Governor Oma’s smile turned sharp. Tennal preferred that. It felt more honest. “You’re not a prisoner, Tennalhin,” she said. “Sit, sit, you must be exhausted.”

She left her formal desk and led him to one of the scattered groups of low chairs on the other side of the suite, near the glass walls that let out onto space. Tennal was still destabilized by the view—he wasn’t used to it; he lived on a planet—and picked the chair with its back to the stars. There was a low table between them, decorated with filament-thin lines that rippled like water.

On it was a bowl of fresh nectarines. Tennal did not take one.

“Not a prisoner, really?” he said. “So all those locked doors and blocked networks … your engineers up here are just extraordinarily bad at their jobs, are they?”

“I could certainly use better staff,” Governor Oma agreed gravely. Up close like this, there was a fine web of lines over her face, gathering at the corners of her eyes. “But no.” She took a nectarine. She wore a softer, more civilian version of a general’s dress uniform today: her tunic was so dark green it was almost black, and the trouser folds draped in the liquid way of very expensive fabric. “In fact, I spent the night debriefing with officers from the Fractal Note.” Tennal watched her hands as she sliced the skin of the fruit and efficiently broke it into halves. “One thing that came up was you. From what I’ve been told about your recent history, it seemed unlikely you’d stay in one place for very long, and I wanted to talk to you.”

“People often do,” Tennal said. “I’m a hot property. In some circles.”

Governor Oma continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “I understand you’ve been conscripted.”

“Yes,” Tennal said. His stomach lurched. “Are you going to send me back?”

Oma had cut a slice of the nectarine but stopped with it halfway to her mouth, looking at him in baffled incomprehension. “Guidance, what do you think of me?” She ate the slice neatly and touched the tips of her fingers to a napkin. “I’m not Legislator Yasanin, and I don’t believe in forcibly breaking my own nephew’s mind to, apparently, get him out of the way of my political career.”

In the moment of silence that followed, she put the sliced nectarine back in the bowl.

Tennal felt transparent. It wasn’t a reassuring feeling; in fact, it was excruciating. The way she said it made it sound like the sort of political scandal the newslogs like to report. Tennal could imagine his own picture up on a screen as part of an attack broadcast. “It was more complicated than that.”

“It often is,” Oma said reflectively.