It requires a white-hot crucible to melt the hardest heart.

—the Azhar Book

With anticipation, though burdened by her secret assignment from Reverend Mother Raquella, Dr. Zhoma awaited the liaison who would take her to the Emperor. Her exclusive patient. The position as Imperial physician would help her gain prestige for her school. If the new Suk School could skate across the thin ice of their financial disaster, they would grow stronger.

But Raquella warned that Salvador Corrino’s bloodline was flawed, even dangerous. Zhoma accepted the Sisterhood’s conclusion without question, and she would remain alert to discover signs for herself. She had brought a sterilization chemical with her, a substance easily hidden in a vitamin supplement that she would prescribe to the Emperor after she had made baseline physical examinations of the whole Corrino family. Before long, she would dispense with the obligation from the Sisterhood … she would be forgiven, and that long-term ache of shame would be gone.

Afterward, she could devote her skills of persuasion to making the Emperor her ally, a genuine patron of the Suk School. Zhoma had not felt such optimism in a very long time.

She waited in the sprawling concourse of the capital city spaceport, while people bustled about their daily business, paying no attention to her. She’d been here for more than half an hour now, and no one had appeared. Troubling, most troubling. She disliked incompetence, and someone in the Emperor’s scheduling office had not planned properly. It seemed like a snub, and perhaps she would have to arrange her own transportation to the Palace. This was not the first impression she wanted to make. What if Emperor Salvador was already waiting for her, thinking she was late?

After nearly an hour, a thin man in a gray suit hurried up to her. “Excuse me, are you the physician Dr. Zhoma?”

She snapped to attention, keeping her expression cool. “The Suk administrator and physician, and I’m supposed to meet with the Emperor. Has there been a miscommunication? His message said he wanted to see me immediately upon my arrival.”

“There have been many necessary preparations to be made at the old Suk School building in Zimia. I am your liaison, Vilhelm Chang. I’ll take you there right away.” Chang led her outside the concourse building to a sleek private flier that bore the golden lion insignia of House Corrino on the hull. The pilot was powering up the engines as they boarded.

“I understood we would be going directly to the Palace.”

“No. A significant event is taking place at the old school, and the Emperor is waiting for you there. He’ll explain everything himself.”

The aircraft took her to the center of the capital city, where she saw large crowds gathered near the original Suk School building. People thronged the grassy park area on the perimeter, overflowing onto nearby streets. So, a reception after all. This was a good sign, though she hadn’t expected it.

Even with the expansion under way on Parmentier, Zhoma and her staff maintained offices in the elegant old structure. Perhaps during her tenure as the Emperor’s physician, she could convert the historic brick building into a hospital for incurable diseases, like the one Raquella Berto-Anirul and Mohandas Suk had run before the Omnius plagues.

She disembarked and went toward a reception area that held a number of dignitaries, as well as Emperor Salvador Corrino and his brother Roderick. Zhoma froze when she saw Manford Torondo there, too, his unmistakable form atop the shoulders of a tall female Swordmaster.

Salvador nodded a greeting. “Ah, Dr. Zhoma—come! Everyone has been waiting for you. Your attendance is necessary, for the full effect. Sorry about all this. We’ll discuss it later.”

Roderick Corrino seemed disturbed, and averted his gaze. He said in a low voice, “This is not what you are expecting, Doctor, but we’ll explain the reasons in private. Do not be alarmed. The Emperor will find some way to make it up to you.”

Not sure what was happening, Zhoma looked at the legless Butlerian leader, who regarded her with obvious disdain, as if she were animal excrement on a path.

Satisfied that the Suk doctor was watching, Manford called out to his followers without waiting for the Emperor’s leave. “Onward, to the old administration building!” He gestured with a well-muscled arm, and his Swordmaster marched forward. The crowds on the streets and in the parks moved in a wave, their voices rising in shouts that had an oddly victorious overtone.

Confused, Dr. Zhoma followed the Corrino brothers. “I apologize for this,” Roderick said in a low voice.

“What—what are they going to do?” This was clearly not a celebratory show in her honor.

Manford did not hesitate to give commands to the Emperor and his companions. “Wait here, Sire—my followers will do the rest.”

Roderick and Salvador stared scrupulously ahead. “Merely a symbolic action, Doctor,” the Emperor muttered to her. “There’s no way around it. You’ll just have to take your lumps today, and I’ll find a way to make amends.”

As the female Swordmaster ascended the stairs of the old building with Manford riding high, the Butlerian crowds streamed forward to surround the structure. They lit torches as they ran.

“You can’t just let them burn down our great school, Sire!” Her voice sounded much smaller than she’d intended.

“Let them?” Salvador turned to her. He was upset, and took out his anger on her. “This is by my command. As Emperor, I have to keep all my subjects happy, and sometimes that involves difficult decisions. You’ll get over this—just remember that it could have been much worse.”

Her eyes began to sting as she smelled fuel in the air, pungent fumes. She fought to maintain her professional demeanor.

On the shoulders of his Swordmaster at the top of the entrance stairs, Manford raised his arms in a signal. His people laughed and shouted as they cast their torches and lit flames at key points. The fire raced along like a living thing, evidence that they had planned ahead, installing accelerants throughout the building.

Her school! They were destroying the historic Suk School! Several explosions from inside the grand old building made the very sky seem to shudder. Zhoma watched in breathless dismay as the historic administration building went up in flames and the walls collapsed inward, leaving only the front entrance arch intact, where Manford waited. Calmly, with flames rising into the air behind them, his Swordmaster descended the stairs and carried him back toward the Emperor and his companions. Salvador gave a polite show of applause, while Roderick stood silent at his brother’s side.

Zhoma realized tears were pouring down her cheeks. She wiped them away. How could Emperor Salvador allow this? He was truly a puppet of the antitechnology fanatics … just as Raquella had warned. Zhoma had not taken the Reverend Mother’s warning seriously enough.

The Butlerian leader glanced past the Emperor and looked very smug as he had his Swordmaster turn toward Zhoma. “We wanted to show you how forceful people can be without technology, Doctor. Look what we have done by simply flexing our muscle.” He turned to gaze at the rising flames. “Emperor Salvador has agreed to abide by basic principles, and he will have no need of your medical trickery.”

Her throat felt raw with disgust at what she had seen. “I am a distinguished physician with full training and experience. Your people just destroyed a facility that could have helped thousands of patients. Does that mean nothing to you?” She knew she should keep her outrage to herself, but could not summon the necessary restraint. “Because of you and your followers, countless people will now die from treatable diseases.” She turned to the Emperor, struggling to keep anger and accusation out of her expression. “Sire, do you truly want your subjects to suffer because of this mindless mob?”

Salvador looked decidedly uncomfortable. “There have been … concerns expressed about some of the technology being used by the Suk School. I simply wanted to ensure we had nothing to worry about.”

The crowds cheered and whistled as the roof on one of the building’s wings collapsed.

“But you had only to consult with me! I assure you the Suk School neither creates nor uses any technology that violates the principles.”

“But your attitude is wrong, Doctor,” Manford said, as if explaining to a child. “I have read of the tortures performed by the robot Erasmus in the name of research. And we will send inspectors to Parmentier, to be certain.”

“That will not be necessary, Leader Torondo,” Roderick interrupted in a hard voice. “We agreed to this demonstration today, and that is quite enough.” Zhoma looked at him, grateful for at least that small amount of support; Salvador, though, did not look sympathetic to her at all.

The Emperor refused to stand up for the school and its physicians, and yet he wanted her to monitor his health and cure his every ill? Zhoma’s heart pounded. As she looked at Salvador, she could fully believe Reverend Mother Raquella’s contention that this man would spawn a monstrous tyrant within a few generations. Yes, he had to be sterilized—at the very least. But how much more damage would Salvador do throughout the rest of his reign?

Zhoma watched in dismay as demolition engineers set charges around the research laboratory structure, the oldest building in the complex. She smelled smoke from the other building, and could no longer watch. She covered her eyes, but Roderick touched her arm, and whispered, “You must not look away, or it will cause you more trouble. This battle is already lost.”

Salvador continued to watch. He didn’t even seem disturbed to observe the destruction. Trembling and feeling sick to her stomach, Dr. Zhoma looked down in an attempt to conceal her agony.

With the buildings destroyed behind him and smoke rising into the air, Manford Torondo rode on the stone-faced Swordmaster’s shoulders, to a speaking platform. An aide scurried up and handed him a bound volume, after which Manford said, “These passages are from the journals of the evil robot Erasmus, the accounts of the demented, horrific medical experiments he performed on human captives.”

Zhoma blinked, horrified but also fascinated. The records of those experiments had been sealed away, although she knew they contained valuable medical data. How had the Butlerians managed to obtain them?

Manford began to read, his words amplified across the throng by an unseen sound system. The crowd wailed and grumbled as he recited countless descriptions of tortures performed on countless captives—how he had cut limbs from living subjects and grafted on bizarre replacements, how he had vivisected thousands of victims, simply to understand how human beings functioned.

When he was finished, Manford closed the book and waved to the burning administration building behind him. “Suk medical research is much the same as what the robot Erasmus did, and now we have prevented such horrors from occurring here. Using technology to keep oneself alive is unnatural—like what the cymeks did to themselves. Proper care and prayer are all a person needs to stay healthy. If such is not sufficient, if a person requires extraordinary machines to remain alive, it is that person’s time to die. One should be content.”

Frightened by the fervor, Zhoma wished she could get rid of this fanatic, just as she had eliminated the charlatan Dr. Bando. Without the assistance of “extraordinary machines,” the legless man would never have survived the explosion that destroyed half of his body.

And Emperor Salvador was allowing this descent into barbarism! Had all of society gone insane?

Leaning close again, Roderick said, “Believe me, Doctor, we will try to make amends to the Suk School.”

Emperor Salvador strolled over to Zhoma, smiling with relief. “There now, that’s over with, and the Butlerians can be on their way back to Lampadas. Come with me to the Imperial Palace, Doctor. We will share a sumptuous banquet, and I’ll begin to tell you of my ills.”