They arrived with an army.
Not soldiers — priests. Three hundred of them, white-robed, chanting the LATIUM divine hymn in rolling waves that echoed off the capital's stone streets. At the center of the procession, carried in twelve separate divine-sealed palanquins, came the Seraphic Seat itself — the twelve god-chosen figures who had granted the mandate of heaven to every emperor for four hundred years.
Mort watched from the palace steps and felt his headache deepen.
He had delivered the scheduling request exactly as ordered. He had used the phrase the new administrator because no other phrase existed yet that felt safe to write on official correspondence. He had expected — had genuinely, specifically hoped — that the Seraphic Seat would refuse. That they would cite divine law, theological precedent, the sacred inviolability of the imperial succession process, and decline to appear until a legitimate emperor was identified.
They had arrived in four days. Three days early.
Of course they had. The renewal stamp was real. The Emperor's seal was real. Whatever theological crisis they were navigating internally, the bureaucratic machinery that ran divine mandate had processed the document and produced a response: attend, confirm, continue.
---
The palanquins stopped. Twelve figures descended.
At their head: High Seraph JULIUS — eldest of the Seat, seventy years old and built like something that had been old for so long it had forgotten how to be anything else. White hair, deep-set eyes the color of winter sky, the kind of face that had been making pronouncements of divine authority long enough that the authority seemed to emanate from the face itself rather than from any external source.
Julius looked at the palace steps. Looked at Mort.
"The administrator," Julius said. Not a question — a request for confirmation.
"Is inside," Mort said. He stepped aside.
Julius's expression did not change. He had been High Seraph long enough that surprise was something that happened to other people.
He walked in.
---
The administrative office had been rearranged.
The Emperor's desk remained. The side table with the strategic map remained. Everything else had been modified in small, precise ways — a second chair placed across from the primary seat, documents organized into four distinct stacks, the morning's correspondence answered and in the outgoing tray.
Yogiri was standing at the window when they entered.
He did not turn immediately. He was watching the procession's rear guard file into the courtyard below — three hundred priests arranging themselves with the practiced efficiency of people who performed this ceremony often. His hands were clasped behind his back.
Julius stopped in the center of the room.
Eleven other Seraphs arranged themselves in a half-circle behind him. Some managed to keep their faces composed. Several did not. One — young, barely thirty, with the look of a man who had received divine mandate recently enough that it still felt new — was staring at the black-and-white flame orbiting Yogiri's shoulders like a slow constellation.
Yogiri turned around.
He looked at Julius the way he had looked at everything in the past week — with the calm, evaluating attention of a man taking inventory. Julius looked back.
A long moment.
"You renewed the mandate," Julius said.
"It was the administratively correct action," Yogiri said. "Allowing it to lapse would have destabilized provincial governors who derive their local authority from the Seat's endorsement. I need stable provinces."
"You need stable provinces." Julius's winter-sky eyes did not blink. "You have been in this palace for seven days. You killed the Emperor in eleven seconds. And you need stable provinces."
"Yes."
"You understand," Julius said carefully, "that the divine mandate is not a document. It is a covenant. Between the ruling authority of LATIUM and the gods themselves. Between—"
"Between the administrative head of the empire and the theological framework that provides its population with spiritual governance and social cohesion." Yogiri moved to the desk and sat. "I understand what it is. I stamped it because the covenant's function continues regardless of who sits in this office. The gods aren't endorsing my character. They're endorsing the position."
Silence.
Julius was quiet for long enough that the young Seraph behind him shifted uncomfortably. The others held still — watching their elder, waiting.
He's not afraid, Julius was thinking. Yogiri could read it in the stillness of the old man's face — not the stillness of composure, but of a man whose categories were being reorganized beneath him in real time. He's genuinely not afraid of us. Not performing courage. Not suppressing fear. He simply — doesn't find us frightening.
"The gods," Julius said finally, "may have their own response to the current situation."
"I expect they will." Yogiri picked up the morning's first document. "That's a problem for when it arrives. Currently, I have fourteen provincial governance structures that need clarity on their operational status, a trade route disruption from the Rūme incident that's affecting six eastern markets, and a military situation in Macedon that requires my attention within the next six weeks." He turned the first page. "I'd like your confirmation on the mandate renewal, and then I'd like your assessment of which provincial religious administrations are functioning effectively and which are corrupt. You'll have better information on that than my imperial records do."
Another silence. Longer.
Julius said: "You want our help administering the empire."
"You've been helping administer the empire for four hundred years. I'm not replacing that function. I'm assuming a different one." Yogiri looked up. "Is there a theological objection to the Seraphic Seat continuing its established role under a new administrative authority, or are we going to discuss whether I'm a legitimate emperor for the next two hours? Because I have a preference, and it's the option that uses the two hours productively."
The young Seraph made a sound that might have been a laugh suppressed at the last possible moment. Julius looked at him. The young Seraph looked at the ceiling.
Julius looked back at Yogiri.
He had been High Seraph for thirty years. He had confirmed the mandates of three emperors, navigated two succession crises, and once — once, in the early years — talked a provincial governor out of a civil war over a trade route dispute using nothing but patience and theological precedent.
He was not sure any of those experiences were applicable here.
"The Seraphic Seat," Julius said, with the careful deliberation of a man choosing each word the way you chose footing on uncertain ground, "will consider the question of the mandate's current status." He paused. "Pending that consideration, we will continue our established administrative functions."
It was not a confirmation.
It was not a refusal.
It was, Yogiri recognized, the most politically sophisticated response available to the man — a bridge built from one side, waiting to see if the other side held.
"That's sufficient," Yogiri said. He turned back to his document. "Mort will coordinate with your administrative staff on the provincial assessment. I'd like it within four days."
---
Julius stood for a moment more. Then he turned and walked out.
Eleven Seraphs followed him.
The young one — last through the door — glanced back once. His expression was extraordinary: the look of a man who had arrived expecting to perform an exorcism and instead attended a budget meeting.
The door closed.
Yogiri set down the document he hadn't actually been reading.
He looked at the empty room.
The gods will have their own response. Julius had said it as a warning. It wasn't the first warning he'd received this week — three provincial governors had included variations of divine retribution in their correspondence, with the confidence of people who had always had divine retribution available as a rhetorical backstop.
Yogiri was curious what divine retribution looked like in practice.
He returned to his documents.
---
In the corridor outside, Julius did not break stride.
His Seraphs fell into formation around him — the long habit of decades — and matched his pace through the palace's main gallery, past the guards who had been LATIUM soldiers six days ago and were simply palace guards now by some semantic shift that hadn't fully resolved, toward the waiting procession in the courtyard.
The young Seraph — CELIUS, recently appointed, still adjusting to the weight of divine mandate and apparently still capable of shock — moved to Julius's right shoulder.
"High Seraph," Celius said quietly. "We cannot seriously be considering—"
"We confirmed nothing," Julius said.
"We didn't deny anything either—"
"No." Julius kept walking. "We didn't."
"He's not an emperor. He has no bloodline claim, no divine selection, no—"
"He has the Emperor's seal, the palace, and he killed the Emperor in eleven seconds." Julius's voice was perfectly level. "He also, in seven days, has stabilized three provincial governance crises, reopened the eastern trade dispute, and answered three weeks of backed correspondence." A pause. "He is more administratively functional than Krau was in his last year."
Celius stared at his elder's profile. "That cannot be your criterion—"
"My criterion," Julius said, "is the same it has always been: what is best for the fourteen million people who live in this empire." He stopped at the top of the palace steps and looked out at the courtyard — his three hundred priests, the twelve palanquins, the grey morning sky above Byzantium. "That man inside is not leaving. Whatever we do or do not confirm, he is not leaving. The question is not his legitimacy." He began descending the steps. "The question is whether fourteen million people eat this winter."
Celius was quiet for the rest of the walk to the palanquins.
He was still quiet when they settled inside, and the procession began to move, and the capital of LATIUM continued its uncanny, unsettling, entirely involuntary process of functioning as if nothing fundamental had changed.
Which was, Julius thought, precisely the point.
---
By evening, the first provincial governor arrived in the capital.
He came, as instructed, without a military contingent. Just a diplomatic envoy of twelve. He was shown to a waiting room, offered refreshment, and left there for forty-seven minutes — long enough, Yogiri had decided, to make the point about whose time was valuable here.
When the governor was finally shown in, he was a heavyset man named PURRGIS of the Burgundia province — red-faced, clearly furious, clearly suppressing the fury with the specific effort of a man who had calculated that fury was not useful here.
He stood across the desk.
He did not bow.
Yogiri noted it. Made no comment.
"I represent," Purrgis began, in the practiced voice of a man who gave speeches, "the lawful provincial authority of Burgundia, acting under the authority of the Seraphic Seat and the traditions of the Latium Imperial succession, which clearly stipulate—"
"Burgundia has the most productive grain surplus in the empire," Yogiri said. "Fifty-three percent of the empire's winter reserve comes from your province. That surplus has been systematically underreported for eleven years to reduce your provincial tax burden." He picked up a document. "I have the actual production figures."
Purrgis stopped.
He looked at the document.
He looked at Yogiri.
"I also," Yogiri continued, "have the secondary ledgers your predecessor kept, which your administration continued, which would — if submitted to the Seraphic Seat's tax enforcement office — constitute fifteen counts of imperial fraud." He set the document down. "You came without a military contingent. That was the correct decision. You came ready to cite succession law at me, which was the incorrect one." He looked at Purrgis directly. "Sit down."
Purrgis sat.
"Here is your status," Yogiri said. "You remain Governor of Burgundia. Your previous administration's tax liability is considered settled, since I have no interest in punishing decisions made before my authority, only decisions made after it." He pulled a blank document from the stack and slid it across the desk. "You will sign this. It confirms your acknowledgment of the current administrative authority, your commitment to accurate reporting going forward, and your agreement to increase winter surplus delivery by twelve percent, which is still below your actual production capacity."
Purrgis looked at the document for a long time.
He's going to sign it, Yogiri thought. They all will. Not because he burned Rūme. Not because he killed an emperor in eleven seconds. Because the alternative — the thing Purrgis was actually calculating as he stared at that document — was twelve percent more grain.
Power, Yogiri had learned, was straightforward.
People didn't yield to fire. They yielded to the cold understanding that the person across from them knew more, held more, and had already decided how this ended.
The fire just made that understanding arrive faster.
Purrgis picked up the pen.
---
Outside the administrative office, in the guard's corridor, Sergeant Denn of the former Third Imperial Guard stood his post.
He had told himself, in those desperate hours crossing the Aurus River, that he would never go back. That no order, no circumstance, no logic would put him inside the same building as the white-haired man again.
He had lasted five days.
Then the new roster had gone up, the new management had announced that all existing guard contracts were valid under the current authority, and Denn had found himself standing in a corridor he recognized, outside a door he recognized, listening to the scratch of a pen on paper from inside.
He stared at the wall opposite him.
Eleven seconds, he thought. Krau lasted eleven seconds.
Down the corridor, through the administrative office wall, he could just barely hear the man he was now technically guarding continue speaking.
The voice was calm. Unhurried.
Utterly certain.
What do you do, Denn thought, when the most dangerous thing in the world is also the most organized?
He stood his post.
He did not have an answer.