INTERLUDE 3

The Throne did not appreciate Misery Nomaki’s little display of power. Of course not. One does not threaten the life of an emperor without consequences. One does not kill hundreds of the rich and powerful and get to live. The Emperor wanted them executed on the spot, but his grandmother, veins swollen with cruelty, wanted a spectacle. A drawn-out public hearing and public spectacle. Not just for Misery, but for the Duke of Apis, who dared bring this degenerate to her. And her granddaughter, for her naked defiance while the whole Empire was watching. Blood only protects you if you bow to its whims.

Such things take time to plan. The offenders would need to be put away for months while the public trial was prepared. The Church, with their canny whispers, managed to divert the prisoners to a highly classified military base on the edge of the duchy. It was in their interests, in fact, that the three go there specifically.

But in the meantime, the Empire talked. Despite the Throne’s wishes, despite the media blackout they enforced, the events at the Grand Amphitheater filtered into the public consciousness. What Misery Nomaki said shone with the glaze of truth. After all, the Messiah’s coming had been predicted years ago by the prophet of Calister. Had the Faithful not forgotten the teachings of the First Eight in recent years? The Throne had gone as far as to pursue peace with the Heretics, as if such a thing could possibly exist. Punishment had been long coming from the Larex Forge, who had afforded far too much of Hir Grace to Hir wayward children. Would the Emperor risk further displeasing the Demiurge by rejecting the one chosen to lead them back to Hir side?

The fizzle of rumor and speculation became a runaway chain reaction, unstoppable by any means. Romulus and Remus pulsed with fervor. A growing breadth of the Empire bubbled over with tales of Misery Nomaki the Blessed, chosen of the Demiurge, the Ninth Messiah who had come to guide the Faithful toward the path of righteousness, from which they had strayed. The galas and the parties of the nobility lit up with impassioned, drunken arguments. On the chattering balconies overlooking the pink salt flats of Romulus, at grandparents’ tables in the working-class districts, skepticism fought a losing battle to wonder. Exhausted by generations of war, rendered hopeless by the passivity of the Truce of Logan, the Faithful latched upon this hint of change like a fount of wine. By the time the Emperor exited from his cloistered meetings, brow furrowed and fingers on temples, Misery Nomaki was already being heralded as the Ultimate Savior even in the farthest-flung duchies. An enterprising youth unearthed Misery Nomaki’s bio from Apis recordbases and flooded the waves with a mockup of them in Saint Ono’s pose. A well-subscribed pastor on Remus named the incident at the Grand Amphitheater the Messiah’s Reckoning, a phraseology that captured fevered imaginations and flooded the waves in no time. In Apis, the halls of the House of Bichap trilled with yearning and excitement. And in his churchhall back on Rootsdown, Cremoline Nomaki knelt before an altar in prayer, waiting for the salves to still his thoughts.