The Emperor's co-option drives him past the brink, and Death declares a strike, breaking his sword and announcing that henceforth, no one will die.
Needless to say, this puts a crimp in the Emperor's all-out war plan. People get shot and stabbed and drowned and poisoned, but they don't die. They just hang around, embarrassingly alive (there's a great comic subplot of the inability of the Emperor's executioners to kill a captured assassin).
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