You must remember this scene, reader, when I took you into MASON’s citadel in Alexandria, and let you hear for the first time the verbal knot-work that is Jehovah’s Latin. The recording of that secret conversation had been leaked that morning, timed to do most damage, Perry’s doing, or I should say Perry-Kraye, through the complicity of a traitor Familiaris, Antonine Fusilier; MASON has not yet announced whether he will be executed when captured.

The Emperor was stone. “It is not your place, Hiveless, to interpret acts of which you have so little understanding.”

“It’s not your place to stop me, MASON.” One must admire Tully for pressing on while tasting Caesar’s anger face-to-face. “The world has a right to know what’s going to happen when the Senate session ends today. If I were telling the people to attack the Senate, or to attack you, or Tribune Mason,” he gestured at Jehovah, “you’d be right to stop me, but you have no right to keep me from warning the world there’s going to be a war.”

Martin and Dominic climbed up to flank Jehovah on the platform now, uncomfortable with how His stillness let Tully draw close.

“There does not have to be a war.” Jehovah’s voice seemed hollow next to Tully’s, as a play’s printed script reads hollowly without the actor’s passion to ignite it. “You are right that history has been one long string of violence, and that this three-hundred-year peace was bought only through blood. That does not mean we cannot make real peace now. When I let Mycroft Canner walk the streets again, they could have tracked you down, Tully, and killed you. They chose not to. When I give my report today, every person in the world will have the choice to hurl hate and stones at whomever they blame, or to refrain. They may refrain.”

I suspect Tully had not truly considered Jehovah his enemy until this moment. How dare He make the world think that my redemption proved mankind could be redeemed! How dare He make the world root for me! “Tribune,” Tully replied, cold, “only you and the Commissioner General know the full content of what you’re about to present to the Senate, so I’ll ask plainly: do you honestly believe anyone in the world will be able to take it calmly? Let alone everyone in the world?”

Jehovah’s gaze floated somewhere between Tully and the crowd, as if addressing an abstraction. “I would be a poor bailiff for the Humanists if I believed we have already seen the maximum of what a human being can achieve. What I will present today are proofs of what has already been said. Prime Minister Casimir Perry is actually the criminal Merion Kraye. The Anonymous has been secretly propping up the failing CFB for over a century. The Humanists have led Europe and the Mitsubishi in secret assassinations for two hundred and fifty years. These are facts we can endure—whether we will endure them we shall see. This is not the end of peace, it is the first chance we have ever had to make a real peace. In seeing how humanity comports itse—”