Krim curled his lip and turned away from the window to look to the protection of his own charges from the blanching touch of the sun. Tall, thin, and alarmingly straight, he moved like a large and very stiff insect. So much so that even those who knew him, caught unawares, would tend to flinch in anticipation of the creaking of joints that might reasonably be expected from such a gait. But Krim moved silently. Indeed, but for the occasional hacking cough – not dissimilar to that of a gagging dog, though explosively short and very loud – everything about Krim was silent. It was a necessary part of his office.

For Krim was the Venerable and Honoured Cushion Bearer to the Striker of the Moot, the oldest and most dignified of the clutch of ancient offices that served the will and the needs of Arvenstaat’s Great Moot and which, tradition had it, were essential to its continuance. His formal title was actually Venerable and Honoured Cushion Bearer and Assassin to the Striker of the Moot, though the word Assassin, being a reminder of the distant bloody origins of the Moot, had long since been dropped from routine usage. Indeed, in this more enlightened age, moves were afoot to have all reference to it removed even from the written records of the Moot.

Krim’s attitude to such proposals, however softly worded, could best be described as venomous. The Moot was tradition. That was the very foundation of his life and work, as it had been for his father before him and his father, and all his forebears back through many generations. Change was anathema. To change was to destroy. The Moot was the pulsing heart of Arvenstaat and to deviate from its ancient ways was thus to threaten the stability of the entire state and all its peoples. Indeed, such troubles as Arvenstaat now suffered from, and, insofar as he understood any of them, could all, in Krim’s estimation, be directly attributed to the embracing of needless change. With dark silence, Krim quietly smothered all fledgling hints of ingenuity and originality whenever he could. His very presence at the councils of the Moot Officers dulled the bright eye and crushed the eager green shoot.