Without really knowing why, Nova did as Calo Gloriam commanded and took a link to Soliara immediately, dressed in a white dress she hoped he would like. It made her look like a doll. It only took seconds to curl her hair with magic to complete the image. She wore the pearl necklace he had sent her this morning.

The link exited a city block from where she and Calo always met, and it had taken her a few minutes to get away from Potestas Tower, but she didn't feel anxious that she was running late.

What she felt was a breathlessness that chased all the thoughts out of her mind, and she was nervous, but not about the planet spinning faster and the world ending, and she was carefree, appreciative of the solar warmth so far from Invernali, and the shops full of people, the patios drinking in the sunshine.

The downtown sidewalk soaked in pleasant light, but the people in the streets were stopped, staring up out of fear, some of them even with a bit of nervous excitement. Perhaps a bit of awe as their imaginations filled in what could possibly make the day run faster, and as with every curious, if disastrous, incident, there were a few curious smiles that disobeyed all rules of decorum, always accompanied by mesmerized eyes.

Nova wasn't afraid either. She was fluttery, and flushed, but not because the sun was too high up, and not because the world might end. Her breathlessness was due to something completely different.

At the end of a block of commercial patios, the edifices broke off to a lot of green, and Nova rounded the fenced corner. She could see the Gloriams' private patio from the top of the street, where Calo Gloriam was sitting alone reading the paper. Nova preferred the company of city life, to be surrounded by other fluttering souls, but public spaces were still too modern for the Gloriams. They would never be found in a crowded cafe. The patio stemmed from Calo's family home, which was colossal, and they would be served by hired waiters, the food cooked by hired chefs. The man had never so much as stepped foot in a restaurant.

Nova approached him up the lawn. The smile she prepared for him flickered with nervousness and she could feel it waver and return, flashing off and on as she struggled with it.

"Good morning, Calo," she said in a voice that came out weaker than it should have.

He did not get up. He looked up, and gestured for her to take a seat across from him, then went back to his paper. She pulled out her own chair and sat in it without another word, respectful of his reading.

It was an uncomfortable minute while he read and she kept smiling at him in case he looked up. Finally he did and she flushed and couldn't hold his eyes, but she kept the smile in place at all cost; she wouldn't let it fade again.

Calo grimly skipped all formalities. "Was Postestas warned?" he asked.

"No," she said, still smiling stupidly.

"How did he survive?"

"He was rescued." Her answers were short and direct, not expansive. But maybe he was asking the wrong questions.

Putting the paper down, Calo leaned forward to look at her as if examining a cryptic puzzle and determining how to solve it while she squirmed under his scrutiny. These meetings were starting to absorb Nova, to consume her thoughts when they weren't together, as he could see by how she dressed up for him.

Thankfully he would be done soon.

"Tell me everything you know about the rescuer."

She obeyed, reciting an unorganized list of observations about Cristo, who had called himself Julian Somnare in public, including a detailed description of his face — as if she were directing a composite artist — that took her more than a minute to get through before she recounted everything he had said and done in her presence down to the number of steps he took to pace the boss's office — it was amazing how much detail the mind could capture and recall when used properly — and she was beginning to go into everything everyone else had said and done in reaction to Cristo five minutes later when Calo interrupted her, noticing that her recitation followed his parameters a little too precisely — she was telling him only what she knew about Cristo, and nothing she speculated.

Yet to put the question so generally again would be another waste of time.

"What do you suspect he's trying to accomplish?" Calo asked.

"To become the boss's heir," she speculated. That explained why she was so suspicious of him. "I haven't ruled Cristo out as a suspect in the boss's attempted murder."

"Next theory," said Calo.

Justin Marius didn't understand how tiresome Nova could be to work with while she was completely in the dark. Their inside woman wasn't really theirs and didn't know what she was supposed to be looking for, not to mention she couldn't be counted on to curate her thoughts and observations the way a conscious person would.

But Marius thought it was genius: a spy who didn't know she was a spy.

She had gone on while he thought without listening, and he had to make her repeat it all from the beginning. The next idea was just as incredible as the first even if Calo hadn't known it wasn't true. She thought Cristo meant to take over Constellation from the president.

"Next theory," said Calo with a wave of his hand as if he were controlling her like a puppet-master with his gestures. Or like he was turning the page of a book. She stopped mid-word on one idea and began immediately on the next. By now she would be getting into half-formed speculations she wouldn't be able to admit entertaining even to herself, but at his command she offered them to him without reservation.

She said, "He came to warn us that the company is threatened by a change of leadership suddenly, through a series of manipulations on an individual level, such as the boss's murder, instead of through organic change in collective opinion." That was more like it. "He knows with certainty that the new party will succeed if he doesn't interfere, because he knows the future, somehow, and he might be the only person who can stop it."

"So you are a good observer after all," said Calo. She continued to smile at him, not vacantly, but with a conscious desire to please.

Well, not totally conscious, but she wasn't empty either. She had been filled with something.

Out of curiosity, Calo strayed from the script for a minute to experiment. "Who do you think is behind that change of leadership?"

"Someone who wants to lift restrictions and protections that keep us from spiraling out of control, someone like Sunyin Aura, who wants the way clear to research and develop dangerous things, worse than immortality or time travel, or even weaponry."

That idea he had planted in her head, and it seemed to be growing there quite well. "Things like mind control," she said, and he had definitely not put that one there, "or mass destruction or who knows what unimaginable thing," she went on.

Even as she enumerated her worst fears, ones she would never admit to anyone, no change came over her affect — giddy as she always was around him — and the disconcerting contrast hit its pinnacle when she said, "I suspect this party controls me through you and I connected the assassins to Potestas Tower's magic myself," without a break in her sunny disposition.

A fear she would not admit, even to herself — especially to herself, he hoped.

"How do you like the necklace?" Calo asked.

With complete honesty and completely vacant eyes, Nova said, "It's hideous and it's giving me a rash. I want to take it off."

"Well don't," said Calo, and he went back to reading his newspaper.