The name of the fourth Emperor was Spirit-Bluff. His name came from this line from the Book of Tengir: "He looked again, and this time he saw a spirit bluff." He ascended the throne in his seventeenth year, following the death of his father, the previous Emperor, and in his eighteenth year he wed a daughter of Noblewood, who gave him six sons and three daughters. His temperament was peaceful and he went to great pains to show deference to others, even people of lesser rank, but at times he would forget himself and erupt into a frenzy, when he would not refrain even from beating people, but after his temper had passed, he would feel bad about what he had done and send gifts to those whom he had just abused.
In the fifth year of his reign, a manservant who tended the fires at night in the hall of his younger sister, was suddenly questioned by her about his home district. He said: "It is called Greatstone, in ... Province." And she questioned him on every detail about that place, until his account so ignited her fancy that she said she wished to go there and see for herself whether his words were true. The man took her on his back and fled the Palace, but she alighted once they had made it to the outer stables, where they mounted a horse, and they made haste from the Palace. The warrior Gray-Tree gave chase, but he was checked at the bridge, which the man had damaged in his wake. Eventually he and the princess made it all the way to Greatstone in ... Province, and she was taken by the land and moved into a vacant lodge. The next day, the Emperor's warriors caught up with them, but she said it was her desire to come here, so they could not arrest the man. The man later married her and set up an estate. After this incident, the Emperor declared that only maidservants shall tend the fires at night.
In the twelfth year of his reign, a fire broke out in the kitchen at two hours till noon, and it spread until it had engulfed the Palace. The Emperor and his family and their servants and retainers all escaped unharmed, but nothing remained of the Palace, or of the sixty or so adjacent buildings to which the fire had spread. Reconstruction began in the third month of the next year, but it was cut short by unseasonable storms that buffeted the Central Meadows with lightning, hail and twisters. Later, in Summer, an uprising took place in the east, instigated by a barbarian confederation, and construction was delayed yet again. The uprising was put down in the fifteenth year, and only then did construction on the new Palace begin.
He availed himself of the opportunity to expand the Palace and order the settled land in its vicinity, for the number of people in the Imperial retinue had increased greatly in the past few decades, and the number of clans who had residences in the Central Meadows was also on the rise. The Palace itself, he relocated to a spot northwest of the Axial Dendron. From there, four great avenues were drawn in all four directions, and these were paved with stone, while lesser roads and byways were paved with gravel. The Palace was rebuilt. The Emperor then made a decree to the effect that all the Scions of Tengir were to relocate their estates, which had previously existed in scattered corners of the Central Meadows, to the area around the Palace, although many clans had already done this in previous decades. They were joined by the compounds belonging to guilds and holy institutions. After the City was constructed, the Emperor mobilized five thousand earth-movers for the building of a wall around it, into which were installed four great gates (for each of the four avenues) and eight lesser gates, two on either side of each great gate. For the uprising had caused worry to foment in his heart that an enemy could assail the City and so spoil the Realm.