Morning came quickly in the palace. The corridors that had held hysteria and blood and the silence of conspiracy now held something else. Efficiency, protocol, the machinery of state that continued functioning even when the head that had directed it was removed.
The Emperor's body had been cleaned, the blood that had pooled and sprayed and soaked now washed away by hands that did not tremble.
The wounds were stitched, the claw gashes that had opened his torso and arm drawn together by professionals, embalmers who understood that the dead must appear asleep rather than slaughtered.
Ones who could create a suggestion of peace rather than violence, viewable by those who would need to believe in the continuity of power.
Prepared for the casket.
Zircon Iondora now reduced to object, to cargo, to the weight that would require carrying and lowering and covering with earth or stone or whatever ritual the new emperor would decide appropriate.
