“I don’t need three minutes,” Fracciterne replied serenely. “At this point every human being on Earth has watched the video of Tribune Mason’s apparent resurrection an average of eleven times. The number of Alliance Members requesting visits to religious Reservations has increased by a factor of sixty-three, and only capped out at that level because most Reservations have a daily max on Alliance visitors. I suspect most of you would love a chance to sit on a couch for an hour and talk to your bash’mates about what happened on the Rostra without having to go to Tibet to make it legal. Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili is in jail, and we haven’t heard a single coherent announcement from the Conclave since their arrest. The Conclave needs to do something, immediately, and we need to order them to. That’s all.”

“Fracciterne’s draft nominates European Vega to speak against. Any objections?” Grandpa’s scowl promised that any who spoke up would go to bed without dessert. “Vega, three minutes.”

I did not know this tall, athletic Spaniard, but had seen her from time to time in the king’s halls. “I shall match concision with concision. Cumulatively, religious wars have killed more human beings than there are alive today. There is no more dangerous fire we could be playing with. The Sensayer’s Conclave is our fire crew. We do not order them to go in unprepared. If we rush this, we risk wasting our best and only resource. That is all.”

“I call the vote on this motion.”

The electronic vote, like the captive lightning which carried it, was swift.

“One hundred ninety-two in favor, eight opposed. The motion passes. Is there a veto?”

As the world waited for the Tribunes’ silence to affirm the vote, fear quickened Achilles’s breath, the Servicers’ too, for those who sat with me had heard the alarm beep of that crass and alien pacemaker which, at Papa’s order, thumps on within me, replacing the homemade creation Saladin and I implanted in our lusty youth. “Mycroft? What’s wrong?”

Reason calmed me swiftly. “It’s alright. I’m fine. It’s not the eight. Vega must have been one of the nay votes.”

“What?”

“One-ninety-two to eight can mean all Hives and Hiveless united against the eight Utopians, but that wasn’t the case here.”

Such a mix of frowns. Many of my fellow Servicers had Hives once, or at least birth-bash’ Hives, so the remnants of allegiance cling like cobwebs to their thinking engines, and the remnants of majority as well: they were not Utopians.

“Let the Senatorial Order be sent.”

The printer in the Speaker’s desk produced the artifact at once, and a Senatorial courier placed the rich gold sheet in its deep blue folder and bore it down the center aisle with all the careful pomp the cradle of a newborn prince deserves. Across the Forum in the flowered courtyard of the Sensayers’ Conclave, a hundred rushing feet rushed faster.