[hider=The Serene Empire of Tara] [i]The Imperial Capital, Rigour, Salano District, The Palace of Reason[/i] It was a fine, spring day in the imperial capital, and, taking advantage of the good weather and warmth, the leisured classes of the Serene Empire were at play. The sparkling blue expanse of the great river Rheol, meandering through the city in looping, sinuous curves before emptying into the sea near the crane-bedecked Docks and the League of Iron, was thronged with pleasure craft. Yachts darted and played, gleaming iridescently like enormous dragonflies under clouds of sail, skipping merrily through the heavier, slower cargo traffic, dancing with one another between the lacy arches of the capital's many, many bridges, their wakes criss-crossing and foaming the river water, whilst ornate, ponderous pleasure-barges - silk-pavilioned, drenched in colour - played host to water picnics for the wives of the great and the good. Once, not all that many years ago, the city's yachtsmen and women - yachting was the national sport and no respecter of gender - had struggled in turgid, foetid and sewage-choked waters. If the poisonous fumes rising from the water didn't carry off the unfortunate sailors, the many pipes dumping sewage and industrial chemicals - the price of progress - provided an extra, unfortunate frisson of danger. Even the bridges, one of the prides of the city, lacy fantasias in a whole host of styles from exuberant Veletian filigreed arches to the baroque magnificence of High Taran, had been rotting where they stood, their supports eaten away by the corrosive liquid lapping at their bases, and it was common in those days for pieces of stonework to prove a serious navigational hazard, crashing down from on high and littering the river with sudden obstacles. Peregrine raised a toast to the previous empress and Sir Jonathan Bezielle, who between them had taken the festering sore that was the Rheol in firm hand. The medical profession - the Royal Colleges - had for once been united in their arguments as to the health of the population, and the undoubted benefits that cleansing the river would have, but what had [i]really[/i] swung things was the influential SBC - the Salano Boating Club - threatening (or advising, depending on one's perspective) to move the Montclair Cup, the most prestigious and profitable event of the entire yachting year in the Empire, away from the Rheol, on whose waters it had been raced for three hundred years, on the grounds of the health and vitality of its competitors. [i]That[/i], the threat to their spring pastime, the most beloved activity of many a young buck and doe of means and breeding, and to the water picnics so beloved of their wives, had mobilized the aristocracy of the Empire [i]en masse[/i], and, aping them, the merchantier princes had waded in too. Money had been thrown at the problem from every direction. Royal Commissions abounded, as did the numinous - and accurate - idea that a peerage would be in the offing for whichever enterprising engineer actually achieved the lofty aim - carting all the city's effluvia far from the glittering imperial capital and into the sea, where it could be safely discharged. Into the fray had stepped Jonathan Bezielle, a native of Duchy Mora and an expert in drainage. He'd applied many of the same principles to his designs and plans as he'd used in that mountainous duchy, and his plans and drawings had been sumptuous things, all technical notation and careful shading, where others had been rough designs and monochrome stolidity. The crowning glory had been the [i]model[/i], which had so impressed the Committee - and the empress - that it had won Jonathan Bezielle the enormous project, with all its problems and prestige. And it was, with a few minor alterations, that model's vision that Peregrine himself now beheld, writ large in earth and stone and steel, from the terraces of the Parliament building, the glorious High Taran fantasy monument to Imperial power and prestige on the banks of the great river. Millions of tons of earth had been moved - dumped into the stinking river from excavations all across the city, carved out into subterranean tunnels through which all the effluvia of civilisation could flow, all on a slight but carefully-planned incline, letting gravity take the strain of moving the muck. That earth had mounded higher and higher, abutting some of the more select districts - but that was all part of Jonathan's plan, and when it was done, handsomely-dressed embankments provided beautiful places for the lords and ladies to stroll of an evening, admiring the parks and the new-cleaned river, all the while beneath their feet a vast sewer carried the waste of millions away, far downstream to the great outflow pipes in the estuary, where the tides diluted and dispersed it all. '[color=PowderBlue][i]Truly[/i],[/color]' thought Peregrine idly, sipping his drink '[color=PowderBlue][i]The works of man are wondrous indeed.[/i][/color]'. "[color=PaleGreen]Admirin' the view?[/color]" came an unexpected voice, close at hand, and Peregrine jumped violently, knuckles suddenly white around his glass. "[color=PowderBlue]Dash it all, Bunty![/color]" he reprimanded, whirling and giving his best double-barrelled glare to the nobleman who'd snuck up on him. "[color=PowderBlue]You nearly had me in the damned drink![/color]" Bunty - Benjamin Reuben, 4th Viscount Ulimiere and, as such, one of the wards of his own Duchy Arcadia - was an old friend (or, as they both gleefully insisted to their respective circles, [i]nuisance[/i]). An ornament of the Parliament for twenty years, his black hair was pepperpot-gray at the temples, now, but his eyes still held that sparkling rakish gleam that had reliably entranced bevies of Veletian beauties on the Continent in their shared youth and, doubtless, still did so today. He was known to have an...[i]energetic[/i] schedule of personal pursuits, after all, but he was careful and discreet in the manner of most imperial nobles, male or female, and his liaisons never resulted in bastardy and shame for his lady wife. Nor did her own dalliances, and - once an heir of the blood had been begot, that was all that mattered to the imperial nobility. The Bliss Alliance, too, closer to home, was well thought-of in the Empire, and provided imperial citizens with a whole wealth of options, to suit any taste and pocketbook, with iron-clad discretion. The system seemed odd, to foreigners, but it worked and had done for generations. "[color=PaleGreen]Lucky these days all you'd be worryin' about is coming out wet,[/color]" Bunty observed laconically, joining the duke at the railings, gazing speculatively out at the bustling city. "[color=PaleGreen]Our fathers' day, you'd be on your way to the medicos' tender mercies, likely as not.[/color]" "[color=PowderBlue]Mmm. All praise to Bezielle.[/color]" "[color=PaleGreen]Quite.[/color]" They clinked glasses in the sunshine, and enjoyed the moment of relief from the endless business of empire. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [i]The Imperial Capital, Rigour, Whisper Palace, Red Drawing Room[/i] Liliana was drowning in flame, cocooned in lava, the womb of the earth. Sparks glittered in her vision, somersaulting embers, and then, as she came to full wakefulness and blinked her eyes into focus, the incandescent scene swimming before her resolved itself. The sparks were the afternoon sunlight, flooding in through the enormous mullioned windows in the western wall and blazing bright on the gilt decoration that gave the room much of its overwrought magnificence. The lava, meanwhile, and all the flames - that was the decor of the room itself: crimson damask, dupioni silk hangings like fire, rich incarnadine carpetry and rugwork, and the womblike heat, the result of a comfortable chair and a beam of sunlight. She'd fallen asleep, the warm sun and comfortable chair acting like a tincture of syrup of poppy, over a pile of State papers, all the doings of her government both near and far, in the middle of comparing their dry notation with the information from her own experiences and her own networks. Foreign affairs she was all at sea in, comparatively - she leaned heavily on Gabriel de Marin there, her government's lordly Foreign Secretary, to whom all the internecine reefs and rapids of international affairs were as lucid, limpid shallows - but in [i]home[/i] affairs, ah, there she held the field against all comers, even the ostensible Home Secretary playing second fiddle to her. From an early age, Liliana had known the throne would one day be hers. The de Tara line had always tended towards daughters, and that tendency had only grown more pronounced with the slow passage of generations. [i]Why[/i] this should be so, no-one could say - the finest medical minds mystified - but the fact remained. The Gryphon Throne had been held by more women than men, now, Liliana herself being the fourth in a recent run of unbroken empresses regnant, and her heir presumptive, a cousin safely stashed away against the unthinkable, was currently set to be the fifth. As such, [i]knowing[/i] that one day, quite literally, all she surveyed from the imposing spires of the Whisper Palace would be hers, she had bent all her intellect and all her energy to understanding that glorious, beautiful, maddening, twisted, brilliant, perplexing, [i]insane[/i] country. Her studies had been encouraged - the concept of [i]noblesse oblige[/i] having been burned into the Taran psyche long before the phrase even existed to describe that blessed aristocratic state - and in them she'd found and fostered a deep connection with her people. [i]All[/i] her people - whether they be Home Duchies dukes or colonial peasants. Liliana took her coronation oaths seriously, and worked hard at her understanding of her subjects. That was truly how she thought of it, the world divided sharply in two: her people, and foreigners. It didn't matter how [i]long[/i] you'd been one of hers; the moment the Rubicon was crossed, so to speak, that was that. Imperial citizen, with all the rights and privileges and duties thereunto irrevocably bound. Duties to Crown and Country, to the good order of the Empire and the safety of her citizens, and in return for that loyalty, the Empire and its emperors and empresses had to give freely and deeply of their own devotion. It was a covenant, born in history and bred into the flesh, the blood and the bone of House Tara, and one that Liliana, when she thought of it consciously at all, had no intention of breaking or even weakening. The click of the doors opening, before she'd even had time to pick up her pen once more, drew her attention even as one of the Palace butlers shimmered in. "[color=Violet]Ma'am, your sailing apparel has been prepared and [i]Manticore[/i] is awaiting your pleasure at the palace marina.[/color]" Liliana brightened, even the thought of her later engagements - a garden picnic with some influential Society matrons which would prove to be Terribly Tedious, a meeting with Peregrine which would prove to be Terribly Vital, and a performance of Suleiman's latest opera, accompanied by her greatest nobles and most powerful mandarins, which would be both Terribly Vital and Terribly Tedious in one - swept away by the thought of sun and sail and water. Like duty, water had been bred into the heart of Tarans the globe over, and even their empress was not immune. [/hider]