Nikolonium, the fourth of the five princes of the empire, kneeled and bent his head as the priest offered him the sacrament, his blue royal robes with his mother's star sigil spread out around him. The priest had been giving a sermon about the virtues of his late father, the 46th Doukar, to the congregation. Nik knew better than anyone his father had been free of all virtues. The old man certainly hadn't cared for religion. Or humility, charity, compassion or even common decency.

He was at the very front of the crowd who were waiting to receive their blessing from Oma, patros and noumens alike. Although even here, the Great Church of the True Faith of Oma, the highborn patros lined up in front of the noumens, the common tradespeople and workers of the empire. In this empire, birth took priority over quality of character. Nik would make real changes to benefit the noumens if he managed to gain influence over Fornulus, once he became the new Doukar.

He bore no ill-will to his elder half-brother Fornulus. He barely knew him, as they had different mothers and a large age gap; but he knew Fornulus wasn't the right man for the Thirty Crowns. He was harmless, but he'd had the misfortune to be born first, a duty even he didn't seem to want. Nik had gotten the impression that Fornulus would much prefer an indolent life with few responsibilities and little power, than be the greatest ruler in the world. He didn’t know why their father hadn’t designated another child as heir. True, legally they followed Mekos' reformations, which meant the first born was always the heir, now dubbed Mekos in honor of the Doukar who had established that rule. But that rule had been broken in the past when it was deemed necessary, and it wouldn’t have been difficult for Holophian to do the same. The Doukar decided what the law was.

Nik didn't want to take Fornulus' place. He was too far down the line of succession for that to ever happen naturally, and he had no intention of harming his eldest brother or anybody else who didn't deserve it. What he wanted was to supplant his older brother Cordelian at Fornulus' side as Eukrates. The Eukrates oversaw everything in the empire that wasn't the military, and while their father had centralized power in his own hands, there had been Eukrates in the past who had effectively ruled the empire for a weak Doukar. That's what Cordelian intended, and if he could, Nik would do it himself. Fornulus would welcome the freedom from the hard work of ruling, and as Eukrates Nik could guide the empire in the right direction, towards faith and morality and compassion.

The plight of the common noumens in the empire was a disgrace. While the royals and patros wallowed in luxury, thousands of the common people died when there was a bad harvest, or a war, or a plague. The empire did nothing to help the poor outside of the grain allowance and the occasional public building project when the mood struck some royal or patros. The empire spent too much money on pointless gewgaws and, most of all, on the military, money that could be better used to feed and clothe the poor. The military was the province of the supreme commander, the Milem, currently his older sister, Meronion, their late father's favorite. She would fight against reducing military spending, he knew, but she was also a person of strong values, and he felt sure that eventually he could win her around to his way of thinking. The strongest military power there was, after all, was for a country to have a strong and wealthy populace. Without that, you had neither soldiers nor the money needed to support them. The success of the noumens was identical to the success of the empire.

He stood up at the end of the catechism and moved back to the bench to hear the rest of the sermon. The other worshippers trailed behind him, following his lead as he was, shamefully, the only member of the royal family present. The priests continued to sing the praises of his late father while Nik struggled to collect his thoughts enough to give the holy fathers the attention they deserved. But they kept wandering back to his family and his hopes for the future.

No, Meronion would not be the main problem. It was Cordelian who stood in his way, and not only because Cordelian was the current Eukrates. The man cared only for power, for himself. He bought off the great patros families, made himself their champion in order to further his own power and wealth, securing his position at the expense of every other value. The man believed in nothing except for himself, and Nik had no doubt that eventually Cordelian would have Fornulus killed. Cordelian had no intention of remaining as the power behind the throne. He would make his move soon, because it would only be about a decade until Fornulus' oldest child, Euphenos, was old enough to take the throne himself if his father died. Cordelian would want to be firmly ensconced as regent before that happened so he could usurp the rightful Mekos' power while he was still a child. The death of Holophian had given him this chance, and Cordelian would not hesitate to seize it.

Who could stop him? Not Fornulus the weakling. He had always relied on Cordelian, the oldest of his younger brothers, to guide him and help him – without Cordelian the man would think himself lost. Fornulus probably couldn't even imagine Cordelian wanting to supplant him. Not his elder sister Theodorian. She'd been pushed to one side years ago and, for all that she was the eldest daughter, had no power. Her father's contempt for her seemed to have sunk into her bones, and she had no ambition or strength of will left.

Meronion, of course, would stand against Cordelian. But until Nik won her over to the right way of thinking, the spirit instead of the spear, Nik couldn't leave it to her. Her military dictatorship would be no kinder to the little people than Cordelian's empire. Ophelion, the sister nearest to him in age and the one who possessed his heart entire, and Pelagius and Helastus, the youngest of all the royal siblings, would help him, of course, but they had little to offer in way of power or influence.

Unlike most of the others, he had no full-blooded siblings to watch out for him, and his mother would soon be sent away along with the other former empresses to their retirement, to "lament in solitude the passing of their lord". He had to deal with Cordelian himself.

That also meant dealing with the third prince, Euphastolon. Euphastolon was a dimwit, but he was dangerous, as wild animals could be. An excuse to put Euphastolon down would be very welcome. The man was a disgrace to the empire, a murdering beast who roamed the streets of the capital at night and preyed on the unwary. From time to time bodies would turn up in the river, and everybody knew Euphastolon was responsible for at least some of them. One of the main crimes his father would be answering to Oma for right about now was why he'd not taken care of this son of his.

Cordelian had bound this scum of a brother to him like the legend of Dardan binding the Gorgoth to himself. Unlike Dardan he apparently wasn't worried about losing a hand to the monster. Well, Nik had faith on his side, and with that he could drag Euphastolon into the light, and take Cordelian with him too. They were a dangerous pair, with both intelligence and savagery on their side, but in the end, he would win. Oma never abandoned those who did good in the world.

The service over, Nik moved over to the entrance to the grand chamber, where he started to hand out alms from the huge chests placed on either side of the doorway, watched over by the church guards. The entrance was just a large, plain door surrounded by unadorned stone. Outside there was a rough wooden walkway leading to the door, as the entrance hall and courtyard were still under construction. This doorway was just a temporary one hastily thrown up to keep the weather out while the stone workers prepared a far grander and larger one. It would be another two hundred years before the workers completed the church. What a sight it would be then.

The chests were full of silver halois, and each worshipper received a silver haloi in reverent hands from Nik's own gloved hands – about a week's wages for a typical laborer. They thanked him profusely, grateful for the money but even more grateful that someone of his stature would deign to talk to them. The church gave out alms every week to any who attended the services, which therefore were always busy. Nik suspected that not everyone who approached him for the alms had actually attended the service, but all had a need for the money, and he wouldn't turn them away.

His father had strongly disapproved of what he deemed "wastefulness". In his mind, the daily grain ration was more than enough for the noumens. Now that he was dead, Nik no longer had to listen to his rants on the subject, which was a welcome relief. The treasuries of Trigon Palace probably contained some millions of gold tolois, and more flooded in every day from the tax collectors out in the provinces and from trade with neighboring powers. Today he would give out the equivalent of about a hundred tolois, so unlike his father, he was not at all worried about "emptying the treasury". The money he gave out didn't even fully expend the money given to him as his personal funds every month, and how many thousands of tolois were spent on the military every month? In any case, eventually much of the money just made its way back into Trigon's coffers via taxes and tributes.

A pretty young woman caught his eye as she accepted the money with a smile and lingering touch. He smiled back, although he smiled at everyone, even the old and malformed. Many of the noumens would try to catch his ear or attention in the hopes of elevating their station, pushing forward pretty girls to collect the money, or the smallest and cutest child. He'd even made some connections in the city in this way, people who could help him, particularly with information.

Cordelian ignored the honest working Dardan subject in favor of his rich friends, but Nik planned to build a powerbase among the church and noumens with which to tear him down. That such a thing had never been done before only pleased him more. Trigon Palace would soon realize that the masses they looked down upon were the ones who supported the whole empire on their backs.