Vigil had regained control of his composure. Coldly, not showing his anger, he said, “Sir. You are the prince consort and husband of Rania, are you not? The Imperator and Nobilissimus of all the races of man on all the worlds and ships in flight! How are you doing this against the will and command of Her Serene Highness?”

Del Azarchel nodded. “I am pleased someone here has recognized me. Siege! Offer me that chair that I may sit.” And the siege of the Terraformer waddled from its current position and held itself nicely while the Nobilissimus sat.

He smiled and said, “I will answer you, and then you will hand me that sword. Do you see this plan for the future written out here so nicely on this cold, hard table? It is a cold, hard plan, is it not? What is missing from it? What is missing here that your planet Septfoil—or what does it call itself now?—your tedious and insignificant little moon-world here—Torment. You have something which is lacking elsewhere. What is it? What is worth spending a thousand years of my life in a long, slow ship, and fighting half a dozen worldwide campaigns, to find?”

Vigil looked at the figures inscribed on the Table. “Zest? The desire to wrestle life and take her by the teeth?”

“Ah, you remind me of D’Aragó—and you are descended from him, are you not? Good guess. Quite wrong. What is missing from Rania’s Plan for Universal Peace is the Sixth Sweep.”

There was a murmur about the table.

Del Azarchel leaned back in the siege of the Aedile and templed his fingers. “What is missing is worlds farther away than yours from Mother Sol. Why are your children not pressing outward, ever outward, colonizing, terraforming, adapting, conquering, trampling, and fathering new Potentates and Powers and Principalities?

“It has been nearly two thousand years since Rania returned. Has even a single new world been tamed by mankind and added to my domination? Even one? A moon?

“Am I the only damned soul in the whole human race with the ambition to rule the stars, the wit to see how to do it, and the will to see it done? Well, be that as it may. Have you unriddled my riddle? Why did I come to your dead-end world as far from civilization as it is possible to be?”

Vigil nodded. “You are here for the launching laser of Iota Draconis! Our Lighthouse was built by The Beast, and no human technology can match it. And if I guess not wrong, you need people who have the spirit, wit, and will like yours to pioneer the stars, and you see that the quarreling races of Torment.”

The Master of the Empyrean smiled thinly. “So, as you see, you have no lawful reason not to return my sword to me. You are hardly going to use it now to compel my servants here at my Table to oppose my will and betray my schedule and let my fine ship die, are you?”

“What happens when the ship makes port?”

“That has never been a concern of the Stability, so long as my schedule is maintained, has it?”

“What happens when the warship makes port, sir?”

“War, of course! But as the Imperator of Man, I decree this Table is not in dereliction of its duty, and therefore you no longer have jurisdiction as the Hermeticist to preserve the turmoil and bloodshed needed to compel the evolution of mankind ever upward and onward. I will see to that matter myself!”

Vigil tightened his hands on the sword. He looked at the Terraformer, the Theosophist, the Aedile. “Sirs, are you convinced that the husband of Rania has the legal power to compel us to welcome the horrors of war into our midst? Or, in your candid judgment and decree, is this a violation of the principles for which we stand? He calls us barbaric, and yet we and we alone recall and perform our oaths—what is civilization but that?”

But the Lords of Stability were cowed. The Castigator said, “We cannot oppose the Master of the Empyrean. He is older than our world, older than the worlds of our ancestors. He is older than time itself! He is the father of a dead god and of many living ones!”

Vigil recalled the wording of his oath. Even if it meant conquest for his world, death for himself and his kin, and the obliteration of his way of life, his honor would not die.

He unhooked the sheathed sword from his baldric. And started walking, one slow step at a time, toward the Imperator, whose dark beard made his white smile seem all the brighter, and his dark brows made his dark eyes darker green.

Here was a man who liked to prevail.

Vigil took one reluctant step, then another, and then he saw one of the statues on the dais that circled the chamber stirring to life and her eyes shine intolerably.

It was Torment in her executioner’s hood and bridal gown, surrounded by her instruments of inquisition. The statue did not grow in height nor weight, and yet a terrible sense of pressure seemed to enter the chamber as if a whole world were focused into this small and human spot.

She raised her hand. Vigil, for a moment, thought that a mudra had frozen him in place. But no, to his relief an internal assured him it was only his own panic and craven fear.

She said, “Yield not that blade to him.”

6. The World’s Word

Ximen del Azarchel stood and, without a word, snatched the pearl from the hand of the Theosophist. Unfortunately, the Theosophist had been staring the Potentate in the eyes at that moment, not looking at the pearl in his hand, and not only went blind but fell backward with a cry, toppling over sieges too surprised to scuttle out of the way, and struck the glass floor to lie senseless. Ximen hefted the gleaming orb once or twice in his palm, perhaps adjusting parts of his nervous system to accommodate it, and raised his eyes to stare at the Potentate unabashed. “Back into silence, Septfoil! You may not interfere with human affairs. That is the unalterable decision of Triumvirate.”

“Yet is there not an exception, Imperator, allowing me to speak in my own defense, when human acts unwittingly bode my obliteration?” She turned her inhuman eyes toward Vigil, who flinched, and raised his hand as if to ward off a blow. He squinted at the figure between his fingers. She said, “I believe the Lord Hermeticist still has the floor, examining the testimony of the Table before rendering his verdict.”

Del Azarchel said, “I am sure Vigil will yield me the balance of his time so that we may move to the next order of business, which is how to prepare for the coming invasion. You see, all the worlds I conquered are forewarned, and given the opportunity to select weapons and conditions of engagement…”

Vigil’s counselor nudged him in the back and hissed, “Stop him.” And Vigil said loudly, “To the contrary. I do not yield the floor.”

Del Azarchel had a strange and dangerous look in his eye, and Vigil felt as if he were looking into two tunnels leading into eons far from the present time. Vigil had the strange, dizzying sensation that Del Azarchel would not forget this affront, and long after Vigil and all his race were extinct, and the star Iota Draconis burned into a cinder and collapsed, and yet still would Del Azarchel recall this moment and fret in anger.

But the Master of the Empyrean glanced at the tall statue of Torment, and nodded graciously, as if it was from his generosity alone he determined not to press the issue. He seated himself again, the orb in one hand.

Vigil said, “The Master has decreed the Table not in dereliction. How, then, do I retain the authority to speak at this Table, to wield this sword, or to call witnesses?”

Torment did not answer, but a voice from the Table itself spoke: “The Chrematist does not have authority unilaterally to call the question and end debate on the question of dereliction. His authority extends only to financial matters relating to establishing resources needed to power the launching and deceleration laser at such times and for such purposes as the Great Schedule decrees. The Lord Hermeticist still has the floor. He has already decreed the Table to be in dereliction. That decree cannot be overridden by any power this Table recognizes. You were discussing only the matter of whether to punish or whether, due to mitigating circumstances, to grant clemency.”