She was hiding drugs in luggage while traveling with her own physician.

Still, she closed the case.

Locked it.

The habit of secrecy had become stronger than its practical usefulness.

Vehm appeared at the foyer looking almost respectable.

He wore a dark traveling coat, clean shirt, good trousers and one of the hats that made him look less like a drunk court philosopher and more like an obscure aristocrat who had misplaced his estate.

He carried two cases.

Kimia looked at them.

“Zhat much?”

Vehm looked down.

“One is clozhes.”

“And zhe ozher?”

“Ozher clozhes.”

“You own zhat many?”

“Recently rediscovered.”

Tarkhe arrived with medical luggage.

The indrel came armored only in the subtle ways permitted for civilian travel, pheromone mask fitted closely, its immense body wrapped in a formal travel garment.

Several personal guards accompanied them.

Plain clothes. Weapons concealed. Documents immaculate.

The procession departed.

At the airport, Kimia was moved through procedures rapidly enough that bureaucracy became almost graceful. House credentials changed everything.

Documents were checked. Luggage inspected discreetly. Names confirmed.

The indrel produced additional paperwork because every transportation system in the Heart still seemed faintly surprised by indrel anatomy.

Eventually they boarded.

The aircraft was enormous.

Long fuselage. Swept wings. Six reaction engines mounted beneath them, three on each wing, whose mechanical violence Kimia could feel before they were even fully operating.

She hated it.

Not openly.

Kimia boarded with the expression of a woman who had flown many times and understood completely why a metal tube weighing many thousands of kilograms could become airborne because engineers had arranged enough controlled violence beneath its wings.

Inside she found the arrangement elegant.

Seats. Compartments. Carpet. Curtains. Polished fittings. The illusion of civilization applied to a machine whose fundamental proposition was that falling could be postponed indefinitely through speed.

Kimia sat. Vehm beside her. Tarkhe across the aisle. The indrel occupied a specially configured section farther back.

When the engines rose, Kimia's claws pressed into the armrest.

Vehm noticed.

“You hate flying.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

The aircraft began moving.

Kimia looked straight ahead.

Vehm leaned closer.

“You can say it.”

“I dislike relying on physics.”

“You rely on physics constantly.”

“Not at zhis altitude.”

The acceleration came. The runway blurred. Kimia's stomach shifted. The aircraft lifted. The ground abandoned them.

She shut her eyes.

Vehm said nothing.

Later, once level flight had established itself and everyone began pretending this was a room rather than an object traveling through the upper atmosphere at obscene speed, Kimia relocated with Vehm to a secluded lounge compartment.

She took whiteblood.

Not much.

Enough.

Tarkhe would know.

She accepted this before swallowing it.

The warmth came. The edges softened.

Clouds existed outside the window.

Kimia did not look down.

Hours passed.

Food. Water. Sleep in fragments. Vehm discussing some scandal involving something at the Val Salian Passage that had occurred three years earlier. Then night.

At some point, the lights below became visible.

Val Salia.

The city was too large to understand from the air.

It extended beyond any reasonable sense of settlement.

Roads became luminous arteries. Industrial districts shone amber and white. Residential blocks formed grids interrupted by darkness where parks, rivers or old stone districts persisted. Rail lines moved with tiny crawling lights. Factories glowed. Televox towers stood like needles.

The entire landscape seemed converted into electrical information.

Kimia looked from the window despite herself.

There.

The Teeth.

Two immense pale buttes rose from the middle of the city, their upper surfaces a brighter shade of pale white, both of them illuminated by lights. 

They stood close enough together that generations had named them as one object.

The Teeth.

Older than House Ivenmoth. Older than Val Salia. Older than every nation presently arranged around them.

The city had accumulated at their feet.

Kimia stared.

The actual heart.

Not metaphorically.

Not the sentimental use.

The political and economic center from which standards, laws, machinery, money, military orders, fashion and irritation traveled outward to everyone else.

Vehm looked through the window.

“Still big.”

“You've been here.”

“Several times.”

Kimia watched the city.

“Does it ever stop looking absurd?”

“No.”

Good.

The aircraft descended. Buildings became individual. Roads became roads. The runway appeared.

Touchdown struck the wheels hard enough that Kimia's stomach jumped.

She exhaled.

“Ground.”

Vehm nodded solemnly.

“A triumphant return to physics.”

“Fuck you.”

Vehm chortled lightly in response. 

They taxied.

Terminal. Processing. House Chityala representatives were expected. So were dozens of other delegations.

The airport had been transformed into an artery for nobility.