“Not yet,” said the green priest, setting the heavy pot down on the step beside the ornate throne. He crouched next to the treeling and wrapped his hands around the scaly bark. “Other green priests in your connecting chambers have been trying to track him down. They spoke with our counterparts in Mijistra. But from there, locating the Chairman in his private meeting with the Mage-Imperator is more difficult.”

“Keep trying,” the King said, attempting to be strong and noble, not wanting to show how much he relied on Basil.

The hydrogue emissary approached, his pressure vessel looming large and ominous. A handful of court bureaucrats sent in musicians to play a bold fanfare, as if the deep-core alien might enjoy such a reception. Protocol ministers raced in with colorful banners and flags, presuming that their symbols and pennants would be recognizable to an alien species. King Frederick thought them ridiculous.

Thrumming with power, the translucent sphere came to a halt, overwhelmingly large even in the giant Throne Hall. Murky clouds inside churned like a living opal.

King Frederick thought of a child’s snow globe and desperately struggled to stop himself from giggling at the mental picture. He had to appear brave and resolute. He would make Basil proud by demonstrating that he had learned true diplomacy after so many years in the Whisper Palace.

In his dread-filled heart, Frederick knew that this was the most important meeting of his long reign. He stood, not out of deference to the hydrogue emissary, but to keep himself from feeling so small and insignificant in front of the hovering crystal sphere.

He waited in silence, but the pressure vessel had emitted no words since the initial demands for an audience. Finally, in an effort to maintain a semblance of control over the situation, Frederick decided to speak first. While the green priests kept trying to contact Basil, the King would draw out this encounter, make no rash decisions—and, above all, do nothing to provoke the aliens. The gigantic hydrogue warglobe in orbit no doubt had its weapons fully charged, ready to level all the cities on Earth.

“I am King Frederick of the Terran Hanseatic League.” He squared his shoulders and spoke with pride, though he doubted the hydrogues had any sense of human expressions. “I represent all humans throughout the Spiral Arm, on Earth, on our colony worlds, and also on the space stations and skymines that you have destroyed.”

Frederick waited, certain that his words would spark some sort of reaction from the alien emissary.

Finally, a shadow congealed in the center of the globe’s compressed gases. The mists thinned, as if solidifying into a form, and a quicksilver silhouette became a shimmering humanoid shape—a perfectly formed man, complete down to every eyelash, every hair on his head, and a uniform of clothes with many pockets, clan emblems embroidered on a flowing cape, every wrinkle preserved.