When Counselor finished her story, all five of the kids sat smiling expectantly at me. Not human smiles, of course; Mandasars smile with their ears and whiskers, both sort of relaxing down in calm droops.

Pity I couldn’t smile too.

The truth is I’d never been so great as a blood-consort. Queen Verity said she married me mostly because of my delicious smell. Samantha claimed it was also a political thing, sending a message to Verity’s enemies that the queen was backed by my father and the full force of the Outward Fleet.

But once I became Verity’s husband, it turned out I didn’t have much to do. Smelling delicious doesn’t qualify you for being a general or cabinet minister or important jobs like that. Mostly I just hung around the palace being Verity’s bodyguard. (By then, sister Sam didn’t need me to be her bodyguard anymore. She’d assembled her own security team of warriors, humans, and even some Fasskisters. Anyway, she was getting busier and busier with secret diplomat stuff, "and it’s better, Edward, if you don’t know about that.")

As for me being Verity’s consort/husband/bodyguard, the queen once said, "You may not be a genius, Edward, but you’re the only honest creature I’ve ever known. I keep you around for inspiration. And curiosity value." It made me feel good when she talked like that… but being an inspiration doesn’t mean you’re good for much else. Definitely I wasn’t cut out for saving people.

(Memories of corpses flashed through my mind: Verity herself, head laid out on a platter. Samantha in a pool of blood. All the people on Willow, dressed up for their last party.)

But Counselor and the others still wore those big trusting smiles. Five minutes before, they had been cheering for Zeeleepull to snip me bloody. Now their black eyes gleamed as if I were topped off with a halo.

Or maybe, as if I were topped off with a crown. I’d been sitting in their midst, giving off the scent of queen’s venom, so why wouldn’t they start responding to me like royalty? If you smell like a queen, all their instincts tell them to treat you like you’re three-quarters divine. (Mandasars are a smart species, they really are, but they’re way too much at the mercy of their noses. Then again, they laugh at us humans and say we’re way too much at the mercy of our gonads… so maybe it balances out.)

"What do you think I can do?" I asked Counselor.

She looked at me in surprise, maybe wondering why I didn’t instantly have a plan to save all ten million kids on Celestia. "Do what is required," Counselor told me.

"Yes, but in the high queen’s court," I said, "Verity never started anything without consulting her privy council. Even a queen knows it’s smart to talk things over with people who’ve studied the situation."

Everyone smiled and nodded. Counselor went all bashful to be compared to a royal advisor, the workers beamed as if their darling grandchild had won a prize, and even Zeeleepull showed some real approval… like maybe I wasn’t just a stupid thug with queen-spill on my face.

"Well," said Counselor, "you’re with the navy, are you not? This is not a Technocracy world, but the fleet still wields great influence. If you summoned a dozen cruisers with tractor beams to stop ships from docking at our orbitals, the Celestian authorities would soon do whatever you asked. Even if the navy just took the name of everyone coming and going, there’d be great pressure on our government to remedy the situation immediately. Powerful people often don’t want it known when and why they come to this world. They value secrecy much more than they care about a few Mandasar employees."

She wiggled her whiskers the way gentles do when they’re pleased with themselves. I guess I was supposed to say, "Tremendous idea, I’ll do it." But the Admiralty wasn’t going to annoy influential people just on the request of a lowly Explorer Second Class — especially not an Explorer Second Class they intended to strand on some lonely outpost as soon as they caught him. Now that I thought about it, maybe it was kind of risky doing anything for these kids: if I attracted attention, people might come to snatch me in the middle of the night, and they wouldn’t just be recruiters for some factory that didn’t pay overtime.

On the other hand… when I’d married Queen Verity, I’d taken an oath to protect her people forever and ever. Verity’s reign was over, but "forever and ever" wasn’t.

"Sorry," I told Counselor, "we can’t look for help from the navy. So let’s think what else we can do…"

We kicked around ideas for an hour. Everyone got in on the act — even Hib Nib Pib. Usually workers just sit back and smile when other people are discussing plans, as if they already know the right answer and are just waiting for everyone else to reach the same conclusion… but maybe the smell of queen’s venom had stirred them enough that they just couldn’t keep quiet. All three workers actually got involved, tossing in suggestions and comments and nit-picks.

Too bad we never decided anything.

The ideas basically fell into two classes: big fancy schemes that would only work if I was a colossally important person (which I wasn’t); and small practical ways to resist the recruiters, which were already being done. For example, Hib suggested I should bring all the Mandasars together in a special shelter where they’d be safe from recruiters. But who would build the shelter? Me? The navy? The League? And who would protect us how, when we didn’t have money to pay for security guards or equipment? On the other hand, if we were talking about making our own special shelters, and protecting ourselves… weren’t the Mandasars doing that right now? There in the Hollen Marsh and elsewhere? They’d banded together all on their own, without needing me as a figurehead. What more could I do? If they were looking for a great military leader to improve their organization or tactics, I was the last person to put in charge.

Hib and the others didn’t understand that. No matter how much I told them I wasn’t generalissimo material, they thought I was just being modest.

So the talk went around and around, the kids thrashing through the pros and cons, while I listened… and listened… and kept on listening till it dawned on me I’d stopped taking anything in. I was watching the way their mouths moved as they spoke. The bobbing of their whiskers. The spike at the end of Zeeleepull’s snout as it swished through the air.

I’m dizzy, I thought. I’ve gone all dizzy. It was the kind of dizziness that seems absolutely fascinating, so you start rotating your neck slowly just to feel the world blur: to see exactly how much you can control the spaciness inside your skull…

Someone gave me a shake. Counselor was holding onto my shoulders with her upper arms and saying, "Are you all right?" — really loud as if she’d already asked the question a whole bunch of times.

"I’m sick," I said. "The little eyeballs poisoned me." Which struck me as funny, so I laughed and laughed… way too hard. The dizziness whooshed down over me like ice water, starting cold at the roots of my hair and draining bleak down my face. I remember thinking, This isn’t regal at all. Then, very unregally, I passed out.

It was hard to tell when I was awake and when I wasn’t. Sometimes I thought I was dreaming about a little Mandasar girl with her arms wrapped around my neck and both of us crying; but sometimes I had the idea maybe Counselor was the one holding me, and she was trying to keep me down on a bed pallet as I thrashed about half-crazy. It all blended together, so confused and light-headed that I couldn’t tell the borderline between dream and delirium.

Still… Counselor, the real Counselor, was a deep gentle brown. The little girl who came weeping into my hallucinations was a bright queenly yellow. "Oh Father Prince," she whispered, "wake and save us all — Please, please wake."