There was a question the speaker’s platform mic didn’t pick up, but Tennal could tell what it was by the stiff line of Surit’s shoulders. Tennal rose to his feet and started to push his way through the benches. “I think this is the time, actually, sir,” Surit said up front. He was aware the mic was picking up his words, Tennal could tell. This was aimed at the whole hall. “My mother, General Yeni, fixed a great wrong when she stopped the last experiments on readers. She was smeared for it. You took a reader I respected, and you treated him like an object. You treated me like an object. And I don’t mind working for the greater good, but I’m not sure I am.”

Surit, for Lights’ sake, Tennal thought, though of course Surit didn’t hear. As Tennal pushed his way to the front, he spotted Zin. She was sitting with a group of people in the green and gray of working lawyers. That must be her law shoal. One of the senior lawyers had her hand on Zin’s shoulder, as if to stop Zin from jumping up. Maybe Zin could rescue Surit after he’d stopped accidentally digging himself into a court-martial.

“So I resign, sir,” Surit said implacably. “Effective immediately, or if there’s a court-martial, after whatever term of imprisonment that panel decides.”

Unbelievable. Tennal had the worst lieutenant possible. Tennal emerged from the benches, the marble slab with the division commanders on his left and the Resolution eyes and screens on his right, and said to both of them, “Excuse me. Excuse me! You’re not going to jail him.”

Two security guards stepped forward, glancing at each other and at Tennal, but after a fraction of a second, the person on the Resolution screen said, “Ah. You are Tennalhin Halkana. The other neuromod at the site of the incident.” They added, “Clear the platform for Tennalhin Halkana, please.”

Surit locked eyes with Tennal but didn’t speak a word in range of the speaker’s platform and its mic. But as he passed Tennal, he raised his hand and brushed his fingers against Tennal’s inner elbow, a touch that probably looked like nothing to onlookers but was intimate enough to make Tennal shiver even through his clothes.

Tennal stepped onto the platform, trying desperately to get his mind back on track. This was not exactly what he had meant to do.

And it wasn’t what he had to do either, because the moment he stepped onto the platform, Zin jumped from her chair like a coiled spring and followed him up.

“Hi,” Zin said to the Resolution screens, shifting from foot to foot beside Tennal. She sounded bright and overstretched as a taut wire, a sign she was very nervous. “Hi, hello, I’m speaking for Tennalhin. I’m his legal representative and spokesperson under Subjects of Participating Polities: Communication codicil one-two-five A.”