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“So it’s like a blaster you have to hit someone with,” Janson had said. “I have to have one.”

Tycho had shaken his head, looking as mournful as Hobbie for a moment. “Don’t give him a new kind of weapon,” he had told Wedge. “It would be like giving a lightsaber to a two-year-old.”

But Wedge had allowed it, and now Janson’s customary swagger swung the blastsword’s sheathed blade around behind him, making it precarious to walk close to him.

Accompanied by Tomer, they paused at the arched entryway to a large ballroom designated the Royal Outer Court. Tomer stepped forward to speak to the guards on duty. There were two of them, large men armed with what looked like polearm equivalents of the blastswords. Between them, across the entryway, was stretched a sort of silver mesh material; Wedge could see well-dressed people dancing and socializing, but it was as if viewing them through a warped and mottled piece of unusually reflective transparisteel. He spotted two-headed Hallis in the crowd, her attention turned toward a large knot of men and women.

Tomer returned. “Odd,” he said. “We’re to be admitted, of course—this is your night! But we’re not to be announced.”

“You mean,” Hobbie said, “nobody is going to bellow our names across the crowd, so that everybody turns and stares at us and we have nothing to say, so we stand there like idiots while they wait. That sort of announced?”

“Yes,” Tomer said. “It’s customary. Why the custom was suspended for tonight I don’t know. You’ll have to surrender your sidearms to the guards, of course.”

Tomer stopped Janson’s action of unsheathing his blastsword. “No, you can take that in. Blastswords are fit for polite society. It’s only blasters they object to.”

The semitransparent curtain flicked to one side instantly. Conversation washed out over them, as did a swell of music played on stringed instruments at a fast pace, and a wash of air that assailed Wedge’s nose and informed him that perfuming was another Adumari habit.

Tomer led the pilots into the outer hall. They attracted no immediate notice. The hall itself was a tall two-story chamber, with a balcony all around the second story, thick with onlookers; its walls were draped with tapestries in a shimmering silver hue, and the lights behind the tapestries offered not quite enough illumination. Two tapestries were drawn aside, revealing enormous flatscreens on stony walls; the screens showed, in magnification, whatever stood before them.

Tomer led the pilots straight to the knot of people that held Hallis’s attention. As they approached, Wedge could see that at its center was one man, unusually tall, with a close-trimmed white beard and alert, active eyes. His garments were all a shimmering red-gold; with every motion he looked as though part of his clothing were on fire. As the pilots neared, he looked at Tomer and asked, in a raspy but well-controlled voice, “What have you brought me, O speaker for distant rulers?” He spoke with the same accent Wedge had heard on the pilots who had attacked Red Flight, in which many vowels sounded like short flat “a”s, but Wedge was becoming more accustomed to it, having less difficulty comprehending it.

Tomer offered a smile that, to Wedge, looked a little artificially tolerant. “Pekaelic ke Teldan, perator of Cartann, smiter of the Tetano, hero of Lameril Ridge, master of the Golden Yoke, I beg you allow me to present to you these four pilots: Major Derek Klivian, Major Wes Janson, Colonel Tycho Celchu, and General Wedge Antilles, all of the New Republic Starfighter Command.”

With each recitation of a name, the crowd around the perator offered an “ooh,” especially for Wedge. The perator nodded in slow and stately fashion to each and extended a hand to Wedge. Wedge shook it in standard New Republic fashion, hoping that was the reaction called for, and that he wasn’t precipitating a war by failing to kneel and put the hand on his forehead or some such thing. But the perator merely smiled.

“You are well come to Cartann,” the perator said to Wedge. “I look forward to hearing