Webster Ezmund Silk, Adherent Minister of the Interior, and personally highly favored by His Imperial Eminence the emperor, turned on his heel into a side corridor. While still lavishly ornamented and grand, the ceiling was perceptibly lower. His brisk stride unerring, he did not pause or even slow down as he perceived the rapid, uneven footfalls of someone hurrying to catch up with him. He did not have to look to know it was Paulson Gladstone, Minister of True Education in the emperor’s circle of Adherents.

“Is it true?” Gladstone gasped from a few strides behind. “Is it true the witch has spoken? The timing—it’s most irregular.”

Gladstone’s breathing was ragged as he fought to keep pace. He was a nervous man who had a habit of tugging at the cuffs of his coat as though the sleeves would roll up his arms of their own accord. Webster did not spare Gladstone a glance. He knew the man’s characteristics well, had watched him grow from a boy into an old man. He’d never borne enough favor with the emperor to receive the Gift.

Webster had. He was over a century old, but exactly how old he didn’t bother to remember. He let his secretary keep track of such tedious details. No matter his age, he would remain eternally a man in his early prime, strong, steady, his hair untouched by gray, his face unmarked by the years. At this point, his son, Ezra, looked more like his father.

Webster had married several times through the years and fathered many children. When his last wife died, he hadn’t bothered to remarry. All his children, except Ezra, had grown up, become old, and died. He’d gotten used to it, watching his children age and die. There was no need to rush into another marriage. If there was one thing he had, it was time.

Time. The word echoed in his mind. Something was out of kilter with time. He felt it like an itch he could not reach, a tingle in his nerves.

“The witch!” Gladstone whined beside him. “Has she spoken?”

Webster halted at a tall oak door, ornately carved with a dragon. A soldier in the red of the palace guard drew it open for him. Without turning to Gladstone, he answered the old man’s question.

“The Scarlet Guard has said it is so. I am going down to confirm it.”

Without another pause, he strode through the door and into the lift that, through a series of flywheels, belts, cranks, and cables would lower him to the roots of the palace. As he turned to work the brass levers that would set the machinery in motion and initiate his descent, he finally looked upon Gladstone and saw the aged man’s pallor and how unbearably fragile and careworn he appeared.

For all of Webster Ezmund Silk’s enduring youth and vigor, he thought he knew how Gladstone felt.

• • •

Far below the palace there were no crypts, no tombs cared for in perpetuity to honor kings and queens as Ezra claimed there had been in the castle of the old realm. The emperor, immortal in name and body, had no use for tombs.

When the lift juddered to a stop and Webster opened the door, the contrast to the light, airy regions above couldn’t have been more stark. Bare phosphorene bulbs were strung along the ceiling of the corridor, their glow sickly against the dark that collected at these depths. The corridor was narrow, made of stone, some of it granite bedrock that served as rough, natural walls. They glistened with seepage, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the plink of dripping water.

At this low level, the churning of great turbines spinning beneath the palace, fifteen of them, each as large as a small house, throbbed through the floor and the soles of his feet. They pulsed, the empire’s heart of power, circulating water-borne etherea throughout the palace and into the Capital. The roar of water was muffled, but everpresent and unrelenting. He did not doubt the constant throbbing, pulsing, and roaring had contributed to the witch’s insanity as much as anything else.

He was greeted by two masked members of the Scarlet Guard, soldiers he’d handpicked, whose sole duty was to guard the witch. Even though he had chosen the men himself, he could not identify them behind the scarlet masks that hid their faces wholly. The masks had the unsettling effect of making the guards inhuman in demeanor. Webster almost caught himself in a shudder.

Silently they turned and led him down the corridor, their feet grinding on gravel and bedrock. The muffled sound of their footfalls seemed to come from all directions at once. Step by step they led him toward the prison. A prison with only one cell and one inmate.

The corridor ended in an antechamber where the Scarlet Guard stood watch. There were half a dozen on duty at any one time, so four waited at attention, not acknowledging him or their two brethren who escorted him. Behind a steel door with several locks to secure it lay the cell.

One of his escorts peered through the sliding peep hole, then proceeded to insert an array of keys into a series of locks, his movements almost ceremonial, rhythmic. The unlocking produced a cold musicality as tumblers rotated and internal mechanisms clicked, tripped, and sprang open. The door was several inches thick and mounted on reinforced hinges. When the unlocking was finished, it took both escorts to haul the door open.

Perhaps it was overkill, but the depth of the prison and the thickness of the door lessened the chance of any etherea present in the palace reaching the witch.

A fetid odor of damp, decay, and excrement oozed through the doorway. The cell was black within. They did not waste phosphorene on one who did not need light.

One of his escorts retrieved a taper, for they needed light, and led the way into the chamber of the witch. Webster followed next, and he was in turn followed by his second escort. The guards’ brethren shut the door behind them with a damning thud.