Hiroaki waved. “Hello, Julia. Thank you for calling back.”

“Of course,” she smiled. “What’s up?”

Frail Hiroaki hesitated, but Masami Mitsubishi spoke up for her, sprawled on the far side of the game board with the calligraphy-covered jacket of a Black Sakura reporter wadded beneath him as a pillow. “We need your help handling Darcy Sok.”

“You’re asking help from an opponent?” The Conclave Head waggled her finger at them, like a chiding aunt. “Are things getting out of hand?”

This is the first time you have seen Masami Mitsubishi in the flesh, the young journalist whose Seven-Ten list sparked so much. The boldness of his smile here is surely false, a mask for the exhaustion of four days dodging the grim slur ‘plagiarist,’ but it is a good mask, the strength of his jaw and the darkness of his face making all his expressions warm and confident. Masami is the darkest of the ten ba’sibs, darker even than Africa-tinted Toshi, and he wears an Ainu strat bracelet, a rare Japanese ethnic sub-strat which stirs much comment when he stands at his adopted father’s side. “Darcy Sok attacked Hiroaki at the CFB last night. Physically attacked.” His frowning glance led Julia to the bulk of a bandage under the cloth that veiled Hiroaki’s fragile shoulder.

“I’m not surprised. Exposing the corruption in the the CFB isn’t some small revenge; you’ve destroyed everything Darcy Sok lived for, the whole Cousins Hive, and you’ve made it seem like Sok’s fault.”

“Sok has no evidence it was us.”

Julia chuckled. “Masami, honey, a flailing, desperate person doesn’t need real evidence, conjecture is enough. You put Darcy Sok on your Seven-Ten list, and Hiroaki was inside the CFB; that’s coincidence enough for an angry imagination to blame it on you, even if you were innocent as babes.”

“Not that a Nurturist bigot like Darcy Sok would’ve called us innocent, even as babies.”

More than a few of the ba’sibs scowled, while others traded glances. Dark glances would have made sense, angry glances, chill, even hurt, but these were nothing so familiar, strange glances with something off about them, timed wrong, shifting wrong, something in the muscles of the cheeks, heads semiturning but not fully following the motion of the eyes. Perhaps you can see it best in tiny Hiroaki, how her arms—as thin as sticks within one of the sleeveless sweaters Danaë hand-knit to let her children boast their ‘unnatural’ Brillist numbers—don’t quite move like arms which have climbed and roughhoused under Nature’s summer sun.

Julia gave a sympathetic smile. “I know it means a lot to you, getting back at the Cousins for ruining your training, but I warned you, revenge is dangerous. Revenge has motive dripping off of it, and when your motive is obvious, people will link things to you even without evidence, and more when there is evidence.”

“There is no evidence!” Masami protested. “Hiroaki didn’t actually leak anything, or break any law! They were just an observer!”

Julia did not feel like feigning patience. “You’re not a Gag-gene, Masami, and anyone with half an eye for body language can spot from how you move that your senses are half remapped. I’m sure the Brillists have guessed for ages, plenty of others too, but everyone held off while Minor’s Law protected you; now that three of you are legal adults, any snoop worth their salt can find the records of your training bash’, and who was behind the attack that broke it up. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone warned Kosala and Lorelei Cook the very day you passed your Adulthood Competency Exam.”