The treaty with Vaelthorn was dead before the ink dried.
The Arbiter, Rank 9 ruler of the Korthane Hegemony, stood at the head of the massive, crystalline table in the primary war room. He did not possess a face, only a smooth, featureless expanse of shifting white porcelain beneath his golden crown. He did not breathe. He did not blink. He simply calculated.
For the past three years, the Korthane diplomatic corps had been methodically negotiating the formal integration of Vaelthorn's northern mercantile domains into the Arbiter's total economic embargo against the Sovereign Imperium.
