Death’s Seat
The Starfield and the Strands
All his assurances had turned to dust.
He’d known not to trust her, and still his soft heart had broken, seeing her trapped in her champions’ prison. The Master had cautioned him, though he’d loved her then, and loved her still, in spite of her betrayals.
But then, if love could sustain the world, there would be no need for him, or his work.
Darkness shrouded his seat. Below, he could see his champions, gathering to receive his summons, marshaling their armies, setting aside the bitter rivalry between their Great and Noble Houses to become a single force, with a single purpose. The fault lines would linger, as they always did. But if the need was great enough, even the deepest hate would bend in service to a higher law.
“Great Lord,” a voice intoned. One he’d been listening for. One he’d managed to place on her side of the Divide.
He willed his senses down into the world. Difficult to sustain, through the shadow, but he had less need to conserve himself now.
“Speak,” he said. Here in the Seat his voice was soft, the same old rasp he’d grown accustomed to, after so many years alone. His servant would hear it as a thunderclap, delivered from darkness given form.
“Great Lord,” the servant said. “Great Lord, I have failed you.”
He said nothing. The truth would come.
“I tried, my lord,” the servant said. The voice was heavy with pain and age, the weight of the self-inflicted wounds needed to bridge the chasm between Life and Death. “I aided her every way I could. But … the moment of ascension … it came, and by the servants’ accounts … Paendurion … he vanished.”
“He vanished?”
“Yes, Great Lord. I beg your forgiveness. This servant is without worth or honor.”
A great blow, if Paendurion had secured his place again. But enough had changed that it wouldn’t matter. They no longer obeyed the Master’s rule, with the reborn girl in her mistress’s seat. One tactician could be met by a dozen; one warrior overrun by a legion.
“Be at ease,” he said. “And come to me. I have need of your service, Master Fei Zan, as my champion of Fox.”
Tears and whimpering, protestations of the servant’s unworth; he ignored it, channeling Death to bind the man to his service. A simple thread of gold stood in the way; he erased it, replacing it with the true bond of loyalty, of sacrifice in service to a higher cause.
One Fox, as champion, but it would not be enough. He would need a dozen, a hundred, to infiltrate the girl’s ranks. Every advisor, every confidant and general must be suspect. Every flank checked by Ox and Crane, every supply line pillaged by Dragon, Heron, and Crab. This was what the girl’s defiance would bring. Total war, absent the Master’s constraints of three against three.
He was ready. The world ached for release, for the torpor Death would bring, after sixteen unbroken cycles of Life. Total war risked unmaking creation, but so, too, would inaction against the treachery of the Veil’s betrayal. He was Regnant to the Master’s throne, and the Master’s precepts were clear. It was wisdom, though he doubted every step.
Take heart, the kaas thought to him. It will be worth the price, when all is done.
“I want to believe it,” he said. “But none can see all ends.”
Uncertainty. The great gift of creation.
“A mistake, perhaps.”
Yes. But whose?
He left the conversation there, closing the part of his mind that reached beyond the shadow. The kaas’s insights would keep. For now, the greater part of his attention was needed along the border, preparing all the souls in his keeping for the days to come.