Dominic: “True, but the bill will be vetoed by the Blacklaw Tribunes anyway. It won’t become law, but you swore to fight it with your dying breath, and I’m prepared to make that fight Hell for you to get what I need. Do this favor for me and you have my twenty-seven votes; add your sixty-one, the Utopian eight, say twenty of the Humanist twenty-two, likely at least two Hiveless on your side, that’s a hundred and eighteen votes right there, the bill’s dead. Refuse and your side has ninety-one, while on Cook’s side would be my votes plus the Cousins, Gordian, dissenting Humanists, probably the Whitelaw Hiveless, that makes eighty-four, which leaves you begging favors from waffling Europeans, plus you still risk the bill passing, then the veto, then Cook’s push to overturn the veto, and while that drags on you know there will be riots, and Utopia will strike, just like they did in the days of Son Majesté Impérial Mycroft MASON. That’s when it turns nasty.”

MASON: “Cook’s law is targeting you personally, canis, you as a Blacklaw and as Madame’s creation.”

Dominic will not object to being called a cur in any language. “Were I a free man, Majesté, I’d be in Hobbestown right now burning Cook in effigy, but I have a Hive to save. From itself. I’m sure you know the feeling.”

MASON: “I am willing to publicly announce that I oppose any attempt to legislate the land question until after the Mitsubishi Hive submits its proposal for self-reform to the Senate a month from now. Is that enough to end the strike?”

Dominic: “That… yes… yes, that should be enough. I’ll need to check with the other Acting Directors, but I believe… yes. We have a deal.”

MASON: “Would you really be in Hobbestown burning Cook in effigy if you weren’t busy doing this?”

Dominic: “Votre Majesté Impérial knows me too well. But I’m not going to give you a recording of me saying what I really want to be doing to Cookie, or to Sniper. And I’ll give you some advice to pass on to Mycroft and Martin too. This isn’t a threat, just a suggestion to lubricate our future interactions: if any of you catches the blasphemer before I do, call me and let me do the final deed. Mon Maître est mon Maître. It’s my right and duty to avenge the blasphemy against mon Maître—no one else’s right or duty—mine. Take that from me and you’ll birth an… inconvenient… grudge.”