The Theater of Good Faith

Yan did not sleep well at all in her hotel room on Olar. She woke up several times during the night, freezing cold with sweat, her whole body trapped as she found herself ensnared in blankets that she must have been wrestling with during the short time in which she had lost consciousness. When the sun finally rose over the mountaintops, Yan felt more tired than she had been the night before.

Despite not wanting to do anything, let alone her duties on Olar, Yan got dressed. On a better day, she might have enjoyed the experience, since she had been provided a whole new wardrobe to wear in the deep winter weather: her cassock was heavy wool, and her new boots were shiny black leather, which laced up over her pants to her thighs. The ensemble was topped with a hooded black cloak, with red embroidered flowers all along the edges. She tucked fur lined gloves into its pockets.

Iri summoned her out of her room punctually at eight thirty. Yan was conscious enough to notice the pity in Iri’s expression now, as Iri looked at Yan’s sunken eyes and slumped shoulders. It didn’t make her feel any better, that much was certain.

“Let’s get some coffee in you,” Iri said. “It won’t help, but at least you won’t be asleep on your feet.”

Yan followed her down to the hotel’s restaurant. Sid was already there. In the sparkling white light coming in through the tall windows, bouncing off the snow outside, the pits under his eyes were so deep they looked like bruises.

“You didn’t sleep well?” Yan signed at him as she sat down.

Sid shrugged, and didn’t say anything else. Yan wondered if he had taken the vena, when he had spent the night by himself. But that wasn’t something she could easily ask when Sid’s minder, Hernan, and Iri were right there.

“Eat your breakfast,” Iri said as the food was brought over. “I’ll tell you what’s on the docket.”

The meal that was set down in front of Yan was far too rich: a savory oatmeal with bacon and onions, all salty and fatty. It probably tasted delicious, but Yan’s stomach churned at the first bite.

“Eat,” Iri said again as Yan put down her spoon. “The first thing on your schedule is a tour of the city. You’ll regret it if you don’t have something in your body. It’s well below zero outside.”

She tried again, alternating each bite with sips of scalding coffee, just to help her swallow it down.

In a somewhat more gentle tone, Iri said, “Will you be able to manage a dinner at the governor’s palace tonight?”

“Without looking like she’s dying?” Sid asked, aloud.

Iri narrowed her eyes at him.

“Yes,” Yan said. “I don’t want to let First Sandreas down.”

“Good,” Iri said. “That’s good.”

“Has he written back to you?” Yan asked.

“Not yet. I’m sure he’s very busy at the front.”

Yan nodded dully.

Iri explained the schedule. In the morning, they were to be given a tour of the city. Iri said that this was probably to impress upon them how much the planet relied on Guild trade, so that Yan and Sid might be more willing to pressure the Guild into reinstating their trading charters with the planet, without the Olar government making any serious reforms.

“But the governor knows we don’t have that power,” Yan said. “I can’t order the Guild to do anything.”

“And you’re not going to try, either,” Iri said. “You two are more here to bring Olar in line than you are to talk to the Guild.”

“I know,” Yan said. “I just don’t see the point. Of the tour, I mean.”

“You’ll enjoy it,” Iri said. “A change of setting will be good for you.”

Yan shrugged.

“Anyway, you’ll have the afternoon free. You’re welcome to spend that time resting, or we can go over what you should expect at your dinner with the governor.”

“The Neutron Star will be here tomorrow?” Yan asked.

Iri pursed her lips before answering. “Yes. But I don’t recommend you think about that now.”

Yan couldn’t help but think about it. But she dutifully finished her breakfast, and put on her new warm cloak and gloves in order to go out for the tour.

Iri had been right, which surprised Yan. Despite her misgivings, and the clear purpose of the sightseeing as a whistlestop propaganda tour, Yan couldn’t help but find some strange comfort in being outdoors. The sky was cloudless and a pale blue, and the mountains that cupped the city in their bowl glowed white under the bright sun. The cold wind, although it chapped her face immediately, kept Yan focused on the present. She was even able to smile in a way that approached genuine, when she was posed for photographs in front of landmarks and shook hands with the people of Olar.

They were shown many places around the city, first to some of the farms and infrastructure that lay on the outer edges, built into terraces on the lower lying parts of the mountains, and some of the mining operations that carved down into the mountains themselves. Olar had been chosen as a planet to settle because of its combination of relatively normal day length and gravity, and its planetary mineral composition, and that of the surrounding asteroid belt, which included an unusually large amount of high value ores. With those factors, it was worth the effort of terraforming the planet to give it a habitable temperature and breathable atmosphere. But this process meant that, more than most other colony planets, Olar was dependent on Guild trade for key imports, and their economy on exporting their goods.

Yan wouldn’t have needed to be told how critical the Guild was in maintaining Olar’s standard of living. She understood that from before they had even set foot on the planet, and she could see it in things that their tour guide didn’t point out: all their electronics were stamped with off-planet manufacture brand names, and there was a strange sameness to the products that had been manufactured on the planet. There were only two or three different styles of tables, or railings, or electrical boxes on walls: many things looked like they were cut and pasted over and over, suggesting that there were only perhaps one or two manufacturing centers for anything that was made on the ground. The population was so low that it couldn’t support much more than that. And when they toured through the open-air marketplace for lunch, Yan noticed that, while there were plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables that had been greenhouse grown, the bags of flour and other staple grains and shelf-stable crops were mainly of off-planet origin. It was the same as it was growing up on a Guild ship, in that respect— greenhouse space was better served by growing things that were eaten fresh.

It would be very bad for Olar if the Guild did not resume their shipments to the planet immediately. This was clear.

But, at the same time, it was easy to see why Olar was a perfect place for pirates to gather. They probably did excellent trade with the planet: with so many ships coming in and out, and so many goods passing in both directions, this was a place for illegal goods to easily enter the Empire’s bloodstream, or leave it. There were probably few places in the Empire where it would be easier to smuggle out and sell finished technological equipment on the black market— possibly even to the adversary across the galaxy. Yan knew that at least some of what pirates did was trading advanced goods for raw materials used in the production of drugs; both were easy currencies.

There were probably several different things happening in the space around Olar. Legitimate mining interests provided enough shipment of material up and down from the planet’s surface that it could cover for smuggled goods in both directions. Pirate ships would meet with sub-light, planet bound ships in the system, exchanging their wares. In richer systems, there would be more of a watch to stop this from happening, but on Olar, their wasn’t much— and what there was, Yan suspected was being bribed to ignore these goings on.

Some of those goods that were exchanged that way would stay on Olar, but some, probably the majority, would be repackaged among Olar’s legitimate exports, to be smuggled on Guild ships and redistributed in the black market in the larger Empire. Guild ships, after all, did not have the time, inclination, or authority to inspect the cargo that they loaded on board. The contracts they signed with planetary businesses usually included stipulations that the huge bulk cargo containers were not to be tampered with— and indeed most were sealed completely before they left port in a way that would show if they had been opened. This wasn’t to say that the Guild ships who left Olar were unaware of their cargo— no Guild captain got their position through stupidity— but there was little benefit in raising a fuss. Yan’s family had usually avoided most of this dance, because the Iron Dreams mainly worked within the core of the Empire, not the outer circle of smaller colony planets.

Regardless of the parasitic relationship that the pirates had with the Guild, it seemed that this didn’t stop the particularly unscrupulous among them from taking shots at the visiting Guild ships. There must be several pirate ships who needed replacement stardrives, and the only way for them to get them was to attack Guild ships, to attempt to take theirs. That was surely the motivation for the attack on the Sky Boat . Someone in the Olar starzone control office was probably selling the list of chartered arrivals and listed routes to pirates.

But thinking of the logistics of all of this brought Yan back to the open wound inside of herself, feeling like the pit of her stomach was constantly falling out. She steadied herself on an icy railing in the market as they walked through, trying to ground herself by clinging to the metal. All around her, people hawked their wares, bustling between tents set up along shoveled paths in the snow.

“Here,” Iri said. She handed Yan and Sid both steaming containers of hot chocolate. Yan was startled, having not even noticed she had gone to get them. “Glad to see you didn’t wander far.”

The tour guide was now talking with Hernan and some of their Fleet escorts. “I think we’re done with the tour,” Yan said. “Where did you go— I didn’t see you leave?”

“I figured we almost were,” Iri said. “I had to go to the bathroom. Passed a stall selling these on the way back. Figured you might want to warm up.”

“Right.” Yan shook her head. “Halen would tell me off for not being observant enough.”

Iri smiled. “I won’t tell him if you don’t.” She nudged Yan’s shoulder. “Are you feeling any better?”

“You were right that getting some air would help,” Yan said.

“Good.” Iri glanced over at Sid, who had wandered a little way away, to go look at one of the storefronts past the tents. He had pushed his glasses, gone foggy with the steam of his hot chocolate, up on top of his head, and he was reading the listed rates on a sign for a tattoo parlor. “We don’t have time for that ,” Iri said.

“He won’t go in,” Yan said, but was proven wrong as Sid opened the door, the jingling of a little bell cutting through the chatter of the marketplace and making Yan cringe. He was too far away to jog to in a dignified way, so the only thing that Yan could do was reach out with the power and tug him gently by the hem of his own cloak. He stopped halfway in the door, turned towards her, and made a rude sign. Yan made a beckoning gesture, and he gave a visible sigh and came back over. She put her hot chocolate down on the snowy railing so that they could converse more easily.

“What’s the sign for t-a-t-t-o-o?” Yan signed as he came over.

He made the signs for needle and picture up near his face. Yan repeated them, raising her eyebrows in a question, and pointed at the decorative embroidery on the hem of Sid’s cloak. He stuck out his tongue and repeated them at chest level, further away from his body.

“You’re in a better mood,” Iri said. Sid, whose glasses were still up on his forehead, ignored her.

“Do you want a tattoo?” Yan signed.

He shrugged, though she did think he was interested.

Iri reached over to him and pushed his glasses down his face so that he could understand her speaking. It had been a harmless gesture, but it caused Sid to react violently, his face contorting into a snarl, and he whacked Iri’s hand away, hard enough that his glasses went flying off his head and landed in the snow a couple meters distant.

“Do not ever touch me like that,” he said aloud. His voice was rough and thick with anger, the words slurring. Though he usually had a slight affect and accent, it bore no resemblance to his harsh tone now. “Do you understand?”

Iri nodded, just once.

Sid turned away from her, back towards where Yan had been standing, but she was walking over to pick up his glasses from the path before they were trampled underfoot. She knew that Sid could use the power to understand spoken language, but since he used the glasses much more often, she assumed it took too much effort to use the power all the time. She wouldn’t want to have their mission to Olar crumble because of that.

She wiped the snow off the lenses with the hem of her cloak as she walked back over to Sid. She tried to hand them to him, but he ignored her outstretched arm and instead just looked at her— she wished she could understand what he was trying to communicate with his expression.

In an attempt to ease the tension, Yan put the glasses on herself. They were heavy, and slipped down her nose. But it worked, and Sid’s anger fell away as he smirked at her, then shook his head. He reached towards her, and Yan’s heart thrummed strangely as his hand filled her entire field of view to pluck the glasses from her nose. She stayed perfectly still. She and Sid had spent plenty of time close together, but it still was a strange invasion of her personal space. She could understand, at least in part, why Sid had reacted the way he had.

He tugged the glasses from her face and placed them back on his own. Then he smiled, as if nothing had happened.

“Are we done here?” he asked aloud. And his voice was perfectly calm.

“I believe so,” Iri said. “Unless there was something else you wanted to see, or anything you wanted to get at the market.”

“No,” Yan said. “There isn’t.”

Sid gave a backwards glance at the tattoo parlor, then shrugged.

Although the tour had been a welcome distraction, the moment she was back in the hotel, in the couple hours they had to prepare or rest before meeting the governor, Yan’s thoughts immediately turned dark once again. It didn’t help that when she opened up her computer, she found the letter from First Sandreas that she knew had been coming.

She hesitated to read it, looking at the first line and then hastily clicking away, afraid to read further. But she knew she had to respond— it was duty— so she had no choice but to look. She noticed immediately that the letter was unexpectedly tender, which meant that it had obviously not been written by First Sandreas. Yan remembered that Halen was responsible for ghostwriting much of Sandreas’s more personal correspondence— any letters that were not of the strictly political kind that were drafted by the veritable army of speechwriters and secretaries who worked in Stonecourt’s vast halls.

Dear Yan,

The first thing I did, when I learned that the Sky Boat had been attacked by pirates, was to thank God for your safety. If any harm had come to you and Sid, I would have been unable to forgive myself. Although your position as my apprentice is unavoidably dangerous, I never intended for this trip to place you or Sid in harm’s way. I hope you know this.

My second instinct is always to reach for praise or punishment, like any teacher with his students. For your sake, I will quell that impulse. I understand that praise— for your leadership, for your skill, for your decisiveness— is not something that you wish to hear right now.

What you want is reassurance, and this is something that I find very difficult to give. I have never been a man of gentle expression, and you and Sid are the ones who will feel that lack the keenest. This is compounded by the distance between us, but even if you were by my side, I am afraid that I would be unable to find the correct words to ease the burden of duty.

Perhaps this is because there is no way to ease it, or to soften its blow. I am sure you understand this already.

(Call to mind the Song of the Red King and the verse which reads, “For he balanced the scale of life and death on the edge of his sword.” This, I am afraid, is my duty, and will one day be yours, if it is not already.)

If you were by my side right now, I would try to stop myself from praising you for doing what you needed to do in the course of duty. I might even tell myself that duty is not something that warrants praise for accomplishing it, because it exists outside of one’s self, and what one feels about their duty is irrelevant to its completion. But I would find that a difficult line to hold to, true or not, because I would want to express my pride in you, and the conviction that I could not have chosen better apprentices. God led me to you because of the strength that you have in your heart, and you have proven to me again how bountiful that strength is.

But you do not want praise, or to hear that this painful strength is a gift. I understand. If I were by your side, I would instead offer the only reassurance that I could: that I am here for you, and that I understand the burden that I and God have placed on your shoulders. I would sit quietly by your side, and I would hope that this reassurance— all that I can give— would be enough.

Until then, I will pray for you.

Yours,

Aymon Sandreas

P.S. By request of your minder, I will be joining you on Olar as soon as my duties at the front are concluded. I expect that you will have the situation with the Guild well in hand by then. If you feel a desire to speak face to face before I leave the front, you may call me on the ansible at any time.

The post script, with its clipped tone, Yan suspected had been written by First Sandreas.

The letter left a strange feeling in her heart. Halen surely knew that Yan knew that he was writing this letter. How much of this was Halen expressing the thoughts that, by ‘his’ own admission, Sandreas had difficulty expressing, and how much was it something that Halen had invented from whole cloth, as an attempt to make Yan feel better? Why would she want his reassurances anyway? She wasn’t reassured. She felt restless.

Yan shoved her computer away from herself and went to stand by the huge windows overlooking the city. The day had grown grey, and a light snow was falling. The sun, visible only as a white glow in one part of the clouds, was heading towards the peaks of the mountains, and it would soon vanish completely out of sight.

Halen— thinking of him felt worse than thinking of Sandreas. Sandreas could talk about duty. That was an easy thing to understand, despite how little comfort it gave. But Sandreas was not a spacer, so he didn’t understand the way that Yan had abandoned the Sky Boat , and he certainly couldn’t understand what Yan and Sid had done to the pirates. But Halen… He had been a pirate.

Yan wondered if the reason that he did not write to her under his own name was because he resented her for killing people who might have been his distant kin. She pushed that thought away.

A response would be required. Yan hadn’t sat down and written a letter to anyone seriously intending to send it yet, so this task daunted her. But she found that she could write in the smooth, professional tone that she used when writing an essay for the masters at the Academy. If her words contained no scrap of personal feeling, then they were easy to put on paper. She reassured Sandreas that she and Sid were still able to meet with the Olar government, and that their tour of the capital this morning had gone well. Nothing was amiss, and there was no need for concern.

As she wrote, Yan even found it to be true. She could embody this persona— as the letter had said: duty did not require her emotional input. That was true of her duty on Olar, if nothing else.

The governor’s palace was carved directly into the mountainside, led up to with a long winding road that clung to the rock face and looped back and forth dizzyingly. The sun had set about an hour previously, so the whole scene, as Yan and Sid approached in their limo, was lit only by the golden glow coming from the house itself, shining out of the windows and doors and glinting on the white rock faces. It was an impressive sight, clearly built to ape the style of Stonecourt, but it didn’t quite match the harsh splendor that the capitol building on Emerri had. It was a poor imitation, and, as it was carved into the mountain, it was a facade only.

Yan and Sid barely spoke on the drive up, only exchanging a few words about the letters that they had received from Sandreas, and what their plan would be with the governor. Sid seemed listless and tired, despite the coffee that Yan had seen him down before they left the hotel.

“I can do most of the talking, if you want,” Yan offered.

“I’m not a baby,” Sid said, but left it at that.

Yan wasn’t sure if she should be glad that this was to be a truly private dinner. Only she and Sid would be joining the governor— it was a practically intimate affair. Even Iri and Sid’s minder would be waiting elsewhere. Iri thought it was a power play, on the governor’s part, to separate the two apprentices, whom the governor must have considered very young and inexperienced, from their support structure. Yan gave the governor the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t know how well she could handle having a real state dinner, with tens or hundreds of people. And maybe the governor meant it as a sincere appeal, for this meeting to be actually used to discuss policy, which would not be possible at a large gathering.

Either way, as the limo stopped at the bottom of the palace’s steps, the great doors heaved open, and the governor stepped out, waiting at the top for Yan and Sid. They were forced to climb the huge set of stairs to greet him, and he watched with a beneficent smile that Yan couldn’t help but find already grating.

Governor Laoti Cresas was an older man, with thin grey hair cut so close to his scalp that the tattoos which covered his skull and dripped in stripes down the side of his lined face were quite visible. He was probably in his late seventies, but he still stood ramrod straight, and his eyes flicked appraisingly between Yan and Sid, not hiding his curiosity at all.

“If it hasn’t been said a hundred thousand times to you already, welcome to Olar, Apprentice BarCarran, Apprentice Welslak,” he said. His voice was warm, and he offered his hand to shake. Yan and Sid each did, in turn. “I’m so pleased to meet the future of the Empire. God willing, I will live long enough to see one of you become First. It’s an honor to be the subject of your first official visit, though I wish it were under happier circumstances.”

Yan tried to smile. The rush of words from Governor Cresas made her feel like she wasn’t going to be able to get a word in edgewise. “Thank you, Governor.”

“I’ve been told that good money is on Apprentice Mejia becoming First,” Sid said.

Cresas laughed. “It seems far too early to tell such things,” he said. “Please, let’s come inside. Neither of you must be used to the weather here.” He glanced behind himself at the two apprentices as he strode confidently through the door of the palace. “No weather at all on Guild ships, and I’ve been told Galena is one of the mildest planets to make a home on.”

“I’ve spent half my life on Emerri,” Sid said dismissively as he shrugged off his heavy cloak and handed it to the waiting butler in the hall. “I know what winter is.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot that you sensitives attend the Academy.” Cresas laughed. Yan didn’t think it was possible that the governor could have truly forgotten that Yan and Sid were very recent Academy graduates— was he trying to put them at ease, reminding them that he was not a sensitive and therefore would defer to them; or was he trying to remind them of their youth?

The governor turned to Yan. “If you’ve spent so much time on planets, do your spacer kin all think that you’re their poor groundbound cousin? I’ll admit that when I heard that you— of the three of First Sandreas’s apprentices— were coming here to help me negotiate with the Guild, I was a little worried that you might be biased in their favor.” He laughed again. “If you’re not as close with them as I had thought, I’m a little relieved.”

Yan’s smile was frozen on her face. “My instructions from First Sandreas are to be as fair as possible when resolving this issue,” Yan said. “Please rest assured that Apprentice Welslak and I want to fix this problem for the sake of the Imperial citizens of Olar.”

“Of course, of course! I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

They came to a small, but quite lavish, dining room, with a table already set up for the three of them. Yan hadn’t been sure what the custom on Olar was— if this had been a dinner function on Emerri, like one of many that Sandreas had brought her to, they might have spent some time in another room first, having some drinks and light conversation before the meal. But Cresas seemed eager to get directly to the point. He gave a little bow, gesturing for them to take seats. He took the head of the table, which meant that Yan and Sid were separated, facing each other.

She was beginning to think that this was deliberate. Sitting next to Sid, she would have been able to touch his hand out of sight and therefore speak with him through the power. Across from each other, they had no such way of coordinating. Cresas understood how sensitives operated— his line about the Academy had been a lie. Yan’s desire to give him the benefit of the doubt had fallen away quickly. But she sat, still smiling, though the tension in her body made her feel like she couldn’t get a comfortable position on the wooden chair.

The furniture in the governor’s palace was real wood, she noticed— everywhere else on Olar, everything was plastic or the kind of compressed biomass fiber that was made primarily of farming waste. There weren’t many trees on Olar— at least not right now— so this furniture, heavy oak, would have been imported. Very expensive. She touched the polished surface of the table lightly with two fingers.

Before Yan could think of anything to say, servants came in bearing the first course of their meal, and wine for their glasses, and then Governor Cresas was saying a blessing. The governor closed his eyes to pray, which gave Sid the opportunity to raise his eyebrows at Yan: saying the blessing was usually the privilege of guests.

“Lord,” Cresas said, “You give us the gift of companionship. As Terae walked between the stars in search of friendship, so to do our friends cross the wide ways to meet us where we stand. How good the Lord is to make the journey easy, and the distance short. How good the Lord is to provide the bread that we may break together.”

Cresas lowered his prayerful hands and opened his eyes, smiling. Yan raised her wineglass and tried to drink. The journey had been anything but easy.

“I did hear that you had some trouble on the way,” Cresas said. “I am sorry that was the case, and I’m very glad that you made it here unscathed.” He let out a little laugh. “I’ve only had the privilege of speaking with First Sandreas a few times, but I know he would not have looked favorably on us here if any harm had come to you on your journey.”

Yan couldn’t even politely smile at that.

“We were lucky,” Sid said. “But it does go to show how much of a legitimate complaint the Guild has, with regard to ships being ambushed en route to Olar. If Apprentice BarCarran and I had not been on the Sky Boat , the situation might have been very different.”

“But the Sky Boat was out in interstellar space when it was attacked,” Cresas said. “You couldn’t possibly hold that against us. The Guild’s complaint is about the edge of our starzone. This was a coincidence. A terrible one, I admit, but a coincidence nonetheless.”

“Governor, when coincidences are good, we say that they happened by the grace of God. Since I have faith in a loving God, I would hesitate to place the blame in God’s hands this time.” Sid smiled and tilted his wineglass, letting the liquid catch the warm light before he drank. “And if work is not done by God’s hands, then it is done by man’s.”

“You do sound like First Sandreas,” Cresas said. Sid wouldn’t hear his darker tone, but Yan did. “He must have chosen his apprentices well.”

“Thank you,” Sid said. But some of his confidence faltered, at that moment, and he looked down at his soup.

A painful silence descended on the room. “You’ve only met First Sandreas a few times?” Yan asked, trying to fill the space. “I thought you had been governor for as long as First Sandreas has been First.”

“It has been a long time. But the Governor’s Dinner only happens every few years, and First Sandreas has limited time to devote to a distant circle run planet with fewer than a billion inhabitants. Especially a small planet that has tried not to cause too many problems for him.” He chuckled. “But I’ve heard even governors of planets with tens of billions of people complain that he doesn’t pay them enough attention, so perhaps I’m not being fair to him. After all, he has sent two of his apprentices here to resolve this issue. I feel certain that it could have been dealt with without anyone coming to visit us all the way out here.” He smiled. “But I can’t complain about First Sandreas’s generosity in this regard.”

“I am happy to try to help,” Yan said as soon as the governor let her get a word in edgewise.

“I assume that First Sandreas expected this to be an easy task for you, as your first outing?”

“No one wants to see the people of Olar starve,” Yan said, “least of all First Sandreas. Whatever is required, you may rest assured that the Guild will resume trade with the planet before we leave, regardless of how difficult it is to reach an agreement.”

“You are very confident!” He laughed again. “When I was your age, I suppose I was the same. Though I had none of the authority that being First Sandreas’s apprentice grants you.”

“First Sandreas has the authority,” Yan said. “He’s only loaning it to us.”

“Nonsense,” Cresas replied. “You must have been given liberty to resolve this problem on your own, or First Sandreas would have simply sent a missive with instructions. Your presence is its own kind of authority. Don’t forget it!”

“I’m glad you think so, Governor,” Sid said. He smiled, but it wasn’t his usual cheerful smile— there was something with more teeth in it. He went back to eating his food.

“You must have been very young when you became governor,” Yan said, trying to make conversation before directly jumping into whatever policy discussion they were going to have. “That must have been difficult for you.”

Cresas laughed. “I’m told I was charming as a young man. That made me easy to elect. And once I was elected once, people liked the work I did.” He cocked his head. “Out here in the wilderness, there’s fewer people like the two of you who want to rise to the top. All your fellow sensitives like to be where civilization is.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Yan said. “When I was a student, I wanted to do xenobiology research. That would have put me out in the frontier, I’m sure.”

“Well, it’s different for spacers,” Cresas exclaimed.”You all have an itch to travel.”

“Maybe,” Yan said, feeling uncomfortable.

“You’re lucky to be First Sandreas’s apprentice,” Cresas said. “Probably the only apprenticeship you could have gotten that would have entailed more travel would be as one of Guildmaster Vaneik’s little pair.” He laughed again. “You know, I said that sending you two apprentices here shows respect from First Sandreas, but it feels like a snub for the Guildmaster to send his.”

Yan knew that all this discussion of the Guild was unavoidable, but it was making it hard for her to eat her meal. She was nauseous, and sweating under her cassock, dizzy with it. Still, she tried to keep her voice even. “Why do you say that? Everyone I’ve spoken to seems to respect Apprentice Olms.”

Cresas raised an eyebrow. “She’s never going to become Guildmaster. She’s a glorified errand girl. It goes to show that the Guild is not looking to negotiate here in good faith. If they were, Guildmaster Vaneik would have come himself.”

“Governor, good faith or not, the issue will be resolved,” Sid said. “It doesn’t matter who the Guild sends.”

“I hope you are correct,” Cresas said. “There is only so long Olar can survive as an island, and that timer has already begun counting down.”

“I understand,” Yan said. “And I hope that you understand that, as well.”

“What do you mean, exactly, Apprentice?”

“What she means is that you’re going to have to be the one to make concessions,” Sid snapped. “We’re not here to lean on the Guild.”

This outburst made Yan glance at Sid and raise her eyebrows, and shocked Cresas into a moment of silence, taking a sip from his wine and composing himself before he spoke again.

“You’re quite direct,” Cresas said. “But the Guild is who you should be negotiating with. They are the ones who have the power to change the situation.” He spread his hands. “We here are quite powerless— unless the Imperial government feels like granting us stardrives and allowing us to trade with other systems without the Guild as an intermediary.”

“The Guild is the aggrieved party,” Sid said. “It is because of Olar’s negligence— or worse— that the Guild has been under attack. We saw that for ourselves.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying, Apprentice Welslak.”

“You don’t have to like it for it to be true,” Sid said. “Olar is directly profiting from allowing pirates to come into and out of the system unimpeded, and this is posing a danger to not only the Guild ships that pass through here, but to the health of the entire Empire. You are a person who has the power to change that, and the fact that you have allowed the situation to degrade this far means that there must be profit for you in—”

Yan was alarmed at Sid’s outburst. “What Apprentice Welslak means to say is—”

“I understand perfectly what he’s saying, Apprentice BarCarran,” Cresas said. “Being deaf has not prevented him from speaking quite clearly.”

This remark caused Sid’s hand to clench. Yan saw the motion, and watched Sid relax his hand, deliberately.

Cresas, who hadn’t noticed Sid’s reaction, or was unfazed by it, continued. “I didn’t think he would go as far as to imply that I participate in the black market, but if he wants to believe that, perhaps it’s better to air it rather than think it silently.” He raised his glass. “Do you believe the same?”

Yan wasn’t sure what to say. “I hope that you will be willing to make changes that will ensure the Guild feels safer operating within your star system.”

Cresas’s smile was grim. “I don’t want to set the precedent that the Guild can dictate the internal workings of small colonies. They would never try something like this for a planet like Galena.”

“Galena does not have a pirate problem,” Sid said.

“I’m not asking you to let them dictate policy,” Yan said. “I’m just looking for cooperation, and good faith.”

“Then what concessions are you looking for, Apprentice?”

“I think that increasing security within the system— better monitoring of all sub-light ships and mining facilities…” Yan began. Cresas was almost smirking— as close to it as he could come while still having a veneer of respect for Yan. She had to trail off.

“We follow the standards that the Guild agreed to many years ago,” Cresas said. “Requiring us to budget more— to waste time and resources on additional surveillance, which will be not only meaningless and useless, but also unpopular— why would that even appease the Guild?”

“It would be a show of good faith,” Yan said.

“The theater of ‘good faith’ is not a show I’m interested in performing. I like things that are real, Apprentice. Real things like shipments of grain, and our ores being sold at fair prices on the the market. Those are what matters— and the Guild has to understand that providing those real things is what they exist to do. They are not policy makers, and they do not get to start running my star system. I’m not going to go to them on my hands and knees. This is a power play from them— they saw an opportunity to make an example of us, to show the Imperial government— and every planet— how much power they can wield.”

“I’m afraid, Governor, that if you refuse to make any changes, the changes will be made for you,” Sid said.

“What, exactly, are you threatening me with, Apprentice? Stationing Fleet ships in this system?”

“No,” Sid said. “There shouldn’t be any need to go that far.”

“Then what?” Cresas asked. Yan began to open her mouth, but Sid made a slight motion above the table with his hand, a signal for her to let him speak.

“First Sandreas has been remarkably lax with allowing small planets to operate as they see fit,” Sid said. “The position of Imperial Advisor on Olar has not been filled except ceremonially for many years. Olar’s council representatives, too, have been elected rather than appointed. An unwillingness to root out corruption at its source would indicate that the Imperial government must use a firmer hand to protect the citizens of Olar from their own planetary government’s poor choices.”

This pronouncement left an uncomfortable pall over the room.

“So, this was why First Sandreas sent you here,” Cresas said. “As a show of Imperial authority, to cut me out of negotiations with the Guild entirely. Because the citizens of Olar should have no choice in how their planet is governed.”

“No,” Yan said. “That’s not what we were sent here for.”

“We were sent to solve this problem, and solve it quickly,” Sid said. “First Sandreas did not give us a specific instruction.” Sid smiled, but it was one of his smiles with teeth. “He might even be annoyed with me— after all, there has been a reason he has not used the full weight of Imperial authority on so many small border planets. If we must take control of the whole government, it will send a stronger message than even the Guild is sending.”

“Then why are you doing it, if this is not even the outcome that First Sandreas is looking for?” Cresas asked. All the joviality had fallen out of his tone— and it must have been false to begin with. He was nearly gritting his teeth.

Sid smiled and didn’t answer.

“If you’re willing to negotiate with the Guild, we won’t have to,” Yan said.

“Have you never heard of an ultimatum, Governor?” Sid said. “I want this resolved quickly, and I’m telling you that if you do not resolve it quickly, then we will resolve it for you.”

Cresas was silent.

“You’ll have a chance to speak with the Guild,” Yan said. “Come to your own terms that you find mutually agreeable, and there shouldn’t be a need—”

“You don’t have to play this tag team game with me,” Cresas said. “I understand perfectly well what my options are.” He looked at Yan directly. “What I do not understand is why you think the Imperial government should bow to the Guild. You could demand things of them as easily as you demand things of me— but you don’t.”

Yan’s stomach flipped, and she opened her mouth to try to say something else conciliatory, but the words wouldn’t come out. There was no way she could make any demands of the Guild right now. Even beyond the longstanding agreements between the Guild and the Imperial government that made the Guild a politically independent body, Yan was not in any position to negotiate with the Guild. She was sure that they would not be interested in hearing anything that they had to say.

Even as she was annoyed at Sid for far overstepping their authority, and for turning this meeting with the governor so antagonistic, she was grateful to him for understanding her situation with the Guild, which Governor Cresas either didn’t understand, or was choosing to ignore. Sid was just trying to protect her. If he had mentioned that he would be taking this tack before they arrived at the Governor’s palace, she would have tried to stop him— but he hadn’t.

“I’m afraid, Governor,” Sid said, his voice dry, “that the Imperial Government’s relationship with the Guild is worth more than the worries of a few border planets, who want to jealously guard their self-governance.” Sid cocked his head. “First Sandreas might like to allow people the ‘theater of freedom’ as you might describe it, but I don’t care to. In that respect, disdaining a symbolic theater, you and I are alike.”

“So, this trip is about establishing your personal style of authority. I misjudged you,” Cresas said.

Sid just smiled.

“You’ll forgive me for casting my lots in with the good money on Apprentice Mejia becoming First, then,” Cresas said. His voice was even dryer than Sid’s had been.

“Will you negotiate with the Guild?” Yan asked, trying to get her voice to not sound quite so strangled.

“It remains to be seen what the Guild is going to demand,” Cresas said. “You wouldn’t happen to know, would you, Apprentice BarCarran?”

“No,” Yan said. “I have no idea what authority or instructions Guildmaster Vaneik has given to Apprentice Olms.”

“Certainly she has less freedom authority than Apprentice Welslak thinks you two have.”

“You were the one who said we have our own authority, Governor,” Sid said.

“I don’t know what authority Guildmaster Vaneik gives to Apprentice Olms. I—” Yan lost her train of thought completely as there was a knock on the door. She and Cresas looked towards it, but Sid took a moment longer to follow their gaze, reacting to their movements rather than the sound.

“Come in,” Cresas said.

The heavy door swung open, and the butler came in. Swiftly following on his heels came Iri, though the butler let her in with reluctance.

“What is this?” Cresas asked, looking at the interruption.

“Ms. Maedes said that she urgently needed to speak with Apprentice BarCarran,” the butler said. “She demanded to be allowed in.”

Yan felt all the blood drain from her face. “What is it, Iri?” she asked.

“The Neutron Star just jumped in,” Iri said. “They have a shuttle on the way down.”

“And why does that require an interruption to my private dinner with Apprentice BarCarran and Apprentice Welslak?” Governor Cresas protested. But his protests didn’t matter. Sid was already standing and abandoning his dinner.

Yan glanced between him and Iri, lost. “My—” Yan began. She couldn’t quite get the words out. The sudden terror of her uncle’s disapproval was too much.

“Yes,” Iri said. “He wants to see you as soon as he lands.”

She almost asked if she had to— if there was some way she could escape. But she knew that she couldn’t refuse. She nodded.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your dinner, Governor,” Iri said. “I’m sure that if you need to speak with Apprentice Welslak and Apprentice BarCarran later, that can be arranged.”

“No,” Cresas said, “I think we have already said everything that we would need to say to each other.”