Chapter 4: Syndra Mault's Thirty-Year Arithmetic

The private dining suite on the forty-second floor of the Mercantile Accord Tower had no official connection to the Confederation Senate, which was precisely why Syndra Mault had chosen it for occasions like this one. The room had been booked under a hospitality consortium she controlled through three intermediary registrations, the reservation attributed to a corporate anniversary celebration that did not exist. The florist had delivered arrangements in the coalition's traditional amber and cream. The caterers had been hired through a separate intermediary and briefed on the menu only. No one in the room had arrived together, and no one would leave together, and the eleven men and women currently occupying the table had not, in any official capacity, met.

This was the infrastructure of the thing. Syndra had learned, thirty years ago, that infrastructure was not cynicism. It was simply the architecture by which certain kinds of necessary work got done.

She stood at the head of the table and watched Kael Voss work the room.