‘And you are now married to him!’ Chetta shouted, pointing past her. ‘You are Jo’Sin, not Brobantis! Just as I am Brobantis, not Dacastos! In fact, Morandia, I have publicly declared my intention never to return to the house of my birth! I have pledged myself to Brobantis in life and in death!’ She raised her chin, daring the other woman to reply. ‘Where do your loyalties lie? Have you set them out for all to see?’

It was a tender subject, and not polite to bring it up. Most Navigators who married into other houses would return to the house of their birth shortly before their deaths, to be interred in their own catacombs, which meant there was always the possibility of them taking secrets with them. As a result, many marriages were little more than long-term, mutually arranged hostage situations, undertaken only due to the need to diversify the bloodlines and keep Navigator gene-stock as strong as it could be, for the good of the Imperium.

Chetta’s approach to the tachydon in the room was usually to kick it as hard as possible, and Sen Uru Dukarr wasn’t the only one who could force people into an uncomfortable choice. However much truth was in her reply, Morandia could either remind her husband that she might one day abandon his house, or she could acknowledge that, for the moment at least, she had no place here.

Jalamar saved her the trouble of answering. ‘Come, my dear,’ he said, taking his wife’s arm. ‘Tempers are high. Perhaps we should go.’

‘I will not forget this, Chetta,’ Morandia said icily. She turned, the cloth hanging from her arms sweeping out like wings, and strode away with Jalamar trailing her.

‘Luc,’ Chetta said quietly, ‘have your men see them out.’

Krane nodded, and the two of his armsmen who’d been accompanying them set off to tail the Jo’Sin couple at a polite distance.

‘How secure from surveillance is this hallway?’ Chetta asked Krane.

‘We sweep it regularly,’ the security chief said. ‘To be honest, my lady, any random stretch of hallway may be more secure than one of the meeting chambers, for all our efforts. No one has a specific reason to try to bug it.’

Chetta nodded, and turned back to Vittariel. ‘I believe you were shouting at me.’

‘You return here with my brother dead, and now you drive my sister from the halls of her birth,’ Vittariel snarled. ‘You form a new alliance without consulting me, and end another that my brother organised, leaving us weak and embroiled in a trade war. I wonder what your agenda truly is.’

Chetta glanced sideways to make sure that Morandia and Jalamar had gone, then leaned in closer to him. ‘Morandia is going to make a play to become Novator.’

Vittariel blinked. ‘What?’