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[thefirstemperor]

[Absolute silence. Fou-Lu does not know what an inbox is.]

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[thefirstemperor]

[He takes a plushy chair with faded upholstery that might be comfortable enough to sit in through a whole interminable house meeting.]

When one hast elaborate systems of aqueducts and unceasing light sources and not even a small troupe of musicians, one's priorities are unmistakably clear.

[Stupid admiral. So... gouache.]

[shamebat]

[Nadja herself settles on the couch opposite. It's torn up in the back with claw marks but it's old and serviceable]

Mmn. Yes, exactly. Do you play, or do you like to listen?

[thefirstemperor]

[He decides not to take credit now for the few bars B taught him on the piano. It's a possible future skill, not one he can boast of now.]

To listen. 'Tis simply that we understand the plain orderliness of a peasant village that hath not the resources to spare, but ugliness in the face of plenty bespeaks sloth or worse.

[shamebat]

[Nadja pauses, before struggling, politely]

You...don't know many peasant villages, do you?

[thefirstemperor]

[It's really just the one, which was a rather prosperous farming town in a stable part of the empire. He has mixed feelings about it, none of which he feels like explaining. He's considering telling her something more like the truth than he has anyone else here, but not about that.

He chooses, after a moment's contemplation, a careful half-truth.]

I have dwelt only in one.

cw; tales of cannibalism

[shamebat]

Mmn.

[she hesitates again, before deciding to let a part of herself slip;]

I will tell you a solemn secret that only myself and my husband and our roommates and a few cameramen know.

I grew up very very poor, in one of these villages. It is not the sort of romantic notion people have nowadays. There was so much hunger, so much anger. My siblings and I would sometimes try to sleep very lightly because we feared one of us would kill the others and gobble them up, or maybe sell the meat for more food money.

[thefirstemperor]

[While he does suspect something more of blackly humorous exaggeration (mortals do things like that), he takes the gist of it seriously. This, after all, is why he was summoned.]

'Tis the greed and the grasping of unfit rulers at fault. Resources put to war and excess that should have gone to the people of the land. Supply lines and trade choked by conflict and worthless borders. That any should sit on a throne and not see first to the security and comfort of those their subjects be among the first and greatest harms of mortalkind.

[shamebat]

Unfit rulers? We were gypsies. We lived on our own terms. We did not have a king or a throne or a kingdom. There were only villages. And people to come and burn them to the ground.

[thefirstemperor]

[Without knowing the specific term, he can deduce enough from context.]

Then those who held the land failed in their first duties. There should have been granaries and means of distributing the harvests of more fertile lands to the barren, or to hold against famine, and garrisons to prevent banditry.

[shamebat]

They burned our lands because they wanted to take over them. It was an army, not bandits.

[thefirstemperor]

Then bandits they were, or no better. Only a fool wishes to rule over ash and blood.

[shamebat]

What does it matter?? So he was a fool. He still burned my village to the ground.

[thefirstemperor]

We... wished to express displeasure. Simply on multiple levels.

[Courtly reserve works against him sometimes. As does the fact that he considers disapproving of someone's approach to warfare and governance to be the most scathing insult imaginable.]

[shamebat]

Mmn. You were raised in luxury?

[thefirstemperor]

[He wasn't raised at all, but he interprets what he thinks is the spirit of the question. Luxury means very little when sleep and hunger and danger more or less can't touch you. Not that he minded the fancy outfits.]

We were... meant to ensure an end to suffering, and what means our own power did not provide were available to us. Our days were lived in camps and shipboard, not in palaces but for rare lulls between campaigns, and for occasions of note.

[Did anyone else in the camp have a vast retinue of priests, courtiers, advisors, secretaries, concubines, diplomats, body servants, beaurocrats, guildmasters, and magical constructs? No. But.]

[shamebat]

I think you would have a lot in common with my housemate Nandor. He was a prince, but he was a conquering sort of prince. Someone who went around to villages like mine and ruled them.

[thefirstemperor]

[At this, he bristles a little. Such petty, mortal doings are what he was brought into being to prevent.]

No village hath any part in a war, but to feed and house the soldiery as necessary, and make a contribution in proportion to their prosperity to the doings of their rulers. To sacrifice the people of the land belongs only to the greatest extremity. Tis for their sake the battle be fought.

[shamebat]

And what if the village doesn't wish to house the soldiers? What if they would like to only live on their own in peace?

[thefirstemperor]

[On the one hand, this is the fundamental trouble, isn't it? The first trouble. Not the more vicious conclusions that came after his return and betrayal, but the first trouble, the one that drove him to exhaust himself and step out of the world for a few centuries. Can't make mortals happy.

On the other hand, there is an answer.]

Small concessions to a just authority protects from the privations of many cruel ones. The village in a peaceful empire may proceed free of the world for most of their days, concede a fair portion of their most prolific resources and receive from others what they lack, and suffer neither attack nor harassment by squabbling powers with no motive but greed.