A cacophony of voices filled the Council Chamber. Every seat at the large, circular table was filled by a politician who insisted on speaking over their peers, many of them resorting to emphatic hand gestures. They wore Bekalan fashions – dresses with a modest cut for the women, usually in bright colours like blue or pink or green, coats of a slightly darker shade for the men, almost always with embroidered cuffs – and several of them carried trinkets that were almost certainly Infused. Rings, necklaces, bracelets: that sort of thing. Kalia couldn’t say for certain if any of those little baubles were actually deadly weapons; she wouldn’t know until someone triggered a Heat-Sink or a Force-Source. And that was starting to look more likely with every passing minute.
In a white dress with sh
