Tennal opened his mouth to say he had excuses for all of those. But he hesitated. There was something about Oma that he recognized, something his aunt had, something Tennal unwillingly recognized in himself. There was no point smiling and treading in velvet slippers when what was underneath Oma’s voice, always, was the bared edge of a knife.

She knew Tennal and Surit had been in the archives. She might’ve known they’d been looking for the remnants. Tennal wasn’t too concerned about being found out: he’d expected it once someone checked the entry logs. But Oma hadn’t asked for an explanation, which meant she didn’t care that he was poking around. She didn’t care that a pile of alien artifacts had gone missing.

Tennal said, “What did you do with the remnants Surit found in chaotic space?”

“Oh.” Oma gave a smile that showed her teeth. “So you are Yasanin’s nephew. It’s well past time.” She reached under her desk and pulled out something Tennal had mistaken for part of the desk, but he now saw it was a secure lockbox shaped like a cabinet. It hovered just above the floor as she removed it. “I only had about a dozen before Lieutenant Yeni found this windfall. The best outcome possible, really.”

The cabinet was something more than a lockbox. It was encased in stained mahogany, like the sides of the desk, but when she lifted the lid, it was six inches thick with metal shielding. She took out a metal box from inside it, also shielded, and laid it on her desk.

“When I was at the lab, this was our talisman,” Oma said, placing a hand on it. “They discovered it when chaotic space spat out a pocket of debris. I was nineteen. This was Orshan’s hope. This was our chance of modelling ourselves after the High Chain. We could be more than human—that was the sales pitch I volunteered for.” She gave a self-deprecating smile. “Unfortunately, we’re all still human. Just human with some mild neuro abilities.”

“And … what was the goal after that?” Tennal asked, fascinated. “Did you really think the Resolution wouldn’t care?”

“Well, they didn’t notice for a good few years,” Oma said. “Even their first Auditor missed it. As for the goal, we’d genuinely thought we’d be an unstoppable fighting force. The High Chain architects—well, whatever they are, architects is an Orshan word—can influence whole crowds of people at once. But the Chain is much more advanced than us. The neuromodifications we managed were smaller. In fact, what we got was something very bad for interplanetary expansion but very good for internal coups and civil wars.”

“Lucky us,” Tennal said. “So your new readers started a coup, and your new architects followed right along with a civil war.”