Bright Steel by Miles Cameron

Author:Miles Cameron [Cameron, Miles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ORION
Published: 2019-06-06T21:00:00+00:00

Book Three

Assalto

It is not enough to deceive your opponent or dominate him. You must dominate his blade and deceive his intention, so that your killing blow passes through his body and he can do nothing to harm you in return.

Maestro Sparthos,

unpublished notes to the book Opera Nuova

1

Megara, Palace of Justice

Meetings of the Council of Seventeen were held in secret, yet with public knowledge. This layer of complexity was very much in keeping with the layers by which the Empire was governed; the public could not know who was on the inner council, and were only occasionally notified of what the Seventeen decided; but they were welcome to know that they were meeting and where, so ensuring the secret business of Empire was publicly conducted, so to speak.

The Council of Seventeen, by laws more than six hundred years old, was composed of eight nobles, eight commoners – eight men and eight women – and the Emperor. In fact, one of the Emperor’s few real constitutional powers was the chairmanship of the Council of Seventeen. The membership was by appointment; the appointments were secret; the process was convoluted.

The Seventeen had vast, yet limited, powers. They controlled the military and the security services, and they could examine, interrogate, or investigate anything that could be perceived to have an impact of the security of the Empire. Their officers commanded the militia and the Watch and the regular military (but not the Imperial Guards). Their inspectors were the bane and terror of every arm of government; their Secret Service, was feared throughout most of the world. Everyone called it the difensori, but it was sufficiently secret that it had no public name or headquarters.

This meeting of the Seventeen was the first meeting of the Inner Council in more than three months. The Imperial Lion flag went up over the Palazzo di Justicia, and the citizens, from military technicians in the gun foundry in the Arsenale to the citizen textile workers from the long sheds near the Spice Market, were cheered to know that the strongest arm of the government was coming into action – doubly cheered when the City Herald announced that the Great Council of Three Hundred would meet in a week. The same announcement carried the names of every person executed by the so-called Protector’s regime and a list of his legislations that were now proscribed or repealed.

At two in the afternoon, the small black flag with the gold star rose over the Palazzo di Justicia. Out in the piazza, people cheered.

The hall of the Seventeen was on the third floor of the palace, up a secret staircase. There were, in fact, a dozen ways into the Hall of the Seventeen, so designed that the members could arrive without attracting the notice of even their peers and families. A tunnel under the Piazza led to one door; the doorkeeper was blind. A bridge from a door in the Imperial Palace led to another, kept by an ancient automaton of the First Empire.

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