“I’ll dump your fish soup on your head if you keep this up,” Naffa warned. Cardenia smiled at this.

* * *

“I saw the video you made,” Batrin said, once he had woken again. Cardenia observed that Drinin had been correct; her father’s demeanor was fuzzy and wandering now. “The one where you were talking about me.”

“What did you think?” Cardenia asked.

“It was nice. It wasn’t written by the committee, was it?”

“No.” The executive committee had complained about Naffa’s rewritten speech until Cardenia informed them that it was either Naffa’s words or none at all. She enjoyed her first victory over the tripartite political forces counterbalancing the emperox. She did not pretend that there would be many more of those once she came into power.

“Good,” Batrin said. “You should be your own emperox, my daughter. No one else’s.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Do.” Batrin closed his eyes for a moment and appeared to drift off. Then he opened them again and looked at Cardenia. “Have you chosen your imperial name yet?”

“I thought I might keep my own,” Cardenia said.

“What? No,” Batrin said. “Your own name is for your private world. For friends and spouses and children and lovers. You’ll need that private name. Don’t give it away to the empire.”

“Which of your names did my mother call you?”

“She called me Batrin. At least long enough to matter. How is your mother?”

“She’s fine.” Three years prior, Hannah Patrick had accepted a position of provost at Guelph Institute of Technology, ten weeks from Hub via the Flow. By now news of the emperox’s worsening condition would have reached her. She wouldn’t know her daughter had become emperox until well after the fact. Cardenia knew her mother was deeply ambivalent about her ascension.

“I considered marrying her,” Batrin said.

“You’ve told me.” Cardenia had heard a different story from her mother but this was not the time to bring it up.

The emperox nodded and changed the subject. “May I suggest a name to you? For your imperial name.”

“Yes, please.”

“Grayland.”

Cardenia furrowed her brow. “I don’t know this name.”

“When I die, look her up. And then come talk to me about it.”

“I will.”

“Good, good. You will be a good emperox, Cardenia.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll have to be. The empire is going to need it, in the end.”

Cardenia didn’t know what to say to that, so she just nodded, and reached out for her father’s hand. He seemed surprised by it, and then gave it the smallest of squeezes.

“I think I’ll go to sleep now,” he said. “I’ll go to sleep and then you’ll be emperox. Is that all right?”

“It’s fine,” Cardenia said.