The air in Basstadt was heavy with ink and parchment, the scent of wax seals and old paper clinging to the grand marble corridors of the Imperial Bureau of Administrative Affairs.
Here, war was fought with documents, approvals, and stamps of authority, and the battlefield was a desk piled high with edicts that could kill a man faster than a sword if wielded correctly.
And today, the matter of Varentis was the next war to be decided.
The Imperial Bureau of Administrative Affairs was a city within a city. Marble halls ran like arteries through its heart, filled not with blood but with bureaucrats, functionaries, record-keepers, decree-holders, and men who'd long since traded their swords for signatures. Some joked that the Bureau's ink weighed more than its steel. They weren't wrong.
At its center sat High Minister Varlen Deccos.
He didn't pace. He didn't fidget. He simply read.
A stack of reports sat before him on a blackwood desk carved from the drowned groves of Deephollow, each page crisp, bound, annotated in his own hand. His ink never smudged. His quill never scratched. And his signature, bold, unhurried, carried the weight of fire when it reached the provinces.
He was the Empire's scalpel. Not its sword. A clean cut. A quiet wound.
Across the room, Aemund Karthis sighed as he shuffled through the stacks of reports, his desk buried beneath scrolls stamped with the sigils of viceroys, magistrates, and imperial observers.
"The reports from Blackmount arrived this morning," Karthis said at last.
Deccos didn't look up. "And?"
"The situation in Varentis deteriorates. The trade flows fluctuate."
"The trade will hold," Deccos replied, still scanning the page before him.
Karthis gave a slight nod before continuing. "You were right by the way. House Varro suppressed Tyrellan merchant expansion in the Noble Quarter for nearly two decades. Protected the old eastern families. Blocked foreign charter permits."
"Outdated loyalty," Deccos said flatly. "Sentiment masquerading as stability."
"A city rotting from within, a Palatine coughing his last, and half a dozen factions ready to burn the place down for a seat at the table." Karthis ran a hand through his grey hair while inhaling a deep breath from his pipe. "What a delightful mess."
Karthis inclined his head. "What about Syr Gaius Ilthor? I recall him holding quite some sway in the city at the last merchants summit in Basstadt."
"The grain merchant? Ambitious. Local. Useful."
"Useful?"
Deccos stood. The hem of his coat fell straight, uncreased. "Ilthor is not a danger. He is a symptom. A man who rose not from noble roots, but from necessity. If the old order cannot prevent such men from ascending, then the old order no longer serves."
Deccos looked out his high window, across the gray rooftops of Basstadt, where the towers of the administrative quarter stood like blunt knives and the streets below moved with the slow, constant rhythm of a city run by paper and protocol.
A sharp knock broke the quiet, three precise raps, evenly spaced. Not impatient.
Deccos didn't look away from the window. "Get that, will you," he murmured, as if asking for another bottle of ink.
Karthis moved with the efficiency of habit, boots silent on the polished floor. He opened the door.
The corridor beyond seemed to darken.
Standing in the threshold was a figure swathed in armor that blurred the line between man and shadow, black plate layered over reinforced leather robes, matte and bloodless. No sigils, no rank marks, only the faint imprint of a red sword stamped into the breast. The helmet was featureless save for a slit of smoky glass where the eyes should be.
The figure extended a single hand, gloved in something closer to surgical hide than soldier's gauntlet. In its grip, a scroll, sealed in red wax, the sword sigil pressed deep and clean.
No words. Just the scroll.
Karthis accepted it without a nod, without a breath. The door closed with a hush, as though afraid to offend.
He crossed the room and held the scroll out to Deccos, who had just walked back to his desk and sat down, eyeing the wax.
"Black wax, red sword, the infamous seal," he said quietly. "OISS."
He accepted the scroll and cracked the wax. A crisp break, like a bone.
One sheet. No flourish. The ink was dark and dry, the handwriting narrow, each line a blade, clean and deliberate. The kind of script that carried orders without sentiment, urgency without haste.
Not from the Empress directly. But unmistakably shaped by her will, her rhythm of control.
Karthis stood behind him, hands folded. Neither of them spoke.
There were no comments when the sword watched.
It read:
---
To: Lord Varlen Deccos, High Minister of Administrative Affairs
Office: Tier Primus - Internal Governance
By Order: Will of the Crown, OISS Classification 4-GOLD-THRESH
RE: FLAGGED INTELLIGENCE — INTERNAL DISSENSION / VARENTIS-TYRELLIS COORDINATION / ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
Per Directive SD-13FR-R4, the following summary is submitted for your confidential review regarding the administrative instability of Governorate VAR-001 (Varentis).
SYR VARUN AL-TARREK (Third Chair, Tyrellan Merchant Council) entered the Viceroyalty of Blackmount six days ago via Watchpost 17A under diplomatic seal, accompanied by two aides. He registered under the alias "Syr V. Altare" at the Copper Quarters and bypassed road tax protocols using forged credentials authorized by Armon Vellis (now detained).
Within twelve hours, SYR GAIUS ILTHOR (First Chair, Varentis Merchant Union) received him in a private, undocumented meeting. Two months prior, ILTHOR's trade holdings (Cluster GR-IX) began showing manipulated logistics: rerouted shipments, stalled manifests, and indications of engineered scarcity in Grandmark.
During a site tour of GR-IX, ILTHOR was targeted for assassination by Denik Mosslow, a known debtor and unlicensed Brightblood (Third Circle). The attack was neutralized by SYR VARUN via Sixth Circle sand casting. Mosslow was killed on site.
OISS interrogation and financial tracing confirm Mosslow was paid through dormant accounts tied to House Varro. Authorization leads to HOLVEN VARRO, brother to Palatine Varron Varro. Payments were funneled through dissolved front firms and delivered in Frosmyr mint to obscure origin. Motive: eliminate ILTHOR ahead of Palatine succession disruption.
Assessment: ILTHOR is a destabilizing figure in the regional power shift. HOLVEN VARRO has violated Crown Mandate 442-F. SYR VARUN's role, while publicly stabilizing, may indicate premeditated involvement.
Filed and sealed by:Director Viesthal ReynBy authority of Her Royal HighnessOISS - Eastern Cell
---
Deccos read it in silence, his eyes scanning each word with the dispassionate speed of a man who had sentenced cities to death before breakfast.
When he was done, he set it down gently and slid it over the table towards Karthis.
Karthis glanced at it, then at Deccos. "Are you sure?"
Deccos nodded once.
Karthis picked up the page with both hands, careful not to crease the parchment. His eyes moved slower than Deccos's, more methodical, absorbing each word with growing tension etched into the corners of his mouth. At the second paragraph, he leaned back slightly, nostrils flaring. By the time he reached the name Holven Varro, his jaw had set into a tight, disapproving line.
When he finished, he lowered the letter to the desk, one finger tapping the edge of the page like it might bite him again if left alone.
"Holven Varro is a fool," Karthis said bitterly. "He tried to keep his hands clean by hiring a debtor with third-rate magic..."
"They're all fools," Deccos said softly. "They think their schemes are performed in the dark, but the Empire was built to see through stone. They light candles and think they're invisible. Holven moves to preserve a legacy that's already ashes. His brother lies rotting behind velvet curtains, and rather than accept the end, he lashes out like a dog with a bleeding throat."
Deccos suddenly chuckled. "And that Ilthor... Naive," Not just of his ambition, but of its direction. Of the people he spoke to. Of the game he thought he was playing.
Karthis, stepped forward, curious to Deccos' thoughts. "You understand his strategy?"
Deccos gave a slight nod. "He thinks himself a builder of futures. But he's still trading in the logic of merchants. Cause, effect. Invest, return."
"And you think he's miscalculated?"
"I think," Deccos said, "he's assumed we don't already see the board."
He rose from his chair, slow and stiff, and moved toward the cabinet on the right of his desk and reached in, pulling out a gold adorned pipe. "He has three possible plays," he said quietly. "Grain is the first. Starve a city, stir unrest, then offer himself as the savior."
Karthis nodded slowly. "We've seen it before."
Deccos was back at his desk, filling the pipe with an exotic tobacco mix. "Too often. It works. The people don't care who feeds them, only that they're fed."
Deccos raised a hand, ticking off the second. "Internal leverage. He courts Tyrellis, leans on their trade to backfill shortages, and builds legitimacy by aligning with another Palatinate. If the Crown hesitates, he'll have Tyrellan merchants ready to plant roots and claim stability by proxy."
"Risky," Karthis murmured. "The Strand has long memory."
Deccos ticked off the third. "Social foothold. He draws in the middle caste, brightbloods, refineries, dock masters. Enough influence in the working tier, and the noble houses will be surrounded without ever being touched."
He snapped a finger, and a thin flame sparked to life, catching the pipe as he drew in a slow, deliberate breath.
"And yet," Deccos said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke, "he's too loud for a quiet coup, and too patient for a riot. That leaves only one option."
Karthis waited.
"He thinks we'll let him." Deccos's voice was even, without malice. Almost amused.
Karthis hesitated. "Should I…?"
"No," Deccos said, cutting him off with a quiet, unshakable calm. "Let him build. Let him dig the trench himself."
He met Karthis's gaze without flinching. "If I know... then Her Majesty already does."
He closed his eyes and drew from the pipe, savoring the smoke not just for its flavor, but for the ritual, the stillness it offered between decisions.
"If he can't hold the ground he's claimed," Deccos murmured, "then we'll let him lie in it. And trimming the pride off the Tyrellan merchant council would be a welcome consequence."
Karthis tilted his head slightly. "Then the Empress… approves?"
Deccos opened his eyes, setting the pipe gently back onto the desk. "She does not object."
Deccos turned back toward the high window, its arched frame capturing the eastern sprawl of Basstadt. Above it all, perched atop the basalt rise like a crown of knives, loomed the Imperial Palace, dark, vast, and angular, its spires cutting into the sky like verdicts. The wind couldn't touch it. Even the clouds moved around it.
"She's watching."
Karthis followed his gaze. "You think she means to let Ilthor rise?"
"I think," Deccos said, measured and low, "the city's been stagnant for too long. Varro was stability, useful, predictable, loyal. But even loyalty decays when left untested."
He turned back to the desk, voice sharpening just enough to draw a line. "Ilthor can be the fire. And the Empress is watching to see what he burns... and what remains after."
Karthis shifted slightly. "And if he burns the wrong thing?"
Deccos didn't blink. "Then we sweep the ashes. Replace them with stone."
He returned to the desk, unrolled it, and examined the names listed within.
"You still intend to send a placeholder?" Karthis asked.
"I intend to send a shape," Deccos said. "Something bland enough not to offend the nobility. Weak enough to require guidance. Capable enough not to die in a week."
"A puppet."
Deccos gave a small shrug. "The throne does not care what hands it moves with, so long as they move correctly.
He dipped the pen, and the room filled with the scratch of authority.
"Regardless," Deccos said, turning back to his desk, "that doesn't mean our work halts."