A killer walks among the rich and powerful. Who can the Magebreakers trust? Someone is killing the non-magical members of Senate houses-those who might one day be named Protector of the Realm. And that same someone is leaving behind messages for the Magebreakers beside symbols of the shadowy organization known as the Knights of the Emperor. Under suspicion from the constabulary, Tane and Kadka are drawn into the investigation to prove their innocence. What they find is that Audish politics are as dangerous as any Porthaven back-alley. Suddenly, they're surrounded by the most powerful figures in the realm, every one with a different agenda. Telling allies from enemies has never been harder, but Tane and Kadka will have to find someone to trust if they're going to bring the killer to justice. Their lives-and the future of the Protectorate-depend on it.

Fifty leaves that form the sumptuous Kevorkian Album, one of the world's greatest assemblages of Mughal art. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

The fascinating story of the Austrian, German and Russian imperial families during the four years of the First World War and the political and personal struggles that brought about their ruin

This title concerns the Farnham Castle Centre for International Briefing, widely acknowledged as the world's leading provider of intercultural management training and briefing. It has an unmatched reputation for helping individuals, partners and their families to prepare to live and work effectively anywhere in the world. CONTENTS: 1. The Japanese Mask 2. The Japanese Archipelago 3. Japan Past 4. The Cultural Values of Japan 5. The Japanese Language 6. The Japanese Economy 7. The Business World 8. Negotiating with the Japanese 9. Experiencing Japan

There is a cancer at the heart of the mighty Cerani Empire: a plague that marks each victim with a fragment of a greater design. Geometric patterns spread across the skin, until the victim dies in agony or becomes a Carrier, doing the bidding of an evil intelligence. The lost prince Sarmin, the emperor's only surviving brother, lies locked in a hidden room. As the pattern draws closer to the palace he is at last remembered: now he awaits a bride, Mesema, a Windreader from the northern plains. She is accustomed to riding free across the grasslands and finds the Imperial Court stifling, but she soon realizes the politicking is not a game. It is in deadly earnest. Eyul, the imperial assassin, is burdened by the atrocities he has committed. As commanded, he bears the emperor's Knife to the desert in search of a cure for the pattern-markings. As long-planned conspiracies boil over into open violence, the enemy moves towards victory. Now only three people stand in his way: a lost prince, a world-weary killer, and a young girl from the steppes who saw a path in a pattern once, among the waving grasses.

Since glasnost began, Russia's most eminent historians have taken advantage of new archival access and the end of censorship and conformity to reassess and reinterpret their history. Through this process they are linking up with Russia's great historiographic tradition while producing work that is fresh and modern. In "The Emperors and Empresses of Russia", renowned Russian historians tell the story of the Romanovs as complex individual personalities and as key institutional actors in Russian history, from the empire builder Peter I to the last tsar, Nicholas II. These portraits are contributions to the writing of history, partaking neither of wooden ideologisation nor of naive romanticisation.

This important new and original study on the institution of the Japanese emperors focuses on the enigma of the institution itself, namely, the extraordinary continuity of the Japanese dynasty, which is unknown anywhere else in the world, yet which is now at risk on account of more recent laws of succession.

I am the Emperor of the Nine Layered Heavens of the Myriad Domain! My decree is so vast that in this world, there is no one who dares to disobey it! This was the story of an ordinary boy like Lin Dong growing up to become the Nine Heavens Emperor! Experts were as numerous as the clouds, and they could also be seen how Lin Dong managed to carve a path through countless geniuses and powerhouses! If a beauty falls in love, how could the main character choose?

In the days of the Roman Empire, the emperor was considered not only the ruler of the state, but also its supreme legal authority, fulfilling the multiple roles of supreme court, legislator, and administrator. The Emperor of Law explores how the emperor came to assume the mantle of a judge, beginning with Augustus, the first emperor, and spanning the years leading up to Caracalla and the Severan dynasty. While earlier studies have attempted to explain this change either through legislation or behaviour, this volume undertakes a novel analysis of the gradual expansion and elaboration of the emperor's adjudication and jurisdiction: by analysing the process through historical narratives, it argues that the emergence of imperial adjudication was a discourse that involved not only the emperors, but also petitioners who sought their rulings, lawyers who aided them, the senatorial elite, and the Roman historians and commentators who described it. Stories of emperors settling lawsuits and demonstrating their power through law, including those depicting 'mad' emperors engaging in violent repressions, played an important part in creating a shared conviction that the emperor was indeed the supreme judge alongside the empirical shift in the legal and political dynamic. Imperial adjudication reflected equally the growth of imperial power during the Principate and the centrality of the emperor in public life, and constitutional legitimation was thus created through the examples of previous actions - examples that historical authors did much to shape. Aimed at readers of classics, Roman law, and ancient history, The Emperor of Law offers a fundamental reinterpretation of the much debated problem of the advent of imperial supremacy in law that illuminates the importance of narrative studies to the field of legal history.