Chapter 8 · free to read
In the cellar, the truth had been a brand and a book. In that hall, the truth was whatever two hundred men with tablets agreed to write down.
Two hundred men looked at a scar on a starving stranger's hand and did the arithmetic of their own households. A living heir meant a purge. A convenient impostor meant a regency, and a regency meant twenty years of everybody keeping their post.
They sent for the one man in the empire who had already written the answer down, ten years ago, in his own hand.
She said nothing for two hours. It was the most frightening thing she did all year.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.