“I was planning to tell him in the morning.”

She stopped and glared at me. “No. Now. The sooner he knows, the better. I realize you have no obligation to share this information, and your innkeeper’s duty is to let him rest, but it is a matter of his political survival. Do this for me, please.”

“Okay,” I told her.

“Right now.”

“Right now,” I promised. “Do you want to come?”

“No. It is best that I interact with him as little as possible. But tell him this: Olivio teseres tares. He will know what it means.”

* * *

I knocked on the door leading to the Sovereign’s quarters. Next to me Sean looked alert and fresh-faced, as if he’d had a full night of sleep instead of 30 minutes.

“Enter,” Kosandion called.

The door slid open, and we did. The Sovereign looked up from the transparent screen in front of him. Nothing changed in his face or posture, but somehow it became instantly clear that he knew an emergency had occurred and was ready for it.

Sean placed the data cube in front of him. I pulled two chairs out of the floor. We sat. A moment later the floor parted, and a small table grew like a mushroom, holding a carafe of coffee, three mugs, and an assortment of creamers and sugars.

“Coffee?” I asked.

Kosandion didn’t seem to have heard me.

Sean poured two mugs, one for him, one for me. Sometimes coffee was truly a life-saver.

The results of Cookie’s fact-gathering appeared on the screen. Reports, video footage, testimonies… Ten minutes into it, Kosandion stood up, walked over to our table, poured himself a cup of coffee, dumped sugar into it, and went back to the screen. His face showed no emotion, but a storm had to be brewing inside. The Muterzen pirate had barely covered his tracks. Everything in his dossier indicated that long-term planning and attention to detail never made it into his bag of tricks. He was impulsive and careless. His assumed identity might have passed a superficial check, but the top candidates were rigorously vetted. The moment Kosandion’s people started to dig, the warning bells would’ve gone off.

If it was negligence or incompetence, the blow would’ve been bad enough. Kosandion would look like a fool who was unable to hire the right staff and properly supervise them. An inept leader who allowed a notorious criminal accused of monstrous atrocities to come within one step of becoming a parent of the Dominion’s next ruler.

Sadly, it wasn’t just incompetence. It was much worse.