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“Let us begin with the account I received from Secretary Gierplun,” Kadhir said. “Its explanation of our dear maniac Tessin’s disappearance wasn't the main focus of the report.”

“What was it about, then?” Enolin asked. His expression displayed puzzlement, but something in his voice gave Kadhir the feeling he already knew the answer to this question.

“There was a section covering Tessin, of course, and some more about a figure named ‘the Harbinger.’ But mostly, it was about Scinrea,” Kadhir explained casually, hoping her almost offhand mention of such an important name would throw off Enolin from whatever plot he had certainly devised during the main meeting.

“Interesting,” Enolin replied emptily as Kadhir handed him the reader containing the document. “How did you manage to pry a Level Five-classified report from someone as protective as Gierplun?”

Seeing where Enolin was heading with this, Kadhir switched to the tone Ofrant used to call her “protection of state secrets” voice. “Your murky position in my government,” she said, “doesn’t entitle you to knowledge that I haven’t even told my top campaign managers. And it especially doesn’t give you the authority to question the veracity of my results.”

Enolin put the reader back on the desk and sighed rather condescendingly. “Firstly, Governor, I hold no doubts concerning the report’s truthfulness. Secondly, it’s not my status as your personal assistant that lets me query your methods. With all due respect and honorifics and such, if you’re to be an effective member of the Modus Vivendi, you can’t withhold this kind of information from me,” he said, his voice heavy, “both because I’m your equal on the MV and because your highly public job requires that I act as your link to the Council.”

Putting aside her indignation for the moment, Kadhir countered with equal force: “That may be true, Enolin, but in the public world, you still work for me, and that relationship must be maintained.”

Enolin looked around Kadhir’s office as if deciding how to respond, pausing his visual sweep for a few seconds to look at the set of plants the governor kept in the far corner of the room, then returned his gaze to his superior. “I agree completely,” he said, sounding emboldened. “I work for you as your spy, both within and outside your sphere of influence, and my job relies on having information. If I can’t know anything about your exchange — your meeting — with Gierplun, I’ll be that much less effective. Is that what you want, Governor?”

Oh, so Enolin was going to try that approach, was he? “In exchange for the report,” she said, “I gave Gierplun a piece of information I learned solely due to my association and employment of you, Enolin. Now please tell me again how keeping secrets from you, as I always have, suddenly harms your ability to do work.”

Enolin sighed again, his expression all but uttering to Kadhir, Practically useless, but it’s probably better than nothing. After a moment, he asked, “How secure is your office, Governor?”

Initially, Kadhir thought that her wily subordinate had just suffered a minor stroke. No, Enolin’s brain is healthy, or at least as healthy as it ever was — he’s changing the subject to avoid acknowledging he lost the argument, she thought confidently. But just in case…

She pressed the first button under her desk. Upon hearing the subsequent click of the locked double doors, he said in a reminding tone, “I was speaking in terms of transmission security.”

“I’m aware, Enolin,” she said. “Locking the exit was for my own sense of comfort. My office is more than secure enough for whatever diabolical scheme you’ve cooked up this time.”

Enolin leaned in closer to Kadhir, much the same way Gierplun had done after the governor’s offer of an exchange of knowledge. “I hope so,” he said quietly. “Because I’m going to ask you one last time how you got that information from Gierplun. You know why I’m asking for it, and I know you’ll give it to me.”

“What do you mean?” Kadhir asked, keeping the suspicion and small but growing sense of urgency out of her voice, and again hoping her easy reply would deflect some of Enolin’s machinations.

Without replying, he stood up and walked over to the corner of the office. Adding further to Kadhir’s uncertainty, he stuck a hand into the soil of the rearmost plant. “What are you doing, Enolin?” she demanded.

Still silent, Enolin pulled a small capsule-shaped item out of the soil, pushing aside Kadhir’s document-reader and placing the object in its place: between him and the governor. “This,” he said evenly, though Kadhir could sense the confidence in his voice, “is a recording device.”

“What!?”

“How did I get this past your security sweeps?” Enolin prompted. Kadhir immediately felt a mix of fury and dread — fury because Enolin had managed to sneak a recording device behind her back into her own office, and dread because she already knew how the rest of this conversation would go. Deciding to get it over with as quickly as possible so that she could arrange some consequences, Kadhir nodded.

“It’s very simple, actually,” Enolin said, some of the edge gone from his voice. “This device heavily utilizes some of Trinity Corporation’s most cutting-edge technology, which, as you can imagine, was acquired by elements of the Modus Vivendi shortly after Scinrea killed off the company’s leadership.”

Somehow, in the span of a few hours, she had been outmaneuvered twice: first by one of Sary Hykks’s secretaries, and then by a diminutive spy who, during their first conversation, she had thought to be a practical joke being played on her by a Conservative Senator. Desperately hoping Enolin was bluffing, there was only one thing Kadhir could say: “Play the recording.”

—

Enolin wasn’t bluffing.

He shut off the device and raised a stare to Kadhir. As the governor expected, he wasted no time in pressing his advantage: “While I may answer to you in the public world,” he said, not even bothering to address her as Governor, “in the Modus Vivendi, we’re equals. The Council can’t afford for you to hide information from me, especially—”

“—Because you’re my liaison with them,” Kadhir interjected in exasperation. “You don’t need to repeat yourself.”

Enolin stayed silent, as if expecting the governor to continue speaking.

“I suppose now’s the time to ask what the consequences will be for revealing Arven Lore’s survival,” she said, not especially caring that she sounded quite dour.

Enolin shrugged, again reverting to his innocuous persona. “The danger that revelation poses to achieving the ultimate goal is punishment enough,” he said, “both in terms of the Council’s continued secrecy and your own ends.”

My own ends? Did he know?

“Good enough, Enolin,” she said. “Now that you — I’m sorry, that the Council — has the NIB report, what would they have me do next?”

Extracting his own reader from a side pocket, Enolin simply told the governor, “This.”

Kadhir unlocked the door to let her exhausting assistant leave, then locked it back shut as soon as he departed. First Gierplun, and now him… she reflected. With both of them, she had let herself become overconfident and lazy — because her meeting with Gierplun ended in less than victory, she counted it as a defeat; and her conversation with Enolin had ended in defeat. Never again would she make that mistake, especially with the ever-unpredictable Harlin Enolin.

But before she read the Council’s latest request — and Kadhir knew they’d frame it as a request, since she’d been making sure to portray to Enolin a very tenuous cooperation with them — she had one task of her own to do.

Despite her solitude, she smiled furtively as she initiated a call with Qaib Nencaka.

“Deputy Director Nencaka here,” the bureaucrat greeted, his voice as gray as ever.

“I have a first-priority assignment for your people, Nencaka,” Kadhir said, some of the vigor and acuity Enolin had drained from her beginning to return as she spoke. “I need you to send an analysis team to my office as quickly as possible. Once they arrive, I’ll explain their task.”

“I understand, Governor,” Nencaka said, confirming after a pause: “Dr. Jirno and his team can arrive at the Gubernatorial Complex in two days.”

“Excellent,” Kadhir said, switching off the transmitter. She picked up the recording device from her desk and held it up between herself and the door. You may be good, Enolin, and I may have underestimated you today… but leaving your precious technology within my reach was a major mistake.

—

The next day, feeling significantly more confident about her next conversation, and remembering not to underestimate her counterpart, Governor Kadhir opened a transmission with the office of the CEO of the Accent Political Aid Company. Accent was one of the right wing’s most reliable donors and supporters. Since its creation in 2049 as a response to Goa Lore’s landslide victory, Accent had played a major role in nearly every conservative upset in the following years. Accent’s founder and current executive, Inteva Notsuini, was in charge of a team of lawyers infamous for taking advantage of loopholes, finding workarounds in the law that allowed high-value donations to right-wing politicians, and generally doing everything they could that fomented left-wing grievances.

Today, however, Kadhir wasn’t calling Notsuini to ask for legal assistance.

More quickly than she’d expected, her transmission was received. “This is Assistant Evlior Koera,” came a voice. “The CEO is currently preoccupied, but he assures you that speaking to me is as good as speaking to Mr. Notsuini himself.”

Oh, right; she’d completely forgotten Notsuini’s maze of useless assistants, redirections, and delays. That was why Kadhir’s call had been answered so quickly — she was being fed into Accent’s processor.

Well, if Notsuini had set up a maze intended to keep all but the most important and determined individuals from speaking to him, Kadhir was going to prove her importance and determination at every one of his turns.

She unmuted her transmitter. “I’m sure that line works with most people, Assistant Koera,” Kadhir said, adopting a polite yet assertive tone. “But it won’t work with me. Put me through to Mr. Notsuini.”

“If you feel so extremely confident in your own importance,” Koera said, “may I direct you to Assistant Belborint?”

“How is that any better than talking to you?”

“Mr. Belborint is a tier two assistant to Mr. Notsuini,” Koera said as if it were blindingly obvious. “I am a level one assistant.”

“How many levels of assistance does Notsuini entertain?”

“Fifteen levels,” Koera said in the same tone.

Kadhir’s instinct was to hang up at once, but, she recognized, that wouldn’t get her any closer to Notsuini. “Put me through to Belborint.”

Importance and determination, she told herself before Belborint began to speak.

—

According to the clock situated next to the door, three hours passed before Kadhir was passed from one of Notsuini’s level fifteen assistants — a woman named Pefien Nallidar — onto the CEO himself. She had only been able to pass his level four assistant after invoking her title as Governor of Josezhey, wouldn’t have made it beyond his level eight assistant if she hadn’t known that Notsuini had two sisters, and had been forced to wait forty minutes while his level ten assistant ate lunch.

Fortunately, though, she had passed his many tests, and was finally on the verge of talking to Notsuini himself.

“Ah, Senzala Kadhir!” the executive said warmly. “My apologies for the dramatics; they exist to keep unpleasant interests from wasting my time.”

“I can appreciate that, Mr. Notsuini,” Kadhir said, “though an expedited process for high-ranking clients would be appreciated.”

“Call me Inteva,” he said, acknowledging the governor’s recommendation with: “It’s on my list of priorities. But I know you didn’t come all this way to exchange pleasantries.”

Kadhir shook her head incrementally. “Of course not. I will be direct with you in this matter,” she said.

“As you always are,” Notsuini approved.

“I need a steady inflow of funding, with a currently unknown end date,” the governor declared without hesitating, “and with no questions asked.”

Notsuini grew pensive, occasionally glancing at out-of-view items or people as he thought. After several minutes, he said, “Certainly I’ll get you the money, but naturally, there needs to be a price.”

“That’s how Accent has always operated,” Kadhir said. Usually, clients repaid Accent by adopting certain stances on issues or advocating for particular laws or reforms. “What were you thinking about? The stance you’d ask me to embrace?”

“Something like that,” the executive agreed. “I was wondering if one part of your repayment — thirty percent, precisely — could be dropping your support of Tessin.” To the public — including to Notsuini — Kadhir’s support of the terrorist had been sincere and willingly, with only the governor and possibly Harlin Enolin knowing the truth.

“Really,” Kadhir said genuinely. Was this really going to be that easy?

“Absolutely,” Notsuini said. “I know you have a strong alliance with him, but supporting someone viewed as a terrorist has been hurting the right wing’s popularity. Many say it contributes to why we failed to retake Congress last year. Even if it’s true that his ultimatum to the Dauiland Council was falsified,” he added, “you cannot change a first impression of murder and terrorism.”

“I can do even better than dropping my support, actually,” she said. Without question, Notsuini was skilled, but Kadhir was better — much better — at this craft than the Accent executive. And to cement her advantage in this conversation, only she had read the NIB report detailing Tessin’s neutralization.

“In exchange for this counting more towards the repayment, I assume,” Notsuini guessed, to which Kadhir nodded.

“Forty percent?” the executive proposed.

“Seventy,” Kadhir said, and when Notsuini began to gape, she explained: “I can make Tessin disappear for good.”

“Governor, making Tessin vanish would boost the national cause immensely — you know this as well as I — but seventy percent is… it’s…” Notsuini trailed off, seemingly unable to think of a way to phrase his disapproval sufficiently cooperatively.

Now to finish this. Ofrant had been close friends with Idolia Karvis, Notsuini’s niece, and in her time with Idolia had learned that the executive had secretly tried to delve into the field of transhumanist science before deciding to pursue a career in political law.

“It’s not going towards the 2060 election, Inteva,” Kadhir finished his sentence. “I won’t be using the money for my presidential campaign.”

“Then what will you use it for?”

“To advance the cause of humanity in its entirety.”