Nauana’s voice filled the room with soft, steady tones. “This, then, is the first lesson. It is easier to restore a balance that has been disturbed through the mai than it is to unbalance something. Balance is the key. As you become stronger, you will be able to use more the mai, but you must beware attempting to unbalance too many things.”

“What happens if I do?”

“Mai is everywhere, even in us. It gives us life.” Her voice became colder. “If you attempt too great an invocation, a balance will be maintained. Mai will be drawn from the nearest source: you. It may kill you. It will exhaust you.”

“How do you know if what you are trying to do is too much?”

“When you fail to waken from the attempt.”

A spark sprang from her fingers and the lamp ignited again. She looked at him solemnly. “Now, my Lord Tetcomchoa, you will restore the balance again. And again. You will do this until you are satisfied you have mastered this invocation, and then you will do it again.”

He smiled. “My sense of sufficiency is not good enough?”

“It is, my lord, but such are the decrees you laid down when you gave us the gift of your knowledge.” Nauana nodded toward the flame. “Begin, please. Centenco is a time when the world is out of balance. Only you, a god, can restore it to the way it must be.”

Chapter Thirteen

28th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Ministry of Harmony, Liankun

Moriande, Nalenyr

Pelut Vniel knelt at a small table. The brush in his right hand hung high over the pristine sheet of rice paper. Ink hung in a pregnant drop at the bristle’s end. He did not know if it would grow fatter and drop, splattering over the paper, ruining it, or if somehow it would remain there, where it should, waiting for him to apply brush to paper in a flash of inspiration.

How like the problem the Prince has presented me.

His face tightened slightly. The Komyr, grandfather through grandsons, had never understood the way the world worked. They were great ones for giving lip service to how valuable the ministries were; they praised how well the ministries worked and urged them to do more. In private-but what in the world was ever truly private?-they railed against sloth and inaction, as if they were bad things.

What they missed was that the bureaucracy was the foundation of the world. Emperor Taichun had seen this when he organized and formalized the ministries to administer his Empire. Urmyr, the most celebrated of his generals, had been placed at their head. He gave them the directives that ordered their lives and set their mission. From the beginning it all had been very clear: the bureaucracy was not a means through which revolutionary ideas and practices could be efficiently spread through the Empire. Quite the opposite: it was the brake on reckless fads that might be a cure for an immediate ill but would prove fatal to society in the long run.

Pelut Vniel needed look no further in the past than to the Viruk Empire and its history to know the consequences of failure. The Viruk had employed the Soth as their bureaucrats, and the Soth functioned perfectly. Since they were a subject people, however, and as much slaves as the humans who supplied muscle to the Viruk Empire, the Viruk ignored their counsel when it came to matters of internal politics. As a result, doctrinal differences split the Viruk population, and the resulting civil war destroyed their homelands and broke the Empire’s power forever.

He studied the drop of ink and found in it a correspondence to the world’s black moon, Gol’dun. Legends cast it as the last resting place for all Viruk evil, and while historical conflicts had proven that to be a lie, every minister knew that if he failed in his duty, another black moon would rise to the heavens to mark the passing of mankind.

And Prince Cyron hastened that outcome.

Pelut Vniel did admire Cyron on one level, for he had managed to motivate the ministers to speed up their work in ways no one else ever had. Of course, outright bribery had been tried in the past with a modicum of success, but the Komyr Dynasty’s expansion of trade required internal distribution of wealth. This was overseen by ministers, and the opportunities to enrich themselves had gone neither unnoticed nor unexploited. Ministers acting in their own best interests had moved quickly, and this had created a great deal of internal strife, both within Nalenyr and the wider bureaucracy.

The haste with which ministers moved to facilitate the expansion of trade created many problems, too-not the least of which was ambition among the lowest ranks and a desire to rise more quickly. Ministers who felt threatened sought to reinforce their own positions by grabbing as much wealth as they could, then bribing subordinates or buying the loyalties of others. This destabilized the bureaucracy and had to be stopped.

What the Komyr had never truly appreciated was that bureaucracy was the true nature of the world. Flocks of birds would fly in formations that mirrored the bureaucracy’s organization. The heavens had countless stars organized into constellations that had their own hierarchy and yet were all ruled by the whim of the sun. Even the Nine Heavens and Hells were ranked, and progression through them was all but impossible. And the gods, with minor spirits beneath them, had arranged supernatural hosts as a bureaucracy.

That was simply the way things were.

Disasters of epic proportion could be seen in the natural world when this hierarchy was abandoned. When farmers wiped out wolves in a district, rabbits ran wild and destroyed their crops. That was divine retribution for failing to recognize the natural order and attempting to subvert it.

What Cyron had asked him to do was an even more heinous crime against Heaven. Cooperation throughout the bureaucracy was the way things were meant to be. It had always been thus, even after the Empire had been split into the Nine. It had been reinforced since then that only by cooperating could the nature of the Empire be preserved even though local political events might shift the people on the thrones. Whereas the Emperor might remove a provincial governor, now the bureaucracy permitted the removal of a leader who was a threat to stability. It was just part of what the bureaucracy had to do.

Pelut Vniel did see Cyron’s point. This new invasion was overturning the whole of the nature of society. It did threaten everything, and he did fear what would happen if Erumvirine fell and the invaders moved into Nalenyr. Unlike Cyron, though, who feared being overthrown because his dynasty was the product of usurpation, Pelut knew that the bureaucracy was more resilient than the Prince could imagine. While the invaders might have swept into eastern districts, he was certain that ministers were already organizing things in the occupied lands to ensure that life continued as normal.

The Viruk had needed ministers. Men had needed them. Why would not the invaders need them? There was no question they would. In time, they would come to rely upon them and, once again, the way of the world would be restored and life would continue as it had been meant to.

But Prince Cyron threatened the natural order. By ordering Pelut to keep silent, he raised the Naleni bureaucracy above all the others. He was asking Pelut to create a new level of bureaucracy, which was something only the Emperor could do. Cyron was arrogating power and position he had no right to-trying to change the natural order by way of a most unnatural whim.

While Pelut Vniel did acknowledge that he, himself, was certainly the best candidate to be the Grand Minister of a new empire, he knew that the consequences of abiding by Cyron’s request would be swift, disastrous, and inescapable. Cyron would immediately set each nation’s bureaucracy against one another. The invasion would face a fractured enemy. Their advance would be certain, and the demise of each nation would be just as sure. Only by remaining united in the face of the threat could humanity survive.