His fingers slid across a stack of dossiers, until he drew out one sealed in gray ribbon. He broke it with a flick of the nail and held it open, letting the parchment rest in his palm.
"I intend to push Lord Gale Manchedo forward," he said, "as imperial auditor and transitional overseer."
Karthis raised an eyebrow.
Deccos continued. "Yes. Soft, pedantic, a creature of office. Believes in the sanctity of ink and imperial record more than any god. Perfectly unremarkable, and perfectly loyal to this office." He turned to Karthis. "What do you think?"
Karthis thought for a second before answering. "I think he has a family. He has estates. He has ambition. All the right things to be frightened with."
Deccos nodded and started drafting up a letter.
"He'll be sent as interim Palatine," Deccos continued, voice calm as ever, "ostensibly to manage the succession crisis, ensure imperial interests are protected, and compile a full report to send back to Basstadt."
"And in truth?"
"In truth," Deccos said, eyes narrowing, "he's bait. A mirror. Ilthor can play his game. Maneuver, consolidate, whisper promises to merchants and street scum. If Manchedo finds him useful, if the man has the mind to see through the play, then perhaps Ilthor's rise can serve us. Temporarily."
"And if not?"
Deccos closed the folder with quiet finality. "Then he'll be discarded. Not the first Syr to choke on his wine."
Aemund Karthis took a deep drag from his pipe, smoke curling like scripture through the dusty light.
"You think Manchedo's up to it?"
"He doesn't need to be," Deccos said, lips thin. "He needs only to be there. Everything else… unfolds."
Karthis tapped his pipe against the edge of a brass ashtray, embers crumbling. "And the Varros?"
"Unimportant." Deccos waved his hand as he muttered. "The daughter is attached to her father's dying shadow, and the brother is clinging to the past like it still matters. We'll keep them watched. They might try to play ruler. Or martyr. Either way, they'll be irrelevant by winter."
Deccos set the pen down with deliberate care, the last curl of ink drying sharp and unbroken at the bottom of the page. He slid the parchment aside, pressed the seal, red wax, and left it to cool beneath the weight of his signet. The writing was lean, decisive, not a stroke wasted.
He stood, smoothing the lines of his long black coat. Every button gleamed with a dull, oiled sheen; every seam was exact. Authority stitched into fabric.
"Send the papers," he said to Karthis without looking back. "I have an appointment with the Governor of Weststadt."
He adjusted the cuffs at his wrists, voice calm, but edged with something final. "Mark Manchedo as provisional. Immediate dispatch. And make it look like it came from the Crown herself, she'll know and wouldn't want me to bother her with this anyway."
Karthis nodded and moved to the writing table, picking up the letter.
"Let them all think they're winning," he murmured. "That's the trick. Let them crown themselves in their own minds. It makes the fall so much more satisfying."
"Understood." Aemund Karthis left without another word, the door hissing softly shut behind him.
The Bureau of Administrative Affairs stretched before him in a long procession of marble arches and cold authority. Polished floors caught the light from high, narrow windows, enough to dazzle, never enough to warm. Basstadt, the Empire's second heart, beat not with fire or steel, but with ink. Every law, every order, every execution writ here first, quiet and bloodless.
As Karthis moved through the great corridor known as the Spine, he passed statues of long-dead ministers, their expressions etched in granite severity. The Founders of Process. The Keepers of Order. Every plinth bore a plaque, and every plaque a quote on loyalty.
Basstadt had once been a military garrison during the Marmain Theocracy, little more than an outpost overseeing the Eastern Lang. But after the rise of Newfyre, it was gutted and rebuilt, stone by stone, into a different kind of fortress. Now it ruled not by sword, but by form and stamp, its power stitched into the very bureaucracy that strangled the provinces like a velvet noose.
Karthis passed them all: scribes in black sashes, cart-pushers ferrying towers of sealed scrolls, a priest of the Manabassic Church muttering an invocation to Basst as he dipped a quill into holy ink. And then, at the end of the Hall of Appointments, he found the door.
Gale Manchedo's office lay tucked near the end of a quiet annex off the Hall of Regional Affairs, just far enough from the main Spine to be forgotten by most, but close enough to be summoned without delay.
The plaque beside the door read, in careful brass lettering: Interim Auditor, Regional Affairs - Pending Confirmation.
Karthis knocked twice. He didn't wait.
The door opened with a sigh of old hinges and stale ink. Inside, the air smelled of paper mold, dried tea, and the faint, nervous sweat of a man who had not expected visitors. Stacks of folios lined the shelves with obsessive neatness, color-coded and tagged. A pot of ink warmed quietly on a rune-stamped brass plate.
Gale Manchedo looked up startled, nearly flinging his pen across the room. It landed on his ledger with a painful skrrrch, carving a diagonal wound through a paragraph of perfectly aligned notes. He lurched to his feet so quickly that his knee collided with the underside of the desk, producing a hollow thunk that made the teacup rattle dangerously.
"Aa-ah! L-Lord Karthis!" he sputtered, eyes watering behind round spectacles, from the pain in his knee. He shoved them up his nose with the back of one ink-smudged hand. "An-an honor, truly! I wasn't expecting—"
"Sit," Karthis said, already halfway to the center of the room.
Manchedo sat. Fast. Possibly faster than gravity intended. His chair gave a protesting squeak. His hands twitched about, unsure of where decorum required them to go, one made a half-hearted attempt to straighten a stack of papers, the other hovered protectively near his teacup like it might leap off the desk of its own volition. He eventually settled for clasping them together in his lap, where they resumed trembling in quiet unison.
He looked like a man in his late thirties whose soul had aged significantly faster. His stubble was at the regrettable phase of halfway grown and clearly unintentional. His collar sagged on one side as though it, too, had given up. A thin crescent of ink traced along the inside of one sleeve where he'd leaned too long against an undried letter.
Karthis shut the door with careful finality, the click of the latch sounding disproportionately fatal in the quiet room. He approached the desk with the calm, efficient stride of a man delivering bad news in measurable doses.
He dropped a slim envelope onto the center of the desk. Cream-colored. Heavy. Sealed in blood-red wax still glistening with the weight of recent authority. The mark of the Imperial Bureau of Administrative Affairs caught the light like a knife's edge.
Manchedo looked at it like it might sprout legs and attack him.
"Your appointment," Karthis said, voice flat as slate.
Manchedo opened his mouth, reconsidered, then opened it again with significantly less confidence. "I-I thought there were still... discussions…"
"There were," Karthis replied. "They're finished."
Manchedo's eyes flicked from the letter to Karthis, then back to the letter, like he was waiting for it to explode or tell him he was being pranked by the Office of Irony and Internal Reassignment.
Manchedo's fingers hovered again. This time they found the edge of the parchment. He did not open it.
"You are to depart for Varentis within three days," Karthis continued, his voice quiet but immovable. "You will not govern. You will observe. You will audit. You will send everything back to Basstadt, no matter how small. You will copy every ledger, every whisper, every door that closes when you enter the room."
"Y-yes, of course," Manchedo, relieved as he wasn't getting fired, sputtered. "I understand."
Karthis gave him a long, unreadable look. The kind that lingered just long enough to make most men question if they'd said too much... or too little.
"I doubt you do," Karthis chuckled softly. "But you will."
Manchedo tried to collect himself. He straightened his back by degrees, as if remembering he still had one. "B-But Lord Karthis, I will uphold the values of an Imperial Auditor," he said, voice wobbling into something like resolve. "Even if it means the end of me."
Karthis chuckled again... low and humorless. "You're not going as an Imperial Auditor," he said. "You're going as Interim Palatine. Until the Crown names another, you are the face of the Empire in Varentis."
Manchedo went pale, visibly so, as though the blood had simply changed its mind. His lips moved, but no sound came out at first. Then, finally: "I... I'm the Interim P-Palatine…?"
He blinked rapidly, panic flickering just behind his eyes. "My Lord, this-this honor will not be wasted on me."
"Good," Karthis said, tone hardening, "because she's expecting a great deal from you."
"S-she…?" Manchedo's voice cracked. "I… understand, my Lord. I will not let the Empire down."
Karthis gave a small nod but said nothing more. The words You already might have didn't need to be spoken.
Manchedo still hadn't opened the envelope.
"Good." he turned to go, then paused at the door.
"One more thing," Karthis added, his voice quiet. "If you start thinking you understand the city before you finish your first report, you've already failed."
Karthis exited without ceremony, his task complete. The door to Manchedo's office sealed behind him with a soft, final snick. No words passed between messenger and observer, but none were needed. The message had been delivered, to the intended recipient, and to the one who had not asked for it.
Far down the corridor, beyond the reach of the windowlight and the sound of echoing steps, a figure stood motionless in the hollow between two filing cabinets. Neither servant nor official, they wore no sigil and bore no title, but they did not need one. Some posts in Basstadt were not appointed. They were assigned.
The watcher withdrew a small book from a breast pocket, its surface plain save for a worn impression: a crowned flame, half-faded by design. A stylus traced only two lines into the page, dry, pressure-carved, silent.
Manchedo installed - Int. - Pal.
Deccos operating without request. Permission presumed.
There was no alarm. No surprise. Only confirmation.
The Empress did not need to be informed. She would already know. That was the nature of Deccos's use, he was not just one of her ministers, nor her confidants. He was her instrument. A sharp, precise tool forged to act without asking. She trusted him not because she liked him, but because he had never failed her. And because when he moved, he always did so knowing that she was already watching.
The ledger closed. The figure turned and vanished into the seam of the Bureau's architecture.
Not everything in Basstadt was seen. But nothing, ever, went unseen.