<div class="floatright">(http://i.imgur.com/4zL89GJ.jpg)</div><br/>About the only thing that Aza had learned over the past several months was that the title of malevolent dictator was just an unending burden. She guessed that maybe the marauding and conquering part could be lively and enjoyable, but the ruling bit was only repetitious and arduous, except of course for when it was really fucking<em>boring</em>. So many<em>meetings.</em>Conferences and councils. Debates and deliberations. Assemblies and arguments. For hour after awful hour Aza had been expected to sit patiently beside or behind the sorceress while the woman and the Vizier blathered on to generals or petitioners or stewards or emissaries, making various decrees and city-ruling decisions upon which no one ever seemed to agree. It was unbearable. Finally, during one long session about how an autumn dust storm had driven a goat herd into a chaos bubble (resulting in an entire caravan being devoured by mutant shepherds with hooves, ruining the yearly goat market and upsetting the mansion's kitchen budgeting), Aza had quietly chewed almost to bits the leg of the antique settee upon which the sorceress sat to make her judgments. Since that, Aza'd been permitted to skip the meetings that didn't require Zozo's active spellcasting.<br/><br/>And that meant Aza had lots more time for good things like naps and practicing her own small magics and making demands of the other, more lowly ranked servants. This night's forum or whatever was about building new slave barracks for the latest importers out of the East or something and had stretched on well past dinner, keeping the fox's mistress occupied elsewhere in the compound. Aza had taken a leisurely meal of sauced sand-quail on the balcony off the sorceress's private quarters at the top of the Spire, changed her fur to a very attractive shade of deep scarlet, then had one of the slaves trim her tiny claws and polish her heavy, gold, gem-studded collar.<br/><br/>Then she amused herself by stalking and pouncing some of the swift little green lizards that had infested the Spire (ever since being introduced to the Water Gardens to eat the red beetles that were in turn eating the lilies), then chewing off the lizards' pointy heads and hiding the bodies for the maids to find before the sorceress did. Earning the slaves' startled shrieks was a game of which Aza had not yet tired.<br/><br/>By then it was probably bedtime. She extinguished all the oil lanterns with a dash of magic, leaving only a few candles flickering in their colored glass bowls at the edges of the round room, and climbed onto her miniature velvet couch that sat beside the ornate podium that held Zozo's massive magical tome. It was said that all the spells of the known world had been collected between that book's leather covers, but Aza wasn't so sure about that; she'd glanced through it once or twice, and some of the pages were empty, and some of the spells looked mostly like scribbles to her anyway. It wasn't exciting.<br/><br/>She turned a few circles on the cushion before curling comfortably into a fluffy burgundy ball, slender nose tucked between her forepaws. The night air was warm and incensed, and this far above the streets it was quiet. It had been a fine day. Tomorrow should be too. Aza planned to sleep in.