"'Because you had me walled up within it and left to die, my Emperor, Munnosh replied.

"'It was done only to assure the safety of your Emperor and to preserve your own good name, the old tyrant told Munnosh. 'You ought to have accepted what was done and let your family mourn you decently and in peace. Instead you led them into benighted exile and only ensured that now they will have to mourn you a second time.

"When the Emperor said this, Munnosh fell to his knees and began to weep and to plead for forgiveness from the Emperor. The Emperor held out one thin, shaking hand and smiled and said, 'But that need not concern you, because I have sent my finest assassins to seek out your wife and your children and your grandchildren, to kill them all before they can learn of your disgrace and death.

"At this Munnosh, who had concealed a mason's store chisel beneath his robes, leapt forward and tried to strike the Emperor down, aiming the chisel straight at the old man's throat.

"Instead Munnosh was struck down, before his blow could fall, by the Emperor's chief bodyguard, who never left his master's side. The man who had once been Imperial chief architect landed dead at his Emperor's feet, head severed by a single terrible blow from the bodyguard's sword.

"But the chief bodyguard was so full of shame that Munnosh had come so close to the Emperor with a weapon, and also so appalled at the cruelty which the Emperor intended to visit on the innocent family of the architect — which was but the grain that breaks the bridge, for he had witnessed a lifetime's cruelty from the old tyrant — that he killed the Emperor and then himself, with another two swinging blows from his mighty sword, before anybody else could move to stop him.

"The Emperor got his wish then, dying within the great palatial mausoleum he had built.