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many ships over the millennia. For a thousand years since that landing, the Scales had weighed every major issue of state, and were considered to be undisputed in their wisdom and judgment.
    Thus, when the new emperor was chosen from the Mercantile, the merchant class, Fhremus had been slightly surprised, but did not question the decision at all.
    The man who would be crowned emperor this day was a man with immense vision, Fhremus knew. Despite having taken a humble position by his selection, at which he had seemed more surprised than anyone else there, making an offer to serve as regent for a year and then being reconfirmed by the Scales a year later, he had embarked upon an ambitious agenda of changing, or rather, improving many of the long-established practices of the nation.
    Fhremus had not been surprised by this aspect of the aftermath of the death of the empress. Leitha had ruled with an iron hand, but there had been rust on the iron; in spite of her surprising acuity at the age of ninety-eight, she was not as hale and vigorous as she had been in youth, and therefore had allowed various aspects of her governance to fall into disrepair. While she had officially outlawed bloodsport in the gladiatorial arenas that were an enthusiastically supported tradition for thousands of years before the Cymrians came, she had also turned a blind eye to its return twenty years into her reign, and a deaf ear to the sounds of hooting and violence that had continued to build outside the arenas as she grew older and her reign grew longer.
    The gladiatorial arenas were not the only aspect of evident neglect. The return of the practice of slavery and slave trading had been more recent than the bloodsport, but it was even bloodier, though less widely known of. Fhremus had not been officially informed of the increase in the heinous activities, but would have had to have been blind in order to miss the buildup of the industries, state-run and privately owned, that had suddenly expanded their labor forces.
    Though he was not sure why, he suspected that Talquist might have been involved with that expansion long before his elevation to the throne of the new dynasty he had established, called the Empire of the Sun.
    The Mercantile was a misunderstood and, in Fhremus’s estimation, underappreciated social class. Looked down upon by royalty, the nobility, and even the Church, the merchant class was often a bastion of far greater wealth and international connection than any of those other groups possessed. It was all but impossible to be isolated or parochial when the very basis of a class’s existence was predicated on making contacts in every place possible around the world. While Fhremus knew little to nothing of the details of Talquist’s holdings, wealth, and connections to friends in both high and low places across the globe, he was quite certain those elements of the new emperor’s power were substantial.
    Perhaps even frighteningly so.
    As little as Fhremus knew about the financial and social secrets of the Merchant Emperor, he had a better window into Talquist’s military plans, though not as clear a one as he would wish. Fhremus had been instrumental in the training and deployment of the soldiers who rode the iacxsis, a strange breed of flying beasts that could both soar over walled fortresses and mercilessly attack the inhabitants of those cities. He had been given a tour of the breeding and training grounds, hideous caverns that had once been the central cistern and aqueduct beneath the streets of the capital city of Sorbold, Jierna’sid, where both the Scales and the palace of Jierna Tal stood. He had still been unable to purge his nose of the stench of the place and his mind of the memory of what he had seen there.
    He had accepted the emperor’s word that the breeding and training program was essential to the survival of Sorbold, due to the merciless plans for conquest and expansion that the leaders of the new Alliance, the Lord