They were human ornaments, an accordion of paper dolls. Another instance of the government’s elitist stupidity. The compound’s nighttime illumination rendered them sitting ducks while simultaneously impeding their ability to see anything in the surrounding darkness.

The honor guards represented the ARA’s elite—typically, those with relatives in high places, mannerly careerists with excellent hygiene and a knack for maintaining the crease in their neatly pressed uniforms. The crème de la crème brûlée, the Caliph reflected to himself with a mixture of irony and contempt. They were showmen, not warriors. Through the binoculars, he gazed at the seven men, each holding a rifle braced upright on his shoulder, where it would look impressive and be perfectly useless. Not even showmen. Playthings.

The chief radio operator nodded at the Caliph: the section commander was in position, ensuring that the barracked soldiers would be undeployable. A member of the Caliph’s retinue presented him with a rifle: it was a purely ceremonial act that he had devised, but ceremony was the handmaiden of power. Accordingly, the Caliph would fire the first shot, using the very same rifle that a great independence fighter had used, fifty years ago, to assassinate the Dutch governor general. The rifle, a bolt-action Mauser M24, had been perfectly reconditioned and carefully zeroed. Unwrapped from the silk that had enfolded it, it gleamed like the sword of Saladin.

The Caliph found the number one guard in the weapon’s scope and exhaled halfway so that the crosshairs settled on the center of the man’s beribboned chest. He squeezed the trigger and intently watched the man’s expressions—successively startled, anguished, dazed. On the man’s upper right torso, a small oval of red bloomed, like a boutonniere.

Now the other members of the Caliph’s detail followed suit, loosing a brief fusillade of well-aimed bullets. Marionettes released from their strings, the seven officers collapsed, tumbled, sprawled.

Despite himself, the Caliph laughed. These deaths had no dignity; they were as absurd as the tyranny they served. A tyranny that would now find itself on the defensive.

By sunrise, any free-floating representatives of the Anuran government that remained in the province would be well advised to shred their uniforms or else face dismemberment by hostile mobs.

Kenna would no longer be part of the illegitimate Republic of Anura. Kenna would belong to him.

It had begun.

The Caliph felt a surge of righteousness, and the clear piercing truth filled him like a light. The only solution to violence was more violence.