“Good afternoon, Thursday,” intoned the emperor when he saw me, a flicker of a smile attempting to crack through his imperialist bearing.

“Hi, Emperor. How’s the galactic-domination business these days?”

“Hard work,” he replied, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Honestly, I invade peaceful civilizations on a whim, destroy their cities and generally cause a great deal of unhappy mayhem—and then they turn against me for absolutely no reason at all.”

“How senselessly irrational of them,” I remarked, winking at Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

“Quite,” continued Zhark, looking aggrieved and not getting the sarcasm. “It’s not as though I put them all to the sword anyway—I magnanimously decided to spare several hundred thousand as slaves to build an eight-hundred-foot-high statue of myself striding triumphantly over the broken bodies of the vanquished.”

“That’s probably the reason they don’t like you,” I murmured.

“Oh?” he asked with genuine concern. “Do you think the statue will be too small?”

“No, it’s the ‘striding triumphantly over the broken bodies of the vanquished’ bit. People generally don’t like having their noses rubbed in their ill fortune by the person who caused it.”

Emperor Zhark snorted. “That’s the problem with inferiors,” he said at last. “No sense of humor.”

And he lapsed into a sullen silence, took an old school exercise book from within his robes, licked a pencil stub and started to write.

I sat down next to him.

“What’s that?”

“My speech. The Thargoids graciously accepted me as god-emperor of their star system, and I thought it might be nice to say a few words—sort of thank them, really, for their kindness—but underscore the humility with veiled threats of mass extermination if they step out of line.”

“How does it begin?”

Zhark read from his notes. “‘Dear Worthless Peons—I pity you your irrelevance.’ What do you think?”

“Well, it’s definitely to the point,” I admitted. “How are things on the Holmes case?”

“We’ve been trying to get into the series all morning,” said Zhark, laying his modest acceptance speech aside for a moment and taking a spoonful of the pie that had been placed in front of him, “but to no avail. I heard you got suspended. What was that about?”

I told him about the piano and Emma, and he whistled low.

“Tricky. But I shouldn’t sweat it. I saw Bradshaw writing up the duty rosters for next week, and you’re still on them. One moment.” He waved a carefully manicured hand at the waitress and said, “Sugar on the table, my girl, or I’ll have you, your family and all your descendants put to death.”

The waitress bobbed politely, ignored his manner entirely and said, “If you killed me, Your Imperial Mightiness, I wouldn’t have any descendants, now would I?”

“Yes, well, obviously I meant the ones yet living, girl.”

“Oh!” she said. “Just so we’re clear on the matter,” and with a cute bob she was gone.

“I keep on having trouble with that waitress,” muttered Zhark after she had departed. “Do you think she was…mocking me?”