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nine thousand years,” said Rit, “and then end up fighting so bitterly?”
    â€œBecause the bezeri asked them to intervene to throw you off Bezer’ej.” Ralassi dodged a loader sagging under the weight of chunks of shattered rubble. “Had they been Eqbas wess’har, they would have stopped you colonizing Asht to begin with.”
    This was the concept that gave Rit the most trouble, this idea that wess’har felt obligated to render aid—and carry on rendering it even when they were no longer wanted. She searched her inherited memories and found no hint that any of her forebears had understood that. All they had known was that wess’har didn’t attack Umeh. That had left Umeh unprepared for the aggressively interventionist Eqbas Vorhi.
    â€œHow do humans cope?” she asked Ralassi.
    The ussissi aide reached out and touched the dalf ’s fronds carefully as if expecting pain from them. “With parks?”
    â€œWith having to learn everything anew in each generation.”
    â€œThey don’t,” said Ralassi. “They make the same mistakes each time.”
    â€œNo wonder they’re so possessive about information. It’s hard won for them.” They did learn, though. They didn’t seem at all surprised by the Eqbas. “What are they doing now?”
    â€œThey seem happy to have an outgoing ITX link to Earth, even if they have to queue to make their transmissions and even though they have nothing to say.”
    It took one authorization from Rit to lift the block on outgoing messages. Her ministry could have done it sooner, but they hadn’t, and now it had been done that day, after requests had been countersigned and permissions passed down the line. The humans thought there was some strategy to it. But they had simply been forgotten in the unfolding crisis. They didn’t seem used to being a small detail in the galaxy.
    â€œI see no point continuing the embargo,” said Rit. “There’s no harm that they can do, now that they’re leaving.”
    â€œAnd now that the problem isn’t humans provoking wess’har any longer. Minister, what will you do about the Eqbas?”
    â€œI have to reach an understanding with them, of course.”
    â€œShomen Eit says this is now an infrastructure matter, and so his responsibility.”
    The park and the restoration was—strictly speaking—the preserve of Shomen Eit too. Rit, whose ministry handled alien relations, was making a statement by being here at all, even if she had planted the tree because it was, technically, alien.
    And that statement was that she was moving into Shomen Eit’s fiefdom.
    My husband died for this. He wanted Umeh to be restored. And all Eit wants is more power for the Assembly. I can’t let it stop at that.
    â€œUntil he relieves me of my post,” said Rit, measuring every word, “then I carry on doing my duty to the state.”
    Two isenj who had been inspecting the dalf paused to stare at her. For a moment she thought they might speak to her: unlike human politicians, isenj didn’t fear their electorate enough to want constant protection from them. But they simply acknowledged her office with a rattle of quills, stared at the tree for a moment longer, and then moved away.
    She waited for them to pass. “Where is our army now?”
    Ralassi checked the latest deployment on his data cube. “Those who’ve remained loyal to the Assembly are still surrounding the administration buildings, and there are units holding out along the border.”
    â€œWhat would you do?”
    â€œMinister, I’m not a military tactician.”
    â€œI meant politically.”
    Ralassi had those same spherical eyes as all the fur-things—wess’har, Eqbas, human—except they had none of that disturbing wet glaze that made them look like internal organs protruding through wounds. They were matte black. Even