Dorji made a mental note to double his kitchen's salary. With half an hour's notice, they put together a proper feast to entertain the Privy Minister, and he appreciated it. The table was piled high with all the delicacies of the Empire and a few new ones. Boiled bean paste waited anxiously to be piled on flat onion bread; fried and stir-fried shellfish bathed languorously in five different sauces; fine-sliced chicken lay patiently within hollowed-out lettuce heads. Reigning over the whole banquet was the quintessential Veloth desert. When it came to the sweet tooth, simplest was best, and caramelized chunks of sugar surveyed the rest of the table from an elevated plate.

So it was unfortunate, a little bit, that Paia chose now to pitch a fit.

"Are you kidding" Why didn't you tell me before" I don't want a priest here snooping on me!" Snooping is what spiritual advisors did, especially when they had an actual tenure as a priest. Orig Shelnarqlaisen was the real deal; he'd been preaching to the grassies down in Dolna for 6 years. Perhaps it was unwise of Dorji to have kept this a secret, but he figured that it'd be best to take their medicine all at once. No matter how much they got used to the idea, the reality would almost certainly be worse.

"Respectfully, my lady, I'm not here to snoop on you. I'm here to advise and guide your husband, as well as see to the religious needs of your staff. I've been informed that you do not observe Rezan Dalba?" Never mind that it was only 900 kahnas from the Capital and the whole country was 27,000 across, Dolna was the festering cesspit of the Empire. It was a backwards, stagnant garbage dump. Just hearing him speak grated on everyone's nerves.

"What holidays we observe, Minister Shelnarqlaisen, is no business of yours! I am perfectly happy with the depth of my spiritual activities! We all are. Isn't that right, husband" You do such a lovely reading." Theoretically, he could do a lovely reading of the Canon. People living in exile or near-solitude always picked up interesting abilities; it was such a common trope that Dorji didn't dare try to buck it. So yes, he could do it. He just didn't.

"Well, the Skirras have been agitating . . ." It was true. They had been. The Skirra, as is common to people who spend their life faced with death, were the most religious segment of the Empire's population. The 36 Skirra here were no different. Lax faith led to worse things.

"My lady, I'm told that you've used the Speak-Common Tablet?" That was, of course, the priest, who had put his eating-hooks down to speak.

"I don't see what business that is of yours, but yes, I have." Paia got on the defensive. She looked down her lack of nose at him.

"And you've . . . spent a great deal of time fraternizing with them?"

"I have. All in the name of research, of course." Of course.

"But my lady is, of course, not a trained research agent."

"Well, of course," she said acridly, "I'm a woman."

"What is done," Orig said with a deep breath, "cannot be undone. However, if my lady is having regular contact with the Grass-People, my services can only be of use, to help her put their behaviors into context. Isn't that correct, Your Temperance?"

"Yes, yes, of course." It was correct, actually, but that was insignificant considering he had been sent by the Emperor. For all they knew, he was secretly a heretic and the Crown wanted him out of the way.

"And my own husband is taking his side. Ridiculous. This is disgusting." Paia was ready to get up and leave at that point.

"My dear lady . . ." And now it was finally time for Teerna to intervene. He'd been keeping quiet, enjoying his dinner, but circumstances had conspired to make that impossible.

"My dear lady, my sweet blood-sister, it is the very whim of His Divine Majesty that you entertain this fine minister. There's nothing to be done about it. As for me, I simply had to concede the point in order to get the Patriarch on my side. As far as I care, you can stick him in the closet." Teerna had the unfailing ability to find whoever was important in a given circumstance and get on their side. Dorji was wishy-washy; Orig was irrelevant. It was Paia who had to be appeased here, and his little comment got a wise half-smile out of her.

"Fine. I'll say no more. But if he goes through my closet, I'm chaining him up outside." Orig was clearly unhappy with that comment, and he showed it by eating another bean-roll. It didn't matter what the Minister through of him; he'd be gone the next morning. He only deigned to speak when he realized everyone was looking at him.

"I shall do my best to please His Temperance and his family. I only pray to our Mighty Liberator that it will be enough."

"Do you think it will?" That was Paia. If every Veloth in the Empire had a social rank, with 1 being the lowest and 100 being the Emperor at the highest, Paia would have been 80 by virtue of birth. Dorji was born at 60 and managed to bootstrap himself up to 70, but his nouveau status showed through his behavior. Orig was a priest, but just a lowly one, and nobody with the ancestral name Shel had ever accomplished much of anything. He was stuck somewhere in the 30s, and Paia was perfectly within herself to talk to him like that.

"All signs are favorable, my lady." He gave her a little glare, just to show that he was engaged. You're not a thorn in my side, he was thinking. You're a child. You don't know anything about real life. But I do, and I'm not going to let you get to me, no matter how much you try. I've dealt with far more than you can even imagine.

"Good," said the Minister. "That was an excellent dinner, Observer. I enjoyed it heartily. Give my complements to your cook. Now, if I may speak with you in your study for a moment??

It could be said that few things happened within the city of Rhydin that were not observed by someone, if none other than the abundance of homeless and under-class that sometimes filled the streets at night. If not they, then the equally abundant animals and city-bred wildlife that scurried their lives trying to avoid being someone or something's next meal. Yes, the city of Rhydin was positively overflowing with eyes and ears.

So it was that at the arrival of the Veloth ship, there was one more set of eyes and ears, and the city itself would not begrudge the competition.

Verash had worked for MACE, short for Market Assessment and Competition Evaluation, for a good twenty years. The covert division within TRIAD Enterprises was on the surface simply intended to analyze new markets for profitible ventures by the mega-corp. In reality, MACE and it's Operatives were responsible for exploiting any new markets, and discovering the weakness of any potential economic rivals. In short, MACE Operatives were highly-trained industrial espionage agents, and Verash was among the upper ranks.

He'd been chosen for this assignment on Rhydin initially to observe one Trystal Vordia, the sister of TRIAD's current CEO, and ensure her cooperation in furthering TRIAD's agendas. So far, Trystal had done as 'requested', ensuring her daughter's continued safety. This time, Trystal had delivered some rather interesting intel on a potential market, namely that of the Veloth Empire.

Eventually the reports written on the Veloth by Trystal made their way to MACE, and that division wanted to know more. More importantly however, the CEO himself wanted to know more about the home lands of the Veloth. So here was Verash watching and spying on the arrival of an airship and supposedly an important envoy, considering how low the local Veloth lord was bowing.

Verash waited for the group to break up before he moved from his vantage on a nearby rooftop. A control on his wrist engaged the thermoptic camo in his sneak-suit. The specialized energy fields generated by the skin-tight suit bent light around his body, rendering him invisible to normal light, while the suit itself absorbed and erased his thermal signature. The sneak-suit was just one of the tools of a MACE Operative, but it made getting around and into restricted places so much easier.

Leaping out from the building, his cybernetic legs tensing at just the right moment to absorb the impact and allow him to land silently on the dock where the airship was berthed. With any luck, the senses of the guards would be none the wiser for his quick on and off visit. His purpose aboard the ship was to secure a trans-dimensional tracking beacon aboard the airship, so that MACE could follow it's progress and thereby locate both the actual position in the multiverse of the Veloth homelands, but hopefully as well the physical gateway used to access those lands.

A quick look around before Verash was darting this way and that, avoiding close proximity of the guards, and keeping downwind at all times. Time to see if this worked...