“An exception in whose opinion, Madame?” Andō challenged. “Yours?”

She shook her head. “Yours. We all drafted the rules together of what crimes were too great to remain concealed even if exposure might harm the commonweal.” Madame’s throat quivered like a puppy’s as she swallowed hard. “Remember, friends, we are friends.”

“His Imperial Highness,” the crier called at last, “the Prince D’Arouet.”

Are you surprised the crier stops short, reader? That no encyclopedia of titles trails after Jehovah’s name? A list of His offices in every Hive would fill a paragraph, and with His full name and the styles bestowed by His pedigree the list would outstrip Mason’s and approach Spain’s. I think in early days it was Madame who chose not to remind each Power how many others laid claim to the Child, but it is now Jehovah’s preference; He is offended enough by the time it takes to move from one location to another, and cannot stand to lengthen the delay.

Jehovah entered smoothly, His suit pure black as always, black buttons, black lace, black striped minor’s sash, even the embroidered vine-work black on black and restful to the eye like shadow. “The illusion that the human race is capable of peace is over.”

Doubt and fear shot from eye to eye around the room like electricity; hyperbole does not come from His lips.

“What do you mean, Epicuro?” It was Spain who spoke first, Spain least shaken, perhaps because all the others had secrets enough to fear that He referred to theirs.

“For two hundred and forty-four years peace between the Hives has been maintained by the Humanists and Mitsubishi, by employing the Saneer-Weeksbooth transportation network as an assassination system.” He did not look at anyone, nor raise His voice as He spoke the revelation flatly. “Europe joined the conspiracy one hundred and twenty years ago. The victims total two thousand, two hundred and four. Your long supposed peace is made of murder. The Seven-Ten list theft was engineered to lead us to this truth.”

How fiercely all in the room wished they could imagine that Jehovah would joke.

“What is this, Jed?” Kosala asked first, mumbling like one not fully wakened from a dream. “An assassination system? You mean criminals inside the Hives are—”

“The Hives themselves. Their leaders.” Still He looked at no one, but His gaze seemed to accuse the air itself, and the defective race that breathed it.

“Whom have they been killing?” Caesar asked.

Jehovah turned slow eyes upon his Imperial father. “Human beings.”

“Why?”

“World stability.”

“You have proof?”

“Yes.”

Behind Jehovah the crier announced, “The Honorable Mycroft Guildbreaker, Prases Minor, Nepos Imperatoris, Familiaris Regni, Ministerque Porphyrogenis, and the Reverend Father Dominic Seneschal.”

The two wore the formal livery Madame had designed for this room, Dominic his black suit, Martin a light gray uniform, corded and military to match his Emperor’s, with white cording on his right shoulder to represent the white sleeve of his Ordo Vitae Dialogorum. The pair brought printed lists on paper, and handed one to each Power within the room, ready to be kept forever as evidence, or destroyed at once, as the holder willed.