“That is not quite what I meant,” Fassin told them quickly. “The moon ’glantine, for example; has it been harmed?”

“Not to my knowledge,” the Administrator said, with another stern look at Hatherence.

“And the military ships that were in orbit around Third Fury?” the colonel asked.

(- Shh! Fassin signalled Hatherence.

— No! she sent back.)

“What ships?” the Administrator said, apparently mystified.

“How about the planet Sepekte?” Fassin said.

“I have no idea,” the Administrator told him. She fixed her gaze on Fassin. “Is this why you wished to see me? To ask after the welfare of moons and distant planets?”

“No, ma’am. The reason that I wanted to see you is that I am worried that there may be a threat to Nasqueron.”

“You are?” blurted Y’sul.

“Really?” the Administrator said with a sigh.

Even Hatherence was turned to look at him.

“There is a war beginning amongst the Quick, ma’am,” Fassin told the Administrator. “It is going to come to Ulubis and it is not impossible that some of the forces taking part may wish to involve Nasqueron and its Dwellers in that war in some way.”

The Administrator rolled fractionally back and sucked her outer trim-frill in, the Dweller equivalent of a frown.

(- Major? the colonel sent. — You said nothing of this. What do you base this on? Is there something you’re not telling me?

— A hunch. Just trying to get their attention. And I should point out that it’s considered impolite to signal-whisper like this.)

The Administrator continued to look at Fassin for a moment, then turned to Y’sul. Ts this human normally mad?”

Y’sul made a sucking sound. “Down to definitions.”

“Nasqueron might be vulnerable to a further bombardment,” Fassin persisted. “Even to some sort of raid.”

“Ha!” Y’sul laughed.

“We are not defenceless, human Taak!” the Administrator said loudly.

No, but your spaceships are leaky antiques and your planetary defences are set up for dumb rocks, Fassin thought wearily. You talk a good defence, but if the Epiphany 5 invaders decide to attack, or the Mercatoria decides I’m dead and they plump for a more obvious way to get hold of whatever might be in Valseir’s library, you won’t be able to do much to stop them. Going on what I’ve seen, a single Navarchy Military destroyer could lay waste to your whole planet, over time.

“Of course not,” he agreed. “But I would ask you to pass this information on to the relevant authorities. You will be still better defended if you are prepared.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” the Administrator told him levelly.

Oh shit, Fassin thought. You’re going to do fuck all. You aren’t going to bother telling anybody.

Y’sul was looking up. “What’s that?” he asked.

Fassin experienced a moment of horror. He looked up too. A stubby vaned cylinder a couple of metres high was hovering vertically above them in the darkness outside the ceiling’s still-open diamond petals. It was pointing something long and dark at them.

The Administrator groaned. “Oh no,” she said. “That is the press.”

“Sholish! My good cuirass, you witless rind-nibbling waste of gas!”

Y’sul threw a piece of armour across the room at his servant.

The camo-painted carbon plate spun through the gas, changing colours rapidly as it tried to adapt, narrowly missed several other Dwellers — the large room was crowded and people had to duck, bob or dodge — just avoided Sholish and embedded itself in a FloatTree panel, producing a distinct thunk. Before it had much of a chance to blend in, Sholish tugged it out of the wall and disappeared into a side chamber, muttering.

“Excuse me,” Colonel Hatherence said sharply to a Dweller who’d just bumped into her in the general shuffling that had spread through the room to give the thrown piece of armour a clear trajectory.

“Excused!” the Dweller said, then continued his conversation with another of Y’sul’s relations.

Y’sul was getting ready to quit Hauskip and leave for the war along with his charges, Fassin and the oerileithe. His new combat clothing had arrived just that morning (kudos-enhancingly quickly!) along with various gifts from friends and family, most of whom, it seemed, had thought it best to show up in person to present their mostly useless or positively dangerous gifts and offer vast amounts of generally contradictory but extremely loudly proffered advice.

Y’sul, flattered and excited to be the centre of so much attention, had invited them all into his dressing room for snacks and whatever while he tried on all his new clothing, checked that his antique, inherited familial armour still more or less fitted and played with all the new bits and pieces he’d been given. Fassin counted over thirty Dwellers in the chamber, which was one of the larger spaces in the wheel-shaped house. There was a saying to the effect that one Dweller constituted an argument-in-waiting, two a conspiracy and three a riot. Quite what a gathering of thirty-plus was supposed to represent he wasn’t sure, but it would assuredly have nothing to do with silence or subtlety. The noise rang off the curved walls. The clothing competed for loudness. Expressive patterns spread across exposed carapace skin like flip-books of geometric artwork. Magnetic chatter swirled, infrasound bounced confusion from one wall to another and a heady mix of pheromones bathed the place in frantic currents of Dweller hilarity.

— Are there other guides-cum-guards we might employ beside this one? Hatherence asked, pressing up to the wall beneath where Fassin floated as another Dweller bearing gifts arrived and pushed his way through the throng towards Y’sul.

— Not really, Fassin told her. — Y’sul suffered a significant kudos-loss within the Guard-mentors Guild taking on an alien outworlder, back when he agreed to be Uncle Slovius’s mentor. He got that back eventually but it was a brave thing to do. Few of them will accept that kind of loss. Starting from scratch to find somebody new would take years, even if Y’sul did agree.

Something small, round, pink and gooey bumped into the top of the colonel’s esuit, and stuck. She batted it away. — What are all these things? she said, exasperated.

— Just hospitality, Fassin sent, with a resigned expression.

Floating, drifting round the room were bobfruits, flossballs, chandelier-gumbushes and wobbling breezetrays loaded with sweetmeats, mood-balloons, narcopastes and party-suppositories. The guests helped themselves, eating, ingesting, snorting, rubbing and inserting away as appropriate. The noise seemed to be swelling by the minute, as was the collision rate — always a sure indicator that Dwellers were getting out of it (lots of loud bumps, hasty cries of “Excuse me!’, sudden, alarming tiltings, and bursts of the sort of especially raucous laughter which invariably accompanied the realisation by a Dweller that one of its companions had lost control of their buoyancy).

· Oh dear, Fassin said. — I do believe this is turning into a party.

· Are these people intoxicated? Hatherence asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

Fassin looked at her, letting his incredulity show. — Colonel, he told her, — they are rarely anything else.

There was a bang and a yelp from somewhere near where Y’sul floated. A bobfruit exploded in mid-gas and fell limply to the floor. People nearby wiped foamy pieces of fruit off their clothes.

“Oops!” Y’sul said, amidst widespread laughter.

· He can’t be the only guide! the colonel protested. — What about other Seers? They must have guides too.

· They do, but it’s a one-to-one thing, an exclusive relationship. Abandoning your Guard-mentor would be a terrible insult. They’d lose all kudos.

· Major Taak, we cannot afford to be sentimental here! If there is even a possibility that we might find a better, less idiotic guide, we ought at least to start looking.