The automatic double doors welcome you to a shuttle platform lit by too many LEDs. It is three in the morning and the air is like bathwater. It is late summer. You fish the sealed envelope out of your bag again and flip it over to read the scrawled writing on the back.

"Deborah," the letter addresses you, for you are Deborah Tosteson, "I don't envy you." This was going to be Neal Schultz's assignment had you not volunteered. This is Neal's chicken-scratch handwriting on the back of the envelope, scrawled with a dying pen in the bowels of the Pangua foreign affairs department, some five-thousand kilometers away. "On paper, your job couldn't be easier; the bill is already passed, it's just a matter of notification. They're not the type to shoot the messenger, or anyone else. That's really the problem. I've never learned anything particularly inspiring about Wilskenn. Not from the perspective of a war-monger." They have to know it's coming after the losses in Humnoque. Surely.

Why did you volunteer for this again?

The shuttle to your hotel pulls in. You stuff away the letter.

You haul your small suitcase onto the shuttle and take a seat nearest the front. The driver is Wilskenn. Forty, perhaps? Hard to tell; human age doesn't translate well on Wilskenn physiology. He looks like a werewolf caught mid-transformation, or a particularly humanoid bear. Completely bald, as they all are.

"Skenn," he says as you pass by. One flesh. Both the name of Edrye's dominant religion and a mantra of biological community. It is the belief that every living thing is a splinter of some previous singularity.

You are not expected to respond. Edrye is an aristocracy. Although it is not Pangua's style to let class dictate piddling social interactions, it is Edrye's. When in Rome, and all that. Still, you try not to be awkward. Perhaps you can strike up a conversation? You try to recount what you know about Edrye.

Inkin af, one of the Daughters of Yan, has not been seen nor heard from for two weeks.

Her title is political: the Daughters act as aldermen to the lord mayor of Athar. They are women of high birth who symbolically carry on the lineage of Yan Pkuuy, the father of modern--and ancient--Edryean political philosophy.

She was also pregnant.

"Has Inkin been found?" you ask.

"Nay and she won't be," the driver responds in Panguan tongue. His Skenyan accent is heavy and crushes the delicate syllables.

You're taken aback by his blunt nature. "Because?"

He yawns and, for a moment, all the pointed and yellow teeth in his mouth are put on full display. "Can't be anything right about it." He's referring to the baby. "Otherwise we'd have seen it already. It's a..." There is no Panguan word for Cagaskenn. Born under a sick star. Something that fought it's way into the world when all of medical science dictates that it should have died before birth. The very mention of them is taboo, let alone whelping one.

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The bus hits a pothole in the road.

All you can think to say is "I see."

The driver looked between you and the road a few times. An awkward silence falls between you two. Finally he offers, "Perhaps she will come home. After." He nods.

After the child is discreetly rehomed to a farm where it can herd livestock and eat pests until its early death. Wilskenn can't even kill the things that offend them; that ruin their reputation and hinder their political career. You sigh and sink into your seat.

The shuttle arrives at the hotel. Hotel is the wrong word. It is a hostel. The Twin Piers. There is no body of water big enough for even one pier within thirty kilometres of here. Privacy is hard to come by in Edrye. Single-occupancy rooms are not common

You haul your suitcase off the shuttle and, once again, the driver only quietly watches you. When you enter the building you are greeted first by a massive painting in the foyer of a lake you don't recognize with a pier on either end. There is no one at the desk, nor anyone else in the room. You leave your suitcase by the door to inspect the painting, but the moment you turn away from the desk you hear a voice from the other end of the room.

"Miss Tosteson?" A young Wilskenn man is standing behind the desk, wringing his hands. The glasses perched on his snout magnify his eyes.

"Yes," you reply.

"I thought you would arrive earlier." His gaze shifts to a tea set on a low table with no steam coming off the kettle.

"My flight was delayed," you say. "The weather in Saberttho was quite violent when I left." You look around the small room and listen for anyone else's presence. "Where is Bennett?"

"Well, that's me," the Wilskenn man says.

You can't help but hesitate. "You have a Panguan name."

"My parents were assimilationists." He tilts his head and smiles to politely request that the conversation move on. Wilskenn have an entire language of facial expressions that Panguans often find difficult to interpret. This, at least, is obvious to you.

"It's nice to put a face to a name," you offer, and grab ahold of your suitcase again. "Where's my room?"

Bennett leads you down a hallway of wooden boards that cry out under the weight of every step. He stops at a door that you can't help but notice is hand-carved and retrieves a brass skeleton key from his pocket. The door opens with a squeal. The interior looks to have been decorated by your grandmother, or perhaps your great-grandmother. The wallpapers are chintz and every surface is adorned with an ornate antimacassar or doily. Many delicate objects are mounted on the wall, including an oil painting of Jorg Fnun, second lord mayor of Athar, hanging above the bed. It is a very far cry from contemporary Penguan interior design.

You cannot imagine feeling comfortable here. "It's wonderful."

"I have given you my room, Miss Tosteson. I understand that Panguans do not like to share beds or rooms and this is the only private room and bed in the hostel." Bennett smiles at you.

You're grateful, but first you must follow the appropriate procedures of refusing and questioning such a generous act. "I can't take your room. Where will you sleep?" Perfect.

Bennett laughs. "I am too busy to sleep." He takes off back up the hallway, waving at you before disappearing around a corner. "Goodnight Miss Tosteson!"