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For decades that meant preserving the status quo. Don’t think I didn’t look into alternatives; I did. But as you’re about to discover, ripping out a government by the roots and replacing it with something new? That’s not trivial work.”
During this particular occasion, Hemiola was rewatching the seventeenth episode of A Rose in Three Revolutions, its favorite drama. A Rose in Three Revolutions supposedly had six seasons of twenty-four episodes each, except it had still been airing when the hexarch transported the servitors to Tefos. Unfortunately, the hexarch had not seen fit to bring the last two seasons with him on his subsequent visits. Hemiola amused itself sometimes by cutting up and altering the existing episodes and making miniature videos to music of its own devising so it could speculate on how the whole thing ended.
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It makes fancams. God I love the servitors.
“Maybe it’s the latest fashion,” Hemiola said. They all knew how the hexarch felt about fashion.
The edges of Jedao’s vision grayed. “Listen,” he said, “you can vivisect me for speaking out of turn, but you’re fucked in the head if you think the correct response to a psychotic mass-murdering traitor is to bring him back from the dead and hand him another army.”
A quiet cold ran through Jedao’s bones. It was a bad situation, but he might be able to talk himself through it if he treated it like a game. The first rule of any game was to assume you could win, even if you had to hunt through the universe’s cracks for a strategy, even if you had to turn the pieces inside-out, even if you had to tell so many lies to the opponent that they couldn’t figure out which way was up.
One of the first things Brezan had discovered was that he needed replacements for the official news service that he’d taken for granted all his life. Even worse, he had no idea how to tell reliable news from unreliable news. The gossipy networks used by citizens without faction allegiance took on a sudden and not always appetizing prominence.
We are a nation of thousands upon thousands of worlds, and we can’t prevent a child from starving to death right next to one of our faction academies.
Kujen was smiling at whatever he saw in Jedao’s face. For once a soft light almost made the beautiful eyes human.
Irimi drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t very, and stared at Emio. “Do the Shuos have no manners?”
Brezan knew perfectly well that she wasn’t so much worried about his safety as her professional reputation, but he appreciated her attentiveness all the same.
You’re not supposed to spend on frivolous shit, but what good is life without some frivolous shit?”
“The presence of atrocity doesn’t mean you have to put your life on hold. You’ll arguably be better at dealing with the horrible things you have to witness, or even to perpetrate, if you allow yourself time to do the small, simple things that make you happy. Instead of looking for ways to destroy yourself.”
Not everyone highlighting this like Mikodez is a good person with a valid point….
Was it vain, perverse, or merely mortifying to be attracted to the actor playing you?
He tried to keep count of the victims, measuring his monstrosity, but the numbers flew out of his head like burning birds.
“Sir,” said the protocol advisor, Oya Fiamonor, her voice neutral, “you’re picking at your nails again. Through your gloves. Don’t do that.” “At least I’m not picking my nose,” Brezan retorted. “Don’t do that either.”
Brezan suspected her of being up to something devious, but what? Even Mikodez, who specialized in being up to devious things, had approved the location.
Brezan weighed her words. So that was why she thought she could work with a crashhawk. Because she remembered a time when she wished she’d been one herself.
“You can’t arbitrarily decide that it’s all right to torture whole categories of people to death!”
Plus, it suspected that administrators everywhere had the incentive to report things in a positive light whether or not things were going well.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Miuzan said. She might even have been telling the truth.
He longed to tell them that he had no intention of mass-murdering them, but even if Kujen wasn’t listening, he doubted they’d believe him.
From the corner of his eye, he saw someone carefully not-flinch.
“Normally I would have let you sleep longer,” he added, “but powerful people desperately want to talk to you.” Well, Cheris thought philosophically, I only have myself to blame for involving myself in world-shattering affairs.
