Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 290, Wednesday
October 17th, 2018
Chapter
Three: Rites
He took all of the rituals seriously, as he did everything during his
career.
He carried them out perfectly even though his studies revealed them to
be nothing but tools of control and division.
He fulfilled them with grace, and a presence that gave no indication of
the fact that he knew they were empty gestures, and meaningless incantations.
The comfort that he had with his body, developed through his long years
of martial discipline, gave his performances a nuance that his peers were
unable to match.
Once again he stood out from those around him, not only because of the
attention that was focused on him, but for what he brought to each moment.
While he no longer believed in the mysteries as they had been taught to
him, he understood that the cohesion of the Empire, the peace of a million
worlds, relied on them for everything.
While the imperial families, the royal powers, the priestly caste and
the war machine cared nothing at all for justice, intrinsically viewing any
person below them in rank as a thing to be used, a device or a tool; justice,
if it was to be had, had to be distributed from the top.
He performed the rites with that in mind. He bound people to the
commitments expressed in them in ways that had never been seen before, in ways
that were not remembered.
When members of the Imperial family came to the table, drawn by his
fame, he extracted promises from them in the sacred space, which they could not
then refuse.
In the place where his life was most regimented, he found the freedom to
return to his old self.
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