Anlyn turned to address his outburst. “No, Counselor, it is you who violates the Center of Speak.” Tunics fluttered at this. “When I entered the Circle, as is my right, I was addressed by Lord Thooo, who holds the Center. This conversation is his choosing, and it is over when he says it is over.”
Anlyn turned back to Bodi while Totter seethed, his blue skin purpling with rage. Several members of the Circle who had won their posts due to merit attempted to cover their panting chuckles.
“Lord Thooo,” Anlyn continued, “you call my gender to attention in an attempt to discredit me while pretending to honor me.” All eyes turned to her again at this accusation. Anlyn once more addressed the entire room. “Many sun cycles ago—long before the threat we face today ever made itself known—female Drenards not only served on the War Circle, they served in the General Assembly and on every Planetary Board—”
“Enough,” said Bodi, both palms held up to Anlyn.
Anlyn took this to mean that he had no further complaints. She stepped around and climbed up in her seat, kneeling on her shins to rest her arms comfortably on the male-sized table. She turned to Edison and gestured to the empty chair beside her. The pup nodded solemnly as the page hurriedly swiped away the mourning cloth. Edison held up his lance, as he’d been taught, and laid it lengthwise across the table.
Bodi complained immediately. “That is Lord Muder’s chair. Your pet will not be allowed—”
“Lord Edison Campton is my betrothed. He is not my pet, and I am no longer yours,” Anlyn laced her words with cold venom. “Lord Muder is the second uncle I have lost this week, and his widow has granted Lord Campton—”
“Lord?” snorted Bodi.
Anlyn smiled. “Ninth degree, Lord Thooo. And as you are an eighth-degree Lord, you will not be permitted to use his first name unless he permits it, a protocol I’m sure I need not remind you of again, lest you desire to leave these proceedings.”
Bodi purpled at this. The entire Circle could surely see the hem of his tunics vibrating with frustration. “No alien, Lady Hooo, has ever—”
Anlyn cut him off again, each jab to her ex-fiancé’s ego like a blow to a fighter’s belly, sapping his endurance. “Lord Campton is a Drenard. If such a thing may be measured, he is more a Drenard than you. He will be my husband. He has been given this seat by Widow Muder. He will go before the election board during the next cycle to retain his seat.”
“With all respect, Lady Hooo, his seat holds the Chair of Alien Relations, how will a nonlinguist—”
Anlyn smiled as Edison rose to respond. She spread her pale blue hands across the ancient table, its ten-meter diameter cut from a single petrified tree, the largest ever found on the cold side of Drenard. She rubbed the polished grain and watched each Counselor’s reaction as Edison spoke.
“Distinguished Counselors,” he said in a perfect Drenard coo, “the subject being discussed from the Center is my qualifications as Lord Muder’s replacement.” He swept his face across the circle, wide teeth flashing. “While my dialect has the lilt of upper Drenard, a result of my association with Anlyn,” he stressed her common name as he met Bodi’s gaze, a brilliant blow, “it might interest you to know that my race has a long history of rapid language acquisition. I am fluent in English, and I am already conversational in Bern.”
Bodi seemed more stunned than the rest to see him speaking—with the accent of Drenard royalty, no less. The full implications of this creature’s presence on the Circle appeared to finally settle through his thick skull. With Edison’s status as Anlyn’s betrothed, and the recent death of two members of the royal family, Bodi was looking at a potential Drenard king!
Anlyn saw him sway forward as it sank in, ready to pass out, or perhaps considering a mad rush to kill his rival with bare hands.
Were he not so blasted timorous, Anlyn thought, he’d surely attempt himself what others failed to do in cowardly ambush.
Bodi glared at Edison. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, closing it. Anlyn hoped it wouldn’t be the last time she tripped him up; one misstep on either side could result in expulsion.
“I call for a formal Vote of Protest—” Bodi began, his voice shaking.
“Bodi—,” Edison began, cutting him off once more, but this time in a blatant breach of protocol. Anlyn spun in her seat to warn him, fearing all would be lost.
“—I would like to issue a Citation for violating the Light of Turn.”
The Circle grumbled, dozens of spectators in the packed house panting with laughter. All heads turned to the second shaft of light being reflected through the hole in the roof. Eight minutes ago, those photons had left Hori II, Drenard’s smaller sun. They travelled through space—across millions of kilometers of vacuum—before reaching a series of occluding disks stationed in orbit. Those clockwork orbital machinations continually shifted, directing the narrow shafts of light down through the windy Drenard atmosphere, piercing the roof of the Pinnacle. One shaft remained stationary in the center, where all speeches of importance must be made. The other shaft slowly orbited the surface of the giant, petrified tree, indicating whose turn it was to speak.
Everyone in attendance—thousands of Drenards—focused on that spot of illuminated marble.
The Light of Turn no longer stood before Bodi’s empty seat; it now rested before Lord Mede. He rose, purple with so many eyes turning his way, and nodded apologetically at Bodi.
“I forgive the transgression,” he said meekly.
Anlyn let out her held breath and settled back against her seat. In the Center of Speak, on the symbolic highest point of the planet Drenard, Lord Bodi Yooo shivered with rage. Otherwise, he did not budge. His eyes focused on Edison.
His imagination concocted murder.
30
Molly surveyed her prison cell aboard the Navy StarCarrier. Due to a spate of recent events, she’d begun to consider herself somewhat a connoisseur of incarceration.
With its riveted metal plating, functioning sink with hot and cold water, flushable toilet, and padded double bunks, she gave it three stars. It couldn’t match the filth and squalor on Palan—and it lacked the extra, decadent touches of a Drenard prison. In a Navy known for operating along one extreme or the other, she’d discovered the one thing they do in moderation: lock people up.
In a strategy right out of the Navy manual of torture techniques, her captors had left her alone for an hour. The idea was to marinate a prisoner’s brain in their own guilt to prepare them for the grilling ahead. Molly knew all about the tactic, but that didn’t prevent it from working. She had a lot to feel bad about: the Wadi locked up in the laz, just waiting to be discovered; the multiple failures on Dakura; the fact that she was no closer to discovering what her parents had been up to on Lok; and the utter lack of progress on helping rescue her father.
She felt positive that whatever Lucin thought could end the war, was somehow connected to her parents, but she couldn’t see it. And now she’d be court-martialed and airlocked for what had happened at the Academy, dead before she could unravel the mystery.
As the hour of guilt wrapped up, she half expected Saunders himself to arrive and begin the softening process, but her first visitor in Navy black didn’t fit the profile. Too thin. The mysterious figure strode by the bars slowly, his fingers rapping against the cold steel.