To our left and slightly behind, the interior of the Ocean Dining Hall glowed with honey-colored light of its chandeliers like a giant garden lantern. It was quiet and mostly empty. The floor to ceiling wall of glass that separated it from the terrace was almost invisible.
Just inside the Ocean Dining Hall, Orro slumped in a big chair at a round table, an exhausted heap of dark quills. The taller of his assistants had curled up on the floor, the other crawled into a chair and passed out. Droplet had pushed two chairs together, climbed onto them, and wrapped her fluffy tail like a blanket around herself. None of them noticed me quietly reshaping the chairs and the floor under them into comfortable loungers so they could stretch out. The food on their table remained mostly untouched.
It had been a long day. All remaining delegations decided to discuss Kyporo’s expulsion, and all of them wanted to do it over dinner in their individual quarters at different times. The kitchen staff was exhausted.
I was exhausted too. After we dealt with Odikas and the Kyporo delegation, Kosandion went on a date with the Donkamin candidate. The candidate had requested a “plain room with nothing in it,” which was exactly what I provided. Kosandion and the Donkamin stood for an hour inside the empty room, discussing scientific advancement. It was intellectually boring and visually disturbing.
On the way back, the Donkamin candidate nearly collapsed in the hallway. I caught him before he fell to the floor. Apparently, Donkamins didn’t do well when they were separated from their group, and they also found us grotesque and incredibly disgusting. Once I delivered the candidate to his rooms, they asked me for a purifying pool so they could wash my molecules off the candidate’s body. The purifying liquid was complicated and took forever to make.
The ocean shimmered. Amber lights in front of us, warm yellow glow behind. Sean and I sat in the narrow strip of shadow and watched the waters under an endless sky, studded with alien stars and so deep that looking at it for too long filled you with vague unease.
My earpiece chirped steadily, delivering a successive assortment of the Dominion’s news broadcasts into my ear. The fall of Tair Odikas was the talk of the nine star systems.
Olasard padded out of the dining hall on his fluffy paws and hopped into my lap. I put my tea on the small side table between my and Sean’s chair and stroked the cat’s back.
According to the newscasts, the saga of Tair Odikas stretched back many years, long before Kosandion was born. Four centuries ago, Kyporo faced a crisis. The planet’s population had outpaced its natural resources while its space technology was in its infancy. Kyporo joined the Dominion to save itself.
Before the unification, Kyporo had a rigid, striated society with sharply defined social castes, while the Dominion adhered to the belief that every citizen had the same rights. The integration of Kyporo was slow, difficult, and took centuries. Officially the castes had been abolished, but the citizens of Kyporo had good memories.
Odikas came from a long line of patricians, the highest caste of Kyporo. His great-grandfather was the Prime Councilor, revered and venerated, and on the rare occasions he had condescended to leave the hallowed halls of the Grand Council and stepped into the street, among the commoners, people of lesser castes knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground.
No matter how much education and cultural exposure they had, some people craved to be bowed to.
Odikas followed in the footsteps of his ancestors, climbing to the post of the highest elected official, resisting change, and doing his best to block the Dominion’s attempts to integrate the planet. His highest aspiration in life was to resurrect the old customs. He wanted to step outside his palace and see an ocean of bent backs with not a single person daring to meet his gaze. He would’ve rebelled if he could, but the Dominion managed Kyporo wisely, leaving them with little military autonomy, and the public sentiment among the younger generations wasn’t on Odikas’ side. Once the genie of freedom came out of the bottle, it was hard to put it back in.
For the forty years he was in office, Odikas flirted with separatism, made grand pronouncements about national identity and independence, and hated Kosandion’s father, who had removed the last vestiges of the old social system. When Caldenia murdered her brother, the Dominion was already facing an external threat from an alien species and domestic unrest on several fronts. His death struck the seven star systems like a meteor, causing numerous fractures. Odikas had taken full advantage of that. Kyporo was the last planet to accept Kosandion as the Sovereign, and Odikas and his faction continued to be a massive pain in the ass through his reign. Until today.
Sean pulled the earpiece out and put it on the side table between us. I took mine out as well.
“I scanned the Holy Ecclesiarch when he went to his quarters.”
Sean glanced at me.
“He’s in perfect health,” I said. “I mean he is elderly, but there is nothing inherently wrong with him. He could live another decade or two. You don’t seem surprised.”
“He doesn’t smell like a sick man on his deathbed.”
“Do really sick people smell different?”
“Usually.”
“I think Kosandion knows. I think this whole thing with the deathly ill Ecclesiarch is a sham.”
“He’s using us to clean house,” Sean said. “The Ecclesiarch’s illness is a pretext to bring everyone here and isolate them from their allies back at the Dominion. Now he can deal with them one by one.”
“You think there will be more like Odikas?”
Sean nodded. He was contemplating something.
“A penny for your thoughts?”
“Kosandion is dangerous. For Odikas it wasn’t just politics. It was personal. Kosandion recognized it, so he backed Odikas into a corner and gave him just enough rope to hang himself.”
“He is Caldenia’s nephew.”
“And that’s what worries me. I’d like to know in advance if he’s planning to settle more scores.”
Olasard stretched in my lap and turned over. We’d been so busy, I had neglected our usual cuddles, and he was determined to get all the petting he was owed. I scratched his chin.
“I can ask Her Grace. If anyone knows, she would.”
“Would she tell you?”
“I don’t know, but the worst she can do is say no.”
Sean pondered the ocean. “Every time George gets involved, things get complicated.”
“If things weren’t complicated, there would be no need for George. That’s the whole point of him.” I sighed.
“Kosandion should just marry him and be done with it.”
“The galaxy wouldn’t survive. Also, George is already married, and Kosandion isn’t foolish enough to fight Sophie for him.”
The inn tagged me. The Higgra delegation wanted to talk. I pulled up a screen to their habitat. With the Dushegubs, I didn’t bother, I just projected the disembodied voice, but the Higgra would want a visual.
The habitat appeared on the screen, a dense space of real and synthetic trees interrupted by jutting rocks with smooth tops and conveniently placed soft perches. Cyanide sprawled on the nearest perch, her huge white paws dangling over the side. Her golden eyes focused below my face and widened.
“Why did you pick him up?”