Death was the real thief, of course. It always had been. Love was fragile and hapless compared to it. Since humans had first gained self-awareness, they had been stalked by the specter of extinction, of nothingness. And since the first humanlike primate had learned to smash another’s skull, death was the ultimate arbiter of power. It was no wonder that the Risen Emperor was worshiped as a god. To those who served him faithfully, he offered salvation from humanity’s oldest enemy.

And demanded death itself for those who failed him.

Best to get it over with, Laurent Zai thought. Tradition had to be served.

Zai touched his hands together as if to pray.

His stomach clenched. He smelled it on his hands, that shame from childhood, when he had prayed to the Emperor for taller classmates. He felt the bile that had risen on that afternoon at the soccer field, when he felt with childish surety that he himself had caused the Krupp Reich plague. The heavy-handed Vadan propaganda still informed him somehow. He smelled vomit on his hands.

And instead of praying to the Emperor, instead of saying the ritual words of suicide, he whispered, “Nara, I’m so sorry,” again and again.

The remote was hard in his hand, but Laurent Zai didn’t reach for death. Not yet.

Message for Captain Laurent Zai, came the prompt in second sight.

He opened his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

“Hobbes…” he sighed. He had left specific orders. Would the woman not let him die?

But his executive officer did not respond. Zai looked more closely at the hovering missive, and swallowed. It was eyes-only, under penalty of blood. It had bypassed the bridge altogether, looking for him alone, under senatorial seal.

Senatorial.

Nara. She knew.

The situation here on Legis XV was subject to the highest order of secrecy. The Lynx’s marines had locked down the planet in the first hours of the crisis, occupying the polar entanglement facility that allowed translight communication. Even the ubiquitous Rix compound mind was cut off from the rest of the Empire.

Among the Senate, only a select few would know that the Empress was dead. The propaganda machine of the Political Apparatus would prepare the body public very carefully for the news. But evidently Nara knew. Senator Oxham must have risen high in the ranks of her party these last ten years.

Or could the message be a coincidence? Surely that was absurd; Nara wouldn’t contact him casually with a message sealed under penalty of blood. She had to know about his error.

He didn’t want to open the message, didn’t want to see Nara’s words borne by his defeat, his extinction. Laurent Zai had promised to return, and had failed her. Use the blade now, he told himself. Spare yourself this pain.