“The Chain is old and slow and may not be your main threat. No—the minute you leave Resolution protection, the powers that will be scrambling fighters and plotting routes are Kaschec and the Enna Union, both military megapowers that need quick victories to prop up their demagogues at home. Kaschec owns territory nearer to your link and has better passage agreements, so I’d expect them to get here first. You might have months. You probably have weeks.”

Instead of panicking, Jainan felt he was watching the machinery in his head as it kept ticking over, heavy and relentless, crunching this new information and its consequences. He imagined Thea standing alone in a sector annexed by a Galactic megapower. The Resolution promised stability. How much independence would Thea manage to keep if the rest of the sector was at war?

“What if Thea somehow managed to agree a treaty in four days?” he said. “What about the other planets? Sefala? Eisafan?”

The Auditor gave a fluid motion of his shoulders that could have passed as a

shrug. The chair shifted under him. “They have not volunteered information as you have for Thea. We don’t generally encourage schisms in treaty signatories, but we encourage remnant use and deceiving the committees even less.”

Jainan was surprised at his own lack of dread. Everything seemed very clear, clearer than it had for the past five years, as if the beginnings of a breeze had stirred in his head and the fog there were melting away. He barely needed to stop to consider Kiem, and Bel, and Audel and her students. “I need the whole sector to be part of the treaty,” he said quietly. “Even Iskat. I have … links.”

The Auditor gave him a long look, from those disconcertingly normal eyes with their alien political views. He reached up and touched the lacquer headpiece again; the field swirled back over his face.

“Then find me those fifteen remnants, Jainan nav Adessari of Feria.” The Auditor’s mouth, now the only visible part of his face, curved up in something that wasn’t a smile. “You have four days.”

A shift change buzzer sounded in the narrow corridors of a hostel as Kiem knocked on the door of the guest room assigned to Professor Audel. The attendees from the Imperial College had been assigned to hostel rooms in the Transit Module; they’d clearly run out of guest suites in the nicer residential areas.

It was the second door Kiem had tried. It was locked, but an occupancy light glowed softly. Kiem tried the bios sensor.

A voice from the speaker said, “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

The door slid open to show a small set of rooms with a pokey living area cramped by a desk and chair. Several screens were open above the desk. The window opposite the door, sunk in the wall to give the illusion of a view, was currently set to a projection of a beach that seemed faintly alien to Kiem.