The silence after Emperor Lucius' pause did not feel empty. It felt weighted, like a seal pressed onto wax before the wax had cooled. In that quiet, Tobias could hear the Clansmoot chamber breathing as one organism, nobles and banners and grudges held in a single suspended inhale. Even the Merwyn representative beside him seemed to still further, as if deep water had learned to listen.
Emperor Lucius Daeva Regius III lifted his chin by a fraction, and the chamber followed the motion like iron filings following a magnet. His white-silver hair, tied neatly back, barely shifted as he turned his gaze from alcove to alcove. The platinum chain across his shoulder caught the light and returned it with a cold gleam, an unspoken reminder that rank was not merely inherited. When he spoke again, his voice was calm, but it carried the subtle pressure of command that had outlived decades.
"House Hawthorne," he said, and the name landed with the weight of history rather than flattery. "Duty-bound servants of the throne, not because they are weak, but because they have always chosen burden over comfort." His eyes moved toward Archimedes, then toward Tobias' No'aar alcove, and Tobias felt the Emperor's attention like heat behind the eyes. "When the requirements were just and the need was great, Hawthorne has taken up the cause and accomplished the impossible in my name."
The words stirred something in Tobias that he refused to let become visible. He kept his posture formal, hands still, gaze forward, and he let the praise remain what it was: public record. In the Hawthorne alcove, Archimedes stood very straight, cane planted with quiet defiance, as if refusing to let injury bend him in the Emperor's sight. Tobias did not look away, because a son did not hide when his father was being named as the Emperor's right hand.
Lucius' gaze shifted next, and the warmth in his tone cooled into precision. "House Kantreel," he continued, "master engineers of our Imperium's forward momentum." The Kantreel alcove held still, and Tobias saw the slight tightening in their representatives' faces, the way a mechanic's pride resisted being reduced to a single sentence. "Our fleets do not fly on vows alone, nor do our WarMechs march on ceremony. They move through time because Kantreel's hands and minds make movement possible."
The Emperor let that truth hang, then turned his attention toward House Mordred. The Mordred banners did not flinch, but Tobias watched Duke Jorgen's expression carefully, searching for any crack in the welcoming mask. Lucius spoke the name without disgust and without softness, which made it more dangerous. "House Mordred," he said, "and the labor that maintains the Imperium when nobility prefers not to see the cost of its own comfort."
A murmur threatened to rise, but it died before it could become sound. Lucius continued, his voice even, almost reflective, as if he were discussing weather rather than moral rot. "We are an empire that spans worlds, and worlds require hands," he said. "Millions of hands, to maintain infrastructure, to harvest resources, to scrub corrosion from the bones of ships and stations." His gaze was steady as he spoke the next sentence, as though daring the chamber to deny the arithmetic. "If House Mordred did not exist, the workload to merely maintain the Imperium would smother it and kill it."
Tobias felt his jaw tighten, and he forced it to relax. The statement was brutal in its honesty, but it was also a confession of weakness, and Tobias recognized the strategy beneath it. Lucius was not absolving Mordred, not yet, but he was establishing a context where Mordred could not simply be cut away without consequence. The Emperor was presenting the Imperium as a machine, and Mordred as one of its ugly but functional components.
Lucius' expression sharpened subtly, and when he spoke of assassination, the chamber seemed to shrink around the word. "The attempts upon Duke Archimedes were not merely the ambitions of a rival House," he said, voice still calm but carrying an edge. "They were an attempt to destroy my right hand." His gaze flicked toward Archimedes, then toward Tobias, and Tobias felt something cold settle in his chest. "When a hand is cut away, the body does not bleed only from the wound. It bleeds from everything it can no longer hold."
The Emperor's eyes moved across the assembled Houses again, and Tobias sensed psychic pressure beneath the words. It was not a blatant intrusion, not a mind raked open, but the sensation of being measured by someone who had seen too many futures to be impressed by any single argument. Lucius' voice softened in tone while remaining firm in purpose, like a blade wrapped in velvet. "So understand this," he said. "I did not order House Mordred's withdrawal from No'aar as punishment."
The chamber leaned in, and Tobias felt the minor houses' attention tighten like a net. Lucius continued, and now the words carried the weight of prophecy rather than policy. "I ordered their withdrawal because I foresaw a great threat," he said, "one that would rise if Mordred's ways continued to soak No'aar in blood." He paused briefly, letting imagination fill the gap, and Tobias felt the Merwyn representative beside him hold perfectly still. "Blood in the sea does not vanish," Lucius added. "It calls to things that have learned to follow scent."
Tobias did not know whether the Emperor meant political predators or something older. He only knew that the Emperor's prescience was being used as a weapon, not just to justify decisions but to make those decisions feel inevitable. It was an Imperial technique, and Tobias recognized it with a chill because he could feel how effective it would be on the undecided. Lucius' gaze shifted back to Tobias' alcove, and Tobias felt the Emperor's attention settle on him like a mantle.
"Stewardship of No'aar was given to House Hawthorne by my command and authority," the Emperor said. His words were crisp, unambiguous, and stamped into the air like official record. "It was not a suggestion, nor was it a gamble. It was an act of continuity." Tobias felt relief and tension collide inside him, relief that the Emperor had spoken the truth openly, and tension because the Emperor's truth always came with a purpose.
Lucius let the clarity stand for a heartbeat, then tempered it with something that sounded like humility but was, in truth, structure. "Yet," he said, "the purpose of the Clansmoot is not to become a stage for my single voice." He turned slightly, allowing the platinum chain to glint, and the movement reminded Tobias that even humility could be performed as power. "An emperor who rules alone becomes a bottleneck, and bottlenecks break empires." His gaze swept the alcoves of the Great Houses. "That is why the Six were raised, why my royalists were not kept as mere ornaments, but forged into pillars."
The words carried a warning for everyone in the room. Lucius was not retreating from authority; he was explaining why authority had been distributed, and why that distribution would not be allowed to become a mockery. Tobias felt the implication settle into place, sharp and clean. If the Clansmoot wished to matter, it would need to decide something real, not merely argue.
"The Clansmoot exists to weigh decisions that must outlast my lifespan," Lucius continued, voice calm as ice. "To decide whether House Mordred should resume stewardship of No'aar, or whether House Hawthorne should maintain it." He did not look at Duke Jorgen when he said it, which made the sentence more dangerous than any direct accusation. "I cannot be the sole voice of decision," Lucius added. "Not because I lack the right, but because an Imperium cannot survive if it depends on a single throat to speak its future."
Tobias watched the chamber's reactions ripple outward. Minor houses shifted, their internal calculations adjusting as the Emperor framed the stakes in terms that made neutrality seem smaller. House Sinclair's posture looked steadier, their support now echoed by the Emperor's recognition of Hawthorne's duty. House Kantreel remained poised, unreadable, as though already crafting the engineering of whatever compromise might emerge.
Duke Jorgen held his welcoming smile, but Tobias could see the strain at its edges. The Emperor had acknowledged Mordred's utility while simultaneously pinning Mordred's violence to the Emperor's own body, calling it an attack on continuity itself. It was a masterful binding of narrative, granting Mordred the dignity of being necessary while denying them the dignity of being trusted. Tobias felt a quiet admiration for the Emperor's control, even as he disliked the moral arithmetic being performed.
Lucius' gaze returned to the center of the chamber, and his voice lowered slightly, as if inviting every listener closer. "So we will proceed as intended," he said. "We will weigh the evidence and the consequences, not merely the desires of Houses." The platinum chain on his shoulder caught the light again, and the medals on his chest seemed to settle as if acknowledging the return of warlike seriousness. "We will decide stewardship," Lucius concluded, "not as a prize for the loudest voice, but as a duty assigned to the most stabilizing hand."
The Emperor's final sentence of the moment fell into the chamber with quiet inevitability. Tobias felt his own heart beat once, slow and heavy, and he realized the Emperor was reshaping the conversation so that every House would have to argue not for advantage, but for stability. That did not guarantee justice, but it made lies harder to wear comfortably. Beside Tobias, the Merwyn representative remained still, and Tobias took that stillness as cautious approval.
In the No'aar alcove, Tobias held his posture and let the Emperor's words wash over him like a tide that could either lift a ship or smash it against stone. He knew the address was not finished, and he knew the next portion would be where the Emperor's "method of resolution" began to take shape. Tobias did not chase prescience, because the Emperor's presence made futures feel crowded, like a hall filled with mirrors. Instead, Tobias did what Hawthorne had always done when the need was great.
He listened, he endured, and he prepared to hold the impossible without letting anyone see his hands shake.