“Emperox Grayland reigned from 220 to 223 FI,” her tablet said, in a pleasant voice, popping up a search page. The Interdependency started its calendar from the founding of the empire by Prophet-Emperox Rachela I, which was arrogant—there had already been a perfectly good calendar system in use, in which the founding of the Interdependency took place in the late twenty-sixth century—but Cardenia suspected it was no less arrogant than what any empire did, given the chance. “Notable events in her reign include the founding of Lamphun, the disappearance of Dalasýsla, and the emperox’s assassination by Gunnar Olafsen in 223.”

“Why was she assassinated?”

“At his trial, Gunnar Olafsen maintained the emperox did not do enough to rescue the citizens of Dalasýsla.”

“Was this true?”

“I am a search function. I do not have opinions on political matters.”

Cardenia crossed her eyes in irritation. Fair point, faceless computer, she thought. “How was Dalasýsla lost?”

“The Flow stream access to it disappeared in 222,” the tablet said.

Oh, right, Cardenia thought. Her elementary school Interdependency history lessons came back to her now. Dalasýsla was one of several early settlements that had met with a bad end before the Wu emperoxs and the religious and social tenets of Interdependence had entirely locked down most opposition. Most of those settlements, however, had been lost to war or famine or disease. Dalasýsla was lost because suddenly there was no way to get to it, or from it, through the Flow. It had just… disappeared, off the map entirely.

Cardenia called up an encyclopedia article on the assassination, complete with a photo of Olafsen, a ship engineer from Dalasýsla, who had been stationed on the Toun Sandin, the imperial tenner. He had assassinated the Emperox Grayland, along with more than a hundred of her retinue, by sealing off the ring segment her staterooms were in, and, while the Toun Sandin was in the Flow, returning from a state visit from Jendouba, jettisoning the ring segment out of the time-space bubble surrounding the ship, into the Flow itself, where it promptly stopped existing.

“Well, this is cheerful,” Cardenia said to herself. She was not entirely sure why her father had suggested the name Grayland to her, unless he was confident she would be assassinated by a disgruntled minion. This discomfited her somewhat. She skimmed through the rest of the entry and noted that Grayland had apparently actually ordered the evacuation of Dalasýsla, based on data provided to her by scientists, but that the evacuation had been opposed in parliament, including by Dalasýsla’s own ministers, and by the guilds, which delayed an evacuation until it was too late. Olafsen blamed the emperox for the delay, when the blame should have properly set elsewhere.

But there is only one emperox, Cardenia thought. And she was on his ship.

“Hey,” Naffa said, from the other room. “Are you about done?”