Knightly Theorem of Government Inefficiency
Through the ocean of green, the great, verdant hills and valleys that rose and fell according to some unknown tide, a single soul swam, a single living being disrupted its natural flow and witnessed its unexplored depths, a certain singular malignant intelligence driving it onwards.
It could feel its target. See it, smell it, touch it…
In a single burst of frantic activity, the hapless herbivore at the edge of the great, green expanse was drawn beneath the surface, flailing for but a moment, then stopping, the rich red colour appearing on the surface the only mark of its passing.
The ocean was quiet again.
A while later, the attacker crawled out of the great green, reclining on the cold, stony surface that the ocean was splashing against, sighing in pleasure as the waves rolled over her body. She dragged her catch along with her, happily nibbling on its arm, droplets of scarlet blood falling onto her exposed flesh.
“Ahem.”
The Grand and Regal Divine Padishah-Empress, Praise Her 36 Divine Names, May She Rule For All Eternity, of the Quadratic Imperiate turned her bright black eyes towards her chambellan, smiling a crimson-coloured smile.
“Ah, here you are. I have called you here to assist in urgent matters of the state.”
The Royal Chambellan glanced at the dead, blue eyes of the girl-slave from the Padishah-Empress’ personal harem, frozen in an instant of mortified fear, never to see again, and knelt before his master.
“Thy will.”
“See, chambellan,” she raised her hand, paper shards of the green ocean falling off her alabaster skin, “recently I have taken notice of a great issue within the halls of my palace, a place sacred beyond all others.”
She paused for a moment, swallowing another chunk of meat, sighing in pleasure.
“Ah, you really know how to pick them, my dear chambellan. Remind me to reward you later.”
“Thy will,” he replied, his gaze low.
“In any case, to get to the meat of the matter, so to speak, news of a certain troublesome situation within my own government finally reached my ears. You know the usual way of things. Warlords and bureaucrats alike feuding with each other,” the loud sound of a bone snapping beneath teeth, “conspiring against each other, backstabbing and murdering their supposed friends for nothing but scraps of power off my table! It’s, mmmm, splendid to witness, my faithful servant, you understand? Simply splendid.”
She sighed, expression souring for a moment as she continued to nibble on the arm within her hand, staining her body and the paper ocean even further.
“They, however, have started to stop,” another gulp “and the dreaded spectre of Efficiency has once again raised its ugly head. I am a hard woman, chambellan, making hard decisions. Consider, for instance, the issue of the division of wealth.”
She swept her free arm in front of her, showing the entire ocean of green banknotes, rich in denominations, but a few of them showing signs of Padishah-Empress’ enthusiastic indiscretions.
“This is not an issue that can be taken lightly, or left for the fools to decide. Yet, my dearest chambellan, they have started to! Like a freshly oiled machine, the gears of Imperiate’s modern government are now running smoothly, more so than ever before. Young, bright bureaucrats and officers full of hopes and dreams, yet uncorrupted by ages-old decadency and lust of power, have started to solve all of Quadratic Imperiate’s problems by themselves, without even bothering to inform me – ‘the Padishah-Empress should not have to bother herself with such trivialities’, they say!”
The chambellan was kneeling before his master and kept his gaze low, even as the Empress’ voice grew more agitated with every word, sharp teeth ravaging meat and crushing bone.
“The sheer arrogance! I am the ruler of this nation, the greatest empire to ever exist in the universe, a living god! I built it with my own bloodied hands, standing victorious amidst a sea of corpses of those who dared to oppose me! And I do not approve of some pitiful whelp that hasn’t even stood by my side at Radiant cutting into my Imperial treasury just to feed some miserable orphans. If they weren’t so weak and cuddled, they wouldn’t be starving in the first place!”
The Padishah-Empress crushed the last remains of the hand between her teeth, a single finger dropping loose and falling into the green ocean beneath.
The chambellan was kneeling before his master, and kept his gaze low.
The Empress turned, cupping his face in her alabaster hands, black eyes meeting cold, unfeeling glass, merely inches between each other, her body all but revealed for him to witness.
She smiled. He did not shudder.
“Tear them up for me, my chambellan. Introduce that primordial element of chaos into those disgustingly perfected cogs, put sand in their lubricant. The current spectacle bores me, and when I am bored, I hunger. Do not make me wait.”
“Thy will”, the chambellan replied, and rose from his knees, released from his master’s grip.
“Oh, and one more thing, while we’re on the subject of orphans,” the Padishah-Empress interrupted him, a thoughtful expression on her face, a thin line of blood falling from her lips and onto her breasts, “send in two after you leave, and have the maids bring some cranberry sauce. I need comfort, and these are awfully stringy these days.”
“Thy will”, the chambellan replied, his gaze low, and left the Empress’ quarters in silence, trying not to dwell on the sound of chewing he left behind him.
The world shifted, and in the sightless depths of the World-Machine that dwelt in the cold, infinite void beyond the stars, another set of gears, long since rusted and stopped, has started to turn once again.
A pair of politicians walked down the halls of one of the innumerable corridors of the Imperial Palace, a great tower that pierced the heavens, their attire a curious combination of business suits and traditional patrician clothes, worn during senate gatherings and religious ceremonies to honour Her Ineffableness, for what little distinction existed between the two.
“See, Pavel, this new taxation system reform will help us plug holes that we had been forced to bear with for years,” he patted a freshly-printed document in his hand, puffing out his chest with pride, “and greatly lessen the burden on the peasant class at the same time! We will bring in as much money to the treasury as before, at the very least, while dealing with social issues that have been plaguing us for centuries!”
The other man, a short, tired-looking man, glanced at his friend as they walked towards the chancellor’s office to present their proposal.
“Yes, Gavel. Or we could leave those well alone and rake in twice as much as we are doing now. Are you sure that Her Transcendent Majesty is going to approve of your proposal? Last I talked with old Kazio, he mentioned her being quite surprised by Anja’s project to redirect funds from reserves to disaster relief over in the third Quadrant-“
“Bright young girl, really, that Anja,” Minister Gavel nodded, “haven’t seen her the whole week, though.”
“My point is,” Pavel continued, mildly annoyed at the interruption, “you are playing with fire, Gavel, and I believe that as a friend it is my duty to say so. Her Ineffableness does have her moods, and the last thing we need are loud projects like this that might make her pay attention again. Reforms do not happen overnight, revolutions do.”
Gavel shrugged, rolling his eyes, not noticing a strange sound drawing closer as he spoke.
“Yes, Pavel, but we have at least three budgets in those reserve funds. What is Her Divine Majesty going to do with all that money? Swim in i-“
He stopped, his last words cut short by a blade of fine steel parting his flesh, held by a strong, mailed hand.
Pavel stared in mute horror as the head of his friend rolled towards his feet, blood squirting from the neck stump, and the metal horror in front of him, teeth clenched, blade bloodied, stared back.
But a moment later, as the quiet droning of the contragrav of the palace guards started to fill the surrounding corridors, the terrible shape turned and rode away, leaving behind the unmistakeable sound of horseshoes clopping and an Imperial Minister dead in its wake.
And thus have started the inexplicable killings within the Imperial Palace, the beginning of grim events that would claim many lives and paralyse the workings of imperial bureaucracy for months to come.
A freshly-promoted general, richly rewarded for bringing yet another nation under Imperiate’s iron heel, was relaxing in his office, satisfied and content. He opened the window that one of such status was privileged to have, and his first breath of the mechanically-freshened air was his last, as a wooden shaft piercing his throat cut his career short. A monstrous shadow rode away on a walkway below, its teeth clenched tightly.
His aide found him bleeding out on the floor, utter incredulity on his face, the feathers on the arrow a brilliant red.
A secretary opened the photocopier, preparing to put a set of documents in. Suddenly, she heard unfamiliar, metal footsteps closing in behind her, and as she turned, the last sight she saw was the monstrous, brightly-coloured horror that she only heard of in faint whispers before, its teeth clenched, her doom in its hand.
Her co-workers found her lying on the photocopier, an axe buried deep within her chest, the thoughtless machine printing out her frightened, blood-soaked face time and time again, without end.
The commander of the 11th division of the palace guards, long famed to be utterly loyal and incorruptible even amongst his peers, was returning to his quarters, having finished his duty and his patrols, utterly failing to apprehend the bizarre, galloping creature that has been reaping a grim harvest amongst the inhabitants of the Imperial Palace. He yawned, tired, not having a chance to have a good night’s sleep for weeks, every day bringing more grave news.
Just as he opened his mouth, the horrible clopping could be heard in its earnest, and before the shocked man could pull out his sidearm or turn around, a long shaft of wood pierced him through, metal-coated tip emerging from between his jaws, spreading them inhumanly wide, as if in some parody of a scream that he was never allowed to let out.
A group of determined politicians, true patriots each and every one of them, sat within a conference room, trying to overcome their differences in opinion to work out a healthcare reform, so necessary in those difficult times, plagued by war and disaster. Each of them was full of ideas, each wanted his great nation to thrive – surely, when willing souls gather, all obstacles could be overcome.
They saw the signs too late, though, far too late to escape, as the swivelling chair rolled by at lethal speeds, allowing each of them to see their murderous assailant in his fullest – thick layers of metal covering him like carapace, glistening faintly in the dim illumination of office lights, bright-red fabrics with heraldic signs sewn on, their worrying shapes bearing the gravest of implications to those few educated men who could recognise their odious forms, a pair of crossbows held in his savage gauntlets, and his clenched teeth, the teeth…!
The Minister of Defence walked through the palace corridors surrounded by his aides and palace guards, as little comfort as they seemed to offer nowadays. The situation was beyond dire; while ultimately the deaths were little more than irritants, temporary setbacks - after all, what one or two hundreds of deaths mattered in a tower full of millions, even if they were the best and brightest? – the men under his and the Royal Chambellan’s command were both utterly incapable of apprehending the criminal that recently made constant mockery of Her Divine Transcendentalness, and in the Quadratic Imperiate, the price of incompetence could be dear indeed.
He would have to contact the Royal Chambellan – work out the best way to present the situation to Her Ineffableness, so as to gain her divine insight and hopefully not end up as her newest meal instead. A day couldn’t pass without him hearing the complaints that Lord High Director of Human Resources kept making about the high turnover in indentured staff and the difficulty of actually finding replacements that met Her Divine Majesty’s standards, almost as if the man was utterly detached from the much more pressing issue of a bloody maniac galloping through the Tower on some ancient beast and cutting off heads of government officials.
It was then that he did not hear the clopping, for there was none, just a terrifying non-sound as the forcefields that were windows exploded inwards, popping like a soap bubble and letting in the cold, black emptiness of space.
He could see the beast – some of the most ancient of the palace’s inhabitants have but faintly remembered the true, odious name of the monstrous creature, a “horse” – and he could see its terrifying rider, steel blade in hand, glistening in the black light of the suns, his teeth clenched tightly, staring at him with a terrifying intensity.
The Minister fell, his hearts skipping a beat, time slowing down around him, as if everyone was moving inside water, floating, his feet leaving the floor-
And he felt a gauntlet of metal closing down on his neck, and he knew that he was lost.
The scene lasted barely a second – and then the bubbles mended themselves, the light faded, and the cuirasses of the palace guards started to turn, bringing their fearsome null-rays to bear, to reduce their hated adversary into nothing but void and echoes.
But he held the Minister in front of him, still breathing, and they stayed their hands, for their own brains were wired so that even contemplating shooting him was outside the realm of their imagination. The Minister knew that well; he himself commanded it so.
“Kolny!” Ala, one of his aides cried out, a lovely little thing, he knew that well. Saved from Her Divine Majesty’s personal supply. She’d just be wasted in that grinder… “Hang on for just a moment longer, we’re going to s-“
She never had time to finish, for the assailant, exploiting the moment of doubt, tore away the cover of the ventilation shaft. He hissed, teeth clenched, the horrible, awful sound leaving everyone on the floor, retching and powerless, and then moved, arms and legs and joints bending in ways that they should never be allowed to, disappearing within the shaft with his quarry with frightening speed.
A moment later, his burden-beast let out the last neigh to ever be heard in this world, and followed its master.
And then, there was nothing but silence.
Her Divine Majesty Padishah-Empress laughed, teeth gleaming in the faint internal light of the armoured cruiser, her flawless form, now concealed beneath a dress of cosmic strings, as black as the light of stars, shaking with mirth.
“Ah, to feel alive once more, to see the petty struggles of mortals, to see them quiver in fear at the very thought of facing me! Splendid, my dear chambellan, simply splendid! Your works and your deeds have pleased me greatly and I will reward you suitably.”
She reached out, grabbing the Royal Chambellan, so small in comparison to his master who knew neither mercy nor love, and drew him closer to her, smiling brightly, planting a kiss on his lips, crimson and black merging together in a moment of perfect joy.
“Ask any wish of me, the most loyal of my servants, the last of those who saw me wild and free and almighty at the ur-citadels of Radiant, where my hands tore apart stars.”
But he merely smiled sadly, nostalgia and regret alike on his face, and the Padishah-Empress raised her hand, a blade piercing through the divine flesh only to stop a hairbreadth away from her eye.
As the black, viscous liquid flowed down the fine steel and onto the cruiser’s sable seats, she turned her withering gaze towards the one who dared to spill the blood of a god.
The faintly glistening metal carapace covering his flesh. The exquisitely embroidered fabric. The clenched teeth.
In a moment, Grand and Regal Divine Padishah-Empress of the Quadratic Imperiate, whose hands have brought down stars and for whom kings of old were nothing but servants, realised a terrible truth.
The chauffeur was a knight.