took a seat beside Cynwrig, sitting stiffly. They folded their hands, then crossed their arms, then shifted their weight. All their limbs felt wrong. They couldn’t find a place to put them. Beside them, the martial ruler of Gan-De sat comfortably watching a slapstick comedy, ankle resting on the opposite knee, a box of something edible in her lap. She laughed at the theatrical goings-on—the most subdued of chuckles, but heartfelt all the same.
Niko tried to get their thoughts in order. Surreal didn’t begin to cut it. “What is this?” they said, watching the screen. They didn’t speak whatever Gandesian dialect this was in, but even if they had, they weren’t sure the imagery would make any more sense. A man in an ornate sequined bird suit had entered the scene now, for some reason. “Two and Six,” Cynwrig said, laughing at the bird man. “It’s a classic morality pageant, very old. See, the two carrying the treasure chest are criminals—you can tell from the branding across their faces. They’re trying to escape with the treasure, but the queen—she’s a witch—has summoned the Six Aspects of Order to thwart them.”
“And the bird is . . . ?”
“An avatar of Wisdom. It’s making them solve riddles or else it’ll peck out their eyes.”
“So . . . the criminals outsmart the Aspects?”
“Of course not. The criminals are clowns. Stock characters. They’re punished for their stupidity, and they die at the end.” She laughed again as the face-pulling criminals gave some bumbling answer to a question.
“And that’s . . . funny.”
“It’s hilarious,” the general said. “Although, I wouldn’t recommend this particular adaptation. It’s not very good.”
“Then why are you watching it?”
“I’ll show you in a minute.” She picked up the box in her lap. The edges were dented from travel. “Vanilla puff?”
Niko stared. No. This was poison. This was a trick. And yet . . . gods damn it, it had been over a week. An awful, stressful week on a ship without so much as a spoonful of empty sugar to be found. They took a vanilla puff. If they were playing diplomat, they’d play diplomat. “Thank you,” they said. They sat back, took a bite, and managed not to moan. Wow, they’d needed that.
“Do you know why she doesn’t eat sweets?” Cynwrig asked.
“No,” Niko said, taking another bite. They let the filling spread across their tongue, not wanting to neglect a single taste bud.
“Strange. But then, I have no idea if patties have a taste for sweet things, do you?”
Niko swallowed. The heavy sugar coated their teeth, something cloying and chemical leaving an odd aftertaste. How dare she. How dare she assume that Niko’d be fine with talk like that when Asala wasn’t in the room. They set the sweet down on a side table, resisting the urge to eat the rest. “I don’t know about Hypatian food, no.”
Cynwrig gave another short chuckle and went back to watching her movie. “Ah, here,” she said, leaning forward. She pointed at the screen. “Watch the background. There’ll be a boy who comes in . . . now.”
Niko looked. “The . . . the one in the white feathers?”
“No, the one in the red.”
Niko saw the boy she meant, baby-faced and floppy-curled. They watched as the feathered boy did leaping somersaults as the bird man spoke, and . . . that was it. The boy was gone, a background dancer without a line.
“My grandson,” Cynwrig explained. “Fifteen, and desperate to be an actor.” She took another puff for herself. “My son’s son. Had him much too young, he and the mother. My daughter waited until she was in her thirties, smart girl. Her boy just turned two—biggest cheeks I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s . . . nice.”
Cynwrig fell back into silence again, watching the movie. “What were you after, before you knew I was in this room?”
“I needed a break,” Niko said. “I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with the comms.” The shriek had returned at random intervals, plus a varied assortment of other problems. The ship’s systems shouldn’t have been that hard to tease out, but the general’s patched-on scramblers had made everything a clusterfuck.
“And what were you going to watch? Your refugee videos?”
“Maybe.” Yes.
“Emotionally flogging yourself isn’t a break.” The general nodded at the screen. “I remember this one night during the Siege of Halien.” That reference, Niko knew—a particularly long and bloody stretch during the Gandesian Civil War. “My regiment had established camp in a former school—bombed out, of course, but it still had part of a roof, and it was the rainy season, so you see the appeal. Everyone’s clothes were wet, and we all smelled like sweat and old blood. We were sick and exhausted. Food was running out. And then, one of the soldiers found a projector and a video drive in what was left of an old classroom. Those of us who couldn’t sleep watched movies all night—kid stuff, but it was fun. We laughed at those puppets like we’d never seen a movie before. It took us away for a while. We all needed that.” She cracked her knuckles. “Granted, half of us died in the morning when the enemy bombed our encampment, but we’d had a laugh beforehand, at least.”
Niko had no idea how to respond to that.
“War,” Cynwrig said, “is math. How many dead, how many miles, how many bullets you have left. We—me, you, our stalwart protector here—we are all at war. Only, our enemy isn’t something we can outgun or outfox. It’s time. Time is our enemy, and resources are the only weapon we have.” She nodded at the screen. “Everyone who made this fluff, they’re Gandesian sons and daughters. They have people who love watching them, even if only for a few seconds. Ours is a beautiful world, full of beautiful people. And yes, it’s going to die, just like the rest. But for now, we have water. We have food. We have a greater distance from the enemy than the rest of you, and that means we will solve this.”
“How?” Niko said. “How are you going to solve it?”
Cynwrig shrugged. “That’s a job for scientists, not me. My job is to make sure there are Gandesians left to see whatever plans are made all the way through. To make sure our people and our culture survives this.” She looked sideways at Niko. “And that means we need to keep what we have.”
“You have more than enough. You have a whole planet.”
“Do you know what a planet is? It’s not as big as you think. When it’s used up, it’s used up. Have you seen our reports? Have you done the math?” She stretched her legs. “I’m going to assume you don’t have children, but pretend for a moment you do. Say that there’s a famine, and you have just enough left to feed your family. Now say another family knocks on your door, and they have children of their own. They say, ‘Please, please give us your food, or we will starve.’ Who do you feed? The strangers at your door or the family in your home?”
“That’s not—”
“And now say,” Cynwrig continued, “that you see those strangers approaching, and you know that people just like them stole your neighbors’ food. Raided their
