It was going to be a long journey back. Tennal had made hops on commercial flights to get to Sanura, a couple of hours here and there. “Hey,” he said. “I suppose there’s no chance you could drop me off at a … family event? If we really floor it, we might make the last hour of my sibling’s commencement.”

“No, sir, we have orders for your movements.”

Tennal rolled his arm as the ranker released it. “Course you do.”

The ranker read the results to the medic through a low-resolution comm, nearly inaudible under the drone of the engines. Tennal didn’t understand most of what the medic said, but he heard alcohol withdrawal shot and enhancer withdrawal and winced. You could take withdrawal shots to get functional again in a short period of time, if you didn’t mind spending an hour or so retching, but they weren’t pleasant. “Two at once?” he said. That was going to be miserable.

He could see the medic looking at him through the projection. They frowned down at their notes as if something had surprised them. “From the results here,” the medic’s crackly voice said, “it looks like you’ve had this coming for a while.”

Tennal dragged his hands down his face. “Oh,” he said, “I know that.”

It was four hours before they roared into the capital. The city of Exana, low-rise and picturesque, rolled out far beneath them like a sack of mosaic tiles. Other cities on Orshan’s three planets might be older, or richer, or more impressive, but Exana was the seat of government and, more viscerally, Tennal’s home: its winding streets and bright gardens were a sight so familiar that they might as well be traced across his skin like the web of his own veins.

The plane landed in the old army barracks behind the sprawling wings and domes of the Codifier Halls. It was another two hours before Tennal was done with the medical fun and games. He had experience being treated by army medics—his aunt trusted them more than civilians—and at least they didn’t try to offer sympathy. When the withdrawal shots were out of his system, they cleaned him up, put him in hospital civvies, and passed him over to an unsmiling low-grade ranker who escorted him between the barracks and the halls.

The Legislator’s Residence was tucked into a small walled garden attached to the Codifier Halls, the whole enclave overshadowed by the great dome next door. A narrow path wound through the garden between tall bushes thick with dark, glossy leaves. The residence itself was a low house of yellowing stone. The lintels had once been covered with carved patterns, but weathering had softened the edges, and now sprays of late-spring flowers climbed over them and threw suckers into the stone. The air was heavy and close.