Atlanta had never traveled in it before; she had not yet become jaded by the vista and its twists of light shading into colors she had never seen. She sat on a tonguelike divan the ship had supplied for her—a massive lump of flesh, pleasantly warm and giving to the touch, covered with a thick integument colored in paisley swirls and the ship’s logo—staring at the window and thinking. She’d done a lot of thinking in the past day.

She turned to look at Milly. Where Atlanta wore the robes the ship had provided, Milly had taken to a casual nudity that Atlanta knew was part of life in space for most species without dangling bits. Skidoo appeared in the doorway behind her.

“An Imperial Heir, really,” Atlanta corrected.

“There’s more than one?”

“There’s a dozen or so.” Scattered across the court, learning different skills and different expertise. Any of them might be called upon at any time to advise the Empress with what they had gleaned.

“So when is being taking up the throne—and who is being deciding which is being taking?” Skidoo asked, settling onto another of the fleshy lumps that served as seating, spreading her tentacles out to savor its surface, salty and misty, the texture almost furry.

Atlanta pulled the entirety of her attention away from the window to give it to the other two. It was still two days before they would arrive at the IAPH, and the strain was as telling on the pastry chef as it was anyone else. Her feathers were somewhat disarrayed, her beak had a scaly patch near where it met downy skin. She looked rumpled still, as though she had just come from bed.

“Well,” Atlanta said. “For one thing, the position sounds much more important than it actually is. It’s more than possible that an heir will not outlive the Empress. There’s no guarantee that we’ll ever pick up the throne. We’re simply there in case of disaster or assassination. We’re fail-safes in case there is a reason to depose or replace her. Otherwise, she can simply keep switching bodies and live for centuries. The current one has been alive for three—the one before her was, in the end, deemed too ambitious, and replaced by an heir with less outward-ranging ideas.”

“Strange for a system that calls itself an empire. You would think that the idea of expansion would be built into the very core of your government,” Milly said.

“It was, for a long time. But as we have encountered other races, other civilizations, our Empire has learned that it must coexist or perish.”

“Not every race is being realizing that,” Skidoo interjected.

Atlanta nodded over at her. “Indeed.”

Milly asked, “So how was the current Empress chosen from among the crop of heirs?”