“But is that the only reason I’m here? Is that the only reason you made me a planner?”

Edger hesitates, rolling the handle of his disused mask in one hand.

“No.”

“Why twelve people at this table?”

“Because it has always been so.”

“That sounds dangerously close to mythologizing, Edger.”

“I fear we crossed that threshold long ago.”

“But now you are thirteen.”

“We are thirteen. Yes.”

Dyeawan looks down at herself, fingertips involuntarily plucking at the material of her tunic. They lightly touch the smooth, polished surface of the concentric circles pinned below her shoulder.

“I saw the looks on their faces when you gave me this. The planners closer to my age, the ones who attended this meeting today, they looked like they were being given a gift. The planners who are closer in age to you looked like something was being taken away from them.”

“Your insight has clearly grown to match your powers of observation.”

Dyeawan ignores the compliment. “Was something being taken away from them, Edger?”

“Yes. The teat was taken away from their mouths. And it was long overdue.”

“I don’t understand.”

The air moves swiftly from Edger’s neck through Ku the wind dragon’s mouth and backbones. It may be a sound of exasperation, or perhaps anger, Dyeawan can’t be certain.

“Becoming older affects us in many different ways, Dyeawan, some of them beneficial and some of them detrimental. Many of my elder colleagues amidst this table have suffered mainly ill effects, I’m afraid. They become set in their ways. They become convinced the ideas they conceived and implemented decades ago, which were admittedly brilliant for the time, need not be changed or further innovated. They resist new methods and new discoveries. Observing this, I’ve strived to fill this table with fresh young minds imbued with fresh young ideas. My elder colleagues have been particularly resistant to that.”

“But before today there was a balance,” Dyeawan says almost without thought, as if the words were a muscle reacting to being prodded.

“Correct. There was division, but it was equal because we were twelve. Six of the new guard and six of the old.”

“Now we are thirteen,” she repeats, this time with understanding.

“Your presence tips the scales toward the future and makes them feel even more like part of the past. Their voluntary absence today is a form of protest, not unlike a mass tantrum. It’s funny, really. The older we get, the more we become children again. It’s a futile gesture, however. Whether they are here or not, there will no longer be a stalemate over every petty issue.”

Dyeawan frowns. “You used me to give you a majority over them, for control.”