“Good Keeper, Light over the Earth, Zhiren,

The saboteurs have arrived in Carakhte, Zoe Bari at their head. They are ready for their mission and will ride far ahead of the army when the time comes to depart. Your retinue returns now to the Tower of God, following after your messengers. We know you will receive them and be joyful, for the time has almost come to cleanse the north of its vermin and bring peace…”

244 YT, Late Spring: Kurikuneku: Atop the Tower of God

Zhiren set the letter aside and leaned back in his satin-lined seat, letting his head rest lightly against his own shoulder. Out the window behind him the city of Kurikuneku rested, a plane bristling with lighted spines and crawling with the antlike husks of people. Ordinary people and their ordinary lives, the vehicles that carried them from place to place, all part of the great machine whose purpose they could neither fully see nor fully comprehend… Oh, how they had tried, in the days of Old, to gain complete understanding of the world. Its systems. Its rules. And when they sought to understand, they inevitably sought to bend. It was only natural.

The machine was so beautiful – a beautiful totalizing, all-embracing, all-enveloping humanity. It loved all in equal measure – it held all within its grasp. Everything… so perfect, blemishes hidden and washed away by the loving hands their guardian. Human and more-than-human at once. It was such a beautiful thought, to Zhiren, made more beautiful still by the knowledge that one day, the mantle would fall upon him. The divine would personally embrace him!

He shook his head to remove himself from the reverie. Putting pen to paper, Zhiren prepared a quick reply to the letter placed on his desk. As he turned and picked up the pen, he saw the messenger stiffen, standing up straighter, arms down at his sides. An imperfection – he’d allowed himself to relax when Zhiren was turned away. Zhiren couldn’t blame the boy, of course – the boy would be forgiven, if only he would renew his love. He reminded himself silently to make sure the relevant priest would speak with this messenger. And leaning over the desk, he wrote:

Zoe Bari and her companions should be given the order to depart for Kivv, with the fastest vehicles in Carakhte, as soon as our army’s approach through the city is about to be prepared. Waste no time when that time comes – send them with the finest equipment and, in the interim, drill them for the real thing. I sense that the model city block of Kivv has been prepared – let them train there, so that when they arrive they will be ready, and they will cripple the city. Then our army may proceed with minimal casualties.

Zhiren did not need to sign his letter. Those who knew its meaning would not question its source. He folded the paper and handed it over quickly to the messenger. “Go ahead and take this away, child,” Zhiren said, a soft smile upon his warm and pleasant face.

The messenger saluted and left Zhiren. When the door closed, he sat up straight in his chair. He felt the relief in his spine as he resumed proper posture, then, pushing his hands against the table, he sat up. He glanced over his shoulder once, twice, then turned to face the window. His place was so far above the city, if he were to push through that window he’d fall long enough to reach terminal velocity. He’d survive, of course – Zhiren was not a fool, nor unlearned in magic, and his Devotees were clever creatures capable of feats to convince the ordinary folk he was divinity incarnate. The fall would still hurt, though. That thought amused Zhiren.

“It’s all about image,” Zhiren murmured to himself, glancing over his shoulder one more time to confirm that he was alone in the room. “Image.” And he tapped his finger on the windowpane, the faint reflection drowned out in the daylight outside. “They want a soft and gentle lord. Oh, Gaius may make his shows of might but it’s with fierceness and might that you stir hearts. You stir them to action.” He sighed. “You don’t win them over but with gentleness and softness.”

A faint part of Zhiren chided himself for the vanity of talking aloud in an empty room. “Ah, but what’s life without a little vanity?”

Pacing past his desk, dragging his fingers along the top, Zhiren mused to himself. “And who is it who gets to decide what it means to be a lord, to be a guide, a god?” He stopped, his fingers pausing in their tapping. “Whoever is left standing when the bombs have fallen and left everyone else bleeding beneath rubble,” he muttered. Grimly, angrily. “It’s not pleasant but it’s true. This world knows only two laws.

“Fear and ingratiation.”

A flash of concern from Thoth at the back of Zhiren’s mind: The one with the blade whose father shook the walls in the south, she’s bent on destroying your champion.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means, Thoth,” Zhiren said, not deigning to speak in mental whispers to his own Devotees. They could bear to hear his voice, and they could bear the jealousy of not having voice themselves. “Can you be less cryptic in your foreknowledge?”

A woman who came from nothing, whose name is nothing, who cares for nothing – but there’s someone else with her, an old soul, once wise.

“I’m not getting your meaning, you old bat. Tell me plain, will you?”

The old soul’s world was tragically stolen from her, taken first by the game of nations and then by the game of magicians. Once noble and great, all that remains of her is a desperate, hateful sense of self-preservation… and the thirst of revenge.

Zhiren pounded his fist on the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he hissed. “Who?”

The woman from nothing is the apology the Vale owes the world. The old soul is the vanity spoken by the tongues of ancient fools who’ve yet to accept they have lost the world.

“Enough riddles!” Zhiren cried. “Who do you speak of? The old soul?”

Karla Enok is planning something. What, precisely, I cannot say, but surely it cannot bode well for you.

“Karla Enok is long-dead, lost to the Aether. Her own people slaughtered her out of fear.”

I know.

“Then you speak nonsense.”

No. You know I speak only truth.

“Half-truth, useless truth.”

Truth nonetheless.

“Ah, well. It does not matter. And what of Carakhte… are there any new developments in the town?”

There is something resting there, waiting for its time… a serpent that wears the skin of humanity, a pig that stands on two legs and speaks in convincing tongue… one who crawled from the heights of Kurikuneku to the depths of the fetid swamp and, now, it seems, halfway back again.

“A traitor?”

Possibly.

“It’s little matter. They have no idea what we intend.”

Beyond the obvious, that is.

“And the obvious, they can do nothing to stop.”

You would hope so.