“We’ll have reached the Sicclunan front line. You and the rest of this raw meat, none of whom I imagine are lucky enough to not have the training you say you don’t, will join up with the surviving Savages from other companies.”

“And then what?”

Spud-Bar reaches between them and gently flicks the edge of the ax in Evie’s hand with their fingertips.

“You’ll need that ax to be in as fit shape as possible.”

RESOLVE IS THE FORGED BLADE THAT CANNOT BE QUENCHED

“IF THAT TALKING SADDLEBAG THINKS he can call my husband a traitor, fold my Gen, and pay me off like a whore, his mind is as molten as his face!”

Lexi has been raging for three blocks, since they left the Spectrum. Her every step seems to pump pure fire through the rest of her body, leading to reoccurring eruptions between her ears.

Taru hasn’t said a word. They’ve rarely seen Lexi so fiercely dispossessed of composure.

“And that self-righteous ideologue using her backside’s spout as her mouth,” she thunders on. “If she weren’t wearing those robes she’d be scrubbing the Spectrum’s stone hide every morning.”

Taru frowns, offering comment for the first time. “From what you’ve described, Te-Gen, Councilwoman Burr was thoroughly unsympathetic and even unnecessarily aggressive when addressing the issue, and you in particular.”

“She’s an Ignoble,” Lexi says, as if that one word is explanation enough.

“I’m afraid I… am unfamiliar with that term, Te-Gen. I was taught all forms of ‘nobility’ in Crache were overturned long ago. We have no nobles, of any kind.”

“And so they were, and so we do not. Ignobles are the descendants of those ancient houses whose powers were revoked and wealth reallocated during the Renewal, when smarter folk than Burr finally realized how destructive it was, allowing themselves to be ruled by men based solely on whose crotch they were pulled from at birth. Burr’s family was one of the richest and most powerful in Crache before that time. They commanded their own armies. For all I know the Spectrum is built on land where their great castle once stood.”

“But that was… hundreds of years ago. How could she possibly know, yet prove—”

Lexi laughs wryly. “Ignobles became even more fanatical about preserving and cataloguing their bloodlines after the Renewal. They were all certain it wouldn’t last; that the great houses would rise up and take back the realms that became Crache. They all wanted their claims to what their ancestors’ lost clear as a morning stream.”

“Councilwoman Burr seems to have adapted well enough,” Taru observes. “She speaks the words of the state with vigor.”

“Her family has learned to play a new game. If they couldn’t make themselves useful, they could decide the usefulness of others. I believe she’s the third Burr to serve on the Gen Franchise Council.”