The governor of Castilia sent his answer on a Thursday.
Not a letter. An army.
Twelve thousand soldiers marched from the provincial capital at dawn, banners up, war-drums beating, moving south along the Castilian road toward Byzantium with the specific confidence of a force that outnumbered the palace guard forty to one. At the front of the column, riding a white horse, was Governor MARIUS CAST — third of his line, Rank 3 Soul-Brand, a man who had spent thirty years cultivating the one thing he was most proud of.
His army.
The relay report reached Yogiri's desk by midday.
He read it.
Set it down.
Picked up his coat.
---
He met them at the Castilian bridge.
Forty kilometers north of Byzantium, the provincial road crossed the River Aurus at a stone bridge three hundred years old. Yogiri was standing on the bridge when the column's advance scouts crested the hill and saw him.
One man.
On a bridge.
The scouts stopped. Sent word back. The column slowed. Eventually stopped.
Marius Cast rode to the front.
He was a large man — broad-shouldered, red-faced, the kind of man who had never lost a military engagement in thirty years and whose confidence had calcified into certainty. He looked at the single figure on the bridge from a hundred meters away.
He raised his hand.
The column stopped.
"You," he called. "Move aside."
Yogiri looked at him.
"No," he said.
Marius's jaw tightened. He turned to his field commander. "First battalion. Remove the obstruction."
Two hundred soldiers moved.
---
They were thirty meters away when the fire came off Yogiri's shoulders.
Not the slow constellation orbit of administrative Byzantium. This was something different — the fire expanding outward in a sudden radial burst, thin and precise, reaching the road surface in both directions simultaneously and burning a line across the stone.
The line burned down. Through the road. Through the bridge. Through the three-hundred-year-old stone that the Aurus had been flowing under since before the empire began.
The bridge cracked.
The first battalion stopped.
Yogiri had not moved.
"The army," he said, at normal volume — not shouting, just speaking, and his voice carried the distance without effort the way his presence carried a room. "Goes back to Castilia. Today."
Marius stared at him from a hundred meters away.
"There are twelve thousand of us," Marius said.
"Yes," Yogiri said.
"And one of you."
"Yes," Yogiri said.
Marius looked at the burning line across the bridge. At the fire orbiting this man's shoulders with the patient calm of something that had never once been in a hurry. He looked at the reports he had read — the Rūme reports, the palace reports, the accounts of eleven seconds and five hundred thousand soldiers facing the wrong direction.
He had read them.
He had decided they were exaggerated.
He drew his sword.
"First battalion!" he shouted. "Advance!"
Two hundred soldiers started moving.
---
Yogiri raised his hand.
The fire moved south.
Not at the soldiers — at the road behind them. A line of black-and-white flame crossed the Castilian road a hundred meters south of the bridge, burning through the packed earth and the stone beneath it and the bedrock beneath that, a clean precise cut that severed the road from the land.
The section of road between the two fire lines — the section currently occupied by twelve thousand soldiers — dropped.
Not collapsed. Dropped. Three feet. A clean rectangular section of road and earth descending as the substrate beneath it ceased to exist, leaving twelve thousand men standing on a platform that was no longer connected to anything, suspended over nothing on three sides, the river on the fourth.
Nobody moved.
Yogiri looked at Marius Cast.
"The governor," he said. "Come forward."
Marius looked at the floating road section he was standing on. At the gaps on three sides. At the river below. He looked at his field commander, who very carefully did not meet his eyes.
He rode forward alone.
He stopped at five meters.
Up close, Yogiri was younger than Marius had expected. The reports had said young and his mind had converted that to manageable. Standing five meters away, he understood that the reports had not meant young the way inexperienced was young.
The golden-green eyes looked at him the way you looked at a problem you had already solved.
"You had three options," Yogiri said. "Sign the administrative covenant. Refuse and step down. Or this." He indicated the floating road section with twelve thousand soldiers on it. "This was the third option."
"I chose my province over a usurper," Marius said. His voice was steady. He had not survived thirty years of politics without learning to keep his voice steady. "Whatever you are, you have no legitimate—"
"Your army," Yogiri said, "is currently standing on a section of road I am holding in place through active fire application. If I stop the application, the section falls into the Aurus." He paused. "The river is twelve meters below. At this time of year, the current runs fast. Most of them would survive. Some wouldn't."
Marius was very still.
"I am not going to drop them," Yogiri said. "I am telling you what I could do so that you understand the range of what is available to me." He held the golden-green gaze steady. "Your army goes home. You sign the covenant. Castilia gets a new governor within ninety days — one you recommend, subject to my approval, which I will give if the recommendation is competent."
---
Marius stared at him.
"You're letting me recommend my own replacement," Marius said slowly.
"Your loyalty is to Castilia," Yogiri said. "That's apparent. You sent twelve thousand soldiers to protect it. I'd rather have someone who is loyal to Castilia governing it than someone who is loyal to whoever appointed them." He paused. "Recommend someone competent who loves this province. I'll approve it."
Silence.
"And me?" Marius said.
"Retire," Yogiri said. "You've governed for thirty years. You're done."
The road section creaked.
Twelve thousand soldiers who had not moved in five minutes had the specific stillness of people doing very thorough calculations about their immediate environment.
Marius looked at his army.
At the gaps on three sides.
At the man five meters away who was holding twelve thousand people in the air and discussing retirement packages.
He sheathed his sword.
"Send me the covenant," he said.
---
The army turned around.
All twelve thousand. In good order — Marius had given the command and his soldiers executed it, filing back along the floating road section and onto the solid ground to the south, the march reversing itself with the disciplined efficiency of a military force that had been well-trained even if its purpose today had turned out to be entirely futile.
When the last soldier cleared the section, Yogiri lowered his hand.
The section dropped.
Into the Aurus with a sound like the world clearing its throat. The river swallowed it and churned white for a moment and then moved on the way rivers moved on from everything eventually.
The bridge was still cracked.
He would add it to the infrastructure repair list.
He turned south.
He walked back to Byzantium.
---
The covenant arrived at Marius's residence the next morning, delivered by palace courier with a cover note in precise, unhurried handwriting.
Recommend someone who knows the grain routes.
Marius read the note twice.
He thought about twelve thousand soldiers on a floating road section.
He thought about the golden-green eyes and the complete absence of anger in them. No rage. No desire to punish. Just a man who had already decided how things worked and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.
He picked up his pen.
He wrote a name.
He sent it south.
---
In the provincial capital of CATALONIA, three days east of Castilia, Governor RENN received the news of the Castilian capitulation by relay crystal.
He read the report.
He was a careful man — had always been careful, had governed Catalonia for eighteen years through two imperial succession crises by being the kind of governor who read the reports twice and made decisions slowly. He read the Castilian report twice.
Then he read it again.
He called his military commander.
"Stand down the garrison," he said.
The commander stared at him. "Governor—"
"Stand it down," Renn said. "Then draft a covenant of administrative acknowledgment for my signature." He set the report down. "Include a grain route assessment. I'm told he likes those."
The commander stood in the governor's office for a moment.
Then he went to stand down the garrison.
Renn looked out his window at the Catalonian landscape — the terraced farms, the eastern road, the mountains on the horizon. Eighteen years. A province that worked.
He thought about floating roads and rivers.
He picked up his pen.