Obedient to his emperor's command, the Frangoni warrior braced himself, picked up the throne – it proved lighter than he had expected – and heaved it toward the center of the Hall. It crashed onto the rocks of the Hall and shattered in a cloud of dust.
'Ah,' said the Silver Emperor, with a great sigh of satisfaction. 'That's something I've always wanted to do. So, Hatch. So you do have your uses. You – you, girl – what's your name – fetch me a chair.'
A chair was fetched and Plandruk Qinplaqus settled himself in this makeshift throne – a procedure which was less than instantaneous, involving as it did the placement of a cushion under his feet by one slave and the serving to him of sherbet by another.
'Well, Hatch,' said the Silver Emperor, once he was properly seated. 'Have you caught any more mad scientists?'
'None,' said Hatch.
'Then you're in default of your duty,' said the Silver Emperor. 'My spies tell me there were ten of them down by the river. They were endeavoring to invent a vehicle for submersible travel.'
'To do what?' said Hatch. 'To ride the river to the Mouth?'
'Don't be impertinent with me!' said Plandruk Qinplaqus, shaking his walking stick at Hatch. 'Impertinence ill becomes you. Address the question, Hatch. What have you been doing to catch me mad scientists?'
In truth, Asodo Hatch had not been involved with any mad scientists since he had disposed of Darius Flute. The unfortunate Flute had cracked under the pressure of his Combat College studies, and had abruptly withdrawn from the College, announcing that he was going to start a new Renaissance of Technology in Dalar ken Halvar. This was quite, quite mad, as the city of Dalar ken Halvar and the continent of Parengarenga as a whole quite lacked the population base and the raw materials required to create any technology capable of economically out-performing an ox cart.
But the Silver Emperor had taken Darius Flute's claims seriously. Plandruk Qinplaqus had never banned technological enterprise, since the Silver Emperor knew full well that to forbid something was to make it universally attractive. So Qinplaqus had ordered Hatch to execute Darius Flute, but to do so in a manner which would not draw public attention to Flute's technological enterprises.
Hatch had then proceeded with consummate skill. He had arranged for his sister Penelope to marry the unsuspecting Darius Flute; and, on their wedding night, Penelope had stepped outside, Hatch had stepped inside, and Flute had been dead in moments. It was the custom amongst the Frangoni that a bridge was fully entitled to kill her husband if he disappointed her on the first night of their marriage, so Flute's death had passed with very little in the way of public comment; and the Silver Emperor had been rightly pleased.
But now – 'Hatch,' said Plandruk Qinplaqus. 'Will you keep me waiting all day? My question requires an answer. How many mad scientists have you hunted for me of late?'
'I did not know that my lord had commanded me to actively pursue such creatures,' said Hatch mildly.
'You don't take this seriously, do you?' said the Silver Emperor.
'I trust that wisdom sits on the throne, and hence am ever eager to obey those commands which come to me from the throne,' said Hatch. 'But as yet the throne has not chosen to give me any instructions for fresh persecution, murder or otherwise.'
'I see, I see,' said the Silver Emperor. 'A legalist. Well then, leaving aside the scientist question – have you seen this?'
With that, the Silver Emperor waved the cat-intimidating Imperial Census at Hatch.
'No,' said Hatch shortly.
In his moods of deep depression, Plandruk Qinplaqus was hard to handle, but as he ascended his manic curve Hatch usually found him quite intolerable.
'You haven't read it?' said the Emperor. 'Well, then. It's yours, then. Take it.'
Then the Silver Emperor tossed the Census in Hatch's general direction.
Hatch let it fall to the broken rubble of the Hall, then bent, picked it up and carefully dusted it off. One never made sudden or incautious moves when one was in the Emperor's presence.
The Emperor himself was possessed of the most admirable selfcontrol, but some of his guards were a bit too quick with a javelin.
'When you search those pages,' said the Silver Emperor, 'you will find that a full fifty people claim themselves to be scientists.'
Hatch knew the Silver Emperor lived in fear of waking up one morning to find that one of his subjects had built a functional starship, or something worse. It was true that many of Dalar ken Halvar's mad scientists had claimed that they would do as much – indeed, they had claimed that they would bring about a glorious Age of Light in which every man would walk on silver and eat from gold.
'I will take note of the number of scientists,' said Hatch, endeavoring to remain non-committal.
'There are probably more of them than that,' said Plandruk Qinplaqus. 'With every census I trust the figures less. This one, for instance! It tallies the last rice harvest to the very last sack. But last harvest the mountains of Qash were in open revolt against the empire. How then could we count those sack to the very last?'
Hatch caught a note of rising fanaticism in the emperor's voice. Plandruk Qinplaqus was getting quite worked up about his census. Hatch knew this mood. The Silver Emperor was on the upswing, climbing out of his last and longest depression, entering a manic stage.
'Well,' said Hatch, seeking an opening.
'Well!' said the Silver Emperor. 'You wish to speak, do you?
Then speak! Give your report.'
'My lord,' said Hatch, thinking he had better speak both quickly and bluntly. 'There is revolution brewing in the city.
Indeed, some say it has started already.'
'I am intrigued,' said the Silver Emperor. 'Proceed.'
Hatch proceeded, and told what he knew.
'So,' said Plandruk Qinplaqus, when Hatch was finished. 'Our soldiers are on the way to the silver mines already.'
'That is so,' said Hatch, 'but if Scorpio Fax is to be believed, then in the city – '
'Forget the city,' said the Silver Emperor. 'They want a revolution in the city? Very well! Let them have their revolution!
It will do us no harm. Ignore it!'
'Ignore it?' said Hatch, quite taken aback.
'Yes, yes,' said the Silver Emperor. 'Ignore it. What can they do? Burn the city? It burns on a regular basis. Let them riot, then let the riot burn itself out.'
'My lord, they threaten, they – '
'Hatch,' said the emperor, 'the city is so thoroughly divided against itself that nobody can hope to unite it. Can the Yara unite with the Chem, the Frangoni with the Ebrell Islanders?
Whoever wins the city wins the nightmare. With the nightmare over, they'll wake anew to me. To my reason. My mercy. My strength. My prudence. My justice. They love me, Hatch, and with reason. I love them too, hence let them have their amusements. Let then the burning of the city count as such amusement.'
'My lord,' said Hatch, 'I think you let your city burn too easily.'
'I let it burn for a purpose,' said the Silver Emperor.
'There is conspiracy, it seems. Very well! Let the conspiracy reveal itself. Then we will chop down the conspirators and have done with all conspiracy for a generation.'
Hatch thought this poorly thought out, but he was dismissed, and had no alternative but to leave.
Asodo Hatch was slowly waking from his own personal concerns to face the wider realities of the city in which he lived. But those realities had been changing even as he had been in conference with the Silver Emperor, as Hatch found out when he left the presence of the mighty Plandruk Qinplaqus.
For at the end of his audience with Qinplaqus, Hatch was intercepted by the noseless Nambasa Berlin, Dalar ken Halvar's Treasurer. While Hatch had been meeting the emperor, messengers had arrived at the palace, bringing alarming news from the city.
There were demonstrations; there was sporadic looting and burning in Actus Dorum; a boat had been pirated on the Yamoda; and there was one incoherent report which suggested that the soldiers sent to put down the
