Kimia kept reading until philosophy became politics again, which happens with most philosophy if one continued long enough.
The Akalosi author had moved from the individual self into what he called collective phantasms, reiterating on the idea through a different lens, and from there into institutions, states, religions, currencies, borders, and everything else that existed because enough people agreed to behave as though it did.
The term he used to describe it was older than the book.
Mass egregore.
Kimia disliked it immediately.
Not the idea. The phrase.
It sounded occult in a way the argument itself was not.
The philosopher anticipated this objection too, which irritated her.
He insisted the egregore required no supernatural mechanism. A collective fiction became materially real once human beings, or yinglets, or baxxids, or any other thinking species, began arranging their lives around it.
A nation could not bleed. Its citizens could. A Tradehouse could not hunger. Its workers and rulers could. A currency possessed no appetite. People killed for it anyway. A title was air until someone bowed, then someone else signed an order, then perhaps someone died.
Kimia read roughly half of the argument before realizing she had stopped understanding individual sentences and had begun supplying examples from her own life.
House Chityala. House Ivenmoth. Peshtul. The Heart of the World. The Val Salian Diet.
There.
The thought arrived and refused to leave.
Two days from now she would board an aircraft.
Several thousand kilometers.
The Val Salian Passage.
House Ivenmoth had summoned the rulers and principal representatives of the Heart. The Great Tradehouse and its Minor Tradehouse vassals. Monarchs. Dukes. Matriarchs. Patriarchs. Ministers. Delegates. People who spent most of their lives governing pieces of an immense political machine and periodically gathered to convince themselves the whole machine possessed one mind.
Kimia would represent Peshtul alongside several other lords whose authority overlapped hers in ways everyone understood until someone attempted to draw a clean chart.
The Diet would commence several days after her arrival.
She already knew what they would discuss.
Tilmuhl.
Not exclusively.
Nothing at the Diet was ever exclusive.
Agricultural standards would appear. Defense contributions. Rail investment. Industrial quotas. Tax harmonization. Shipping insurance. Possibly Dinnish electronics subsidies if somebody wished to ruin lunch.
But Tilmuhl would sit beneath everything.
The rope.
Kimia saw it that way suddenly.
A great rope under tension, not fraying all at once.
Sloughing.
Individual fibers parting one after another while the whole remained intact enough for everyone to continue calling it strong.
Olissingen. Eauritsstad. Irregulars. Bycite. Kilcane. VSEA readiness. Money leaving quietly. Water bottling plants bombed because small things became useful pressure points.
The rope would hold until one day there was no meaningful distinction between holding and the moment immediately before snapping.
Kimia shut the book.
Enough.
Three in the morning was a poor hour to govern hypothetical wars.
She returned the volume to the shelf. The lamp went dark beneath her hand.
Immediately the study changed.
The desk disappeared except for moon-pale edges. The books became one large black wall. The indrel stood near the door, scarcely more distinguishable from darkness than its mask.
Click.
Kimia picked up her coffee.
Cold now.
She drank anyway, then left.
The palace had grown quieter still.
She had no intention of returning to her rooms.
This thought arrived with unusual certainty.
The bedroom contained too many negotiations.
The wardrobe. The bed. The plastic sheets she uses while using whiteblood. Whiteblood residue even after cleaning. The little concealed arrangements by which temptation became convenient.
No.
Outside.
The garden.
Nothing hidden in the garden except plants.
Probably.
Kimia left the study. The indrel followed.
Halfway across the lower eastern corridor she encountered Vehm again.
He looked considerably less dead than before, but still terrible.
His fur had been wet-combed around his face. He wore a loose shirt beneath the same waistcoat, now open. His yellow eyes were bloodshot. One ear remained slightly lower than the other. He carried another glass of water.
Stone sober.
This itself looked unnatural on him.
Kimia stopped. Vehm stopped.
Neither spoke immediately.
Kimia expected some joke.
None came.
Vehm looked at her, then at the indrel, then at Kimia again.
“Were you serious?”
Kimia frowned.
“About what?”