Interlude: Workaholic (I)

Nothing in this world was eternal, except work.

Work could never be finished. You could wager your life on trying, but work would always emerge victorious in the end. You could spend eighty percent of every day working, and still never finish it.

You could even go so far as to abandon the most basic needs of a human being, remaking yourself into a cyborg who only needed regular injections of nutrient fluid to meet basic physiological requirements. Even then, it would still be futile.

"How many officials in the entire Adeptus Administratum die from overwork each year?" Karyl asked sincerely.

A man answered him in sign language.

The man wore black robes and bore the Sigillites' personal seal upon his shoulder. He had no hair whatsoever, and his pupils were as narrow as needlepoints. He had clearly undergone artificial modification.

A gold-thread Aquila was embroidered upon his forehead. The same gold thread divided his pale, bloodless lips into neat diamond shapes, subtly combining mathematical beauty with a certain kind of order.

Thirteen.

"So many?"

The man nodded and signed again. His blunt emphasis gave Karyl something close to a headache. He had no choice but to set down the data-slate in his hand and, amid the shuttle's jolting ride, ask another question.

"Has administrative efficiency improved in any way?"

The man hesitated for a moment, then nodded and made a more complicated series of signs.

Karyl understood every one of them clearly, and the sense of oppression in his heart grew stronger. Not because of this frightening language system, but simply because he found what the Silent Guard had told him difficult to accept.

Three hours earlier, he had left the Lord of Iron's fortress with a belly full of priceless vintage liquor. At the time, he had not