"Continue," one of the ministers urged Bai Yuyan without taking his eyes off me. "We want to hear what you have to say."
Yuyan dipped her head like a lily in a polite wind. "As I was saying," she purred, "Baiguang is in mourning. Our capital suffered—" she didn't say who made it suffer, wasn't that civilized "—a terrible losses. I come—" and here she let her voice tremble just enough "—not to beg, but to…understand. To offer what remains of the royal house to reconciliation."
The word clicked neatly into place next to the others she'd set out: civilized, peace, mourning, reconciliation. A trail of sugar leading to a cage.
"Funny," I said, and my voice carried to the back wall without trying. "Normally when I step on a cockroach, it doesn't usually stand up and offer me reconciliation."
Silence is its own kind of applause.
