or bullets riddled through their corpse as they made a desperate flee for safety. Some bands rushed forward to the attack the soldiers, spraying the innocents with cross-fire and mortars, while other farmers rushed from their huts with pistols drawn or a pitchfork in hand, ready to stick their neighbours and molest their wives.

Song pulled Mila, still bewitched by the confusion of chaos and carnage, as close as possible to the jiaren lines, but the battle had engulfed everything in its wake. A rowdy, disheveled mob of the Walder Vimarr's disobedient bannerman were running in all directions, sometimes confronting the soldiers, sometimes firing on their own peasants, trying to keep order, but always in a fruitless attempt to flee from the incoming missiles. Jiaren lined behind shelters and barricades, accidentally gutting sympathetic Cassians out of paranoid precaution in some places and letting their guard down to accept murderous turncoats in others.

Kang's uniformed, more disciplined soldiers held their line well just behind the onslaught of their deafening shells, but as soon as the line passed, the formation crumbled, order collapsed and infantry-men broke rank to burn houses, kidnap wives or join the locals in hanging jiaren by their necks over tarry, chemically-bubbling fire. That terminator, the deadly line of government forces separated the living and the dead as clearly as a switch guards "on" and "off". It was a dousing, torrential, indiscriminate downfall of human pesticide, and once passed, the fields would be cleansed for all eternity.

The country had fallen to lunacy, and Mila knew they could scarcely survive another, single agonizing second of it. Lyudmila would not surrender now, no matter what the consequences what might be. She only hoped Song felt the same.

They laid flat against a rocky outcropping as more rockets flared overhead, and just as they were about to rise up once again, Mila grabbed Song's shoulder, surprising him with her strength.

"T. V.?" she said.

Song couldn't even reply, he was too terrified to utter a word, though surrounded by nothing but a swelling, off-tuned orchestra of squeals and explosions. His eyes were bulging and white, his throat nearly gorging out from his neck, lips thin and split with blood. Mila was not even certain he could understand a word, but she pressed on.

"We must let us away, my lord! Where the present mice scurry, tomorrow's carrion will surely feast."

Song's eyes grew wider, but still his lips pressed more firmly to one another. Mila breathed deep to calm herself and clasped the tussled, unwashed clumps of his black hair, her palsied hands unable to fully express the affection and concern she was attempting to convey even in the midst of this unfolding apocalypse.

"Have thou the faintest grain of faith in me, thy humblest of servants?" she asked. "One grain, my lord, one grain is all I ask, and let us sew it the field of salvation."

She stared deeply into T. V., but nothing stared back. She grabbed him by the collar of his pajamas and pulled him as he had done just before instead. "Follow me, stars be damned! Follow and be saved!"

The star-crossed pair stumbled madly through a sudden and blistering maelstrom of shrapnel and debris, a shell some forty paces ahead having eviscerated the only visible path. Now, Song was faced with little choice. Blinded by the flaming splinters of exploded trees, lungs clogged with chalky clouds of heavy dust, he was led by nothing more than that soft, inviting, though utterly insistent touch through the darkness. Though deafened by piercing screams, screeching ordnance and the indiscriminate wrecking of general havoc, the virulence and intensity of the sounds seemed to raise to a nearly heart-stopping crescendo before falling sharply to a contained, echoing distorted shadow of its former threat. Eventually, with the clacking of something heavy and rusted at his back, the clamour became nothing but a distant rumble, the afterglow of an unpleasant dream made all the more forgotten with each clanging footfall against a reverberating catwalk.

The air was damp and musty, as slick and breathable as the goopy, oxygenated liquid of a pregnant mother's womb, and an excruciating surprise on the travelers' heaving chests. Song fell to his knees, scraping his tender flesh against the iron plating, wheezing and moaning, black, dusted tears of pain streaking down his sooty, blood-smeared face. It was just as he had finally removed the ash from his eyes and bile from his lungs that his still ringing ears became aware of the dozens of high-heeled boots clicking all about him.

He grabbed out for Mila's hand, but it was conspicuously absent. Instead, he rubbed his eyes again and held out his arms to steady himself, though two sets of portly arms grabbed him and forced him properly upward. He could feel the woman's stinging, ghastly breath on his face even before he had fully adjusted to his dark surroundings and seen her chilling, fat-cheeked but stern face.

"You, Mister Song, may call me Valentina," the woman began in a deep, tobacco-tarred voice, the flickering florescent lights exaggerating the white skunk streaks of her dry, corpulent hair in sinister relief. She bowed, winding her arms and arching her back with all the satirical grace of a drunken actor whose single intention was the degrading of his audience. "Welcome, my dear friend, to our home away from home." Song could see Mila standing behind Valentina, two of her counterparts now stripping her in all haste from the gore-soaked tatters of her skirts, and returning a fresh pleated, maroon-red Party uniform.

"Welcome," Valentina continued, her scarred, wide jaws reaching wider yet in a deliberate but inauspicious smile, "to the new Red Jiaren Army."

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Alfred was as excited as he had ever been. For more than a week now, the exacting preparations had all but consumed him: the pavilion had needed to be erected, the tent stuffed with furnishings, beasts and wine, with licentious women and high-pitched boys careening about castle yards to dance, sing and make merriment. It was to be a celebration of the ages, the inauguration of their new Vidar state, and the prophet's most trusted servant could not possibly risk a single detail being left out of place.

It was, therefore, only after he had procured every loot, plucked every hen and pleated every pillow that Alfred finally turned to the political agenda of the conference: the first time in many years that all the generals, chieftains and ministers of their mountain-dwelling diaspora would meet in a single location and fear not impending death raining down from imperial skies. Now they held imperial cities, imperial people, imperial citizens, and they would not surrender such an opportunity lightly. Alfred cared little for whatever obscure grievances the general of one valley would hold against the imam of another. The point was to share the spoils, and Alfred intended to ensure they would be spread as far and wide as only the prophet's divine generosity could afford.

Though the martial and religious leadership of the VLF were the offspring of what had once been respectable patrician families, their harsh upbringing among the simple, superstitious and unquestionably degenerate clansmen of the mountain lands had divorced them entirely from the refined taste and noble traditions of court ceremony. They knew now only that deference was their birthright, not deference to what or deference for any reason, but they were to be deferred to for all things: that power flowed through them, from them, from the prophet and ultimately from the Stars Themselves.

It mattered not, then, who bowed, how long, who entered when or how many trumpets sounded or bugles call. All were mere trivialities. It mattered only that the people, the conquered people, the liberated people of the north now happily contained in that newest of earthly kingdoms would be held in awe and held in awe they would be indeed.

One by the one the dignitaries strode through the city's streets, flocked on all sides by tired, sullen people, their eyes downcast and sunken with hunger. This was all deliberate planning on Alfred's part, however, for as he and his prophet finally took up the rear, they tossed little loaves of bread and savoury pies at the suddenly adoring masses who erupted in joyous abandon. The generals, waiting at the castle gate, looked on in silent, seething jealousy as the crowds returned the gift with their poorly folded paper stars and homespun white banners, cheering wildly: "Stars bless the Principality, and Stars bless the prince!"

Alfred smiled, greatly moved as he and Edward, his greatest and most loyal friend, scanned the faces of every adoring child, approving elder or nodding tradesmen, kissing their new subjects and reveling in their shared freedom. Perhaps it did not behoove a pious man like Edward to call him prince before that official crown had so been placed upon him, but Alfred saw a light so pure and radiant in his master at each time he bestowed it on him, that he dared not dampen the spirit by even one modicum is in so prohibiting it.

Was this the man he had thought abandoned? Was this the saint whose worried absence had so precariously plunged him into the worship of another, false idol. Looking into that strong, handsome visage, seeing nothing but determination and grace, it was hard not to think otherwise.

But then, there was Mila. How had it been that that kiss to settle everything had instead resolved nothing? How could it be that she had so enraptured him, her aurora, her words, her iron will, her sour, proletarian perfume and muscled figure all playing sensuous wonders about his body and mind, only for that kiss, that inconclusive embrace to feel like nothing more than temporary imprisonment in a wet and doleful prison?

What was it that he saw in her but could not feel? Could it be that her appearance, her every motion, her every phrase had all been so carefully selected, a dish perfectly curated to his eclectic palate. Was it that honesty and ambition and sheer vision for the future could all be effortlessly faked but that one moment of passion could not?

Perhaps; she was a spy. An admitted one at that. But what sort of spy could have one wrap around them in blissful enrapture only to banish them from that embrace? What sort of spy would even allow it?

And was Edward any different? For him there had always been the two prophets, the one inside the tent and the other outside it. The Edward outside the tent heard the Revelations as loudly and as clearly as if the Stars were ringing a giant bell right against his ears, and he shouted with all the moral clarity and stark decision of that cosmic peal. The man inside the ger, however, had always been a different breed entirely. True, in the early days, perhaps the difference had never been so apparent. The mission was evident, but the words needed refinement, debate and counsel.

But then, as with many things, time began to erode the confidence of one man while buoying the steadfastness of the other. And so, though Edward's outward pronouncements grew more violent and apocalyptic, his inner confessions became ever greater and his conscience more haunting. The man who beat his chest and waved his flag one hour wept on Alfred's shoulder and cocooned himself in loving flesh the next.

Alfred wasn't entirely certain which Edward stood by him now, but he knew he would settle his mind now just as he had done with Mila then: with a single, tender kiss on those smiling, full lips under the gaze of those bold, imperious eyes. The thought brought a soft, pulsating warmth to his cheek, and he could not help but just ever so lightly reach the tips of his leather-gloved fingers into Edward's hand beside him.

The prophet did not even flinch for a moment. Instead of returning with the gesture with a playful, but secreted movement on Alfred's now sweating palm, he took his lover's hand entirely in his own and raised it over his head in a gesture of divine triumph. Alfred could not help but succumb to a full and indiscriminate blush as the crowds again cheered and hollered. There was something mechanical, something too political, too calculating in Edward's willingness to thrust his private desires into public spectacle, but Alfred compensated by dreaming of the day when the two would be become one. In his mind, he imagined the same cheers and festivities as mobs lined the streets to see this beautiful couple finally take their long-postponed wedding vows, screaming uncontrollably as Edward parted his snowy veil and thrust those full, blissful lips down upon his own. It took all the self-control he had to not cradle himself on to that broad warrior's arm beside him and lose himself in the fantasy.

Eventually the procession left the city to be admitted to the inner keep of Vihorr castle, where the generals then sat in a wide circle of freshly sewn satin pillows under a white canvas tent printed with little lemon stars. A shaman, his colourfully flashing pupils encroaching on nearly the whole territory of his ostrich-egg eyes, danced around in full nudity, caked only in goat feces he had lent several bleeding, rich shades from the juices of berries and beets. His skin was blistered and peeling, his outer digits blackened and nearly rotted, his lips parched and white, yet all the while he ululated and sang, welcoming the generals one by one. This shaman had spent many days tied to one withered, petrified tree on the summit of Thororr Mountain, staring at the eternal summer sun, communing with his ancestral spirits and braving the agonies of starvation and cold to bring the message of the Holy Stars.

Alfred has always been uncomfortable sharing the movement with these rougher mountain folk. He had much preferred the original plan that he and a group of trusted generals place the sacred crown of steel and glowing uranium above their prophet's head in recognition of his martial achievement, but Edward had thought better of it this morning. The mountain people had been their hosts, he said, the core of their meagre army and the bedrock of their persecuted state. Without their gers, their hunts or their steadfast will to survive in the barren lands, the Old Believers would died out long ago, and the VLF would have been nothing more than a gripe spat into uncaring winds.

Alfred wished not to disagree with his master on this (and surely there could be no discord, for the hospitality of the wild people had been for decades now indispensable), but that did not assuage his deep, envious feelings as those muck-caked, frozen fingers placed lowered the crown on the holy head of his beloved.

The generals rose and cheered, and as heralds called out from the castle walls back into the streets, a great roar of jubilation rose back into the keep.

"Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years!"

Alfred shuttered, but he still managed a tortured smile. He had trained the boys in the crowd to cry out "Ten thousand years to Prince Edward! Ten thousand generations to the Principality of Thunorr!" but he supposed it had probably been too long and belaboured for the poor, only recently besieged folk to recite in the moment. It was no great matter, Edward was beaming, his outstretched arms weighed down with enormous jewels on every finger and golden snake bracelets slithering about his wrists, a proud father welcoming his children home after a long and fateful journey. There was nothing, in that moment, that Alfred wanted to do more than race over to his prophet and worship at his luminescent feet.

After the clapping had died away and the generals returned to their plush, pillowed seats, the pavilion attendants sealed the tent and lowered the central brazier to a humming, low flame. One by one, the courtiers rose to regale their hallowed prince, taking great swigs of wine and spirit as they did, only to, upon reaching the final word, spit a long train of backwash into the fire and let it burst like a flare from the simmering surface of the sun.

Alfred's speech was never going to come close to matching the devotion and desire he held in the innermost chambers of his heart. In terms of delivery, well, he had learned every scrap of rhetoric from Edward himself, so what point was there in displaying twigs before a carpenter? He did enjoy the attention, however: the Stars' emissary on earth, the most powerful man in the galaxy, rightful emperor and prince over all the universe made to stare longingly on his youthful, uniformed and lusting body. Yet, though he moved as seductively as a cat, speaking as sultrily as good taste and religious decency would allow, to his great dismay he saw not even the slightest ease in Edward's expression. The prince remained fixed and unmoved, never once betraying even a hint of a gentle smile his way.

What could he have expected? It was all too solemn, too ceremonial. This was not the proper time and place, and surely Alfred's feelings have overpowered him, as they often did. Indeed, he had little doubt all those carnal desires and lusty passions were bottling inside the stoic façade of their immovable prince, building in pressure and intensity, waiting on the point of desperate anguish just to be taken inside his private ger and unleashed. After such a thought, Alfred could bear the sight of his gorgeous bedfellow no more, receding the floor in silent, lascivious shame.

As Cuthbert rose from his perch to speak, Alfred noted with some suspicion that the commander refused to imbibe, shunning his goblet in favour of a long, hand-scribbled scroll instead. With all the flourish of a sedated accountant, the man unfurled his notes, strained his eyes to peer over his nose and read:

"On this, the day of Your Saintly Ascension, Edward DeVihorr, Prince of Peace and Seer of Stars, Lord Protector of the Old Believers and Prophet of the Faith, I, Cuthbert do so humbly and with pathetic submission petition You to gift unto us, Your most loyal and dedicated subjects, but a single taste of that bountiful fruit we have plucked from the great tree of Vitharr."

Edward's smile immediately faded, his face growing stern, but pale as a ghost, anger seething through him, yet bound by some invisible force to remain passive and compliant. Alfred could feel every hair stand raise on his neck, twirling a furious, agonizing dance of nervous electricity, uncertain of what was to come next. What in the Star's light was he doing?

"Speak," Edward coughed, eventually, his face contorted in disgust, though he still, somehow assented. "Speak, and We shall deliver whatsoever which We can upon thee."

"Your Eminence, Your Grace, my most awesome, mighty lord," Cuthbert began, pacing around the fire with his hands clutched at his back, "like the first Stars that did grace the heavens in the Great Chaos of the Elemental Storm, we men of the old Faith are beckoned to go forth and multiply, to prick the night's sky with our eternal light and shower the cosmos in new human constellations. This is our finest duty and highest privilege, and for some, ye, for many, it is a privilege even the most faithful and prudent of worshippers cannot carry out."

Hisses and remonstrances were heard in the audience, but Cuthbert just nodded his head sadly, as if acknowledging the sorry state of their mortal affairs. "Aye, it is so. For our men, our strong, brave, unbreakable men, they have spent their lives fighting, scrounging, sacrificing, dying for the cause, crusading for the Faith, and in all that time they ploughed no fields, they tended no herds, they learned no craft. They have not even the eighth-piece of a tael with which to pay a bride price, and so their heroism and conscience may be celebrated with a cheer and a kiss, but at the very pinnacle of their success, they are rebuffed most disdainfully by the comely women of this land."

The general suddenly raised a finger in the air, a wide, sharp-tooth grin slowly worming its way down his face. "But! But, my lords, there is another option. There is a people, a people flocking to our kingdom, a whole dominion of foreign gaggles and encroachment of refugees who know not the Faith, who worship not the Stars and whose marriages to ungodly aliens profanes against our Path and the very foundation of this new, eternal nation. I speak, of course, of the jiaren: the infidel women with whom we shall marry our troops and so reform them to the Stars' light."

Alfred was not going to allow this absurd spectacle to play out a moment longer. He could understand why Edward may want to maintain amity on this, the first day of his reign, but Alfred was under no such restraint. He stamped to his feet and snarled, not loud enough to be bellowing but with enough volume to rattle Cuthbert's interior confidence. "This is entirely preposterous! Infidels and interlopers they may be, but our quarrel has always been with their Emperor, not them. Now He has all but abandoned them to death, and so they cling to us as the last line of defence. Our prophet, in His infinite wisdom, was chosen to spare such people and teach them through mercy and patience to convert to our ways. It is better we not question His judgement and incite them to think unkindly now."

Alfred smiled, self-satisfied and bowed with a dramatic tussle of his fur robes, his nose nearly touching the frozen castle cobble stones. Yet, when he stood again, he saw the face of his prince was not amused in the slightest, and instead, reflected coldly the sinister smirking of the vile Cuthbert. An ugly, vomitus pit began to form in his wrenching guts.

Edward's face drooped down to the point that he was nearly addressing the floor, and his voice grew low and harried. Yet, even as he mumbled out, "We do affirm the general's request," he was heard well enough to illicit gasps from all across the tent.

The gasps were few and far between, however. Much more prominent were the uproarious clapping from a spattering of high-ranking commanders all flanking their leader Cuthbert and straightening his back with pride. Alfred could not withstand another second. He had been wrong after all. The true Edward was just as wavering and intransient as he had ever been, and now he needed his one true ally, his closest and dearest friend more than ever. He was not going to yield the interests of his lord to anyone, perhaps not even the lord Himself.

That may have been far beyond the meaning of loyalty, but it was just within the domain of love.

"No!" he demanded, firm and implacable. "That is not what You said, my lord, and that is not what You mean." He could see Edward's face begin to darken with rage, and his words became a jumbled, haltering swirl as he tried to maintain the pace. "You know the jia-."

"Thou dare tell a Prince what He ought to be thinking?" cried out the prophet, utterly incredulous and ready to let loose a passionate tirade, it seemed, no matter the witnesses nor indecency.

Alfred was shocked, his heart utterly distraught and his resolve failing quickly. He gritted his teeth, bowing his head, and tried, however impossibly, to keep his voice calm and pliant with every word. "I..., I..., I counsel only to reconsider my lord," he pleaded, mumbling more to his feet than to his master. "Please, why not abide by first decisions and let the ideas of newcomers to be judged on their merits through the passage of time."

Edward would not accept even this act of minimal contrition. He boiled over, "thou would sooner shelter the foreign devil than obey the dictates of thy Prince!" Furious spittle had moistened the contours of his square, handsome chin, made hideous and dastardly in the grotesque deformity of wrath.

Alfred looked up from his feet once more. He had not unearthed through great agony and suffering the strength to flee the inviting arms of that splendid temptress just to be treated so cruelly by the man who had sent him to her in the first place. "Blasphemers they may be, but through the sharing of our enemies they do inadvertently make us friends, and who are You, Prince, to call me traitor that so cultivates the partners of Your very own state." Alfred regretted the words the instant had spat them from his mouth, but the venom once spewed was never returning to the fangs from whence it came.

The prophet leaned as far forward as he could, his arms pushing himself with all his force against his motley throne as he cursed, "I'll burn the lot of them, I say! I'll burn them all, Alfred, sooner than have you seduce those devils against me! Let's see the jiaren be loyal friends, then! Enemy of my enemy!" He laughed in a deranged hysteria, "the only jiaren I call friends are ash."

A wave of protestations arose on Albert's corner, with many generals raising their objections (and one furtive, restrained pat of acknowledgment on his shoulder), but they were drowned out by Cuthbert and his faction as they screamed in ecstatic frenzy, "skim the cream, steam the milk! Skim the cream, steam the milk!"

"Take their women!" Cuthbert shouted, raising both hands in the air as he agitated his followers. "Burn their men!" the commanders replied, wild, rapacious eyes, eyes still trapped in the mountains, still locked in the fighting, still enthralled in the wrath of that eternal, violent hunger.

Alfred scowled. He had lost his patience entirely, and now, a clique of loyalists behind him was spurring him to greater moral certainties.

"This is despicable on the verge of damnable, my Prophet," Alfred disputed, his heart yearning just to pluck Edward from his throne, press through the folds of his private ger and cradle him until he came to his senses: out of Cuthbert's sway. But he knew it was not possible, and worse, the more he cried, the stronger the Prince's inclination against him.

"Please, Edward," Alfred begged, falling to his knees before the man he loved and feeling that wretched, unambiguous disembowelment of those once tender eyes peering down at him in only loathing and despair. "Please, my lord. Our country is young and legacy vast to be written. Do not singe the first volume, that inaugural and binding chapter, with the burning of five hundred thousand souls."

Every muscle, line and cell in Edward's face etched itself viciously in the revolting, asymmetrical texture of sheer indignation, and with pouted, blood-thirsty lips he conjured forth his curse.

"We, Prince Edward, Lord of..."

"Don't do this, Edward!" Alfred cried.

"...do name thee, Alfred...."

"We haven't enough matches for such a fire!", "We're liberators not murderers!" and "Do the Stars hold no clemency?" were heard from Alfred's backside, though it made no impression.

"Show mercy!" he screamed.

"...are hereby and henceforth forever banished from this land, on pain of death."

Alfred had to gasp to hold his tears. He had already prostrated himself on his knees, the swift kick to his gut would keep him there for many long, agonizing moments. He stared back into the gaze of his lover, but the Prince would not meet it. His eyes were heavy and dark, inscrutable and undecipherable to him for the first time in decades.

And like that, it was over. A lifetime of kisses, secrets and daring exploits, exhausted in the space of an afternoon. As Alfred turned his back on his prophet for the last time, he knew it was no longer the man he had known and fought beside all those years. That man had dissolved the instant the crown had descended upon his head.

Now, he turned his back on a stranger, and the Stars would have no clemency indeed when he made introductions for a second time.

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"We cannot possibly continue this, my lord," Edgar pleaded, barely able to keep his Keeper's frock from spilling off his body with which he was ferociously slamming the table. "If this embargo goes any longer, the whole country is bound to starve."

Kang winced, but his smile returned as it always did, cold and abrasive as ever. "Edgar, thou had many years, decades even to advise the Gretwalden. If thou had known that the farmers of Vitharr were wantonly investing in cash crops, linking this planet perilously tightly to a fragile imperial market, the time to say it was then, not now."

"But our country starves now, my lord!"

Kang remained calm and collected, his monotonous voice not stooping to the Keeper's anxiety for even a single syllable. "We will not bow to the Governor. We will not submit to the Emperor. We will be self-sufficient. There is no change in policy, and there will no trading for food. The Vidar had better learn to eat their crops, or they'll discover how to eat nothing at all."

It was at that moment that the disgraced former Commandant, MacGregor, passed through the heavy iron seal of Kang's underground bunker looking generally disheveled and unimpressed. The Keeper, ever the watchful observer of ritual, chose to rise, but Kang shook his head and so Edgar slowly lowered himself down with some uneasy hesitation.

"Shawn, or should I say, 'my lord,'" MacGregor withdrew his soggy tricorn cap in a mock curtsy, bowering briefly before rudely stiffening himself to unbutton his rain-drenched coat. Kang's eyes flittered rather frankly and with indelicate precision to the act, making note that MacGregor wore no uniform of any kind underneath.

He smiled, though this, the Keeper was beginning to tell, was not the sort of nervous, empty smile that often adorned his unwaveringly cheery face. No, instead this betrayed some genuine, some unacknowledged desire or serendipity fulfilled. The lord, for that is what he was now, was sincerely happy, and at this moment in the long and tumultuous recent history of their crumbling country, that could only fill Edgar with ominous discomfort.

"Leave us," Kang demanded, as dismissively and summarily as Aeplerad had ever done. Edgar supposed it could not be helped. He had learned from the best. Knowing his cue was up, he receded from the stage, hoping with every silent prayer his brain could muster that no matter what those two imperials plotted, his nation would still survive. The time for resistance had died along with Karl. Now, Edgar, it was merely the epoch of submission.

The Commandant waited awkwardly, his hands clasped behind his back, staring off to the side while the Keeper of the Scrolls gruffly packaged away all his titular documents and departed. It was only after he noticed that they were alone and accepted their state of lonesomeness that MacGregor finally loosened his shoulders and stood at ease. He walked up to Kang's table, but still refused a chair, opting instead to lean casually against the edge with an outstretched arm.

"What sort of Yaoguai's doing is this, Shawn?" MacGregor asked, his face immediately caving to a look of heightened concern. "I had to smuggle myself here on an unlicensed coal ship, was shuttled from car to building and back again with a hooded draped over my prematurely balding head not once, not twice, not even thrice, but four times until I was tossed down an elevator shaft so deep below the surface I could feel my very eardrums pop from the pressure, and now I'm here, having not heard or spoken a single jiawen word for more than an entire day, and still you cannot speak until we are alone."

The Commandant exhaled deeply and pressed his other hand against the table, leaning towards the chief, his countenance grown deathly stern. "What sort of secrets are thou keeping?"

Kang chuckled, but his eyes were tired and unenthused. He rose slowly from his chair, a few aching bones and muscles audibly popping back into place as he regained his posture and reached out a reassuring hand to his friend's shoulder.

"Tensions are growing between the Governor and this Emergency Committee-."

"What Emergency Committee?" MacGregor interjected, gesturing to the empty room before them.

"This one," Kang winked, pointing to himself. "The only one that matters. Besides," he continued, leaning his back against the table to open himself up towards the conversation (and MacGregor's rolling eyes), "the Governor is going to annex the whole planet anyway. What does it matter who is in charge of what piece here and there in the meantime?"

MacGregor angrily gritted his teeth, unamused at such pedantic misdirection. "Kang, I came here, to you, to you my lord, at tremendous risk to my reputation and - so long as the Governor embargoes Vitharr - perhaps at great peril to my life as well. I demand you answer such gambles with a stake that is worth such inordinate risk."

Kang exhaled through his nostrils and sat down once again, pouring two glasses of rice wine from a flask in the centre of the table. "Commandant, thou know me well, better than any who have ever shared the displeasure of my acquaintance, I'm sure. Thou knew I was plotting back in our glory days of the Cassian campaigns so many years ago and thou can see I have my own devices now. The only question that remains to be asked is, will thou aid now as thou failed to do before? You safely banished me to this planet, true, but let us not pretend thou weren't trading thy loyalty to me for a shot at command. Now that thy command is exhausted at last, will thou retread the error or walk a different path, a destiny we shall meet together?"

"Together!" MacGregor insisted, already slithered into his own seat beside the chief. "But thou know thy plot was madness the first time, do thou not? Though pure in vision and grand in scope, it was doomed to disaster! I saved thee then as I intend to save thee now." The commandant held Kang's hands in his own, his eyes steeling against encroaching tears. "Tell me, Shawn! Tell Kanshou thy designs. Tell us of certain triumphs, and I shall lead thee to greatest success. Tell us of martyr's fancies, and I shall counsel thee from the brink of annihilation."

"Very well," Kang nodded, his teeth mysteriously hidden and face gone unnervingly stolid. "I shall accept those terms, but only if thou do abide by mine."

"Anything!"

"Just one thing, actually," he winked again, "for now, one thing. Tell not a single soul, not the governor, not thy wife, not the Emperor, not Heaven itself. Tell no one not even the slightest syllable of what thou is about to hear, no matter thy reception to it."

"Of course," MacGregor acquiesced, nodding.

Kang inhaled so strongly and so suddenly the commandant feared he had the depleted the bunker of its only supply of air. After pulling all that oxygen in and then expunging it through a heavy, moist rush as he stretched his gangly arms over the table, he retreated back towards his seat, folding his hands against his body, rubbing them anxiously across his wrists as if they were consumed by some immortal itch. Eventually, after a great deal of scratching and many nervous gulps of wine on the part of MacGregor, Kang decided to begin.

"Do thou know the history of these Cassian worlds, Kanshou?" Kang inquired. "Not just founding of the colony and the in which skirmishes we fought, no, I mean the actual, mythic history."

MacGregor frowned, uncertain where such an interrogation could be leading. "I know not how far back thou mean, but I have heard it wondered aloud by many a great and learned scientist that the inhabitants of this world are surely the lost progeny of Old Terra, disjointed from us by many thousands, millions of years of perhaps, though no one yet knows if they are descended from the walking man like us or the strayed monkey – what's his name?"

"Ham."

"Yes! Ham and his progeny wandered out of the most primitive space-going vessels, giving birth to the Cassian race. I've heard this passed around the officers' quarters on many occasions, though I never paid it much stock."

Kang shook his head. "Indeed, I've heard it all too, but alas, that is not to what I was referring. Besides, the argument itself leads to nothing and nowhere. We can teach them. We can work them. We can fuck them. Their ancestry is irrelevant. What truly matters in their history is the secret to making them do all these things and more for us."

MacGregor nodded. This was well within his conception of reality. "Very well, continue."

Kang began to talk with his hands, only every now and then slurping back more wine to lubricate his tale. "Those learned men, and women, I should say, they have developed a theory most intriguing. So intriguing, perhaps, that is censored within our Home systems and only through the Gretwalden's negligence was it ever able to flourish here. They say that some time in the distant past, this system was inhabited by a planet-spawning, hyper-intelligent and incredibly sophisticated spacefaring society every bit as advanced as our own. More advanced, in fact, for at that time we were still recovering from the harsh winds of a nuclear winter and ecological collapse brought on through of our own devices."

"This civilization reached out far greater than just the four Cassian Inner Worlds, but instead, it is rumoured to have burst across more stars than even our fledging Empire can hold even now. Yet, at some time, one of those stars suddenly exploded in a miraculously apocalyptic supernova that liquidated the entire glorious civilization in the blink of an eye. Though they were spared complete devastation, the Cassians would remember it forever. The nova rained down a spray of heavy elements from the heavens, burning their cities and collapsing their culture, reducing them to little more than a backwards, medieval society in just one terrifying flash."

"Enter just one temple and listen to just one worship and thou will see for thine own self that these people have never forgotten. Their every religious scripture and cultural more is caught up in the stars, watching and awaiting their terrible vengeance, telling tales of the wondrous paradise that was and the wretched Blackhell that now persists as a punishment for their pathetic, miserable sins. Yet," Kang laughed at this, "even their misery can illuminate the path to salvation."

"Thou see, Kanshou, for on this planet, it was one metal in particular that rained from the sky, one metal among all the others that most battered their technologies and blasted their culture. And it was that very same metal that drew the radiosensitive counters of the seventh-generation colony ship this way more than seventy years ago. Uranium, Kanshou. That most unstable and most devastating of elements: uranium."

MacGregor began to grow increasingly nervous, but Kang was growing in confidence, raising his voice as he grew more excited. "Worry not, my friend; it's been seventy years, all the big deposits are gone. There isn't enough left to shorten thy lifespan all that significantly, at least not in the way the first of the colonists so bravely sacrificed for our magnificent empire. No, what we do have," now he really could not help smiling with an absolutely authentic demeanour of excitation, "are the largest nuclear reactors in all the galaxy. And I have them all under my control, Kanshou. Every. Single. One."

The commandant wanted so desperately to shake Kang like a crazy ragdoll and shout some godly sense into him, but he remembered all too well his compact with the governor, and so he let the lunatic prattle on. "It's the only heavy industry in all the Cassian worlds, really. Thank goodness for fuel prices being what they are, the Empire decided to refine the uranium here before importing it back Home, and from that one demand, that single investment, all four of the Cassian worlds (all four of them!) went from degenerate, pre-industrial societies barely able to scrap together a spaceship to fully fledged near-imperial powers in just the space of seventy years."

"Those reactors are the key, Kanshou. They're the key to everything. I can convert them, I am converting them to produce plutonium, Kanshou, to make me an arsenal, my friend! The Governor is blocking my ports, well fuck her! Do thou know what she left in my harbour? Enough fuel to build the greatest stockpile of nuclear weapons this universe has ever seen."

MacGregor balked. This had all gone too far. Deal be damned, Kang had gone stark raving mad and now he was threatening to destroy not only himself, but very likely all life on this disgusting, dissolute planet. It had to end somewhere. "No, Kang. I will not hear another word of this! Govern as thou will until the Gretwalder recovers, but this scheme can go no further. Not only are thou sure to fail no matter the aim, but no matter the aim thy arrow won't strike just the target; it'll cleave this whole system in two."

"Oh, but Kanshou, loyal, diligent Kanshou!" Kang sounded almost elated, his eyes white and bobbling wildly about his skull. "This isn't some crazed conspiracy. This isn't another of my dubious plots. This is real scienc and plotted by someone rather close, though distinctly un-dear to thee."

"What?" the commandant was completely befuddled.

"Do thou know what was the most valuable thing I learnt in the service alongside thee, my brother?" Kang asked, taking a heavy, leather-set book from a satchel at his feet and placing it on the table. "It was how to read." The book was red, as all good and important books were, marked with the neat, but clearly plebian characters of the Governor's name: The Art of Civil Governance, Lady Ci Xiao. "Before I used to only read pornography and propaganda. Now, I read the minds of my enemies."

Kang flipped open the text. "Look! See with thy very eyes the wisdom of her counsel. She says to purge the administration of all unreliables. Easy! With all the hubbub of a Party plot and jiaren spies, I got rid of anybody who ever so much as looked at me with a sideways glance. Second, she says to make allies of one's own. Again, simple! I solidified the state, liquidated the Walders and took the reins of every department. True, there are some lords here and there-."

"The entire north!" MacGregor cried.

Kang held his breath, exasperated. "Yes, the north as well... for now. But see, Kanshou, see! My state is smaller, but it's more concentrated. It's lean but it's lithe. It takes fewer blows but it knocks back them twice as hard. All the Gretwalder cared about, to be honest, what every other magistrate, governor and even the Emperor himself truly cares about, is just extracting every piece of silver they can from the state. Not Ci, though, no not our good friend Ci. For her, it is all about power, and I have learned to respect the awe-inspiring majesty of that power."

"We could live a million years and this planet would never reap enough taels to pay a legion, much less fight a war, Kanshou. I know that. I'm not stupid. But these Cassians, these unhinged, unharried barbarians, they are driven by something far deeper than money, far greater than material wealth, my friend. These people are compelled by God, and God alone, and I do mean God in the singular, Kanshou, for they worship, what they truly worship, is not the twinkling of the stars like our petty-minded anthropologists condescend to say. No! They worship that awesome power, the might of the star: its ability to rain down Heaven's wrath at any moment, erasing ten million years of history like the stroke of a pen. And what powers the star, Kanshou? What does power the mighty, immortal star?"

MacGregor's mind was too stretched and muffled to do anything but spit forth that single piece of astrophysics every imperial had had drilled through their skull since before they were even old enough to read it themselves: "nuclear fusion."

Kang breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "So, thou see it then? Do thou see it? These weapons, my brother. They are not made to destroy. They are made to be worshipped! I'll never fire a single warhead. Heaven forbid; I shall not have to, for merely the act of making them alone will bring the Cassians to our side. The Old Believers, Kanshou, the terrorists, the radicals, they're far more widespread than anything thou might have read, not just here but on all the Cassian worlds. They're everywhere, hidden, waiting, and they worship, Kanshou. They worship the immortal reactor, and with time, they'll come to worship me too. And not just the VLF, not just the Old Believers, but the Party too. When they see the immense, omnipotent power of this small but stalwart state, they will drop their arms and join our cause. The Cassians love order, Kanshou. They are the same as us in that respect, and once they see their god now rendered in radioactive flesh, they will despair and obey."

MacGregor still could not believe a word of what he was hearing, but he was happy to see his friend walk himself from the brink of total thermonuclear holocaust he had all but endorsed earlier. Perhaps if he kept talking, Kang would bring himself around. "But what of the Empire, Shawn? What of our people? Don't allow me to forget that you, yes you have now admitted to instigating one of the greatest sectarian purges against your own race in all our history. You persecuted the imperials here, and whether they were mixed of blood or not, it will not go forever unanswered. Word will escape, just thou wait, it cannot be bottled up in thy bunker forever, and once it does, how does thou expect the Emperor to take it then?"

"On His knees." Kang laughed.

"Thou cannot but speak in vain," MacGregor scoffed.

"Oh no?" Kang demanded, leaning forward, an intense but inscrutable look in his eyes. "And how can thou be so sure we saddled the winning horse when we enlisted so long ago, you and me. These Cassians, they've gone from mud dwellers to factory clerks in the space of three generations. Their population has more than quadrupled in seventy years, even as they've nearly destroyed themselves many times over in the bloody crucible of civil war. They're a warrior race, strong, battle-hardened and quick as a whip to learn any skill to which they employ their nimble minds."

"And what of us, my friend? Our empire has not grown one iota in ten thousand years. Yes, I suppose that is nearly inevitable when one values order and stability above all else, but ten thousand years? And not a single new planet, save this one, in all that time. And worse, the fighting we do to protect what we have only grows increasingly desperate. Poor men like us taking orders from unconscionable bitches like Ci only to terrorize, to devastate, to obliterate the few outposts of humanity that remain. Why do we accept it?"

"How is it, that us, crowding so tightly, so wretchedly on the toxic wastes of the Home Worlds, so choked with ash and smog that most will never see a ray of sunshine but once in their entire lives, how is that we anointed ourselves the superior race, our ways to enlightened ones and our enemies the destroyers of humanity? Is it not more likely, dare I say, perhaps even incontestable, from every city we've razed, moon we've raped and people we've exterminated that it is us not them that are the true barbarians?"

"But worry not, Kanshou! Worry not! For once again, the governor is our faithful guide. For she, as all our greatest philosophers, advises the most renowned, most devious and most reliable strategy of our storied history: use barbarians to subdue barbarians. Only now, we do it in reverse. The Cassians will capitulate to me, that much is all but done already. And once they have, they will form the new, invincible core of a Holy Jihad that shall sweep across every heretofore 'civilized' land in the galaxy, teaching it the true meaning of civilization."

"I don't mean to rule as a petty tyrant, siphoning off resources and wenches in meaningless, temporary satiation of my earthly appetites. No," Kang's eyebrows straightened, and his jawline firmed. "No, I mean to establish a new dynasty, a Yuan Dynasty with myself as its Kublai Khan, its Shizu and with you as my Boyan. Take my hand, Kanshou. Feel the well of the great wave as it pulls and starts, building for a glorious tide that shall wipe all away in its desolation. There's no way out now, my friend. Thou know everything, and in my kingdom, the only way to forget is to be forgotten."

Kang smirked once again, but the threat was more than implied. So those were the stakes, after all. Risk his life, try to convince his dear but mind-rotten friend to drop his traitorous schemes before he inadvertently brought all life on this system to an end, or gamble for one last shot at command, wait to tell the governor and just hope it was not too late to save countless millions, perhaps billions of lives.

Those were weightier questions than any MacGregor had ever pondered in all his life, and from the hungry, expectant look in Kang's bloodthirsty eyes, he expected an answer soon.