Callum knocked respectfully at the ancient circular door to his mother’s quarters.

“Come in!” came an immediate response.

The speaker was veteran legionnaire Sloan Ksar. The Ksar and Santus families had waged the war on corruption together for generations, and Sloan was the only man to whom Callum trusted his mother’s secrets. Callum joined his lifelong ally and greatest friend by his mother’s bedside. Sylvia’s health was on the rise, but she was still too feeble to walk and it took more than bedside conversation to wake her.

Callum placed his weathered craftsman’s paw on Sloan’s shoulder.

“It is time, brother.”

“Did you speak with Tara?”

“I did.”

The Friends of the Friends were of two minds on the subject of House Donner. Some friends, the elder ones mostly, wished well upon Tara’s family. There was no denying the integrity with which they had operated for generations. They were pompous elites, but unlike their peers, they were well cut out of the positions ordained by their birthrights. Other friends chose to see members of the Donner family only by their privilege. The Friends did not always operate by Orion’s fairytale standards of morality, and the more than a few of Callum’s friends had been put to the Donner sword. Callum respected the Donner family. Sloan did not.

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“Did you speak to her of the Conclave?”

“I did not.”

Sloan was satisfied. The Conclave Plan had been his idea, and it was important to him that the elites learn of it last. The logic behind the plan was simple. The ruling class was weaker than it ever had been, and it was as weak as it would ever be. Even in its current state, its members would soon gather their resources and the common man would find himself beneath the boot once more. Left to its own devices, the pit of vipers which was post-caesarian Goldcrest would organize itself into the same power structure it had always known. The only way to prevent this was to make sure that Goldcrest’s food stores did not fall into the hands of aristocrats like Tara. When Sloan gave the word, his men would begin to whisper of a more democratic method of distributing food stores. The idea would propagate through Goldcrest Metropolis like an avalanche, and by the time Lady Donner could react, it would be too powerful to stop. This idea, like all things human beings loved, was truly barbaric.