Chapter 3: "The Lawyer's Game"
The morning air in Meridian Bay tasted of salt and engine exhaust, and Elena Blackwood stood at the edge of the Greenvale construction site with her datapad balanced against her forearm, watching a crew of beast-folk haul support beams into place. The agricultural expansion had been underway for three weeks now. New greenhouses, climate-regulated and reinforced against the coastal storms that rolled off the bay every autumn. The Blackwood house had contracted the labor through its regulated service contracts, forty-seven beast-folk in total, drawn from half a dozen villages across the Highpaw lands.
Elena counted heads. Forty-three on site. Four unaccounted for.
She was twenty years old, slight of build, with dark hair pulled back in a practical knot that her mother would have called unbecoming. She wore field boots and a gray utility jacket over her house tunic, the Blackwood sigil, a black oak on silver, stitched small at the collar where it could be seen but not mistaken for ostentation. She had learned early that showing up to inspections in formal dress made the overseers nervous in the wrong way. They'd hide things. In work clothes, she was just the boss's niece poking around, and they let their guard down.
"Miss Blackwood." Torren, the site foreman, approached with the careful deference of a man who had been warned about her. He was human, broad-shouldered, with the weathered look of someone who had spent years managing outdoor crews. "Didn't expect you until Thursday."
"I moved it up." Elena didn't look at him. She was watching a pair of badger beast-folk wrestling a beam into its cradle, their thick arms straining. One of them had a bandage wrapped around his left hand. "Who's that?"
Torren followed her gaze. "Garren. Cut himself on a bracket two days ago."
"Was it treated?"
"He wrapped it up."
"By a healer?"
Torren shifted his weight. "We've got a first aid station."
"That's not what I asked." Elena tapped a note into her datapad. "Where are the other four? I count forty-three."
"Two are on light duty in the barracks. One's got a stomach bug. And Della, she's the rabbit, you'd know her, she's been reassigned to the nutrient processing line at the south greenhouse."
"Reassigned by whom?"
"By me. We needed hands over there."
Elena made another note. Reassignment of regulated servants between work sites required documentation and a compliance review. She doubted Torren had filed either. She didn't say so. Not yet.
She walked the perimeter of the site, Torren trailing half a step behind, narrating improvements and timelines with the cheerfulness of a man giving a tour he hoped would end quickly. Elena nodded in the right places and kept her eyes on the workers. Most of them moved with the steady, unhurried rhythm of people accustomed to long days. A few glanced at her and looked away. One, a young fox woman carrying a bundle of insulation panels, held her gaze for a moment before a coworker nudged her forward.
The safety netting around the upper framework was sagging in two places. Elena photographed it. The water station was positioned forty meters from the main work area, which was at least twenty meters farther than regulations specified. She photographed that too. The portable sanitation units were adequate in number but hadn't been serviced recently enough, judging by the smell. She made a note and kept walking.
Near the eastern edge of the site, where the new foundations met the existing greenhouse complex, she could hear them. Chanting. Rhythmic and earnest, carried on the sea breeze from the road beyond the perimeter fence.
"Service is slavery! Freedom for all!"
Elena stepped around a stack of building materials and looked through the chain-link. About thirty humans stood along the roadside, holding signs and banners. Most were young, university age, she guessed, with a few older faces scattered among them. Their signs bore slogans in bright paint, END REGULATED SERVICE. BEAST-FOLK ARE PEOPLE. THE EMPIRE LOOKS AWAY. A woman near the front held a megaphone and was leading the chant with theatrical conviction.
"They've been out there since yesterday," Torren said. He sounded more annoyed than concerned. "Don't cause any trouble, though. Just noise."
Elena watched the protesters for a long moment. They were all human. Not a single beast-folk face among them. That was always the way. Beast-folk who protested risked their families, their villages, their houses. Humans could chant and wave signs and go home to dinner. The Empire tolerated it, encouraged it, even, as her political theory tutor had once explained with the weary candor of a man who had stopped being surprised by anything. A peaceful outlet for strong opinions, he'd said. It lets people feel like they are doing something, without actually accomplishing anything.
Elena turned away from the fence and looked at Torren. "I'd like to speak with some of the workers. Privately."
His expression tightened. "Of course, Miss Blackwood. I'll set up a room in the admin trailer."
"No. I'll use the break area by the south greenhouse. And I don't want supervisors present."
She interviewed nine of them over the next two hours, seated at a folding table in the break area with her datapad and a pot of tea she'd made herself. The tea was a small thing, but she'd found it mattered. Offering a cup, pouring it herself, it shifted the air in the room just enough that some of them would talk.
The badger with the bandaged hand, Garren, was her third interview. He sat across from her with his good hand wrapped around the cup, his dark eyes careful.
"How long have you been on this site?" Elena asked.
"Six weeks, miss."
"And before that?"
"Nutrient processing at the bay facility. Two years."
"How did you cut your hand?"
He glanced down at the bandage. "Bracket slipped. Caught the edge."
"Was there a safety guard on the bracket assembly?"
A pause. "There was supposed to be."
Elena waited.
"It broke about a week ago," Garren finally replied. "They said they'd replace it. Haven't yet."
"Have there been other injuries?"
Another pause, longer this time. Garren looked at the wall behind her, as if considering something. "Holt twisted his ankle on the scaffolding last month. The footing was wet. And Priya, she's one of the deer, she got heat sickness working the south wall. No shade structure over there."
Elena noted each one. "Are you getting your mandated rest periods?"
"Most days. Sometimes they push through if there's a deadline."
"How often is 'sometimes'?"
Garren took a slow breath. "Maybe twice a week."
The picture was familiar. Not a horror story. No one was being beaten or starved or locked in cells. The workers were fed, housed, and paid their small stipend. But the margins were being shaved, a safety guard not replaced, a water station too far from the work zone, rest periods skipped when it was inconvenient, injuries treated with bandages instead of healers. Each violation was minor on its own. Together, they formed a pattern that Elena had seen at a dozen other sites, a slow erosion of the rules that protected people who couldn't protect themselves.
After the last interview, a quiet mouse woman named Sela who had said almost nothing but whose hands shook the entire time, Elena sat alone in the break area and wrote her report. She was thorough. She cited regulation numbers, attached photographs, cross-referenced the workers' accounts with the site logs Torren had reluctantly provided. She noted the missing safety guard, the water station placement, the undocumented reassignment, the skipped rest periods, the lack of healer access. She flagged the four missing workers and requested verification of their status. She recommended corrective action on seven specific points and noted that a follow-up inspection would be conducted in thirty days.
It took her an hour. When she finished, she read it through twice, corrected a typo, and transmitted it.
The agricultural owners received her at the Greenvale management office, a clean prefabricated building overlooking the greenhouse complex. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all human, all middle-aged, all dressed in the practical but expensive clothing of people who managed large operations without getting their hands dirty. The woman, Adele Forsythe, owned the greenhouses. The men, Petyr Hull and Dominic Vance, held contracts for the expansion project. They sat on one side of a conference table and looked at Elena the way one might look at a persistent insect.
"Miss Blackwood," Forsythe greeted Elena. "We appreciate you taking the time."
"I've completed my compliance review of the Greenvale site." Elena set her datapad on the table and projected the summary. "I've identified seven regulatory violations, ranging from safety equipment failures to documentation gaps. The full report has been filed with my office and transmitted to Imperial Regulatory Affairs."
Silence. Then Hull leaned back in his chair and looked at Vance. Vance looked at the ceiling.
"Seven violations," Hull said. He sounded amused.
"The details are in the report. I've recommended corrective action on each point. The most urgent is the missing safety guard on the bracket assembly in sector four. There's already been one injury."
"A cut," Forsythe said. "On a badger. Who bandaged himself up and went back to work."
"Who should have been seen by a healer and had the injury properly documented," Elena said. "As required under Section 14.3 of the Regulated Service Health and Safety Code."
Hull did lean forward then, resting his elbows on the table. He was a large man with a broad, ruddy face, and when he smiled, it was the smile of someone who found the world reliably entertaining. "Miss Blackwood, I've been running construction crews on this planet for twenty years. You know what the real world looks like? It looks like people working hard and getting the occasional scrape. Your report reads like someone who learned labor law from a textbook and has never swung a hammer."
"My report reads like a compliance review," Elena said, "because that's what it is."
"Adele," Vance said, speaking for the first time, "did your people know she was coming today? She moved it up."
Forsythe gave a small shrug. "She's allowed to do unannounced inspections. It's in the contract."
"It is in the contract," Elena confirmed.
Hull chuckled. He actually chuckled. Then he gestured toward the window, where, faintly, the sound of chanting could still be heard from the road. "You know, Miss Blackwood, maybe you should join them out there. You'd fit right in. Get yourself a sign. 'Beast-folk deserve shade structures.'" He looked at Vance and Forsythe as if expecting them to laugh. Vance obliged with a thin smile. Forsythe did not.
Elena gathered her datapad and stood. "You'll have thirty days to address the violations before the follow-up inspection. If the safety guard isn't replaced within seventy-two hours, I'll file an emergency hazard report with the Imperial Safety Commission. Good afternoon."
She left the room with her back straight and her jaw tight and her heart hammering, because twenty years old or not, Blackwood name or not, it never got easier to sit across from people who thought the welfare of their workers was a joke. She walked through the parking area, past her transport, the Emily Cooper, sleek and gray, sitting on the landing pad like a patient horse, and stood for a moment in the open air, breathing.
The protesters were still chanting.
She got in the Emily Cooper and flew to the Imperial Administrative Center.
The Imperial offices in Meridian Bay occupied three floors of a building that managed to look both imposing and dull, a trick of architecture that Elena suspected was deliberate. The Empire wanted you to feel the weight of its authority without finding it interesting enough to think about too carefully.
The Regulatory Affairs office was on the second floor. Elena presented her credentials, was scanned, was admitted, and was shown to the desk of Lieutenant Commander Adira Sohn, who handled regulated service compliance for the Meridian Bay district. Sohn was a trim woman in her forties with short gray hair and the expression of someone who had read ten thousand reports and expected to read ten thousand more.
"Miss Blackwood," Sohn said, gesturing to the chair across from her desk. "I saw your Greenvale filing come through. Seven violations."
"Seven documented violations. There may be more. I'd like to request a follow-up with an Imperial inspector present."
Sohn nodded, making a note. "I'll put in the request. These are, " she scanned the summary on her screen, "safety equipment, hydration access, documentation, rest period compliance. Standard pattern."
"It's a pattern because it keeps happening," Elena said.
"I know." Sohn looked at her, and there was something in her expression that might have been sympathy, or might have been the residue of a hundred similar conversations. "Look, Miss Blackwood, I'll be straight with you. This will be filed properly. It will be reviewed. An advisory letter will be sent to the operators. If the violations are still present at the follow-up, we'll escalate. That's the process."
"And most of the time, the advisory letter is where it ends."
"Most of the time," Sohn agreed. She leaned back slightly. "But not always. And not when it matters most. I want you to know, your work has made a difference. The Hargrove case. That exploitation ring you uncovered. Three people are facing criminal charges because of your investigation. That doesn't happen often."
Elena remembered the Hargrove case. She tried not to, but it came back in fragments, the testimony of the young deer woman who had been passed between overseers like property, the records Elena had pieced together from discrepancies in the health logs, the look on the Imperial prosecutor's face when she'd handed over the evidence. Three arrests. Criminal charges. The regulated servants involved had their contracts voided and were given full pensions.
"And the Bellamy and Crossfield cases," Sohn added. "Abuse and cruelty. Both pending prosecution. The servants in those cases have been freed as well."
"Five people," Elena said. "Out of hundreds."
"Five people who would still be suffering if you hadn't filed those reports." Sohn held her gaze. "I'm not telling you the system is perfect. I'm telling you it's not nothing."
Elena wanted to argue. She wanted to say that the system was designed to maintain itself, that advisory letters were a mechanism for appearing to act without acting, that the gap between regulation and enforcement was wide enough to drive a cargo hauler through. But Sohn wasn't the enemy. Sohn was a cog in the machine who happened to care, and Elena had learned that those people were rare enough to be worth not alienating.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Commander," she said. "I'll submit the follow-up request through the usual channels."
The weekly call with Special Negotiator Jaer Kline was scheduled for 1600, which gave Elena just enough time to get back to the Blackwood estate, change into something her uncle Thomas wouldn't frown at, and review the trade manifests from the previous week.
The Blackwood estate sat on a bluff overlooking Meridian Bay, old money made visible in stone and glass. Elena's branch of the family occupied the east wing. Thomas's branch, the trade branch, as everyone called it though never to Thomas's face, held the west wing and the administrative offices. The house had been built by the first Blackwoods to settle Dapple, over a thousand years ago, and it showed its age the way old money always did, not in disrepair, but in the layered accumulation of generations, each one adding a wing or a garden or a renovation that preserved the bones while changing the skin.
She passed through the main hall, where two regulated servants, a rabbit woman and an older cat man, were polishing the banister. Elena stopped.
"Maren. Collis. Good afternoon."
The rabbit woman, Maren, dipped her head. "Good afternoon, Miss Elena." Collis, the cat, inclined his head with the quiet dignity of a man who had been in service for decades and had outlasted three heads of household.
"Collis, how's your knee? You mentioned it was bothering you."
"Better, miss. The healer came by Monday."
"Good. Let me know if it flares up again." She paused. "And Maren, did your son's school placement come through?"
Maren's ears lifted slightly. "Yes, miss. He starts next month. Thank you for writing the recommendation."
"Of course."
She continued down the hall, aware of the small absurdity of it, a Blackwood, scion of the family that had built its fortune on the backs of beast-folk labor, asking after the wellbeing of the servants who polished her banisters. She was not blind to it. She had never been blind to it. The contradiction lived in her chest like a second heartbeat, and she had long since stopped trying to resolve it.
Thomas's office occupied a corner of the west wing, all dark wood and wide windows with a view of the bay. He was already seated at the conference console when Elena arrived, a big man, fifty-four, with the Blackwood jaw and the careful eyes of someone who had spent his life calculating margins. His jacket hung over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked like what he was, a man who ran things.
"You're early," he said.
"I came from the Imperial offices."
Thomas gave her a look that was half amusement, half exasperation. "Another report?"
"Greenvale. Seven violations."
"Let me guess. Hull laughed."
"He suggested I join the protesters."
Thomas shook his head, but he didn't argue. He never argued with her reports. Elena had expected resistance when she'd taken the compliance position a year ago, had expected her uncle to shut her down when she started actually investigating conditions instead of rubber-stamping the quarterly filings the way her predecessor had. To his credit, Thomas had not. He had grumbled. He had called her thorough in a tone that made it sound like a character flaw. But he had let her work, because Elena suspected that Thomas Blackwood, for all his pragmatism, was not entirely comfortable with certain aspects of the family business and was relieved to have someone else looking at the ledger.
"Kline in five minutes," Thomas said, tapping the console. "You reviewed the manifests?"
"Yes. Shipment to Asheborne Downs went out on schedule. Standard package, nutrient solutions, agricultural supplies, mining equipment. We received processed ore and a batch of post-materials in return."
"Margins?"
"Strong. Thirty-two percent after the surcharge."
Thomas allowed himself a small, satisfied nod. The Asheborne Downs trade had been Elena's idea, or rather, Elena's persuasion. When the colony had first declared its independence after Myrathin Shadowpaw's revolt, no one would touch it. The beast-folk noble houses were terrified of the optics. Human traders had smelled desperation and quoted prices so extortionate that the colony would have been better off eating rocks. Elena had gone to Thomas with a proposition, the Blackwood name was old enough and established enough that trading with Asheborne Downs wouldn't raise eyebrows. The colony needed supplies. They were offering processed materials, including post-materials, which beast-folk earth magic could extract and refine with an efficiency that no technology could match, at competitive rates. And when the colony eventually came to terms with the Empire, as everyone expected it would, the Blackwoods would be remembered as friends.
Thomas had listened to the pitch, looked at the numbers, and said, "You should have gone into sales."
The console chimed. Thomas accepted the connection, and the holographic display resolved into the image of Special Negotiator Jaer Kline.
Kline was a middle-aged woman with short auburn hair going silver at the temples and the composed expression of someone who had spent her career making difficult things look easy. She wore an Imperial diplomatic uniform, unadorned except for the rank insignia at her collar. Her office, visible behind her, was utilitarian, a desk, a star map, a framed commendation on the wall. She looked like what she was, a professional who took her work seriously and expected the same of others.
"Thomas. Elena." She nodded to each of them. "Thank you for being prompt."
"Negotiator Kline," Thomas said. "Good to see you. How are things on your end?"
"Progressing." Kline's tone was neutral in the way that diplomatic tones always were, conveying information about the speaker's mood without revealing it. "I've reviewed your latest transaction logs. Everything looks clean. Post-material volumes are up slightly from last quarter."
"Their operations are stabilizing," Elena said. "They've had time to organize."
Kline regarded her for a moment. "Yes. They have." She paused, then continued in the same measured tone. "I'll get to the point. We'd like you to increase your surcharge on Asheborne Downs trade to seventy-five percent."
Thomas's expression didn't change, but Elena saw his fingers twitch on the armrest. "That's a significant jump. We're at fifty now."
"I'm aware. You can attribute the increase to new Imperial trade regulations. They won't question it, they know the Empire sets the terms."
"Seventy-five percent is steep," Thomas said. "Even for their situation."
"It's meant to be." Kline folded her hands on her desk. "The goal is to create an incentive structure. If they accept Imperial oversight, a governor to advise the colony, the surcharge drops. Dramatically. They get fair trade rates, Imperial infrastructure support, and amnesty for all former regulated servants involved in the revolt. It's a good deal. We want them to feel the difference between where they are and where they could be."
Elena kept her expression neutral. She understood the logic. She even agreed with parts of it, Asheborne Downs couldn't survive indefinitely as an isolated colony running on stubbornness and post-material exports. Four hundred beast-folk on an asteroid, dependent on trade with partners who charged them a premium for the privilege of keeping them alive. It wasn't sustainable. The Empire's offer was reasonable, in the way that the Empire's offers were always reasonable, generous terms wrapped around the understanding that refusal was merely a delay, not an option.
But seventy-five percent. The colony was already stretched thin.
"We'll make the adjustment," Thomas said, before Elena could speak. "Next shipment cycle?"
"That would be ideal. And as always, this arrangement stays between us. Asheborne Downs is not to know that the surcharge is coordinated."
"Understood," Thomas said.
"One more thing." Kline's gaze shifted to Elena. "I read about the Hargrove prosecution. Your investigation, I understand. Well done."
"Thank you, Negotiator."
"That kind of diligence is valuable. The Empire notices these things." Kline's expression softened fractionally, not warmth, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Approval, perhaps, of the kind an older professional might extend to a younger one who showed promise. "Keep at it. The system works better when people hold it accountable."
The call ended. Thomas leaned back in his chair and exhaled.
"Seventy-five percent," he said.
"It's a squeeze play."
"It's effective. The margins are still good for us, even at seventy-five. Better than most of our other contracts." He looked at her. "You're making that face."
"What face?"
"The face you make when you're doing math in your head and the answer bothers you."
Elena almost smiled. "The colony has four hundred people. They're running mines, refining post-materials, maintaining life support on an asteroid. Every percentage point we add is food they can't buy, equipment they can't replace. Kline talks about incentive structures, but what she means is pressure."
"She means both," Thomas said. "And she's not wrong. They can't hold out forever. The Empire's offer is fair."
"The Empire's offer includes an appointed governor."
"An advisory governor."
"Uncle Thomas, when has the Empire ever appointed an advisor who only advised?"
Thomas was quiet for a moment. Then he stood, retrieved his jacket from the back of the chair, and shrugged it on. "Dinner's at seven. Your aunt's making that stew you like."
It was his way of ending a conversation he didn't want to continue. Elena recognized it and let it go.
She didn't go to dinner immediately. Instead, she went to the east wing library, the old library, the one her branch of the family maintained more out of tradition than use. Most of the collection had been digitized decades ago, but the physical volumes remained on their shelves, leather and cloth spines fading in the filtered light. Elena liked the room for its silence and its smell and for the fact that no one else in the family came here anymore.
She settled into the armchair by the window and pulled up the archive on her datapad, not the official Blackwood family history, polished and flattering, but the raw records. The early colonial logs. The ones that most families had destroyed or sealed, but which the Blackwoods had kept because the first Blackwoods had been meticulous about record-keeping. They had documented everything. Inventories. Transactions. Acquisitions.
Elena opened a file she had read before. An entry from the colonial period, written by Aldric Blackwood, one of the founders.
The entry described the acquisition of a village. Not a military action, the beast-folk hadn't resisted. They had welcomed the human colonists, as they had welcomed everyone who came to Dapple, because that was what the dragons had taught them. Aldric's entry was businesslike, almost cheerful. He cataloged the village's assets, its agricultural output, its population, the skills of its inhabitants. He noted, with evident satisfaction, that several of the beast-folk had strong earth magic aptitude and would be "immediately productive" in the mining operations.
There was no mention of what the village had been before. No record of its culture, its traditions, its history. The beast-folk had lived on Dapple for thousands of years. They had built a civilization. They had learned magic from the dragons, developed their own practices, created art and music and oral traditions that stretched back generations. And the colonists had arrived and cataloged them like livestock, noting their useful skills and discarding everything else.
Elena closed the file. She opened another, a fragment of a beast-folk oral history that a later Blackwood had transcribed, apparently out of curiosity rather than respect. It described a harvest festival, a gathering of villages from across the northern continent, with songs and competitions and a ceremony where young beast-folk demonstrated their magical abilities for the first time. The transcription was rough, filtered through a human lens that found the whole thing quaint and primitive. But underneath the condescension, Elena could see the shape of something real. A community. A culture. A people with their own way of being in the world.
All of it gone. Deliberately dismantled by the first colonists, her ancestors among them.
The Empire's official history was gentler. It acknowledged that the early colonial period had been "marked by significant social disruption" and praised the Imperial intervention 250 years ago for "establishing a framework of mutual benefit and regulated cooperation." Elena had studied this version in school. It was accurate in the way that a map is accurate, it showed you the roads without mentioning the villages that had been bulldozed to build them.
She wondered sometimes what Myrathin Shadowpaw knew of this history. Probably less than Elena did. The Empire ensured basic education for beast-folk, reading, writing, mathematics, but discouraged much beyond that for commoners. History was not part of the curriculum. Why would it be? History was full of inconvenient truths, and inconvenient truths made people restless.
Elena set the datapad down and looked out the window. The bay was darkening under an amber sky, the lights of Meridian Bay's port district flickering on in clusters. Somewhere out there, beyond the atmosphere, past the orbital stations and the patrol routes of the fleet, an asteroid colony of four hundred beast-folk was mining post-materials and trading them at a seventy-five percent surcharge for the supplies they needed to survive. Their leader was a twenty-year-old cat woman who had volunteered for regulated service at eighteen and led a revolt within months, and Elena had never spoken to her, never sent her a message, never even attempted contact. Any communication would be monitored by the Empire. It would compromise both of them.
But Elena thought about her. She thought about a girl her own age, born in a poor village, watching the tax assessor arrive every year like clockwork, watching her neighbors sold off one by one to cover debts that never seemed to shrink. She thought about what it took to volunteer for that, to walk into regulated service knowing what the mines were like, and then to turn around and refuse it. To say no loudly enough that four hundred people heard it and chose to stand with you.
Elena had filed reports. She had caught criminals. She had saved five people, and she was proud of that, and it was not enough, and she knew it.
Dinner was in the family dining room, which meant both branches of the Blackwood family around a long table, eating Aunt Heather's stew and pretending to enjoy each other's company. Elena's parents, Marcus and Margaret, sat at one end, her uncle Thomas and Aunt Heather at the other. Elena's older brother Geoff, twenty-three, had arrived late and was eating with the focused determination of someone who had skipped lunch. Her younger sister Kelly, seventeen, was doing something on her personal device under the table and hoping no one noticed. Thomas and Heather's children, John, twenty-seven, competent and dull, Mary, twenty-five, sharp-eyed and quiet, and Scott, twenty-two, who laughed too loudly at his own jokes, filled the middle seats.
The stew was good. Heather Blackwood could cook, whatever else one might say about her.
"The Redtail-Highpaw wedding invitations came through today," Thomas said, spooning stew. "Two weeks out. The ceremony's at the Redtail estate up in Mount Haven."
Margaret straightened slightly. "We're attending?"
"The whole family's been invited. It's a significant event, first formal alliance between Redtail and Highpaw. Good for appearances."
"I've met Hevpal," Elena said. "He came by on business last year. Very polite."
"Polite is the word," Thomas agreed. "The Highpaws are careful. Always have been. They helped negotiate the current social order when the Empire arrived, and they've been maintaining it ever since. Hevpal's being groomed to take over, and this marriage strengthens their position."
"And the Redtails?" Marcus asked. He was a quieter man than his brother, content to let Thomas handle the business side while he managed the estate's finances.
"Newer house. The grandparents earned their title through military service about forty-five years ago. Good reputation, though. Clean record."
"The bride is Kira Redtail," Heather said. "Red fox. Tiny little thing, from what I hear." She glanced at Elena with the particular expression that aunts reserved for subjects they found amusing. "You know, Thomas, there's an interesting coincidence. Kira Redtail was born on May 17th. Same as Elena."
Elena looked up. "Really?"
"Same day, same year," Thomas remarked. "11,032. I noticed it in the registry when I was reviewing the guest list. You're exactly the same age."
"That is a coincidence," Elena replied. A fox girl born in Mount Haven on the same day Elena was born in Meridian Bay, growing up in a beast-folk noble house where every word and gesture was measured against the Empire's expectations, where a wrong step could strip your family of everything. Elena had been born into a house that could absorb its mistakes. Kira Redtail had not.
"I think it'll be a lovely event," Margaret remarked, in the diplomatic tone she used when she wanted to move the conversation along. "Kelly, put that device away."
Kelly sighed and complied.
"We should bring a gift," Geoff said, through a mouthful of stew. "What do you get a beast-folk wedding? Is there a registry?"
"We'll handle the gift," Thomas said. "Something appropriate. Not too lavish, not too modest. The Redtails will remember who showed respect."
The conversation drifted to logistics, travel arrangements, attire, the social landscape of the guest list. Elena ate her stew and listened and thought about a fox girl her own age who was about to marry into the most powerful beast-folk house on Dapple, and about another girl her own age who was running a free colony on an asteroid, and about herself, sitting at a long table in a house built on a thousand years of other people's labor, filing reports that turned into advisory letters that turned into nothing.
She thought about the protesters on the road outside the construction site, chanting slogans that the Empire tolerated because tolerance was cheaper than suppression and accomplished the same thing. She thought about Sohn at the Imperial office, who cared but was bound by process. She thought about Kline, who cared but was bound by strategy. She thought about Thomas, who cared but was bound by profit.
She thought about the oral history transcription in the archive, the harvest festival, the songs that no one remembered anymore.
Elena Blackwood finished her stew, excused herself from the table, and went back to the library to write another report.