The Red City was in its quiet, drowsy day life. The only thing the sun brought, as far as the citizens were concerned, was work and hangovers. However atop the nameless mountain as it glowered down at the ants below, men and women in fine silk cloths sat at a table, gingerly eating their breakfast. They were mostly regulators of the City's trade, however one man in black was in charge of the weekly supply delivery to the Prison. He looked stony-faced at his food, the sick feeling in his stomach making eating anything impossible. He would have looked suspicious had it not been for the fact that everyone was paying the majority of their attention to the woman at the head of the table.
The woman sat there, with that confident smirk stuck to her face, calmly answering the plentiful questions that were presented to her. She gave the regulators all the answers they wanted to hear most, probably with no intent of actually changing anything. Why would she? She was the Empress, no ill could be spoken of her and all attempts to act against her would be answered with one's business (and probably bones) being crushed. She was beginning to look at the man with the corner of her vision, scanning, observing. She caught him starting at her face, sweat formed on the back of his neck, he needed to think of a question to ask, anything to cover him up.
"So, ah, Empress Novena, I was wondering..." The man pulled at his collar, the woman's smirk grew, "yes Master Vontic," she was playing with him like a cat with her prey. "Um, I've been interested in your views regarding statecraft being like a game." The woman looked at him again, chuckled under her breath, and stood.
She began walking down the long table slowly, each of the patrons straightening when she passed them. "A game hm? But what kind? I like to think of it like poker: high stakes, lot of risk taking, and the only way to assure yourself victory is to cheat." They all looked at her, their surprise at her words was stupidly clear. "Come on, you don't really think a crumbling peice of paper saying what I 'promise' to do is worth anything do you?"
"The 'cheater' in statecraft always wins because they're the smartest person in the room. They know how to keep sharp eyes on their opponents. Statecraft is also like poker in that it has thousands of different players, all with certain tells and things for the 'cheater' to take advantage of. The confident one who is so assured in his movements that he leaves his cards exposed without knowing it, the ambitious one who foolishly pushes far too hard for a early victory, the quiet one who keeps her cards to herself but refuses to make a move, and," she chuckled again, a cold, heartless sound, "my favorite. The scared one. Their nervous, afraid even, so like a cornered animal they begin to become unpredictable. Random, panicked movements, annoying but with enough effort can be used to down them or other players with ease."
The Empress stopped at Vontic's seat. A coldness crept up his spine, she wasn't moving, people were staring, he had failed, it was now or never. The man exploded from his seat, turning to point a flintlock directly at her head in one violent movement. "What I've heard, the madness that your hiding from us, it's insane! I won't let you lead us like blind mice anymore!" While his hands shook violently, there was not the faintest resemblance of fear on the Empress's face, the smirk wasn't even gone. "Like I said, traitor, panicked movements."
With that and a flash of red the man's arm was on the floor, and Vontic was staring at the stub where it belonged. The Empress took a napkin from the table and began whiping the blood from her blade as the man fell to the floor, screaming with pain. Two heavily armored guards picked him up and took him out into the front garden, in which there was a one foot deep rectangle of reddish water. The guards proseeded to cut off the man's three remaining limbs and placed him in the water, he drowned in seconds. The Immortal Empress of the Red City took her seat again, and looked at all the shocked faces, "are there any more questions?"
There were no more questions.