Guards. Clerks. Assistants. Ministers. Baxxid lords and attendants. Yinglet lords and retainers. Human lords and officers. Luggage. Flags. Everyone attempting to appear as though their arrival had not required hundreds of people to arrange.
Outside waited motorized carriages bearing identification for specific Houses.
Kimia entered one meant for her.
Vehm sat beside her.
The city passed.
She saw almost none of it.
The whiteblood remained.
Fatigue. Travel. The upcoming Diet.
Everything existed behind glass.
The carriage eventually stopped before a grand hotel near the Teeth.
Stone facade. Electric signage. Doormen. Tall windows. The kind of hotel where rooms were larger than houses and nobody admitted this was obscene because everyone present could afford not to.
Kimia went inside. Someone spoke. Someone bowed. A room key appeared. Luggage disappeared into competent hands.
None of it registered.
She slept.
The following day was the day before the Diet. It became another blur.
Wake. Food. Tarkhe. Documents. Vehm. Sleep. Alcohol. Whiteblood. Bath. Sleep.
Time became repetitive labor performed upon the self.
By evening, Kimia felt less like a person preparing for a political assembly than a machine being repeatedly cleaned so it could pass inspection.
Then the morning arrived.
Diet.
The word possessed finality.
Kimia dressed in her kaftan.
No drugs before leaving.
That was the rule.
She kept it.
Vehm remained at the hotel.
He had no official reason to attend the opening session and expressed relief.
“Do somezhing useful,” Kimia told him.
“I will.”
“What?”
“Recover.”
“From what?”
“Anticipation.”
She left him there.
The procession carried Kimia closer to the Teeth.
The Diet building stood within the oldest institutional district of Val Salia.
Grand without being decorative in the Peshtulan sense.
Immense blocks of pale stone. Broad stairs. Long banners of red and gold. Glass. Steel.
New additions attached to an older skeleton.
The building had been expanded so many times that history remained visible in its walls as changes in architectural grammar.
Kimia entered.
Security. Credentials. More corridors. Escorts.
Then the meeting hall.
She stopped for one fraction of a second.
Immense.
The room descended toward a central floor in broad tiers.
Delegation tables arranged according to political grouping and region.
Above them dominated a televox screen large enough to make everyone beneath it appear temporary.
House symbols and Diet scheduling information occupied the screen.
Names. Votes. Procedural notices. Translation channels. The machinery of collective power preparing to speak.
Kimia entered with the Peshtulan delegation.
Others were already there.
Everywhere.
The Heart gathered into one room.
Dinnlan. Beletam. The Green Reach. Akalos. Baramor. Auhei. Eastwall. Arisota. Brinnilee.
Places Kimia knew by maps, reports, exports, wars, accents.
Now given bodies.
Some representatives wore modern suits.
Others wore traditional clothing.
Baxxid formal harnesses.
Yinglet coats.
Human suits or military uniforms.
House colors.
Insignia.
Nothing unified except the fact that Ivenmoth had summoned them.
Peshtul kept near itself.
Of course.
A yinglet patriarch and hetman sat two seats down from Kimia, older, broad-faced, wearing a kaftan dark enough to absorb the room.
A human lord and hetman spoke quietly with an aide.
Another human lord, a voivode, already had several papers arranged with military precision before him.
Kimia knew all three.
Not intimately.
Enough.
They exchanged greetings.
No one asked how she was.
Bless them.
Kimia sat.
Her personal guards took their designated places toward the rear.
The indrel stood out there like a siege engine attempting discretion.
It failed.
People looked, then stopped looking.
Kimia arranged her papers. Pocket watch. Pen. Water.
Done.
Conversation moved around her.
Dinnish accents.
Passage speech.
The infrasonic resonance of baxxid voices.
Yinglet consonants slipping around dental sounds in numerous regional variations.
The Heart talking to itself.
Kimia tried not to listen to everything.
Impossible.
Her attention moved.
One delegation.
Another.
A human lord laughing too loudly.
Two baxxids touching forelimbs in greeting.
A young yinglet aide frantically reorganizing papers after dropping a folder.