Leander stood at attention. He stuck to the boss's back, convinced if someone wanted to stab Ilan Potestas in it there was little he, a dead police officer with no magic, could do to stop it. He played the skillful bodyguard anyway, knowing he lacked the high tech to do his job.

The boss insisted on being in the thick of the crowd. Faces were unfamiliar; the music competed louder every minute with a thousand voices; it was dark and flickering with shadows except where fires burned and flame was reflected in the walls that were mostly mirror except when they were fireplaces.

The boss was speaking to Mariana Aurelia, but she walked away nodding her head off. Leander tried to speak to the boss again, but Potestas had found "Exequi Caecina" and asked, "Exequi Caecina, may I have a moment of you time?" and Leander gave up again, restless from futility that shivered through his body.

He glared knives at everyone who came close, which was everyone present in a swirling tide at the party, except for those seated, who never seemed to get up and risk their spot being stolen.

Whatever these people were fighting about while pretending to dance, socialize and celebrate, laughing as if it was the same drinking dancing shouting gossiping that rich people everywhere and apparently across galaxies engaged in, Leander didn't care. Laughing while they plotted against each other, maybe planning each other's downfall or even murders.

The boss's murder, he believed, would destabilize the empire, but there was nothing he could do to prevent that. There was a greater and more unstoppable danger to consider, and if it continued, everything these people were fighting over would be obliterated by something much bigger.

Exequi Caecina wanted to talk about the 'solar irregularity.' "It's the most incredible event of our time, whatever the cause. I've heard some good theories, but nothing I believe. If Solin was perfecting human flight, wouldn't that be something?"

And the powerful didn't do anything but talk about it. Not even talk — gossip. They thought it was an important battle to win.

Leander couldn't convince himself that their battle mattered.

No one, not even the boss, seemed to care that the sun was rising and setting faster. It made for exciting conversation, but no one was afraid. Didn't most of these people work for Constellation? Shouldn't they be at work, in offices and laboratories, yelling over phones, running numbers, tearing through books, doing whatever it was they did in a place like that — to find out what went wrong and make it stop?

Every time Leander asked, the boss shut him up. The election was more important.

Leander wasn't afraid. Yesterday he had been killed, he wasn't afraid to die. Yesterday he had been taken from everything that mattered. People who mattered. No one here meant anything. If their world was going to end, and they weren't going to do anything about it, why should he?

Except that it was driving him crazy.

Now Exequi Caecina left, excited to vote for Sunyin Aura, apparently. Maybe even excited that the president was dead. Leander broke in. "Sir. I'm useless here. A body guard with magic would be better able to protect you. I would be more effective investigating the cause of the solar irregularities."

"Oh, would you?" said Potestas. It was a fair question. Leander had no idea where to start.

Instead, Leander argued, "I believe it's important. I believe my time would be best used determining the cause of the solar irregularity and ensuring it isn't a danger to the empire. Or the planet. Or all of reality. I don't have the first clue how to do that, however."

"You could find someone, for example my son, with a deep knowledge of magic, and ask him what's causing it. Of course, if he had the first idea, he would be doing something about it."

"No one is doing anything about it," said Leander.

"I wouldn't worry about it," said the boss.

"Yes, I've noticed."

Potestas clapped him on the shoulder and he said, "I have a better idea. When Exequi Marius arrives, go ask him why the sun is rising and setting early, and what he, as the next president of Constellation, plans to do about it. Bring as many others into the conversation as you can, let them publicly interrogate him, and keep him busy. If you're lucky, maybe Marius will be able to tell you how to stop the 'solar irregularity.' And you can single-handedly prevent the world from ending.

"In the meantime, I acknowledge your concerns that I'm in danger where I stand. I need to have a talk with Ignatius Varian, and we can take him up to my office. Just the three of us. Very secure."

It should have been what Leander wanted, increasing the boss's odds of surviving the night tenfold, but even as he said, "Yes, sir," what he really wanted was to find the Aurelian and shake him until he woke up and went where he would be most effective.

In some laboratory somewhere, right?

Sipping champagne, Candra wondered whether an election would matter if the world ended. She had arrived early, linking to Invernali the second Pax the designer had her new gown in place on her body.

The boss's purpose was obvious: to control who would replace the dead president. She still didn't know who had eliminated Gaia Solin, or what the killer got out of it, but that was a puzzle for a rainy day.

Candra's purpose became clearer with every elector who came out of the elevators.

The crowd was thickest by the wall of windows, where the first light of the day would be visible through the heavy snowstorm in who knew how many hours or minutes, if ever. Speculation of the cause grew wilder as the night went on; everywhere Candra stopped to listen in, the craziest theories were met with outbursts of skepticism before the group divided like a virus to spread what had been a minute earlier an outrageous hypothesis as verifiable fact.

It wasn't long before everyone at the boss's impromptu gathering was equally convinced that President Solin had built a secret army that turned on her, that Constellation was raising the dead, that President Solin's army was made up of the living dead, that the Soliari theory of the universe was wrong and the planet didn't after all, orbit the sun, that the sun was blotted out by a foreign attack on the Soliari Empire, that the planet was flat and not round, and that the sun's disappearance was an attack on foreign nations orchestrated by President Solin but gone wrong.

They went from believing none of the theories presented to a complete conviction of the truth of all of them by the time the band took its first break.

Guest after guest flooded into the space. There was a puffy eyed girl Candra decided was Diana Aemilia, and she was dying to find out what she was crying about.

Claudia Solace managed an appearance, if not a very presentable one. To be fair, her lilac little toga dress would have drawn eyes at a spring festival. A decade ago. Now it was turning heads, but not in a good way. She should have asked the crying girl what to wear.

Novus Fortunato had attended from Casicaa, stepping right into his father's shoes — possibly literally — and not even taking the day off to mourn. The non-cyclical life with no end in sight did that to a person. The most horrible change was a change, like wind on a hot day when everything stood still in the heat, and you couldn't be expected to be sad about a breeze.

She had been there watching when Antony Solari arrived and guided his beautiful wife into the crowd, but they separated when she stopped to talk to someone and he kept on toward the bar by the windows.

Then, Laio Cytheria had arrived in her absolute finest, a draping golden gown that made Candra jealous of the old woman, or at least jealous of her money and designers, and a huge black structural tailored coat that she was not taking off. Cytheria had a scowl for everyone she looked at, Candra included.

In half an hour Candra counted thirty-seven out of fifty electors to the Constellation board. Some party. Ilan Potestas was orchestrating an assault on Justin Marius's support base. And that was why Portia Nero was directing the troops — Franco, Esperanza Valerian, Acario Lucian, Angelus Gloriam, Sr., and Angelus Gloriam, Jr. — against the enemy.

Candra wasn't among their ranks.

There was a price for her work, and it hadn't been paid. If Justin's victory came too easily, she would never get what she wanted. He wouldn't need her if the land began to slide his way. She watched and prepared her own strategy, to keep the scales balanced, to stop them from tipping too far.

A good place to start was with a crying girl, Exequi Diana Aemilia, who might be persuaded to tip whichever way Candra prodded.