“At this moment we can’t afford an hour’s time of the lowliest apprentice pleader, Taru. Besides, Brio always said Crachian law is far less a code of conduct and far more the most variable language in the nation. It’s designed to be manipulated to create an argument for anything, and to drown novices in words and subsections and sub-subsections. But the answer is there, like a magic spell. You just have to find the right phrase.”

“What phrase are we seeking in the pages of these books?”

Lexi’s expression hardens.

We are not flowers. We do not wilt.

“I’m not letting those crusted, condescending cock-splats revoke the Gen that my family and Brio’s family raised from dust on their bare backs. There’s something in here that will at the very least buy us time. We’re going to find it. And I’m going to thrust it down their throats like one of your blades.”

She looks up, and is shocked at what she sees.

Taru is smiling.

In that moment, Lexi truly believes anything is possible.

REQUITAL IS THE REVENGE OF THE WELL-READ

“IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE THREE hundred and twenty-first subset of the Articles of Addendum of the Adjunct Gen Franchise Protectorate Decree, I, Lexi Xia, acting on behalf of Gen Stalbraid as de facto kith-kin elder, formally protest the ruling of this Council.”

It’s like watching three people who are already awake somehow wake up. The spines of the three Councilmembers separate from their stone seatbacks like withered membranes pulling apart under protest, each of them pitching forward, drawn by the words of the petitioner they all thought they’d dealt with definitively and to whom this final session in the Council chambers was to be but a simple courtesy.

Taru by her side, Lexi stands precisely where she stood one week before, steeling herself under the silent thunder and civilized brutality of the Gen Franchise Council’s proclamations. This time, however, she’s come armed with her own bureaucratic barbs, and enough to shred the cloth from the stale robes of her enemies.

Senior Councilman Stru’s expression pulls twenty year’s worth of sag from his perpetually slumping facial features. He’s known Lexi since she was a young woman, but in that moment he looks down on her as a stranger, his eyes shocked and almost distrustful.

Councilman Jochi, the imp of the trio, comes alight at the unexpected authority in Lexi’s voice and the knowledge in her words. He looks positively delighted by the showing, in fact.

Councilwoman Burr’s suspicion is as thick in her eyes as her contempt. Nevertheless, she remains silent, watchful, waiting for Lexi’s next words.