“They say an army marches to war on its stomach. Always struck me as odd. Feet seem so much better adapted to the needs of marching, but then armies supposedly do require those with ‘guts’ so perhaps soldiers are simply built differently than the common masses?”

– Glenmorda Tinbellus Enika of the Reaper’s Mercy attempting to inspire the Imperial 4th legion shortly before their resounding defeat at Fort Sparkshower on the Empire’s eastern border.

Three days passed before the High Council managed to set a date for the official hearing into the ‘small matter of a conflict declaration between two or more of the Empress’s Houses’. They sort of gave away the urgency of the matter though by setting the hearing for the next day. It was possible that had something to do with the nine waves of assassins which had been sent managing to all go mysteriously missing.

Dead assassins, it seems, were an expected part of the proceedings. Certainly if they did a good job and escaped unnoticed, there was every reason to retain their services for future endeavors. From what the others told me that gave the premier assassins as good as a one-in-three chance of surviving a successful return – the number being so low as successfully assassins were quite expensive and notably troublesome when they weren’t properly paid. Assassin corpses on the other hand exhibited none of those problems.

The startling lack of dead bodies however raised other concerns among our fellow Great Houses. This ranged from the purely reasonable worries with the first few waves of whether or not those assassins knew anything of value which they might be forced to divulge. Generally the screening process for murderers-for-hire was not the most rigorous when the intended target was a collection of academy students and their staff.

Doxle was mildly perturbed by that, feeling (rightly so) that his presence should have merited a more thorough response than that. Enika however was delighted, revealing that she’d gone to some pains to convey the impression that the two of them were vacationing in Rosetide on the southern coast of Thistlehill. That Doxle hadn’t noticed her machinations became a potent weapon in their continue battle of sly glances and carefully chosen words.

For the rest of us though the important daily considerations were; a.) surviving the next wave of assassins, b.) removing the Brands of Loyalty from the previous wave, c.) preparations for the Trial, d.) plotting to overthrow the entire Imperial power structure, and e.) enjoying a relaxing meal at the end of each day.

The meal was really the best part of all that – at least in my view. Partly that was because Idrina and Narla ensured that I never got to join in the ‘thwart the assassins’ work. They had a running tally between them with my score sitting at a dismal zero. Unsurprisingly, to me at least, the leader of the race was Mellina who tended to bring in assassins in a cart, thoroughly disabled, and from where none of us could guess.

It was fortunate that Doxle’s house was as spacious as it was since we were able to repurpose a few rooms into a sort of infirmary and jail complex.

This was because they’d been built with medical facilities and holding cells.

Doxle had a very odd taste in decorating.

There had been some discussion as to whether going out and hunting assassins for sport should be counted in the same tally as the ones who were clearly aggressive and had made their intentions clear by such subtle means as setting fire to my bed with me in it (I was fine). It was one of the few point where Narla and Idrina found themselves in agreement, but they were sadly overruled by a majority vote (from which I abstained) when, after being freed from their Loyalty Brands, the assassins Mellina captured revealed that they had indeed been planning to assault us and had simply been caught before they could make any headway on the effort.

That had led to Narla and Idrina both politely excusing themselves from dinner on the second night and vanishing for several hours, only to return hours later with dour looks on their faces and the scent of frustration lingering about them for the rest of the night.

That, in turn, had lead to another night where I couldn’t talk with Idrina about…anything.

Okay, I could have talked to her. There was time. We were in the same place. At least physically. She wasn’t ready though. And, if I was feeling honest, I wasn’t ready. 

Which was ridiculous!

We’d made so much progress.

But maybe it was too much? 

I don’t know. I had precisely zero experience to draw on, and romantic endeavors were never something Grammy was all too keen to share. 

It wasn’t hard to tell though that Idrina was feeling unsettled. Or that I had no idea what to do next. My hope was that once people weren’t trying to kill us daily, we’d be able to take some time away and get to actually know each other, but I think part of me was worried that without the excitement of our current predicament, she wouldn’t be all that interested in me.

Which was rude and stupid of me.

Knowing that however, did not provide the emotional roadmap to do better though.

Fortunately there was Pastries amazing cooking to distract all of us from thoughts like that. By tacit agreement, we decided that discussion of assassins and all of our other external endeavors was out of bounds during the dining hour. The food simply demanded better of us.

“I think I want to actually visit Rosetide,” Ilyan said, between bites of a roast gamebird which was covered in gravy and a sour berry accompaniment. 

“Now?” Idrina asked, pausing her own enjoyment of the same dish.

“No, I mean, after everything’s wrapped up,” he said.

“Everything is likely to be on fire and drowning in screams when everything wraps up,” Enika said.

“Yeah, but after that,” Ilyan said, waving away the concern as though the collapse of an Empire was something that would sort itself out in an afternoon or so.

To be fair to him though, that was more or less the plan we had in place, I just wasn’t sure anyone except him thought it would work out quite how we hoped it would.

“Rosetide is lovely this time of year,” Doxle said, “but if I may be allowed to offer an alternative, I would suggest the Dhalian Isles. They are truly magical in the fall, and have a far wider array of recreational facilities than Rosetide does.”

“Also, they are outside the Empire,” Enika said from her perch on Doxle’s lap, accepting the grape which he lowered into her waiting mouth.

“Won’t we want to be here to make sure things don’t fall apart completely?” I asked, knowing that they were going to fall apart regardless of our presence or absence. We were dealing with people after all. A lot of people. There’s a certain predictability to that.

“Things are going to fall where they will,” Doxle said. “Should we be temporarily absent, they are less likely to fall on us.”

“Isn’t it our job to carry the load here?” Narla asked. “I mean, we are setting this all up.”

“Are we?” Enika asked, turning her attention and gaze away from Doxle.

“We were the ones who provoked a war with six of the Great Houses,” Ilyan said.

“Seven,” Yarrin corrected him. “We got the declaration from House Farsail just before dinner.”

Ilyan opened his mouth to congratulate Yarrin and Narla on their work there, but clamped his mouth shut a moment later and returns to his food, the prohibition against ‘work talk’ firmly in place still.

“All the more reason to leave as quickly as possible once the deed is done then,” Enika said.

“Because those loyal to the old guard will target us even more fiercely?” Mellina asked.

“That is likely to be little more than an annoyance,” Enika said. “The true danger lies in how the people who’ve supported you will react.”

“If you don’t escape their clutches, they’re likely to foist the entire apparatus of the government on you,” Doxle said. “That’s rather how the Empire got started in the first place if you recall your history lessons.”

“I don’t remember the founders ever being described as unwilling rulers?” Mellina said.

“And you would not be either,” Enika said. “There are oh so many persuasive arguments they can employ, ones steeped in guilt, or rage, or even the honest desire to do better than those who came before.”

“We call that last one hubris, though it often doesn’t start out as that,” Doxle said, maneuvering a bit of the roast bird around Enika to take a bite before she could finish off the rest.

“The challenge is that you will have done a wonderful job, and so people will wish to extract even more wonderful work from you while they can. They will give you power, and prestige, and every worldly comfort they can find in order to buy the illusion of you which they’ve built up,” Enika said.

“And should you fail to match the illusion of you who they want to see, they will turn, not on you, but on themselves,” Doxle said.

“Why would they do that?” Idrina asked, and I could smell the disbelief floating off her.

“Because, they will believe in you, and it is much easier to continue in their belief and find a scapegoat whose existence doesn’t call into question the validity of the ideas they’ve chosen to make central to their sense of self,” Enika said.

“Won’t they just blow us up into even more ridiculous figures if we’re not here to show them that we’re just regular people?” I asked.

Doxle and Enika both laughed, which was rare enough to be disturbing.

“There’s not a regular person in this room, or even in this house,” Doxle said.

“You are correct that people will mythologize you in your absence, but that’s the kind of thing that can be addressed on your return,” Enika said. “The key is, if you are not here for the aftermath of our plans coming to fruition, people won’t be able to turn to you for further answers and solutions to their problems.”

“They’ll have to turn to, or perhaps turn on, each other,” Doxle said.

“The turning on each other seems like something we want to avoid,” I said.

“Do we?” Enika asked, and I could tell from her tone she was taking what I’d said in a different manner than I’d intended.

“Our allies falling into conflict seems like a bad thing,” I said, hoping that provided greater clarity.

“That all depends on how they resolve it,” Doxle said. “This sort of change is a rare occasion, and one of the few opportunities to see if people can learn from past mistakes and grow.”

“Brutal opposition is the most common answer people make to change, but we do have one advantage here,” Enika said.

“The people we’re working with already have a history of working together,” Doxle said.

“The strain of leading an Empire will be new for them, which always makes things a bit of a gamble,” Enika said.

“But they know as well as we do, or perhaps more, what changes are needed,” Doxle said. “They have the example of the Great Houses as they stand now to highlight the cost of acting as they do.”

“Some will fall off the path,” Enika said.

“And we will be there to pick them up,” the Empress Eternal said.

I hadn’t known she could project herself into Doxle home.

I hadn’t known she was listening to our conversation, or was even in favor of what we were doing.

I was supposed to go talk with her to find that out, but I’d been putting it off, mostly because I had no idea how to say ‘we’re going to wreck your empire, is that okay’?