Kori’nh clasped his hands in front of his heart in prayer and supplication. “Your summons honors me, Liege.”

“And your service honors all Ildirans, Adar.” The Mage-Imperator had already shooed away the constant diminutive attenders who pampered him, oiled his skin, massaged his feet. His eyes were hard and impenetrable, his voice edged like a razor. “Now we must talk.”

Nestled in his bedlike chair, covered in draping robes, the leader was large and soft. His fleshy skin hung in pale folds, his hands and legs weakened from lack of use. After his ritual castration many decades earlier, Mage-Imperator Cyroc’h looked vastly different from his handsome eldest son, Prime Designate Jora’h. By tradition, his feet never touched the floor.

Before renouncing the calls of the flesh, Cyroc’h had sired many children. As the paternal figure of the Ildiran race, he maintained an extraordinarily long braid, the cultural symbol of virility. The braid hung down from his head, across his shoulder and chest, draped like a thick hemp rope that twitched and flickered with faint nerve impulses of its own.

A Mage-Imperator could live for two centuries after he became the nexus of the thism and the repository of Ildiran knowledge. Cyroc’h had not deigned to walk for decades, allowing the rest of the Ildiran race to be his eyes and hands and legs. He had too much self-importance to be bothered by such things.

Resting in his enormous cradle-chair, he directed his attention toward the Adar. Kori’nh adjusted his uniform again, glad that he had taken the time to apply all the medals and ribbons, though very little could impress the great leader.

“Tell me what you witnessed at Oncier. I am already aware that the Terrans have ignited the planet, but I require your objective assessment. How much of a threat does this Klikiss Torch pose to the Ildiran Empire? Do you believe the Hanseatic League means to use it as a weapon against us?”

A thrill went through Kori’nh. “A war against the Ildiran Empire? I don’t believe the humans are such fools, Liege. Consider the sheer size and power of our Solar Navy.”

The Mage-Imperator’s eyes gleamed. “Nevertheless, we must not ignore their ambitions. Tell me about Oncier.”

The Adar spoke in gruff sentences, giving clear facts with occasional opinions or interpretations. Kori’nh had been bred to become a military officer, but he was not a rememberer, and his stories were simply recountings of what had happened, not entertaining legends to amuse great men.

The Mage-Imperator lounged on his platform, listening. His intelligent face was doughy, his cheeks round, his chin little more than a button swallowed in soft skin. His expression was beatific enough that some humans had compared it to the face of Buddha. He wore a timeless look of peace, confidence, and benevolence, but the Adar sensed a hardness of necessary cruelty hiding beneath the surface. “So the event went precisely as the humans anticipated?”

“Except for one mystery.” Kori’nh hesitated. “I must show you some images we acquired, Liege.” He removed a recording chit from his uniform belt and inserted it into a portable displayer that he held in both palms. “While feigning minimal interest, our warliners imaged every moment of the planetary collapse. Then, as Oncier was engulfed in stellar flames, we saw this.”