Upon reaching the bottom of the scriptorium’s winding stairwell, the Grand Prefect motioned for Roger and the disguised princess to remain behind in the gloom. “Wait here. I will return shortly. Do not—I repeat, do not—open the door for anyone, under any circumstances.” The priest waited for the simultaneous nods of mute acknowledgment before ducking through the passageway adjoined to the lyceum’s library. The heavy oaken door shut noisily behind him.

After a reciprocal exchange of furtive glances that both parties hoped were discreet, Roger and Princess Sophia were starting to settle down on the stonework floor when Father Athand startled them both by wrenching the door open and reemerging in the doorway. “F-Father? What is it?”

“My apologies. A trifling but indispensable matter slipped my mind. Dy lé Prah, come here and hold out your hand.”

Clambering up to his feet and tentatively drawing near, Roger did so and felt something lightweight deposited in his palm. Frowning, he fumbled with the item before letting out a quiet exclamation. “My spectacles!”

“You’ll be needing them if you’re to be of any help,” the priest commented as Roger hastily put on his glasses, grinning in relief. Though weak, the illumination filtering through the burnt casing of the old monastic door allowed him to make out the faintest trace of good-natured humor on the Grand Prefect’s ageless features. It faded as his eyes sought out the uncomfortably seated princess. “I apologize for these deplorable conditions, Madame. Rest assured that great efforts are being made to reunite you with your family in the shortest possible delay.”

The princess nodded again. Her eyes remained intent on the door as it shut once more, remaining there long after the Grand Prefect had disappeared and the dank corridor was subsumed in darkness once more.

Zephyrin held his breath, his patience strained near to breaking point as the disbelieving king and his nobles listened to the marshal’s warnings of agents undermining the throne. How he longed to intervene, to override all futile debate and impose his prescience on the vacillating king and his councilmen…! Yet both his age and the singular nature of his knowledge precluded such a rash step. He had no choice but to bide his time, even as countless lives hung in the balance.

But he knew that if he waited indefinitely, even his own would be threatened. Still showing no signs of resolving itself, the impasse between King Rudolf XIII and his retired marshal soon gained an additional, dangerous nuance as the meaning of the soldier’s sanguinary proposal became understood by the king in all its terrible dimensions.

“Kill my brother the count? Sir, you…” The king was at a loss for words as the gray-haired soldier refused to retract his words. Would the standoff escalate into an exchange of blows? For the first time since the breaking out of hostilities, Gaulyria’s sovereign seemed inclined to tap into the prodigious mana reserves that were his birthright, and which if drawn upon would make him an army unto himself. His visage uncannily still, there was yet a latent fury in the king’s voice. “You’re mad, dy Cassade. Mad if you think that, our differences nonwithstanding, my brother would dare take up arms against me.”

The marshal’s scarred countenance didn’t alter by one whit. “What need has he for arms, Sire? Congress has thrown its support behind him. The extremist faction sees in him a useful vehicle for their most cherished ambition.”

“And of what does that consist, pray tell?” snapped the king, his composure visibly cracking at last.

The old veteran made no attempt to clothe his next statement in conciliatory garb. “The complete eradication of magic and of all those with an affinity for it. I cannot affirm it for a certainty, but my belief—my conviction—is that the Incensi are working for a society without magic, in which the old distinctions of class have been obliterated.”

Rudolf’s brows shot up as he considered the general, who pressed on doggedly in the face of mounting incredulity. “That is why the count had himself stilled. And why so many constitutionalists have been so quick to follow in his footsteps. Sire, the brother you knew is no more. Count Caradog has relinquished his title and now goes by another name. ‘Patriot Verity’ is being acclaimed by the people on his triumphant march to claim the Isle as we speak. We, on the other hand, are traitors. Traitors to the cause of the people’s happiness, and therefore deserving only of death.”

“Madness!” the king repeated, but the word lacked vigor as it left his mouth. He turned away from the marshal, his ordinarily open brow creased with lines. Self-doubt could be plainly read from his posture, no longer erect and now somewhat bent. “A kingdom without magic… Caradog would never… what proof have you?” he demanded, raising his head abruptly, before his eyes fell on the strewn bodies of his would-be assassins.

Rudolf’s fingers twitched and clenched at his side as he contemplated the sight; then, as if fearing the advance of supplemental proofs by the marshal, he then bore down with feverish eyes on the party next most concerned by his general’s accusation. “Madame d’Aurellis, you are most forbearing to hear your husband slandered thus without murmuring a word of protest.”

If the king expected his sister-in-law to second his indignation, he was sorely disappointed. The princess bowed her head but said nothing as the marshal set his jaw grimly. “Your Majesty must assume that if the rebels fail to obtain your life, a constitutionalist plot will certainly try to rectify the failure.”

Cannon volleys roared ever more insistently. Formerly indistinct, the tone of the defender’s shouts had subtly altered without anyone’s noticing; now the cries of individuals could almost be picked out of the din.

The Royal Guard was being pushed back. Fortunately, the king’s suicidal order that they lay down their arms still hadn’t reached them. Zephyrin burned to step forward, to cut through the accursedly slow, potentially fatal deliberations; how much time had they already wasted?

His father the future Emperor and the present King; what opposites they were! Debilitated by disease, a shadow of his former self, in the original history Narcissin had still managed to exact a toll of seven hundred thousand souls from the Alliance before it managed to wrest Lutesse from his dying hands, while here, in his physical prime, Rudolf XIII shrank before an ill-trained mob of thirty thousand commoners.

“There must be some sort of mistake. Yes, a terrible, terrible mistake.” Closing his eyes, passing a hand over a brow dripping with sweat, Rudolf drew and then expelled a heavy breath. Whether for good or ill, Zephyrin began to despair of his ever forming a resolution. The members of his council shifted uneasily; the queen made as if to rejoin the king’s side.

As if in answer to a half-formulated universal prayer it was then that, against all expectations, the king reopened his eyes to reveal a gaze clearer and decided. “Heavens above, what a consolation for me are my principles!” he murmured, in a nonsequential manner Zephyrin was beginning to recognize. “Where would I be now without them? But thanks to them death seems no fit object for dread. Yes, there exists an inviolable Judge above, who will render the just verdict denied to me on earth.”

The king’s eyes refocused on Queen Adelaide-Estelle as he seemed to remember her and their son’s presence. “Go with all haste, Madame. Rebel or noble, misunderstanding or dastardly plot, I will treat with those responsible. If the situation can be appeased I will be glad to recall you from safety; if not, I trust you to enact my wishes for the kingdom and my son’s upbringing in every point.”

At last. Zephyrin fell in with the members of the queen’s household, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Conscious of the sounds of battle amplifying beneath their sanctuary in the palace, discreetly placed by Madame Ehzvina’s side he watched as the dry but red-eyed queen drew near to Rudolf XIII with their children for embraces and the exchange of words in confidence. When the emotional half-minute had elapsed and the royal couple had disengaged, Adelaide-Estelle’s wasted no time in beckoning forward her sister-in-law.

“Gweddlana, apprise me of your plan. What course of action would you have us favor? Are we to employ the hidden passageway linking His Majesty’s Bedchambers and mine?”

A sympathetic squeeze of the queen’s hand was the only indulgence the princess allowed herself. Letting it fall, Count Caradog’s wife said rapidly, “No Madame, we cannot. The infiltrators received help from the inside; we must assume they know of the secret passages and escape routes as well.” Her gaze seemed to harden then and look beyond the queen as she said this, where Roland and the adopted Primævan Tanji stood apprehensively, flanked by protective maids.

A shadow fell over the queen’s brow. “What then do you propose?”

“We will do what the assassins least expect. The Millenary Hallway.”

“To escape via the Oriental Gardens?”

“No. The jewel cabinet lies in its direction; my husband’s men—” a quiver was heard then, but Madame d’Aurellis put more strength in her voice, “—would anticipate our movement. Instead, the marshal and I have convened that we would move westward, to make contact with Your Majesties’ Guardrooms—”

“To see if we can join forces with any remaining troops,” said the queen, immediately grasping the logic behind the route and heading toward the door as she spoke, her chambermaids trailing behind her. “But should we not travel in smaller numbers, in the hopes of escaping notice?”

“That would not suit the plan devised by our young friend,” put in the marshal, bowing low as he did so in belated greeting before the queen.

“And what is that plan?” asked Adelaide-Estelle, regarding Zephyrin in a new light as she addressed him. Menacing, lightning-laden clouds were rolling in over the horizon. As the grays of the overcast noon sky gave way to lurid yellows, new shadows arose and writhed in the palace and curious artifacts of light and darkness played on the queen’s visage, in her irises, so that they seemed to alternate from gold-flecked thrush’s eggs to luminous adamantine disks.

Standing waist-high, with his child’s voice, Zephyrin saw the moment had come to lay out the heart of his plan, at risk of stretching the credulity of even the most optimistic of the queen’s partisans. “We do what the enemy will least expect. We move in plain sight, regain the courtyard, rally the Guard, and punch through the center of the enemy’s formation.”

Ten centuries of Gaulyrian history passed by in a blur as Zephyrin rushed with the queen and her retinue, their hurried footfalls taking on something of the staccato effect of the gun and cannon-fire throwing up thick clouds of smoke. Unable to clearly make out the situation in the courtyard through the grand hallway’s man-height glass windows, Zephyrin knew he was far from the only one inhabited by feelings of foreboding as they made swift progress down the three hundred yard-long Millenary Hall.

Priceless treasures appeared and receded from view at every instant. Out of the corner of his eye Zephyrin glimpsed argentine antiques and glittering guéridons, porphyrous busts of long-dead monarchs, and ruby-red Sivryian-style marble pilasters soaring up to a gold filigreed barrel vault, the extravagant whole reduced to abstract blobs of color; while unseen above, he knew, hovered the painted masterpieces, foremost of which was a grim-countenanced Kaul The Uniter, scepter in hand and astride Orendaël, the gigantic stallion upreared and frothing at the mouth, fuliginous as its master’s barbarian-length locks of hair.

As he ran Zephyrin allowed himself the briefest of glances upward. The artistic representation of the first Emperor gazed down implacably, emotionless as he watched the disintegration of his dynasty. The Church had not seen fit to canonize Kaul on account of his philandering ways; still, a part of Zephyrin dared to entertain the hope that the real man was not indifferent to his descendants’ predicament.

But there was no time to stop and consider technical masterpieces or indulge speculations on the unknowable. A troop of men rounded the far side of the hallway; red-scarves tied at the neck announced them rebels. The men leveled their weapons. “Halt! Stop, in the name of the People!”

The queen and her retinue stopped in their tracks, uncertain. Some of the maids began fumbling for white handkerchiefs to wave resignedly, only to emit shrill cries as a solid form blew past them.

Encased in mana, the marshal hurtled forward as if discharged by one of the cannons bombarding the palace defenses to collide with lethal force into the ragtag troop. Having blown away half a dozen of their number, silver gleamed as he started administering death with the practiced efficiency of an old hand running through a drill. Curses and yells of alarm devolved into unbridled panic as the duelist sliced and thrust remorselessly, taking care only to avoid wading too deeply into their midst.

As a last ditch effort and perhaps perceiving their adversary’s care to maintain distance, the rebels converged as one body upon the marshal; Zephyrin saw his moment to intervene.

Celerity.

Kicking off with one mana-charged heel, Zephyrin opened his palm to stream then taper his mana down to a hornet’s stinger as he lunged forward, smoothly extending his arm at the tail-end of his acceleration; contact was made; the unsuspecting rebel let out a soft sigh as he crumpled to the red and green marble tiling, bleeding profusely from his side. Marshal dy Cassade threw Zephyrin a quick glance before returning his attention to the task at hand, dealing out deadly blows like a shopkeeper counting out change.

There was no stopping the marshal. A pistol fired at pointblank range, a sword desperately driven into his abdomen; bullets ricocheted and steel found no purchase in his magically enveloped flesh. Still, a long way lay ahead of them and Zephyrin struck where he could, supporting the war veteran at a safe distance. He’s a monster!

One rebel staggered back as another comrade was cut down. Wild-eyed, his chest rising and falling uncontrollably, he looked back and forth from the glowering marshal to his weapon before throwing it down and fleeing with a wail. His panic spread and so did the other survivors…without the exception of one. Raising a crude club, spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he cried, “Down with the king! Down with the tyrants! Die!!”

Behind me?! Scrambling, Zephyrin reraised his ward. I let down my guard!

“One has to cross every t and dot every…i!” said a gruff voice.

An involuntary shiver passed through Zephyrin at the wet, curious sound he heard behind him. Twisting his torso to look over his shoulder, he saw in profile the slack-limbed rebel slump to his knees, momentarily teeter, then collapse backwards onto blood-slickened marble. His sword glistening crimson as momentum withdrew it from his victim’s cranium, the marshal fixed Zephyrin with a sharp look.

“You handle yourself well in a pinch, lad. I see now why Athand called for your inclusion in this harebrained scheme.” Marshal dy Cassade wiped his blade clean on the trousers of a baseblood sprawled lifelessly before him, ignoring or indifferent to the pale faces of the ladies “The Hall is ours. Now, let’s retake the Palace Court.”