The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3)

by John Scalzi

Cardenia Wu-Patrick woke up a half hour before her alarm was set because her lover, Marce, was a snorer. Normally Cardenia was able to filter it out, background white noise that the brain knew to discount and disregard. But for the last couple of days Marce had been fighting a cold, which made his snoring both louder and more random. When it woke Cardenia up, Marce sounded like he was two cavemen having a very urgent conversation with each other about discovering fire, or hunting a feral hog, or something else along that line.

In the meantime, she lay there, arm draped across Marce’s chest, as the conversation between the two cavemen that he was snoring out came to a conclusion and the participants decamped, perhaps in search of a mastodon.

House of Persaud, whose monopoly was in shellfish and certain cartilaginous fishes,

fishes?