83 - ...Nice Empire You've Got Here...

Note to Intharas: Honest boss, every new Guard I talked to said it was an old Mahid’s ghost and that it took the Imperator and the Fenjitzas together to deal with it. That’s why people saw the Most Holy running across Presentation square as if his hair were on fire, with one of the New Mahid.  And they didn’t get rid of it, the Guards are saying it’s locked into a room in the Mahid Quarters that they are sealing up permanently.  Here’s what the MP staff is saying other than “Ask the Imperator”...

FIRE SYSTEM FAILS, MIRROR DESTROYED

As the New Imperial Bodyguard, colloquially known as ‘the New Mahid’ were moving into the newly renovated Mahid section of the Marble Palace, the recently installed fire retardant system failed spectacularly and drenched the new inhabitants with several hundredweights of rusty coloured water.

In the course of the evacuation, the massive new mirror art installation by glass artist Mil Moren ‘Forest of Reflection’ fell or was knocked off the end wall and unfortunately destroyed.   
The Imperial staff assures us that there are emergency funds available to have the art work replaced by the original artist.

Clean-up of water damage proceeds apace, with New Guard taking up temporary living quarters in the training hall and the Imperator’s staff assures us that everything will be cleaned up before the end of the day, though drying things out will most certainly take a bit longer.

A rusted tool forgotten in the Fire system is being blamed for the failure and the uncanny red colour of the flood waters.

Boss: Assemblyman Kallen, Assemblyman Fil Foren, and General Pasen were all there and the two Assemblymen refuse to say anything about it.  General Pasen disappeared into Scarlet Rosary with the Imperator and the Fenjitzas and hasn’t been seen since. I haven’t managed to find him to ask him anything.  Almost all of the New Guard were there and they’re learning to be blank-faced fast. I saw the damage and glass shards were embedded in the panelling deep enough to have killed someone. All the alcohol lamps had been smashed and lots of them seem to have been flung instead of just getting knocked straight down off their brackets and that ‘reddish water’? It stinks like blood, but it’s getting scrubbed up so fast it may as well be invisible by now. Everyone now says it was a busted pipe and people being hayelishly clumsy, not a ghost.

I’m staying onsite to speak to Himself when they come out.

**

“General, what’s your emergency?” Minis asked the instant the door closed behind them even in the face of the servants who had a fresh set of Imperial Whites for him. He sank down in the nearest chair, hoping it looked ‘calm and collected’ rather than ‘close to collapse’.  His guts were in a complete uproar and he was shaking all over and trying to hide it.  His clothes were soaked through with sweat.

General Pasen re-opened the door and waved the servants in with the new clothing and a kaf service trolley.  “Leave all those and go on,” he said.  “Imperator, at least have a cup of water.”

“Yes, yes.” Minis unsealed the bottle as they let themselves out. It would have been tasted for him, swallowed half of it and unlaced his sodden shirt using it as a towel to dry himself off. The laundresses are going to be dismayed.

“We have a new Quatrain Prophet and an army converted of our own people. The Tunnel has been closed against them, but they killed Assemblyman Irinalias and all other able bodied men of the North Mouth village who wouldn’t convert. The children are gone, any young women over second threshold have been forceably purified. Assemblywoman Mil Koren and the Tunnel clan are holding them back, by shutting down the ‘Mountain’s Breath’. I’ve ordered the passes overmountain closed.”

“Shen.”

... nice Empire you’ve got here... drifted through Minis’s head as the general’s report sank in. ...shame if something should happen to it...