They had no time to hide even if they wanted to. A soft alarm came from the doors of the docking bay. The other side had arrived.

Tennal hadn’t thought much about the legislator since he’d first been bundled aboard the Note, apart from the occasional vague stab of animosity, in the same way he didn’t generally think about bad weather. There was nothing to be done about his aunt. There never had been. She spent her time immersed in cutthroat politics and endless committees; she approved of Zin, despised Tennal; and that was all that was relevant.

He watched as Archer officers ushered her and her party in. He’d expected the sight of her to be familiar—her faint, hard, media-appropriate smile, a familiar outfit with a bright swirl of flowers on both the jacket and the skirt—but it was like the past few weeks had given Tennal a feed of new information he couldn’t turn off. She looked small. She wasn’t armed. This was hostile territory.

She had a crowd of followers and aides, all in civilian dress. Tennal could now pin half of them as ex-military just from their posture, and reaching out with his reader senses showed him some architect auras. Most of them sported division emblems or jewelry: Tennal couldn’t catalog all the emblems but spotted several Infantry onyx stones and Navy silver as well as Cavalry rubies. There were even some Archer diamonds, clearly not allies of Oma. Cross-division. That meant something. The politicians were here to face Oma with a unified front.

And there were others as well. Quiet officials in sober dress, a more serious version of the bodyguards who’d sat outside the residence back home. They were armed. Tennal had always ignored security at home, but now he found himself cataloging the number of them against the number of Archer soldiers in the room. At least there were enough people around his aunt to discourage anyone from starting trouble.

The legislator—sharp, powerful, terribly familiar—looked over at the quiescent camera drones. And just as Tennal followed her gaze and wondered why they hadn’t launched yet, she spotted him.

Relief. And then, as her eyes fixed on Tennal’s golden Archer stripes, terrible shock.

Tennal opened his mouth. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He didn’t know what he was going to do—they were half a room away, separated by the crowds of soldiers and hangers-on and by Oma, who smiled and approached the table in welcome.

Surit wrapped a hand around his elbow. “Stay back,” he said quietly. The vortex of Tennal’s thoughts registered my hand, then not mine, then Surit, then tried to spin in three directions at once.