The last thing Surit had expected from her was confusion. But Oma blinked, looked at the shrine, and seemed to take a while to recognize what it was. “Lights, I meant to do something about that. Meant to get someone in. Replace it the normal way.” She looked at the bare wooden shelves and the carelessly stacked icons and gave a strange laugh. “Having four hundred people in your head changes a great deal.” Surit caught Tennal’s shocked reaction at four hundred, but Surit wasn’t surprised. There were hundreds of key government figures who would be useful to a coup. Oma had enough remnants for it. Once you’d found something that worked, why stop?

But it was clearly getting to her. Oma stared at the empty shrine and put a finger to her temple. “I meant to … get a priest in, I suppose? It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s only more material clutter.”

The sick lurch in Tennal’s head surprised both of them. But Surit, watching Oma’s presence build and shift like a thundercloud, had insight into why. “It’s not the four hundred people,” Surit said quietly. “It’s the effect of the remnants, isn’t it, sir? It’s like four hundred syncs. You’re even less human than us.”

Oma stilled. “You’re an expert, are you, Lieutenant?”

“Why?” Tennal said. “Why any of this? Guidance knows my dear darling aunt was never a paragon, but neither are you. You were one of the original neuromods. And you were already a general! You had thousands of soldiers, you were a senior officer, so why start a coup?”

Oma looked between them, a distant frown on her face as if she didn’t understand why they didn’t get it. “There’s no safety unless you’re in command.”

“What?”

“I was on the wrong side of the first war,” Oma said patiently. “The one Cavalry decided to blame on readers. I was eighteen, and my commanding officer—never mind. The point is, they nearly rounded me up. I was a full neuromod, back then: a reader and an architect. They wanted to try out one of the first syncs on me. My relatives had to pull every string they could to get me exonerated, to get me altered into just an architect. It was chaos back then, when the lab was operational. But you should really understand this,” she said to Tennal. “How much did it help you, that you were a citizen, and a Cavalry dependent, and Yasanin’s nephew? How much did it help when they came to conscript you?”

Surit and Tennal didn’t even have to look at each other. “Funny way of dealing with it,” Tennal said. “I’m personally considered a leading light in the field of maladaptive coping mechanisms, but it’s amazing how I never managed to brainwash hundreds of people and take over the government.”