Madame concentrated for some moments, like a bloodhound sniffing for traces of something infinitely subtle. “Fine, yes, I suppose war did occur to me as a possible side effect, or bloody revolution at least, but that’s not a problem. War is useful. The names of warriors and conquerors last a lot longer than those of peacetime heroes. What better way for our Son to eclipse Alexander than to fight and win a true World War?”

MASON seized her arm, hard. “And you don’t care who gets hurt?”

“Steady on, Cornel,” Felix interceded.

“Not one word, Felix!” MASON thundered. “You knew your sister was doing experiments a thousand times more dangerous than rearing set-sets. You didn’t care who got hurt either!”

Madame tugged against Caesar’s grip, drawing his attention back. “Of course I care who gets hurt! Jehovah is the Alien raised free from conscience, I’m not. I’ve tried every perversion in Sade’s book, but I still feel bad when I hurt people.” She sighed. “And imagine my disappointment when Jehovah came out more horrified by homicide than anyone. Our poor young God; the war will be so hard on Him. I trust you’ll help us get it settled quickly.”

“Get it settled quickly?” Caesar’s grip tightened, threatening to snap her wrist like a doll’s thin porcelain. “And just how do you imagine we’ll fight this war? You’re obsessed with the Eighteenth Century, have you never looked at what came later? Wars get worse when people know less about them. What is war going to be like now that we don’t even have territory? A war of all against all fought in every single street!”

She winced at his grasp. “Technology changes between every war. People adapt.”

“The problem isn’t technology,” he seethed, “it’s ignorance! In the First World War the first commander of the Russian forces boasted that he hadn’t read a strategy book written in the past century. Germany’s attack plan was based on the Battle of Marathon—490 B.C.! Result: disaster. Well, everything’s Marathon to us now. There haven’t been strategy books written in three hundred years! How am I supposed to imagine sending people into battle? What will they do? How fast will they break? How long should they train? What’s a big enough force to feel confident enough to take on a mission? What’s a reasonable length of time to leave them in a combat zone before they go insane? War makes people into monsters. How do I keep them from shooting themselves? How do I keep them from raping and pillaging? Brussels is in flames—how long until that happens in the capital, and all over my Empire?”

She tried to pull away. “Caesar, please! The propaganda of the name aside, Romanova isn’t your capital, it’s Ancelet’s, or was. Romanova’s never really had an Emperor before, but if it’s anyone’s now it’s Jehovah’s, and if you can’t control yourself I’ll have Him tell you to pack off back to Alexandria where you belong.”

I do not believe Caesar is a violent man by nature; none of them were until we made them so, Madame and Dominic and I, creatures too terrible for words without violence to truly touch us. It was Caesar’s right hand which held Madame’s wrist, but his left rose, with its stark black sleeve, poised to strike. Before his fist could fall, a fiercer hand wrenched his fingers off the Lady and slammed him backwards with a fast strike to the thorax. Speed made Madame’s defender almost visible, as ripples betray a fish, the edges of sleeves and hood flagging like slices of displaced space as the Griffincloth’s computer failed to keep up with combat’s savage speed. “Apol…” Caesar’s awed voice hardened to iron even as he toppled, “… Saladin!”