The room had the particular stillness of people who needed to act and couldn't yet.
King Douglas sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Olivia stood nearby, fingers moving at her sides, her eyes fixed on her husband with the focused quiet of someone choosing, deliberately, not to do what her body wanted to do.
Mukai paced.
"You're just going to let them dictate terms?" He stopped, facing his father. "We have an army. They're a small group. We clearly outpower them."
"The situation is complicated." Douglas rubbed his temples.
"What is there to think about-"
"If we move recklessly, Alicia kills Sukai." The King's voice didn't rise. "No one in this house forgives that. And your mother-" he glanced at Olivia, whose jaw had tightened incrementally, "-would fly into a rage and kill Alicia. Which she could do. Alicia isn't that powerful. But then we'd have to deal with her father, and that battle costs us countless lives and destabilises the nation."
The pacing stopped.
Olivia pressed her fists together at her sides, a vein visible at her temple. "Chandler's daughters are so burdensome," she said, under her breath.
Moto stepped forward before he'd finished deciding to. "Who's Chandler?"
Mukai's head snapped around. "Why are you still here?!"
Olivia silenced him with a look. The King's guard stepped forward.
"The Maverick of the Heavens," the guard said, his voice even and measured. "A man whose whims shape nations. One of the higher-ups of Denga - the most powerful country in the world. His daughters have a way of making it very difficult to avoid attracting his attention."
"Sounds like spoiled brats to me," Moto muttered.
King Douglas pressed his lips together against something that almost became a chuckle. "You would do very well never to say that to their faces."
Olivia and Mukai turned twin glares on Moto that communicated, without ambiguity, that this was not the moment.
"The Hwange is a small price to pay for Sukai's life," Douglas said, his gaze returning to the dark screen, "but I need more time. Put Alicia back on."
The screen flickered back to life. Alicia's face appeared, composed and faintly expectant.
"Good news, I hope?"
"I'll bring it," Douglas said. "But as you know, the Hwange's radiation is dangerous. Even I need to approach it carefully. Give me until sunrise."
A pause. Brief. Considered.
"Denied."
Black screen.
The table didn't survive Mukai's fist. He rounded on his father, and whatever the King had been about to say, he closed his mouth and gave a small nod to Olivia instead - let him speak.
"If you were a powerful king," Mukai said, his voice shaking with the effort of holding something that was too large for it, "this wouldn't have happened. Even outsiders disrespect you."
"The power of your allies is your own," Douglas said. "Why didn't you protect your brother?"
The silence that followed was different from the others.
"If you'd sent Sukai to a lower school-" Mukai started.
Douglas nodded to his guard. The ice came fast and thin, a shell that closed over Mukai from the floor up, locking him in place. Douglas didn't wait - he and Olivia were already moving, out toward the castle, toward the towering structure that housed the Earth Ore, guards fanning out ahead of them to clear the path.
Mukai cracked free of the ice in pieces, the cold still in his expression.
He paced. He muttered. He glanced over once at Moto and the others, huddled in the corner of the room with their heads together, and looked away again.
Sheu was shaking her head. Whatever Moto was saying, she'd been disagreeing for the last two minutes.
Moto stood up. "It's settled." He turned to Mukai. "You want to go get your brother?"
Mukai stared at him.
"There are six of them. Your power evens the odds."
"How do you-" Mukai stopped. The portal. Moto had thrown himself into it headfirst and been spat back out in seconds, but seconds was enough if you were paying attention. He'd done recon in the gap. "You actually-"
"You're taking too long." Moto's voice was patient in the way that suggested it wasn't going to stay that way. "We're going either way. Your choice whether you come."
He stepped closer. "The odds aren't good. But we're underestimated, which means we can get inside before they expect it. We get Sukai out before it becomes a real fight."
Sheu looked at Moto. The caution was still in her face, but under it something had settled.
Mukai looked at Moto for a long moment - the unwavering certainty in him, and maybe something else, something that looked uncomfortably like his own desperation wearing a different face.
"For Sukai," he said.
"For Sukai," Moto agreed.
They left through the side of the house, into the deep shadow of the path that led toward the border. The cave was six clicks past it, and the night was already old. They moved without speaking, each of them carrying the weight of what they were walking toward, and they didn't slow down.