"What time is it?"
"Five o'clock, Excellency."
"Late enough he'd be upset if I didn't—go ahead." As her butler left, Cortin scowled. The Kingdom Systems couldn't avoid Imperial notice forever—they'd been lucky to get the roughly four hundred years they'd had—but she wasn't at all sure she cared to live under the Terran Empire's rule.
Not, she thought as she showered and got into uniform, that they'd probably have much choice in the matter. The Empire claimed to be a benevolent umbrella government, that it didn't interfere in local affairs unless absolutely necessary, which Mike's studies of comm intercepts tended to confirm—but it was hard to believe that their non-interference policy could stretch to include the Kingdoms. Well, she'd find out—at least she'd find out whatever the scoutship's crew knew or believed about it.
She got her usual deep pleasure out of saying Mass, assisted by both Mike Odeon and Dave Bain, who claimed he'd been awake anyway. Cortin had her suspicions of the reason, with Sis at the unusually early Mass, and approved heartily. Sis was five months pregnant, but that was no reason to deny herself the pleasures of any of the Family's husbands, and Cortin was of the opinion that Dave was good for her.
After Mass, the clean-up that had recently become necessary afterward, and breakfast, Cortin, Odeon, Chang, and Bain went to her ground-floor office to wait for the prisoner. They were silent at first, but at last Bain said, "Joanie?"
"Hmm?"
"We're in trouble, aren't we?"
Cortin sighed. "I can't be sure, but I think so. That's because they scare me for some reason—even though there's no evidence I can point to that'll justify that fear. But I'm the wrong person to ask about the Empire; Mike's the one who's been studying them."
Bain turned to his co-husband. "Mike?"