"I am my father's son. I stand with my brothers against the universe." Sorascan proverb

Year 15 of Xer's reign

508 LE

When Jaminere was notified of the incoming message from Jhantoria, his heart beat fast and he hurried to the communications station in his father's palace. When he arrived, stood before the screen, and saw that the missive was from Xim himself, his pulse was nearly roaring in his ears.

The message was only text. Jaminere bent close, shadow occluding the screen, to read what it said. White text against black flashed clear before him. The words were simple but said everything.

Mission accomplished. League forces have surrendered.

Proceed immediately.

Everything had gone according to plan. With the janissaries of Desevro on their side, Xim's forces had pummeled the Livien League's remaining armies and cornered their leaders at Jhantoria. Xim, Admiral Kadenzi, and Governor Tiatiov had all brought their best men for the climactic battle. Their triumph, really, was never in doubt, but seeing those words sent a shiver down Jaminere's body.

An identical message, he knew, had been sent to Chandaar, where Oziaf and Xim's other allies were waiting to spring into action. Here on Sorasca, Jaminere had his own help, most of them soldiers whom Kadenzi had gradually and surreptitiously transferred to the palace guard over the past two years. After all their planning, all their waiting, all the anticipation and doubt and sleepless nights, they'd finally reached it: the end, and the beginning.

Using the same console on which he'd read Xim's message, Jaminere crafted one of his own. It was just as short and simple, and instead of being flung across the stars through hypercomm relays, it was routed in an instant through the palace's encrypted internal systems. Its destination: the portable comm badge of Captain Belmenos of the palace guard, with whom Jaminere had already spent many hours discussing what was to come. This message read:

Interdict targets to designated area. Will join shortly.

A tap on the board, and off the message went. Jaminere had no doubt what happened next would also go as planned. In the next few minutes, some three dozen guards throughout the palace would move from their assigned places and converge on King Coros IX, Princes Ledo and Portaan, and Admiral Edolfus. Key communications nodes would also be seized, and the king's seraglio placed under lockdown with his concubines inside. Jaminere had provided them with his personal security codes, allowing them utmost access to every part of the palace.

Now that things were in motion, Jaminere felt the tension drain from his body. His heartbeat slowed; his breaths became shallow. As he walked out of the comm station and down the halls of the palace, he actually felt a smile spread on his face. A few passers-by noticed and stared, and though he tried to wrestle that grin under control he could not. Like all proper coups, it would be completed before the populace knew what had happened.

Everything had changed. Everything. All that was left was to see the results of his efforts.

Jaminere made his way to his destination deliberately, without undue haste. Part of him wanted to be there in an instant, but another part wanted to savor this triumphant limbo. He traversed the lesser-used corridors of the palace, the ones in which he'd sulked in his youth and knew more intimately than the grand promenades and ornate central halls. As he walked, he sensed the palace subtly shift around him. Passers-by became scarcer until they disappeared entirely. Rapid footfalls and indiscernible shouts echoed through the maze from sources unknown. All the while Jaminere strode onward, not slowing, until he'd reached the place he had chosen.

The royal observatory of House Jaminere had been constructed three centuries ago, and its fortunes had waxed and waned over successive generations. It was said that King Coros IX's father and predecessor had been fond of this glass-domed chamber, both for stargazing through the telescope and for private rendezvous with his various concubines and mistresses. The son had little use for stargazing and had left the chamber largely neglected. It was that neglect which made it a refuge for Lesser Prince Marco IV. He'd spent countless night since childhood staring out at the stars, mapping them, collecting a topography of the heavens and finally learning which lights lay within the network of navigational beacons that constructed their limited slice of civilization. In the observatory he'd been able to forget about his sorrows and marvel in the universe. It was the only place in this marble and larmastone labyrinth he looked on with true fondness.

When he arrived through the secret entrance behind the telescope, he found everyone already assembled on the black-and-white checkerboard floor. There was Captain Belmenos in his uniform: black with red and blue piping, the royal colors of Sorasca. A dozen palace guards were with him, most with rifles or service pistols in hand. Those who did not hold their weapons were holding the captives: First Prince Ledo with his uniform askew, Second Prince Portaal in his disheveled night-clothes, Admiral Edolfus with a darkening bruise over his right eye (he must have put up a fight) and most important of all, King Coros IX, looking old with white and sweat-smudged hair in his face. All of them were bound with hands behind their backs and gags in their mouths. All their eyes glared shock and murder.

"It is done, Lord Jaminere," Belmenos said. The big, black-haired man stepped up proudly, chest thrust out, hands clasped behind his back, pistol at his belt. "All the palace is now under your control."

"Our control," Jaminere said softly, and Belmenos smiled. Let him think that included him.

Ledo thrashed against the arms of his captors. The gag choked his angry shouts but he still jerked violently to free himself. Jaminere saw what his proud, pretty half-brother had been reduced to and it returned the smile to his lips.

"Have you decided what is to be done with them?" Belmenos asked.

Ledo kept mumbling into his gag, but it was Coros who surprised his captors by jerking halfway free. He lurched two steps toward Jaminere before they grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him back. Coros stopped struggling but his eyes stared wide and imploring at his son.

Jaminere stared back. It struck him for the first time, after all these years, that he and his father had the same eyes.

Something moved inside him. He said, "Take out his gag."

The guards obeyed quickly. As soon as they'd pulled the cloth from his mouth Coros rasped, "I should have seen it all along. I should have known what you were capable of."

"You're not going to ask me to change my mind?" Jaminere asked, honestly curious. He'd never seen his father brought low before and had long wondered how the man would react. With spite? Pleading? Would he retain his dignity or throw it away in desperation?

"You've had it made up all along, haven't you?" The deposed king sneered. "Treason runs in your blood… I should have seen it."

"You didn't," Jaminere said with pride. "And why was that, father? I'm only what you made me."

"I didn't make you. All I did for you was let you live."

"And you regret that now."

Coros growled, "I should have had you strangled along with your traitor whore mother."

Before he could think, before he could understand himself, Jaminere plucked the pistol from Belmenos's holster and fired. The thunder-crack reverberated off the observatory's glass walls. Gunsmoke drifted past his face.

Blood formed a carmine flower on his father's chest. Coros's face hinged open. His eyes bugged wide and his mouth gasped soundlessly for final breath as he buckled and went limp in the arms of his captors. Then his chin dropped, his head lolled to one side, and he was still.

Jaminere stared. He hadn't even lowered the gun.

Ledo screamed through his gag. Jaminere reacted again, taking one second to re-aim the pistol before squeezing the trigger. The bullet took Ledo through the forehead, shattered his skull on exit, and spilled blood and gleaming bone fragments across the floor's checkerboard tiles. The guards flinched but did not drop his body.

Two more subtle shifts, two more taps of the trigger, two more bullets, two more flashes of blood. Portaal first, then Edolfus. Two more bodies sagged limp in their captors' arms. Four heads (or their remnants) lolled forward and stared lifeless at the floor.

All living eyes rested on Jaminere who, finally, lowered the pistol to his side. He realized his heart was pounding again; his breath was short.

When he finally found his voice Belmenos said, "Well. That settles it, sir."

A long pause. Jaminere said only, "Yes."

"What shall we… do with the bodies, sir?"

His pistol-hand kept shaking. "Wrap them up for now. Place them in cold storage. And… bring a crew to clean this room when you're done."

"Of course, sir."

Jaminere looked at the pistol, the shaking hand. He held it out for Belmenos to take. The captain returned it to its holster with a much steadier grip.

As the guards started to carry the bodies away, Jaminere looked at the checkboard floor, the monochrome pattern of his childhood, now interrupted by splashes of crimson. The tiles were an inheritance, the blood his creation alone.

His first thought had been to put his father and half-brothers on trial, then execute them on a trumped-up pretense. To do it officially, properly, with dignity. But as his hands and heart steadied he understood why he had done what he'd done. For all the hurt he'd been given, he'd repaid the debt with his own hands. It had been a personal act of suddenness and savagery.

Yes, savagery. For centuries House Jaminere of Sorasca, like the other Allied Kingdoms, like the systems of Cron and Livien, had grown over-civilized and soft, and so become vulnerable to the barbarians: the Pirate King of Argai and his son. This had been an act of brutality in their language, the one Jaminere had slowly learned over the past three years.

Xim would approve. In the end this was all because of him. He wondered, even, if Xim would envy him the execution he'd not been able to commit himself at Chandaar.

An end to the old, and the beginning of the new galaxy they would make together.

The last body to be removed was the former king's. As Jaminere watched them take it from the observatory, leaving blood-pooled tile behind, Belmenos cleared his throat.

"A new message from Jhantoria, sir. You can use my reader if you like."

Jaminere looked at the man, then the message pad in his hand. He took it (with a steadier grip now) and saw that it was locked for his personal code, and that it was from Xim.

Jaminere tapped in his key, then took in the words before him. They said:

Chandaar is ours. Oziaf reports that all Cronese conspirators have been seized. Xer has been apprehended and will remain under house arrest in the place I have prepared for him. Not opulent, but adequate for his remaining years, however long those last.

Please update on status of Sorasca as soon as possible.

Jaminere nearly dropped the reader. Instead he erased the message, returned the pad to Belmenos, and dismissed the captain with a single husky word. Then he was alone in the observatory, his place of childhood refuge, the site of his long-craved triumph. Triumph, and savagery beyond even Xim's pale.

There were no bodies, no motions, no sounds. The new king fell into that yawning silence, into the black and white order of tiles and the spreading corruption of blood.