The She family's young head, Wo Kenyi, had the posture of someone who had been bred for patience in difficult rooms. He stood with his hands behind his back, glasses slightly adjusted, watching the two other gang leaders file in through the suite door.
Spinici Seller, A-family head: chin scarred in two parallel lines by the old court physicians, a hairstyle that appeared to be a personal choice and not, as far as anyone could tell, an affectation. He came in loud, the way he came into most rooms, and looked at Brokaw Lee with the expression of a man who was already slightly annoyed by the mystery of why he'd been summoned.
Behind him, the A-family's young head, Melina. Long hair, delicate features, and two scars running from her forehead down to her left cheek, the specific notation of a second-line person with royal blood and no legal status to show for it. She stood two steps behind Spinici and looked at nothing in particular.
From what Liam could sense through the Star Mark sitting passive at the base of Brokaw's neck, Melina's aura was doing something more structured than general composure. It had the compressed quality of strong feeling being maintained well below the surface by long practice.
He catalogued it and continued.
Oneol from the Zhou family was the second through the door: a heavyset man whose head had a very specific silhouette, a second-line scar running across his forehead. His young head Henrich followed, with the particular grooming of someone who spent time on it, wavy hair and the ease of a person who had learned to use pleasantness as a professional tool.
"Brokaw," Spinici said, dropping into a chair. "This had better be worthwhile."
"The Seventh Prince," Brokaw said, in the steady register of someone who had been instructed to be direct, "wants to understand the scope of what he doesn't know about Nen." He let that land. "Specifically: how long have the people under our families been aware of it. And given that the Third and Fourth Princes have organizational connections running through all three of our families, whether those princes may have had this awareness considerably longer than the Seventh Prince."
Spinici produced a handkerchief and wiped his chin. "I don't know what you're—"
"Team leaders." Wo Kenyi and Henrich said it simultaneously.
Both team leaders stopped.
Henrich chose his words carefully. "Training this kind of ability is a demanding process. Not everyone has the aptitude. If you'd told the team leaders early on, and the attempt didn't take, and then someone came looking for an explanation..."
He left the calculation visible and unfinished.
Oneol and Spinici processed the specific mathematics of that situation. Their expressions moved through a brief shared journey.
"There's a Nen ability," Oneol said, to the table in front of him rather than to anyone specifically.
The quiet young head Melina looked up. Her voice, when she used it, had the quality of someone who had been listening to everything and responding to none of it for long enough that the habit had become structural.
"Team leader," she said to Spinici, "if you had said what you just said in front of the Fourth Prince, you would be dead now." A pause. "The last time I saw him at any distance, he had clearly already mastered it."
Spinici wiped his chin again. The handkerchief was getting a lot of use.
"Right," he said. "Yes. It's real."
The rest of the meeting ran quickly from that point. Information exchanged, assessments compared, the specific careful language of people who had learned that accuracy was safer than the kind of enthusiasm that committed you to a position. At the conclusion, Brokaw stood and offered his hand.
Both team leaders shook it, in the usual way, with the usual level of attention.
Two Flying Star Bubbles found their way to the back of two necks at contact distance. Neither man registered anything.
Liam added Oneol and Spinici to the running count and let the meeting disperse.
The fountains in the palace garden ran year-round, maintained by staff who appeared when needed and withdrew with the professional invisibility of people who had been trained to not constitute an interruption. King Nasubi Hui Guo Rou was in a rattan chair beside one of the larger basins, a tea service on the table at his elbow, a maid working a fan at a respectful distance.
He was, physically, a large man who had clearly been larger in a previous decade and had distributed the difference in ways that were now a permanent feature of his silhouette. His expression was the particular flatness of someone who had held the highest power in a significant kingdom for long enough that almost nothing surprised them anymore.
He watched his tea cool and did not read any paperwork.
The Benjamin who approached across the garden had the first prince's carriage and the first prince's gait, and two soldiers behind him, and nothing about the visual presentation flagged anything unusual.
Through Rihan's eyes and Vincent's eyes, Liam saw the thing beside the king immediately.
It had ten arms total. Its body was composed of two large, kidney-shaped masses, roughly the volume of a compact vehicle each, from which the arms extended at various angles. Across the surface of the body, anatomical structures were distributed in numbers that had no biological logic. The head was embedded in the center of the body: dull eyes, prominent ears, hair hanging loose, and a vertical mouth that suggested its designer had been working from an unusual set of requirements.
It looked at the three approaching figures with the unhurried attention of something that had been sitting beside the king for years and had developed opinions about who came near.
Through Benjamin's eyes: nothing. The king, the chair, the tea service, the maid. A garden.
Royal blood. The spirit beast was there for anyone without it and invisible to anyone who had it, unless they'd obtained their own through the Seed Urn. Which was information that had tactical implications in several directions.
The spirit beast's twenty-four eyes tracked from Rihan to Vincent, settled on "Benjamin," and gave the impression of an entity making an assessment.
Nasubi looked up. "Benjamin. What do you want?"
"Benjamin" smiled pleasantly, in a way that Benjamin's face did not usually produce quite that expression, and said: "I wanted to pay my respects, Father. I hope I'm not interrupting."
He sat down in the chair across from the king without being invited.
Nasubi watched his eldest son settle in, accepted that this was happening, and picked up his tea.
The spirit beast watched.
And Liam sat inside the first prince's body and looked at the king of Kakin across a garden table and began working out, very calmly, where the Star Mark was going to land.