Stacia waited for him through an observation window. Kenya headed a security team posted up on either side of the storage bay entrance. As soon as Hondo walked through the door, they relieved him of his flute and searched him for any tool that might be used as a weapon. Even without sound, Stacia recognized his pantomime of protest. His pleas of confusion and innocence. She’d seen this performance too many times before. Kenya lifted a glyph for her inspection.

“Maya?” Stacia called out, little above a whisper. Not even the buzz of a garbled digital signal came in response. Only the empty space in her mind—she’d almost said emi, like so many of the mythicists would have claimed. But she acknowledged the space in her heart, its gentle ache, of missing something. The comfort of a friend. She drummed her fingers against a panel, distracting herself with its staccato rhythms while she measured her situation.

Xola dead. Paki missing. Maya off line.

The three people she would turn to first in a crisis. She might have accused herself of paranoia, but the fact remained that her main supports were suddenly taken out in a silent coup. Its architect may have overplayed his hand. She, her family, the Cypher, Muungano were under attack. And no one attacked her people and expected her to stand on the sidelines.

The guards left Hondo alone in the storage bay room while she waited. All interrogations were about agendas. The ground rules were simple: Hondo had secrets to keep; she had secrets to extract. To make sure he was under no illusion of who he was dealing with, she had changed into full captain’s regalia. A headdress of crystals and tight woven braids, an ethereal white dress, bedecked in crystals, and a white ermine cape. By the time she entered the ad hoc interrogation room, he’d fallen asleep in his chair.

Stacia slapped the table as she took her seat. “They say only the guilty can sleep during an interrogation.”

“Or the extremely tired.” Hondo stirred, unhurried, stretching and yawning, his body uncoiling in the seat. She always thought of him as small, but he seemed a lot larger across the table from her. “I pulled two doubles back-to-back. You might not have heard, but I had orders to complete an investigation.”

“Did you find out anything?” Stacia remained nonplussed at his casual disparagement of her. He had a sense of entitlement he believed protected him under all circumstances. She bided her time.

“I wasn’t allowed to finish. I got dragged off to a cell. I mean, an interrogation chamber. Just like the police detectives used to do back on Yo. Is that where we find ourselves? Is that ‘the Muungano way’ now?”