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each Blacklaw is as much a Sovereign as MASON.
heavy, enameled pen which has passed from Rumormonger to Rumormonger
How many fewer—set-set and Servicer alike—might have died in Odessa if the Hives had shared the Blacklaw custom that one may not lynch anyone without first asking the best-informed person in town whether we’re being idiots?
had to be a blank thing when I did it, my beautiful rampage, the act of evil of a human being, not a Hiveless, not a Hive.
“I will not complete the Adulthood Competency Exam,” He finished. A frown touched Chagatai’s cheeks. “Alright. That’s your choice. But, Sniper is wrong, right?” “Οὖτις…” “No one,” I translated, seeing Chagatai flounder.
“The Mitsubishi land majority and the Masonic near-majority population.”
“The Sniper who now lives bears the skill that killed Me, and the intent to have killed Me, but not the finger that sped the bullet home. Bridger was real.” Not only Chagatai, but all within the room froze speechless. Even Jehovah, though Jehovah is never truly within rooms. It was not His words that stunned us. His black eyes, like everybody’s, shifted their focus suddenly far from this room, far from this city, to the news which rose in His lenses. “Sanctum … conrupt’est?” I saw it too, in my news feed. I saw a world away, far out of reach, the first too-tiny plumes of smoke against the
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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—
now we see the Sanctum vaults themselves in their grand circumference, sliced open by the violators like a marble honeycomb.
Their target is already open when we see it, the central vault, a block formed of an impenetrable glassy-black substance dreamed
hold the tablet to the camera. I guessed even then
some young Familiaris from a distant trusted bash’. We could have had no war.
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.—
Faust liked the interruption. “It is my not-inexpert opinion that my Nephew is the only living being capable of calming Cornel MASON down enough to stop them declaring war on the whole world instantly over this theft.”
“Theft? You mean exposure.” “I mean theft.” A pause. “You think they also robbed the vaults?” The Headmaster nodded. “I think few creatures on this Earth could crack the Sanctum Sanctorum and not succumb to curiosity.”
Carlyle Foster-Kraye, tied down with wrists and ankles lashed fast to the bed frame.
Bending to swab up my vomit let me avoid seeing Carlyle’s desperate eyes. “And some of the Gag-gene files were there too, and have fallen into public hands, including … well, actually, the only one they have made public is…” I did not have to finish.
“Here’s a true boon, Sister Carlyle!” Dominic cried. “Now our whole race knows thy guilt from beginning to
“Carlyle Foster.” Jehovah turned to her slowly, His black eyes stirring a shudder in Carlyle’s half-bare shoulders. “If it were true,” the Addressee began, “that you were created only to catalyze this crisis, then, that work done, you would not continue to exist. Therefore either you continue to exist only to suffer, and we learn from this that My Peer equates justice with pain, or else Providence plans more for you.”
I shall instead show the periphery, those strange encounters possible in lands where men speak freely of such deadly things as God.
“I am Headmaster of Brill’s Institute and Steward of Gordian, the First Hive, which birthed the best age this planet has ever known. When I tell you to look at forty-eight pictures of things eating bananas, you do not ask why.”
there so many Cousins involved in these recent riots?” “Are you saying…” Carlyle blinked. “Are you saying … there aren’t actually very many Cousins rioting? It just seems like there are because everyone notices Cousins more because Cousins look so wrong rioting?”
“Cousins’ wraps are slow to change out of. Not like taking off a jacket.”
The Masons and Mitsubishi are taking their jackets off before the riots, aren’t they?
“That’s all I get? I give you the key to exonerate your Hive and all I get is ‘Hmm, funny’? You are far gone.”
The only other interruption worth mentioning was that Madame’s confessor, two hours into her recital, attempted to bludgeon her to death with a censer.
Jehovah whispered some few things to Achilles, then ordered that I be seized. The guards were quick, and silent Achilles watched without surprise or sympathy.
My Ἄναξ answered: “Because you would rather die than let Me do what I do now.”
Humanist President Vivien Ancelet followed Jehovah up the steps this time, wearing, not a presidential suit, but a bright Olympic training jacket.
“Since this war is Willed and must now be,” the Addressee began, “let the sides mean something.
and merge them, and end this world and its version of Liberty.
No one should doubt what has been proved: that, for three hundred years, this civilization’s unprecedented peace has been enabled by assassinations.
The current system cannot function without O.S. I believe that I am intended to replace ...
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publicly. Therefore I have decided. I shall use the power I have been given to seize control of all the Hives, and Romanova, by force if need be, just as My enemies prophesied. I shall destroy and remake whatever I must to create a conscionable world.
There may be seven Hives when I finish, or six, three, twenty, none, but whatever world I remake this world into will not include O.S. or the kind of moral compromise that birthed it.
If you prefer the current bloodstained partial-paradise, support Sniper.” He paused. “There. Now both sides mean something.”
When the Closing Ceremony concludes, one hundred and twenty-eight days from now, I shall return here to the Forum to personally open the Gates of the Temple of Janus, and declare the world to be at war.”
“Enough,” Ancelet urged. “Haven’t you made enough enemies in the last five minutes? Let me speak. Let me calm things down. This was supposed to be about the Olympics, not you conquering the world.”
And to Jehovah Mason I say: you are the best of enemies, but it is my duty to defend the Hives, freedom of choice, and liberty, so I will kill you. —Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, Thirteenth O.S., May 3rd, 2454
“No video.”
At this point smiling, cautious Papa cuffed my right wrist to his left with gentle Cannergel. «You arranged this little visit?» he asked.
Julia: « Forty-eight hours, Mycroft. If you haven’t scheduled a session by then … » I: « Tully Mardi. » Julia: « What? » I: « Famine. And you know I’m not Death. Goodbye, Julia.
“Tully knows nothing. They parted as normal when they both left you.” Papa frowned. “Who wrote that letter from Sniper that The Olympian printed?”
No, there would still be the Mitsubishi land problem.
No, Mars is for Utopia.
Kind, Wise, Divine Mind of our Good Master—Kinder than His Peer—to guide humanity through her glorious transition. All we need is Bridger.
If, as Plato and Aquinas hold, Good Is One with My Peer, then, Being Not-My-Peer, I Am Evil.
“The Cousins surrender?” “What are you talking about?” “I declared war on you. Do you surrender?” “No, Jed, we’re not involved in the war, remember?” Kosala answered, with a strange mix of forced sweetness and impatience. “The Cousins are neutral in this: hospitals, aid, peacemakers.”
“In the Masons’ war on those who pierced their sanctum, in the Mitsubishi war for land, in the Humanists’ for Hive-survival, you may be neutral. Not in My war. I will reorder this world, including you.”
Heloïse is right that residual gendered concepts are still a big part of how the Cousins understand ourselves.
