We had repaired to the deck, sitting near the prow as she spoke and I scribbled my notes. The captain had growled something at our appearance but made no protest and the crew seemed happy to ignore us, bar a few hostile glances at Fornella.
“The empire may speak with one tongue now,” she went on, “and follow the Council’s edicts be they denizens of the greatest city or the foulest swamp. But it was not always so.”
“I know your empire was forged in war,” I said. “Many wars in fact, lasting some three centuries.”
“Quite so, but whilst the Forging Age left us with an empire, true unity eluded us for centuries to come. There were too many different coins with too many different values. Too many languages spoken by too many tongues. And far too many gods. My mother used to say that men would fight and kill for money, but they would only die for their gods. For the empire to endure we required that kind of loyalty, untainted by any divine distraction. And so there were more wars, called the Wars of Persecution by some, but Imperial historians refer to the entire period as the Great Cleansing, a sixty-year trial of blood and torture. Whole provinces were laid waste and entire peoples took flight, some to the northern hills, others across the sea to found new nations free of Volarian persecution. But, for all we lost, it was this that truly birthed the empire, for this is when we became a nation of slavers.
“There had always been slaves, of course, mostly in the Volarian heartland, but now there were more, conquered for refusing to give up their gods, beaten, cowed and bred so successive generations forgot them altogether. To marshal such a resource requires two things: great organisation and vast cruelty. I often think it was these particular traits the Ally found so alluring. After all, we must have been chosen for a reason.”
“Do you know when he made himself known?”
