The Imperial Inquisition, Merauve had long observed, suffered from a peculiar affliction: it insisted on genuflecting to the very traditions it sought to replace. Like a patricide who cannot resist wearing his father's ring, the Empire wrapped itself in the Virtue schools' ancient pageantry even as it systematically strangled their adherents. A weakness, certainly, but one that occasionally provided such exquisite opportunities for theater.
"Lord Merauve," he murmured, testing the title Jerome had so desperately bestowed. It rolled off the tongue, didn't it? Perhaps after this afternoon's performance, others might find themselves similarly inspired. He must give them sufficient reason.
The quartermaster's armory smelled of oil and honest sweat - scents Merauve found quaint in their simplicity. He selected a willow staff with the careful consideration he might have given to choosing a vintage: weight, balance, the particular singing quality it made when cutting through air. The wood had been polished until it caught light like water under moonlight. Appropriate, given that today he would embody Temperance itself.
Or at least, Temperance as interpreted through his particular sensibilities.
The training grounds lay empty: Tensday's religious observations kept the faithful at their devotions and the skeptical in their beds. Merauve approved. One should never rehearse before an audience; it diminished the impact of the final performance.
He stripped to his cotton breeches, folding each garment as though preparing for a ritual. In a sense, he supposed he was. The morning sun painted his skin gold, highlighting the lean architecture of muscle that daily regimens had carved. Beautiful art, after all, deserved beautiful frames.
The willow staff rested in his hands like a promise. Merauve closed his eyes, allowing his breathing to deepen, to slow, to find that particular rhythm that existed in the space between heartbeats. When he opened them again, he had become something else entirely.
Water Before The Fall.
His first movements possessed the quality of dreams — so slow they seemed to exist outside time itself. The staff traced lazy arcs through air, each gesture flowing into the next with liquid inevitability. He advanced on the practice dummy with the patient certainty of an incoming tide, each step a meditation, each breath a prayer to motion itself.
The transformation, when it came, was violent in its perfection.
CRACK.
The staff blurred into motion, all that stored potential energy releasing in a thunderclap of wood against leather. The dummy's head snapped back as if struck by divine judgment. But Merauve was already flowing into the next movement, the willow singing its fierce whistle as it carved figure-eights through space.
Water Over The Fall.
He planted the staff at an angle, using momentum to vault his body into a graceful arc. Mid-flight, his foot lashed out with surgical precision: not at the ribs where an amateur might strike, but at that particular spot just below, where the kidney waited vulnerable and alone. His encyclopedic knowledge of the body's secret agonies made even his practice strikes educational.
But no: at the last instant, he converted destruction into art, diving beneath the dummy's theoretical reach, rolling to emerge behind it. The staff whirled in a clearing circle that would have opened throats had any been foolish enough to stand within its reach.
Water Among Rocks.
Now he was rapids personified, flowing between the practice dummies with precise strikes. The willow struck here — snap — pivoted there — crack — each impact punctuating some secret rhythm known only to him. The sound echoed off stone walls like applause, like screaming, like both and neither.
Time to remind any watchers–for there were always watchers, even on Tensday–that violence could be beautiful when properly choreographed. The staff spun in elaborate patterns: low sweeps flowing to high guards, hand-to-hand exchanges executed with juggler's precision, around his back, his neck, each flourish more elaborate than the last.
Pure vanity. Pure mastery. Pure Merauve.
Gradually, inevitably, the performance wound down. The river slowed, the rain gentled, until he stood once more in perfect stillness. A bead of sweat traced its way down his torso: the sole evidence of exertion.
"Adequate," he pronounced to the empty air, though his slight smile suggested he found it rather more than that.
He gathered his clothes with the same unhurried precision, each garment returning to its proper place like actors taking their final positions. A bath would be required–one must be properly lustrated before a blood sacrament, after all–then perhaps a brief rest to ensure his mind achieved the proper clarity.
And of course, a visit to the latrine. Merauve had witnessed more than one duelist soil himself in the circle, terror and a full bladder conspiring to rob him of dignity along with life. The memories still amused him on quiet evenings. One controlled every variable one could; the rest, one transformed into opportunity.
By the time the bells announced midday, he would be ready. Ready to dance Temperance's deadly ballet, ready to add another verse to the song of his reputation, ready to remind this backwater post why some men were born to command and others: like poor, desperate Jerome, were born to beg.
"Lord Merauve," he said again, tasting the future. Yes. Adequate.
The tolling bells found the duel yard practically bursting with spectators. Shaded pavilions stretched along both sides of the field, the result of some creative punishment inflicted upon last season's recruits by the garrison Major. Merauve had met Major Thorne precisely twice, their parallel hierarchies intersecting only when absolutely necessary. Still, one had to appreciate leadership that transformed discipline into civilization. The pavilions provided excellent viewing for today's demonstration of imperial might.
Unlike most dueling arenas with their packed dirt and blood-darkened stones, this field had been meticulously cultivated to grow short, even grass. The mechanics escaped Merauve, but he appreciated excellence in all its forms. The green stretched before him like a stage awaiting its performance.
Merauve made his way to the small tent erected at the field's eastern end, marked by the Emperor's standard limping lazily in the afternoon breeze. Inside, he found an attendant — one of Jerome's selections, judging by the boy's inability to string together a coherent sentence. The fool blubbered something about "anything he could do," wringing his hands like a washerwoman.
"A pitcher of the coolest water you can find; with lemons," Merauve interrupted, his voice cutting through the nervous babble like Tachet through silk. "Then get out. And stay out."
Outside, the herald's voice boomed out the ritual welcome: catalog of crimes, the invocation of Virtue's right to trial by combat (when evidence proved insufficient and confession remained unextracted). Merauve had heard these words a hundred times, perhaps could have recited them. The tradition maintained that innocence, if it existed, would manifest through virtuous martial prowess. That combat need not result in death.
Merauve almost smiled at that.
The Empire had not lost a single Virtue duel since Merauve was posted here nearly a year ago. Given such certainty, the size of today's crowd intrigued him. Perhaps rumors of a fully Water School trained convict had drawn them. Or perhaps they simply hungered for blood wrapped in righteousness. Either way, they would have their show.
A shrill trumpet blast announced the pre-match presentation. Merauve emerged from his tent, each footfall the cadence of a funeral march. The afternoon sun cast everything in sharp relief: no shadows to hide in, no weather to complicate matters. Pity. Simple conditions tended to produce simple fights, and Merauve had hoped to choreograph something more elaborate.
The herald-officiant, more priest than soldier, began the Litany of Truth. Merauve used the time to study his opponent properly. The man stood half a head taller and carried perhaps fifty pounds more muscle, but it was the way he held himself that caught Merauve's attention. Not the brutish stance of a common soldier, but the balanced poise of formal training. His hands on the spear spoke of years of practice: calluses in all the right places, grip neither too tight nor too loose. When he shifted his weight, testing the grass beneath his feet, there was a fluidity there that whispered of the old teachings.
The man's eyes, when they met Merauve's, held something unexpected: not fear, not rage, but a kind of weary recognition. As if he saw through the Inquisitor's finery to something beneath.
"What is truth?" the herald intoned, "May Truth be divined by these combatants:" here the herald paused, consulting his ritual scroll. "But first, where one stands for another, let the burden be shared."
Jerome appeared at the field's edge, summoned by ritual. The herald beckoned him forward. "Junior Interrogator Jerome, step forward to transfer your cause."
The herald positioned them face to face. "Place your hands upon your champion's shoulders. Let guilt and virtue pass between you, that he may bear your burden into battle."
Jerome, wisely, avoided direct eye contact. His clammy hands settled on Merauve's shoulders with an odd lightness. The herald began the ritual words:
"By this touch, let the accused's guilt be shared. By this bond, let virtue flow where it will. What befalls the champion befalls the accuser. What virtue decides, decides for you both."
Merauve felt nothing, of course. No mystical transfer, no spiritual weight settling upon his shoulders. But Jerome's grip tightened as if something had indeed passed between them, and when the herald nodded for him to step back, the junior officer's face had gone a bit pale.
"May Truth be divined by these combatants. Let each stand forth and name himself before witnesses, that all may know whose cause they champion:" the herald announced, his voice carrying across the field.
"Anders Lon—" his opponent began, following protocol.
"Your end," Merauve interrupted, his staff already carving a vicious arc toward Anders' knees. The herald himself barely avoided the strike, stumbling backward with decidedly unpriestly haste.
Anders flowed over the Inquisitor's attack like water over stone, his spear descending in a counter-strike that would have split a lesser opponent's skull. But Merauve had already begun his roll, leftward and away, momentum transferring seamlessly to his weapon. The willow sang as it rose to meet—
CRACK
Spear met staff in textbook execution. Horizontal block against vertical strike. Like clockwork, Merauve mused, shoving the attack aside with contemptuous ease. Two quick strikes toward Anders' knees, both blocked, as expected, before advancing in the classic ocean swell pattern. Now, let's see how deep his Water School training trul–
SMACK
Pain bloomed across Merauve's left hand as Anders' spear butt found its mark. The crowd's collective gasp provided unwanted accompaniment to match his surprise. Only years of conditioning kept Merauve from dropping the staff. Only a decade of training saved his life in the next instant as the spear tip screamed down the willow's length, seeking his heart.
Merauve melted away from the thrust and, despite himself, laughed.
Delightful.
An actual opponent. How thoroughly he had underestimated this one. Well then. Time to reassess.
Using distance and feigning greater injury to his left hand, Merauve bought precious seconds to think. Heavier, yes. Stronger, certainly. But that overhand grip betrayed formal training without true understanding. And the footwork—always right foot forward on the thrust.
Merauve began the Fourth Kata of Autumn Rain, a Water School fundamental that any third-year student could recognize. But recognition and mastery were different creatures entirely. He was the teacher now, each movement a test, each transition an exam.
Wave Breaking On Stone. Anders matched it, barely.
River Finding Its Course. Adequate, if uninspired.
Water Under The Bridge. Ah. There. The hesitation, the slight miscalculation of distance. His instruction in the deeper forms was clearly... incomplete.
And then Anders did something unexpected. As they circled between exchanges, sweat now darkening both their shirts, he spoke. Not the usual cursing or pleas, but with the steady voice of someone who had been holding words in reserve.
"That Form of Spring Flood," Anders said, his voice carrying just far enough for Merauve to hear. "You flowed through it earlier. Only someone who studied at the River Monastery would know that variation."
Merauve's rhythm faltered for just a heartbeat.
Anders pressed on, his movements suddenly more defensive, creating space for words rather than violence. "I studied there too. Four years under Master Chen, before..." He didn't need to finish. Before the Empire came. Before the purges. Before men like Merauve.
"The way you hold the staff," Anders continued, and now there was something almost desperate in his voice, though his form remained solid. "Left thumb aligned with the grain. Master Chen always insisted on it. Said it was the difference between swimming and merely getting wet."
Merauve's grin emerged unbidden. How delicious. The man thought they were water-brothers, thought that shared instruction might stay his hand. As if the Empire hadn't recruited its best killers from the very schools it destroyed.
"Tell me," Merauve said, his voice conversational as he flowed into the Ninth Kata, "did Master Chen ever teach you the Doctrine of Unity?"
Hope flickered in Anders' eyes. He was tiring now, each block coming a fraction slower, but that hope seemed to give him strength. "He said... he said all water has the same source; it only changes forms. Water from the sea becomes water in the sky becomes water in the rivers becomes the water of a child's tear."
Merauve's staff became a blur of motion. "He told me the same thing."
The assault was artistic in its brutality. Merauve merged the water forms with air, blending elements with vicious creativity: Spring Storm, Driving Hail, Sea-Foam Dancing On Hurricane Winds. Each strike landed with deliberate precision: not to kill, but to demonstrate the gulf between them. Left leg—crack. Right arm—thud. Shoulder, ribs, knee, kidney. A percussive symphony with Anders' body as the drum.
But through it all, even as his body failed him, Anders kept trying to speak. "Brother," he gasped through bloody lips.
The herald raised one trembling hand, calling for cessation. Merauve reined in his performance with visible reluctance, concluding with a flourish that drove the willow staff inches deep into the soft turf.
"Mercy." Anders barely managed the word, but his eyes still held that terrible hope. Even broken, even defeated, he looked at Merauve as if seeing a kindred spirit trapped in an Inquisitor's uniform. "The water... all one..."
The herald turned to Merauve. Victory in Virtue combat conveyed moral authority: the winner's decision was, by definition, the truth. The crowd leaned forward, hungry for resolution.
Merauve studied Anders with something that might have been mistaken for consideration. This man who thought their shared past meant something. Who believed that all water was the same.
He opened his right hand theatrically, leaving the staff standing upright in the earth, and began to turn away. The crowd began a polite applause, appreciating what they believed to be clemency. Even Anders exhaled, shoulders dropping in relief.
Mid-bow, Merauve's hand found Tachet in his boot. The blade emerged and flew in one liquid motion, too fast for most eyes to follow. It took Anders just below the sternum, penetrating completely, the point emerging from his back to pin him briefly to the earth.
The crowd's applause was replaced with gasps and confused murmurs rippling through the pavilions.
Merauve crossed to the dying man with unhurried steps, leaning close enough that his words would be private. Anders' eyes, already glazing, held betrayal more profound than any physical agony.
"Master Chen lied," Merauve murmured. He twisted the blade slightly, adolescent in his cruelty. "But you were right about one thing: I did study at the River Monastery. Right until I saw Chen led away by Imperial forces and concluded that Temperance is weakness and cowardice."
The last light fled Anders' eyes, taking with it whatever faith had sustained him through imprisonment.
Merauve withdrew Tachet with brutal efficiency, cleaning the blade on Anders' shirt with the practicality of a man maintaining his tools. The herald stood frozen, mouth working soundlessly. The crowd had gone silent as a held breath, torn between horror and fascination.
Merauve straightened, sensing their uncertainty like a perfumer detecting sour notes. One must never leave an audience confused about their role. Merauve played his: he turned to face the stands, spreading his arms in a gesture that encompassed the field, the corpse, the entire afternoon's entertainment.
"Witnesses!" His voice carried to the farthest pavilion. "You have gathered to see this criminal's virtue tested and found wanting. This man" — a dismissive gesture toward Anders' still form — "claimed the Virtue of Temperance." He paused, giving them time to prepare for the lesson. "The old schools taught that all water has the same source, that it, as Temperance, always returns to its banks. But we know the deeper truth: water flows where the Empire directs it." He ended with the formal benediction of the victor, "This is Truth!"
The applause came slowly at first, then with growing conviction. They had not witnessed murder but instruction. Not betrayal but the necessary evolution of ancient teachings into Imperial truth. Not his best speech, but sufficient for its purpose.
Merauve bowed once more, accepting their endorsement with appropriate humility, then strode toward his tent without a backward glance. Behind him, Anders' blood soaked into the carefully maintained grass, and somewhere in the crowd, a few observers old enough to remember the virtue schools touched two fingers to their heart followed by a bowed head in the old gesture of mourning.
That lemon water had better be cold.
The tent was mercifully empty. Merauve seized the pitcher and drank deeply, the lemon-touched water a tangy contrast to the afternoon's barbarity. His left hand, when he examined it, bore only the ghost of Anders' strike — a tenderness that would fade before tomorrow's bells. Yet something else lingered on his mind, sharper than any citrus on his tongue.
Fool. The word rose unbidden, and with it came a fury that surprised him with its heat. Anders and his pathetic appeals to brotherhood, to shared water, to the old lies that Master Chen had peddled. The man had chosen his own destruction the moment he invoked Temperance — that toothless virtue that counseled moderation when the world demanded decision.
"His own fault," Merauve muttered, the words tasting bitter. "To lose so poorly."
Unbidden rage built like pressure behind a dam. Before thought could intervene, his left fist crashed down upon the table. Pain lanced through already-tender flesh, and he cursed himself for the childish display.
"Am I interrupting something?"
The voice dropped into the tent like a stone into still water. Merauve turned, his fury vanishing behind practiced walls, replaced by a mask of refined curiosity.
"High Inquisitor Sirius!" He rose to full height and inclined his head to the precise angle that acknowledged rank without suggesting servility. "To what do we owe the honor?"
Sirius stood in the tent's mouth like judgment itself — a man carved of certainty, for sure, yet possessing a quality rare in the empire: comfortable authority. His presence had a practiced weight to it, one that did not need reinforced by posturing.
"That was well done." Sirius gestured toward the field with economical grace. "I'll confess I hadn't thought to enjoy the fight, only suffer the formality until you were available." His gaze found Tachet on the table and lingered. "Anyhow, I wondered if I might call upon you for a favor."
Ah. Here was a moment that required delicacy. One did not refuse a High Inquisitor, yet neither did one casually surrender a passion project. Merauve's voice became silk over steel: "Of course, Your Justice, though I must warn you I have a subject of high interest to the Empire on my docket..."
"Hah!" Sirius's laugh held genuine mirth — a sound as unexpected as sunshine in a torture chamber. "Yes, precisely. It is about the True One I've come to ask. You see, he is being transferred from Inquisitor Garoth over in Fortknow, and..." He glanced about the tent's confines with distaste. "I find this air stifling. Shall we walk?"
"Lead on." Merauve's gesture was all courtesy, though his hand found Tachet as they departed, the blade sliding home in his boot with the whisper of a promise kept.
Outside, the afternoon had grown contemplative. The crowds had dispersed, leaving only the field and its single ornament: Anders, growing cold in his temperance. Merauve absently wondered when the grounds crew would be by to clean things up. The air did taste cleaner here, free of the tent's trapped expectations.
"Six months." Sirius began without preamble, his stride measured and voice without flourish. "Six months Fortknow has had since the Lightbringer brought him to us, and Garoth has utterly failed. He has lost the confidence of the Emperor." The word 'confidence' carried a peculiar sound, spoken like handling broken glass. Merauve found himself almost pitying Garoth. Almost.
"I came to deliver the record personally, along with a warning." They had reached the field's heart now, and Sirius paused and looked around as if the very grass might be listening. "Inquisitor Garoth tried every standard procedure. Deprivation, humiliation, the catalog of bodily insults. I daresay he probably tried spells and cantrips as well." The High Inquisitor's expression suggested what he thought of such desperation. "He got not one word. Nothing." A pause, weighted. "Less than nothing. That's the full record."
"I see." Merauve composed his features into that particular mask of thoughtful humility that had served him so well: the student eager for wisdom, yet wise enough not to grasp.
"We need to know where the Fire Monastery hides, and we need to know within the month." Sirius's tone was devoid of theatrics. "The Emperor's patience with the Inquisition grows thin. He is fixated on this; our other contributions..."
Here the High Inquisitor's gaze found Anders' corpse, "...are overlooked. Success here means we remain valuable to the Empire. Failure..." Sirius prodded Anders' outstretched form with his boot as punctuation, the gesture eloquent as any sermon.
"I understand, Your Justice." The words were ritual, but Merauve invested them with sincere gravity.
"You have one month. I cannot give you more than three tens." Something resembling regret flickered across Sirius's features — there and gone like a ripple on water. "I am sorry for the state he will arrive in; I'm afraid it cannot be helped."
Then, like a man playing his winning card, "I'm told our campaigns in the far north have borne sufficient fruit to place strain on our existing leadership. We are going to need to raise up another High Inquisitor for that region."
Merauve arranged his features into dutiful curiosity, though his pulse quickened and his breath caught.
"Succeed in this," Sirius continued, "and I'll do what I can to ensure the post is yours."
The promise hung between them, bright and sharp as any blade. Then, with the abruptness of a man who had said precisely what he came to say, Sirius folded his hands into his sleeves and departed.
His footsteps swished across the grassy field, leaving Merauve alone with his thoughts and Anders' patient corpse.
One month to break a True One who had resisted six months of Garoth's crude ministrations. One month to find what the Empire sought. One month to transform himself from Inquisitor to High Inquisitor, from player to conductor.
The arithmetic was simple: success meant ascension, failure meant... His gaze fell to Anders' chest, where the welts from his staff had married Tachet's signature. The dead flesh had taken on a peculiar sheen in the afternoon light, almost glossy where blood and bruising met.
Like a jellied popover, Merauve mused with an ironic curl to his lips.