“How?”

“By being perfect in this war,” the Emperor announced. “By achieving every goal. By crushing our enemies, supporting our allies, protecting our people, enforcing our justice, guarding our patrimony, and achieving our will. Jehovah wants to be powerful, efficacious, just. We will prove we are precisely that.”

Achilles breaker of battle lines frowned across at me. “War is not that easy, nor that kind.”

“I am aware that many kings and many empires have made such boasts and failed, but I am not any empire. I am the Empire, the dream of empires, constant since the first time a heart wished to call the space between horizon and horizon ‘mine.’ And you, Achilles, are the Soldier. Fight with me. We are both human and imperfect, so we will not achieve everything, but together we will come much closer than anyone else ever has or ever could. We will prove to Jehovah that this Empire is something they want to preserve—not just to preserve, but to become. Then they will join us, and let themself be reshaped by the ideals you and I share, and together we will make a future you will be proud to live in.”

“I won’t live in it.” The hero’s words fell gently, but with force, as a boulder shifts just an inch, and all in earshot tremble at the whisper-creak that could so easily have been avalanche’s thunder. “I am Achilles. I don’t win the war, I die in it.” He turned to me. “You’re not asking me to live in a world shaped by someone who doesn’t honor the ancients. You’re asking me to be dead in it. You know why I care what shape it takes.”

I did, and choked some moments as again the shades of Ajax and Agamemnon rose before my eyes. “The Masons aren’t the future, Achilles. You know that.”

No one said anything. No one would, but glances crisscrossed among us all, Achilles, Aldrin, pale Apollo, Death, cautious glances, edged with suspicion, and with something lighter.

“MASON, why do you oppose the Set-Set Law?” Achilles asked at last.

Death spoke warily now, “Why do you ask?”

“Because I don’t think you care about set-sets. I think you care about the right of parents to rear strange children, and not just your own son.” Achilles’s gaze strayed to Aldrin’s false digital eyes. “Am I right?”

MASON nodded. “I will die for it if I must, as Mycroft MASON did before me.”

“Why?”

Caesar drew strength as Apollo, still beside him, squeezed his hand. “An Emperor may use their power how they will.”

“Not you.” Achilles shook his head. “Not you. You want me to think it’s for the memory of your Apollo. I do believe, as Mycroft paints it, that Eros’s arrow pierced you as absolutely as it may pierce any man, but I still think duty rules love in your heart.”