The Masonic guards halted, though not, I think, for fear of Blacklaw weapons. These Guards of the Porphyrogene were all at least three generations in the Emperor’s service. They had not paused nor shuddered when Perry-Kraye and Ganymede fell through the window at Madame’s, nor even when Sniper’s bullet spattered their Ward’s brains across His iron father—guards know their duties to a ward dead as much as a ward living—but they had shuddered when duty’s script broke down as Bridger’s potion gave Jehovah life again, and so they shuddered now as a new transmission leaked from violated Alexandria. Two videos. Cameras from the shore still showed the lighthouse from the outside, where a second black wound had appeared, at the top, a fresh explosion cutting through the gold-leaf surface of the tower’s crowning ziggurat. The second image came from inside the ziggurat. We saw smoky air first, the doll-like figures of unconscious guards, Martin’s singed desk and mine beside it, lunch detritus smoldering, my mattress. A jiggle now as the camera is borne out of my cell and up the stairs, a guard’s room, then our Good Guest’s simple bedroom, deep in the tower, safer even than the Emperor’s palace below. A pause, another jiggle, up again, guards’ rooms, a spiral staircase, up, and up, and now we see the Sanctum vaults themselves in their grand circumference, sliced open by the violators like a marble honeycomb. Chips and cards and papers dribble from the damaged chambers: sensayers’ secrets, Censors’ secrets, Gag-genes’ secrets, the identities of past Anonymouses, truths men have killed for tumbling to the floor like dirty hail. The intruders care not. Their target is already open when we see it, the central vault, a block formed of an impenetrable glassy-black substance dreamed up by who knows what genius to guard the Empire’s archsecret. Hands, gloved and trembling, push aside the fragments of the shattered block and hold the tablet to the camera. I guessed even then the almost noble hope which drove these criminals. It might not have been Him. Imagine, reader, if it had named Martin, or better, someone further from Him, some young Familiaris from a distant trusted bash’. We could have had no war.

IMPERATOR DESTINATUS IEHOVAH EPICURUS DONATIANUS DE AROUET MASON ESTO. SI RECUSEAT, DUM PERSUADEATUR, MYCROFTI CONFRATRIDOMITORI AGNOMINATO MARTINO VICARIO IMPERIUM MASONICUM COMMENDEM.

—CORNEL MASON.

NOTE: I can’t blame Mycroft for refusing to translate this, since it’s still technically against the First Law even to read it, but since the whole world knows by now I may as well: “Let the Destined Emperor be Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D’Arouet MASON. Should they refuse, while they are being persuaded, I leave the MASONIC IMPERIUM to Mycroft Guildbreaker, nicknamed Martin, as regent.—Cornel Mason.”—9A

No one said anything. No one said anything for a long time.