Interregnum

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Kiva hadn’t always looked like this; dusty, grey, scarred and hollow. Once, long ago, he’d been a fresh faced blond youth with piercing green eyes and a lithe build. In the days when he’d come out of the Northlands he’d had a budding, wispy beard and long, braided hair. He’d worn furs and leather and travelled out of the cold, swampy lands of his people into the heart of the Empire, golden and prosperous. It hadn’t been unusual in those days, when the Empire was at its greatest extent; when the borders were being forced north and east by generals whose names even now carried the weight of history and valour. The tribes at the fringes of the Imperial world had sued for peace with the Emperors and were beginning to see the benefits. For the first time in the history of the north the tribes had running, clean water, with aqueducts and drainage systems constructed under the expert eyes of Imperial architects and engineers. The young men had begun to learn the Imperial language, and many of them had begun to travel south to find service in the Empire’s bureaucracy or its military. All those years ago, the idea of a heated floor was unheard of in the north.

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