[i]"Are you watching, Nero?" Molech tugs at his wild black beard, lips drawing back from his teeth at the corner of his mouth. Unlike his bodyguard, the fearsome Pallas Rex, who wears a breastplate of black armor whose neon overlays beat in time with the cannon fire and whose helmet bears the goddess's sacred crest, Molech is wearing a simple robe. Bearing arms would imply to those around him that he was not certain in his ability to act according to the collated Codes of War, which he carries in three tomes chained to his wrist. No enemy will approach him if it is not according to his wish, and no traitor will survive the heavy spear-blow of the Pallas Rex. "You hubristrix! You senseless owl! It is my lady's will that I win in her name, by her doctrine, before her image! My rule is the last the age will see, and not one pretender will survive my wrath!"

Redana takes it all in, eyes wide. On the backdrop, the lights shine in simulation of space. Space! There, look at that painting-- the ships cut smoothly through the swirling winds, firing their long-lance batteries as they close in upon the Spear. And there, taking up an entire wall, the sword shorn from the figurehead of the Classical, pitted with starlight and frost. Her hands itch; she wants to vault up onto point in a painting, lead a battalion of Ceronians, crash through a doctrine-perfect phalanx with nothing but fury and courage; she dodges each spearhead as the howl from her throat and the throats of her war-band mingles with the savage cry of Lord Ares, who gives them the strength to do the impossible!

Up on the stage, twelve Machine Intelligences wearing theater masks and billowing robes surround Molech. Redana squeezes Bella's hand, pulls her a little closer. "It's the Board of Administration," she hisses in excitement. "They're convinced by the omens that disaster is about to befall Baradissar, and--"

The first sword moves an inch out of its scabbard, hidden in a sleeve, but the Pallas Rex is impossible to deceive. With a contemplative grunt, she hoists her mirror-polished shield, dark as night, in the air and slams it through the neck of the offending Board member, who falls with a crackle of static. Eleven short arming swords, straight and gleaming, are drawn, and the Pallas Rex begins her deadly dance. (That is why there are Stage Machines here, you see; it would be cruelty to make twelve Servitors die eight times a day for a museum exhibit.) Molech doesn't even turn as the recorded shrieks of the dying traitors ring out. "Nero! Nero! Are you watching, Nero, for once in your damned life? Are you witnessing perfection?"[/i]

***

"You know," Redana says, settling onto one of the seats with a relief she can't hide, her leg supported by a lattice of light braces woven into her trousers, "I wonder if Molech's bodyguard is still on the planet. After Mom kicked her out through the viewscreen. The Pallas Rex. She was a statue of Athena, like Alexa, but Molech used her as his personal bodyguard. I always wondered if she got caught in the planet's gravity well and fell to earth, leaving behind a crater. What would she have done, anyway? Probably become a hermit in the Imperial Palace. Defeated weaponmasters are [i]always[/i] taking up vows and becoming ascetics."

Amazingly, she has never put together two and two. But, you know, why would she? There's the Pallas Rex, invincible image of the goddess, who faltered in the face of Ares-blessed Nero's swordplay, and then there's Alexa, who sat in a niche outside her prison's front gate until the day she needed her help to escape, and is friends with Isty (the Pallas Rex would [i]never[/i]), and probably doesn't even like fighting all that much, and just wants to go home and sit in her niche again. Like Alexa would ever become an ascetic meditating on virtue and the gods!