I have things under control again. All it cost me was another day of endless private audiences with the Houses, cajoling... bribing... reassuring... promising...
On the surface, the Landsraad is as supportive of the Padishah Emperor's wars as it has ever been. But the trained eye can decipher the furrowing of calculating brows, and the trained ear the dissenting murmurs amongst the nobility. The Imperium is bloated. It is inefficient. It is vulnerable. They can sense that there is something more to those attacks than my father's excuses. There is, somewhere, a fault line to exploit. For now they still listen. For now. They are wondering. And so am I.