The first lady of Wosun was required to travel often, her station more than a symbolic one, she served as the chief ambassador for the governor, his voice in distant regions. Her staff was handpicked, devoted to her, be they personal guards, ambassadors or hair stylists, every member of the first lady's retinue was willing, and expected, to sacrifice themselves should she be threatened.

Bianka Kué Lao arrived at the palace late and confused. She sent for her son, but learned he was away on a classified assignment for his father, expected to report through vox channels and spend the night away from the palace.

She entered the council chamber to find her husband at his desk, without his guards, contemplating a crystalline signet ring, booted feet crossed on his desk.

The ring was partly made of steel, melting into the crystal to create what looked like mountain peaks and pine trees frozen in ice. Atop the crystal, the first lady's seal, a rose and quill crossing themselves over the complex and unique nanoscopic signature of house Kué Lao.

"Has there been an attack, Jin-dear? What is going on?" She froze, recognizing the ring he held. "Where did you…" She reached to her ring finger, finding an identical bague on it.

Jin noticed and forced a sad smile. "You know who it was meant for. I was… Optimistic that she would accept my offer. She found the title second lady slightly… Demeaning, so I offered a compromise."

Bianka slowly strode up to her husband's desk, retinue in tow. "As is your right, my darling." She spoke, bristling with barely contained rage, "Clearly Shimia rejected you, so why bring her up now?"

Jin's eyes were cold as they settled on hers. He had always exhaled disappointment when he looked into his wife's eyes, but today, she only saw darkness in her husband. "She's back."

This hit the first lady like a kick in the guts. "Imp…" She stopped herself. "After all these years?"

Jin put the signet ring down and reached for a quill, still wet with ink. "I can see it in your eyes, woman, I needed to..." He swept the retinue with lazy eyes, then sneer. "Our son delivered Kao a letter. From you." He smiled, putting the quill down next to the signet ring. "Your lessons bore fruits, my handwriting has almost caught up to yours, beloved wife."

She stopped, halfway across the room. Twelve men and women soon surrounded her, lambs clustering around their shepherd, feeling the wolf's approach, but to dim to tell where from, or when it would strike..

Jin always wore a Kuan longcoat with the segmented chest piece and shoulder pads of a Kué Lao soldier, a fierce yet elegant style that made it difficult for his enemies to discern if he intended violence or diplomacy. Alone, slouched behind an oak desk in a room made out of paper, he indeed appeared as a wolf sizing up a herd of sheeps.

"What did you write?" She knew the answer, but played her husband's game.

"Don't you want to know his answer? Much shorter. Yes… One word. Yes…" He looked up from the quill and straight into his wife's eyes. The man looked torn, broken inside, but as calm as death. "Why? It wasn't love, we both know this. Shimia was a warrior, not a diplomat, all you stood to lose was a meaningless title…"

Backing further into her retinue, she simply breathed, "The governor cannot have a whore in his court, let alone in his bed…"

"On that, we agree…"Jin smiled, as he had that one time, when an assassin had drawn a sword against him, the gleeful grin of a predator that has spotted its prey.

"Well, lads!" He roared, leaping onto his desk, a long and narrow blade with a slight curve to it held in the left hand, along his leg. "Let's see if you're worth what I'm paying you!"

Blades and guns were drawn, but the men had positioned the riflemen at the back, where they could not fire without hitting their own.

Jin swept into the first three warriors shoulder first, swirling his sword at ankle height. Flesh and bones were easily cut into by the keen blade, which found its way over the governor's head in time to parry an overhead swing from the warrior on the left.

Kicking that one away, he wrapped the sword behind his shoulder and uncoiled like a trebuchet, at throat level, and, taking one hand off his sword the instant it hit the other man's blade, Jin pulled a stubber from his belt and fired twice into the soldier's chest.

The left hand side warrior charged just as a pair of accountants straight ahead did. Jin's blade whipped through the air inches from the last two's throats, halting their course, and caught the former in the helmet, bouncing off with enough force to knock him off balance and on all four.

The governor did not spare the man a glance, merely shooting him in the neck twice before facing the rest of the retinue head on. "Without strength of will, there is no strength of body. Any of you could have reached my level of skill, had you shown discipline." He swiftly beheaded one accountant and eviscerated another with one diagonal stroke. "You bring dishonor to your governor." One boy, the stylist, snapped his scissors in two parts and came at Jin with one in each hand.

Unskilled, but focused like only a true master could be, the boy, barely more than a teen, slashed at the throat, missing by a milimeter, then went for the femoral artery, only to be repelled by a knee to the face.

Unperturbed, the hairdresser came back, silent and focused. He went for the throat again, the chink in the governor's armour, ducked under a broad swipe of Jin's sword. He almost made it, but the governor's elbow blocked him at the wrist and the counter-strike spilled the boy's guts on the ebony floor. As life left the young man's eyes, Jin looked deep into them, easing him down to the ground, whispering "Your name will endure, son, and your descendants will honour you for generation. Rest now."

Two of them, Jin shot once in the midsection, their carapace armours too thick anywhere else. The third, he leapt onto and, in the second and a half he spent riding the soldier's face down, slashed open the fourth's throat.

Injured, the remaining soldiers managed to stand almost simultaneously, but could not take aim before Jin, throwing himself to the ground, picked up a discarded lasgun and riddled the both of them with smoking holes.

"Are you d…" Whatever admonishment his wife had in mind was cut short when a low intensity lasbolt took her in the throat. Followed by another in the chest, revealing seared bones and pulsating flesh.

He squeezed the trigger methodically, burning away the already dead woman's flesh an inch at a time, firing until the sun was up and Bianka was nothing but a pile of ashes.

At that point, he spoke into his coat's collar, "Have divorce papers brought to the council chamber, and the janitor. Oh, and notify the media I am now single… Also tell them I have another son, his name is… Actually, let me get back to you on that."

"Will that be all, sire?"

"Does Commander Koa have any family?"

"Two wives, three sons, one daughter, sire." Jin cringed, then sighed.

"Have them executed, then execute him, please."

"What shall the edict say?"

"The man was a cunt."

Phlegmatic as always, the regent took it in stride, "Quite, sire, but what crime should we condemn him for."

"Being such a huge cunt, I killed him over it." Jin insisted, trying his hardest to smile.

"Treason, then, sire?" The regent offered, as though it were a choice of tea.

"He killed her, killed Shimia, in front of her son, Shaun, lied to my face about it, conspired with my wife… Why? Why would they even do this?"

"Sire, as the most powerful man on the planet, there are things you simply are not equipped to understand."

Slumping back into his seat to once again look at Shimia's signet ring, Jin sighed, "Do you? Understand, I mean."

"Yes, sire; because they were cunts."