It didn’t look much like a coup; at least not at first. There hadn’t been any real coups in Surit’s lifetime. The closest thing was the Reader War before he’d been born, where the media had reported on Marit as if she’d been about to land a rogue fleet on Orshan Central. His mother had never intended that. But Oma had done it.

Surit rested his forehead on the clammy glass and watched the tail end of the procession disappear into the Codifier Halls. No one even shouted. The street was deserted.

Surit had been here for four days. He could put the sequence of events together from the newslog broadcasts that made it to his throttled wristband. Everyone who had traveled with the legislator to Archer Link Station had thrown their support behind Oma. The other division chiefs, the cabinet of state advisors, the senior members of the Convocation—they all gave serious interviews about the loss of the last legislator and the need for stability. The newslog anchors sounded sometimes baffled. They weren’t used to consensus. Surit could spot the brainwashing.

Surit didn’t see Zinyary on the broadcasts again, but from the defensive tone of the official interviews, it certainly seemed like someone was counter-briefing. And the lack of spectators, the Archer troops stationed around the barriers—yes. There was a war going on. Just not here, in the humid, breathless center of Exana, where they’d locked Surit in the barracks.

Surit had let himself be taken prisoner, so he couldn’t complain. The Archer troops who’d picked up his tug had been understandably surprised. They’d been sent to capture Tennalhin Halkana. But Surit was also on Oma’s wanted list, and they couldn’t catch Tennal—something Surit could have told them a while ago—so they detached a ship to bring him home.

Home, for Surit, wasn’t Exana. He’d only ever been to this glossy, flowery city on a school trip. Home was a range of green mountains and industrial sprawl three thousand miles away.

He didn’t particularly want to die here.

He’d tried not to think about it on the way back. The headaches had started out short: brief flowers of pain that made him black out. He’d wake up on the floor of his cabin with time gone. For the first few days, it was only minutes at a time; then it started stretching out into hours. It took two weeks to get back to Orshan Central from that pocket of chaotic space. By the time Surit had been brought to Exana and locked in an empty barrack, he was unconscious for longer periods than he was lucid.