The palace was quiet at nighttime, not for lack of activity. Guards roamed in fours through the roads and courtyards. A fair number of officials strode through the well-lit halls, for whatever unimaginable work it took to maintain such a byzantine construct surely did not call for a break just because the sun was down. The construct wasn’t a city. It was a system. The human archetypal obsession with systems that promised a reprieve from nature’s chaos. If a citizen worked, a citizen was to be rewarded. The system was such a promise of fairness. And everyone wanted to partake of it, only, there was never enough equality to go around. Thus the city was conceived, and a nation can be thought of as a city of cities.

A million Falerians—or more specifically Ralagastii—who clamored together because there was much humanity can do as a gestalt, much industry that would be impossible without the hierarchies of grunt, foreman, and captain. People chose to live and work together, all while stewing in envy and jealousy and insecurity at every success their neighbor gained.

Edeard had been becoming less and less sure of his role. Even as he traversed from slanted roof to roof, bell tower to crenellation, crossing the vastness of the city in long strides he second guessed if he was doing the right thing. From such a meager height the city already appeared diminished, small.

He had stopped along the way to stop an alleyway mugging. The scared citizen thanked him in a shaky tone then scrambled away. He was alone with the mugger in the darkness, where no one need know what happened next but him. What then? He had already taken the law in his hands by intervening while not acting as a knight. Shall he kill the mugger? Become judge, jury, and executioner? It worried Edeard that he saw no issue with that at first. He couldn’t remember when he had gained so much power.

In his grip was the mugger’s collar. The poor, pathetic man had wet himself. He had stabbed Edeard seventeen times with his mugging knife. The cuts barely tickled. Over the course of Edeard’s work, his training, his last year of life here in Etrylis, he had gained strength far exceeding a normal human’s. It wasn’t right. The system was made by humans for humans. If he had become so much more, what right had he to intervene?

“Do this again, and I will end you,” Edeard said. He returned to the roofs, continuing his path to the palace. The hypocrisy weighed on his mind. A group of people chose one of their own to lead their interests since they lacked the power to do so, thusly creating a powerful lord, who by the intrinsic nature of being a lord has transcended the sensibilities of the people who had created them. Edeard was a lord. Edeard was absent from the circumstances that would ever lead him to fear a mugger or become one himself. If someone neither had a taste for fish or experience as a fisherman were to comment on their practices, their words would be met with ridicule.

He reached the roof of one of the palace’s spires.

“Get a hold of yourself,” he whispered.

He believed in life. He was still human in spirit. That much he knew he still had in common. On his back he carried evidence of a weapon that could jeopardize the entirety of Ralagast. After a few deep breaths, he left his perch and found the Knight Captain’s office, which supported a small terrace overlooking the entire city. He landed there and opened the door into the quarters. Lord Jace nearly jumped from behind his desk.

“By the emperor! Edeard? What the hell—?”

Edeard unslung the weapon and laid it on Lord Jace’s desk.

“There are at least one hundred of these in the undercity,” he explained, “And at least one thousand insurgents being trained to overthrow the palace.”

“What?!”

“You are a more proficient caster than I, Lord Jace. Run your senses over this tool and confirm that a plane is being weaponized within its mechanisms.”

Still apprehensive, Jace raised a hand and began hovering his palm over the device. Edeard remained standing, despite there being an empty chair behind him. He was still before his superior.

The office was richly laden with artifacts of Jace’s long career. Sabers, swords, pieces of armor from different eras and lands. A globe was suspended in semicircular bronze arms in the corner by deep red curtains. Details floated above the globe, flat and blue where there was ocean, ridged where there were mountains. Names were suspended above each city and land. Tiny clouds brushed against the underside of its housing. Behind Jace was a bookshelf full of old volumes marked with numbers on the spine and nothing else. The many laws and regulations of their system, no doubt. Only a small corner of it was occupied by personal effects.

The man’s desk was covered with papers. Jace appeared under a lot of stress lately. The deep wrinkles of worry seemed unfitting on his noble, greyed visage. And after studying the device, his worry only grew deeper.

“This was designed by an artificer,” Jace said from underneath his beard.

“Perhaps of Wolfrim make? Maybe this is one of their attempts to destabilize us.”

“Wolfrim machinery would never make use of a plane like this, but perhaps that is a perfect alibi. When you’ve made yourself very predictable, you’ve an excuse for the occasion. This device… it harnesses a dangerous Spell. One that could kill any of us, even with our physicalities considered.” Jace looked up from examining the weapon. “And you say there’s one hundred of these?”

“At least.”

“And insurgents being trained in our sewers?”

“Our own, it looks like. Not many years younger than me. The recession has inspired extremism.”

Jace shook his head. “I told them,” he said.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“I told them this gambit of theirs could cause friction. The officials who planned this recession.”

“What?” Edeard was having difficulty believing what he was hearing.

“That new city? Cadeau de Chires. It’s one of the first built on land that was once Aldren’s. We almost lost that war, remember? Still don’t know what turned the tide. Well those cities need to thrive and prosper.”

“They are,” Edeard said.

Jace chuckled. “They need to balloon extraordinarily. These past thirty-six years have been taxing on the Falerian military nobles, and the general public’s ethos. After such a close victory, people are questioning if it is worth it to continue letting the military families have all the power and be the primary spawning ground from which to draw an emperor. This recession was engineered by our mathematicians to drive talent into the new cities, produce fantastic growth, so the people continue to believe war is profitable. It was meant as a one score operation, one generation. Twenty years. We’ve four left and things are at a breaking point.”

Edeard collapsed onto the chair, unable to continue standing. He covered his face in his hands.

“Those riots months ago…” he said.

“I told them we needed to stop then,” Jace said. “The people can’t—”

“I killed an innocent man. It was an accident. He got in the way. But now you’re telling me these frustrations were engineered. So they were all innocent.”

“Their decisions are still their own, Edeard. Those riots caused more damage to innocents than your mistake. One that the Order already absolved. I thought you had let it go.”

“When I thought it was justice that absolved me! How do I know that wasn’t engineered? What is the point of being a knight?”

Jace stood from his desk abruptly. “We. Are. Still. Protecting our people. That has always been our job, Edeard.”

“The laws—”

“Fuck the laws. Fuck its spirit. If rules made our civilization, we enforcers would be obsolete. We lords keep the violent chaff in line! If we weren’t necessary, we wouldn’t exist.”

Edeard laughed once, a bitter exhale that had nothing to do with humor.

“I quit,” he said. “Take back everything the Guard has given me. I don’t care.”

“But you can’t, boy. I told you everything for a reason. You see, your heart is in the right place, but you’ve never felt true responsibility before. Upon one instance of a difficult situation, your resolve is already shaken. Now you know what it’s like to harbor something that which you cannot divulge lest you stoke the flames further.”

“I can’t keep working like this.”

“You will, or else I will have you taken to the dungeons beneath this palace.”

“I mistook you for a man of honor, Jace.”

“No, boy!” Jace rushed forward. Enchantments were cast faster than Edeard could react. The old Knight Captain was enflamed with a red glow. Monstrous strength grabbed Edeard by the jaw, lifting him, then pinning him to the other wall beside the mounted heads of a faelk. “You think honor is that simple? Honor is knowing the law’s limitations as much as its necessity. Honor is performing evils for the greater good while never straying from your original path. You don’t know what honor is, infant.”

There was nothing Edeard could do. His Enchantments were not as strong. He couldn’t focus enough to cast under Jace’s duress anyhow. Eventually Jace let go, dropping Edeard on the rich, red carpet portraying the proud wingspan of a hawk.

“Return to your post once you’ve regained your composure,” Jace said. “I’ll speak to my men tomorrow about what you’ve brought to me tonight. You’ve done well. I trust you can show yourself out.”

The Knight Captain shut the lamps in his office, buttoned his uniform, and left, leaving Edeard in the dark.