“I’m sure Apollo’s reasons were the best.”

MASON’s black-sleeved left hand locked around my throat, and Saladin’s hands about his wrist, a stalemate which left me pinned against the bars.

“You think I’m deaf?” Caesar spat. “That you’re the only one watching dark corners?” He tapped his tracker with his free hand, and the speakers played back Tully Mardi’s voice: “How would you defend yourself if it did come to war? Do you know? Armed Masons and Mitsubishi flying through every street, exchanging bombs? Can your waste converter be turned into a weapon? Can your child’s toy? You can’t just flee the combat zones like they did in the Church War, there will be no centers, no neutral ground, not with all Hives spread across every city in the world. If you want to defend your bash’ you need to become a soldier, but how can you learn when there aren’t any left to teach you? Weapons change as—” MASON silenced the recording there, his own words worse. “What were the Mardis doing?”

“They were… economists,” I choked out, “historians.”

He squeezed me harder, ignoring Saladin’s claws as they tore at his wrist. “What were Apollo and the Mardis doing?”

Death, reader, Death was in Caesar’s grip around my throat, the only terror that could have ripped from me the word: “War!” The force of my cry left me wheezing. “They were war historians. They were all war historians, whatever else they pretended to be, it was always war. Why else would they shorten Mardigras to Mardi, Mars-day, War-day? You dined with us dozens of times, did we ever once not talk about war?”

His hand stopped tightening. “Kohaku Mardi’s numbers, 33–67; 67–33; 29–71. You told the Censor they were when Kohaku predicted a recession, but that wasn’t it, was it? They predicted war.”

I wondered for a moment whether MASON had had a spy in the Censor’s office, or whether the Censor had leaked the facts himself. “War between the Masons and Mitsubishi,” I confirmed. “Apollo went so far as to start experimenting with weapons, preparations to defend Utopia if war broke out. They were all preparing, Aeneas running for the Senate, Kohaku working for the Censor, they were all trying to influence you and the other leaders, get ready for the war.”

“To stop it,” he tried to finish for me.

“No, Caesar,” I corrected, “to start it. 33–67; 67–33; 29–71, those numbers don’t make war inevitable. They make it possible. The landgrab, Nurturism, those were potential fuel. They needed a spark. They were pushing to make that happen.”

Madame came to the Emperor’s side, and her touch on his elbow made his grip ease on my neck. “You’re saying the Mardi bash’ wanted to start a war?” A fold of Apollo’s coat fell across her too, replacing antique silks with the bleached white of a nurse’s uniform.

“They thought war was inevitable,” I answered, “locked in by human nature, that there will always be another war, now or two hundred years from now, sometime. How long ago was it, Caesar, that Geneva Mardi first asked you their favorite question? ‘What was the nastiest war in history?’ ”