Despite their ability to make extensive calculations, Mentats still have blind spots.

—HEADMASTER GILBERTUS ALBANS, cautionary comment to new class

For three days, the Emperor’s troops scoured the Rossak settlement carefully and methodically, searching for any sign of the computers Dorotea insisted were there. And they found nothing.

Worse, Emperor Salvador had made a bold announcement to cheering crowds on Salusa that he was going to Rossak to “destroy the evil computers.” His humiliation grew more palpable by the hour.

With each failure, Reverend Mother Dorotea became increasingly insistent. The Emperor stood with her outside the entrance to the high-cliff chambers, fuming. Directly overhead, the sky hung ominously gray. “On your assurances I made a spectacle of bringing my Imperial forces here, Sister Dorotea,” he growled. “You made me launch this embarrassing effort, and I have nothing to show for it.”

Even the suspicious Sisters in her faction had been unable to offer any suggestions. In desperation, the Emperor commanded his troops to go through every tunnel and chamber a second time, while using sonic scanners on the walls to detect hidden passages. Roderick personally supervised the operation.

Meanwhile, Reverend Mother Raquella remained calm, and instructed her Sisters to cooperate in every way. “When will you admit that there’s nothing here to find, Sire?”

“When I am convinced of it.” He sent her away.

During the overcast afternoon, a commercial shuttle arrived with routine supplies from offworld—an innocuous delivery, but the Emperor ordered every container opened and ransacked for forbidden technology, anything he could use to justify his full military operation on Rossak.

His soldiers were growing restless, and the Sisters—even Dorotea’s allies—showed increasing signs of anger at the injustice.

Salvador paced outside his flagship, gazing at the cliff city, greatly distressed. He hissed from the side of his mouth to Roderick. “How am I going to get out of this boondoggle and save face? Can’t we just smuggle in a few computers from our junk heaps in Zimia? We have plenty for the next rampage festival.”

“That would be awkward, Brother. No one would believe it if the ships had to fly back to Salusa and then return here.” Always the voice of reason.

“I look like a damned fool,” he muttered. “I should have let Manford Torondo come here after all. Let him waste his time searching for things that aren’t there.”

Roderick’s brow furrowed, and he kept his voice low. “Even if we don’t find illegal equipment, there is still a dire problem here. Anna has been damaged by negligence, and we both heard Dr. Zhoma’s confession that the Sisterhood wants to cut off your bloodline. Even though Sister Dorotea appears to be discredited, in my mind she’s not. She has proved herself useful at the Imperial Court, and I am inclined to believe her claims against the Sisterhood, even though we have no solid evidence.”

“I agree with you, and I’m thinking of publicly accusing the Sisterhood of plotting against me. Reveal their insidious scheme to render me sterile!”

Roderick frowned. “No, Salvador, we shouldn’t do that. It’s not the sort of thing we want in the public record.”

The Emperor let out a long sigh, and nodded slowly. “It is damned embarrassing. But I need a practical solution. I vowed to come here and smash their computers.”

He looked out on his landed ships, his crowded troops, the commanders who had begun to put the soldiers through routine practice drills on the polymer treetops because they had nothing else to do. A waste of time! He needed to put an end to this affair.

“Call Sister Dorotea here and Reverend Mother Raquella. Tell them to bring all the Sister Mentats, as well, and line them up before me.” Salvador crossed his arms as he made up his mind. “Then inform the subcommanders to prepare the troops for departure by nightfall.”

*   *   *

RESPONDING TO THE Emperor’s brusque summons as the sun lowered toward the ruddy haze of volcanic smoke, the Reverend Mother led old Karee Marques and the other Sister Mentats to the Corrino flagship. An armed elite guard stood on either side of the temporary throne, which had been turned so that the low sun did not shine in Salvador’s eyes.

Dorotea already waited there, unsettled and angry. Raquella’s granddaughter had unexpectedly sympathized with Butlerian sentiments, ever since her assignment on Lampadas, but she wondered whether the real reason for Dorotea’s rebelliousness stemmed more from feeling abandoned by the people who were genetically related to her, failing to understand a basic teaching of the order, that the only family its members had was the Sisterhood.

The Emperor leaned forward on his temporary throne, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked coldly at the eight Sister Mentats, but focused his glare on Raquella. “Reverend Mother, I despise your highly questionable breeding projections, and I know you tried to prevent me from having children. Dr. Zhoma revealed everything.”

Roderick stood next to his brother, staring stonily at her. Raquella’s throat grew so dry she couldn’t even swallow. The voices in her mind were as silent as a tomb.

“When we departed from the capital, I made a public vow to destroy the computers the Sisterhood uses. I can’t go back to Salusa empty-handed.”

Raquella flinched. He appeared to be mortally offended and unable to reveal the true reasons publicly. He had somehow tortured the truth out of Dr. Zhoma, but Raquella had supreme control over her own bodily chemistry and felt confident that she could will her body to die before revealing anything. “But you have searched everywhere for computers, Sire. You cannot find what does not exist. We have only human computers here.”

He sniffed. “That is only a matter of semantics. They are still computers.”

A quick nod to the captain of the elite guard, and all the rifles swung down, leveled at the eight Sister Mentats.

Raquella recoiled, and a shout of horror caught in her throat.

Beside her, Karee Marques raised her hands in the final instant, the oldest living Sorceress of Rossak, and Raquella felt a thrumming crack inside her skull as the old woman was hit, a buffeting wave of desperately released psychic energy, a remnant of the power that the most powerful Sorceresses had once used to annihilate cymeks. The other Sister Mentats, though, were not Sorceresses.

Karee Marques wasn’t enough, and as the Emperor screamed, obviously feeling the mental blast from her, his elite guard opened fire. The volley of sharp projectiles mowed down the eight Sister Mentats. The women dropped onto the paved canopy like harvested wheat stalks.

Astonished that she was still alive herself, Raquella broke away and ran to the crumpled bodies, where she knelt over Karee Marques, who lay in a macabre, twisted heap, her white robe splattered in red.

A stunned gasp whispered up from all the Sisters who were observing from the cliffs above the landing canopy, and several began to howl in rage, or wail in grief.

From the cliffs, five more Sorceresses roared in a resonant howl that echoed across the treetops and in the minds of all those gathered around the school. To the astonishment of the group surrounding Salvador’s temporary throne, the Sorceresses leaped into the air, suicidally diving toward the golden Imperial flagship. They plummeted downward, their white robes rippling around them so that they looked like valkyries swooping down to a battlefield—and then they slowed their descent, using telekinetic control to levitate themselves. With murder in their eyes, they dove toward the Emperor, unleashing another wave of buffeting telepathy. Raquella felt her skull shaking from the psychic pressure, and she dropped to her knees.

The target of the assault, Salvador yelled in pain and pressed his hands to his temples, with his eyes squeezed shut. Blood blossomed from his nostrils. Risking his own safety, Roderick grabbed his brother’s arm and tried to help him away from the throne.

Salvador had collapsed to the ground by his throne, whimpering, so Roderick gasped an order to the elite guard. “Stop them!”

Struggling back to her feet, Raquella screamed upward as the Sorceresses continued their descent. “No! No, do not attack!”

Turning their projectile rifles upward, the soldiers blasted the Sorceresses out of the sky, causing the white-robed women to fall and crash in broken, bloody heaps among the dead Sister Mentats.

Raquella sobbed.

Salvador reeled, his face wild with pain and shock. As he started to mumble an order to continue the massacre, Roderick grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “Stop before it goes too far! Enough killing.”

Dorotea knelt in front of the Emperor. “Your brother is right, Sire. Please don’t kill all the Sisters.”

Salvador sucked in great gasping breaths and finally exerted control over himself. He wiped away the blood trickling from his nostrils, offended by the scarlet stain on the back of his hand. He steadied himself by holding the side of the throne and touched a control at his throat. His voice boomed out from the speaker systems on the landed military craft. “By my Imperial order, I hereby decree that the Sisterhood of Rossak is disbanded! This school will be closed. Permanently. All trainees will be dispersed and sent back to their homes.”

Raquella’s shoulders hitched, and she could not tear her gaze from the murdered Mentats, or the fallen Sorceresses who had only tried to defend the Sisterhood. When she looked at the Emperor, her devastated, hateful expression made him flinch.

Roderick Corrino quickly put himself between them. “There is much of value in what the Sisters have achieved. I propose that Reverend Mother Dorotea and certain worthy Sisters return with us to Salusa Secundus, where their skills can still serve the Imperium. The rest…”

Salvador seemed glad to have his brother show strength. “All others are to leave Rossak. The breeding records will be destroyed, never to be misused again.” He gave orders to his troops, who gathered flame guns from the squadron armory and marched up to the high caves.

He turned and looked at the hundreds of stunned women standing at the balconies on the cliff. “The rest of you must scatter to the winds. Your Sisterhood is outlawed!” He looked down at the distraught Reverend Mother, gratified to see how defeated she appeared. “There,” he said. “Now do you think I have a weak and inferior bloodline?”