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vagaries of Tragacanthan industry and its economy inside and out. He had given Aspet no reason to doubt his suitability for the cabinet position.
    Aspet opened the meetings in his own style; he was quickly becoming known on the world stage for his razor-sharp wit and ability to herd even difficult parties down the negotiating trail, making it look much easier than it actually was. In many ways he was born to be king, a fact not lost on CoME.
    After the formalities were concluded, he retired to the Royal Chambers for some paperwork while the trade negotiations got underway for real. The trade treaty between Tragacanth and Solemadrina had been in place for centa, but by statute had to be renegotiated and renewed every deca. This would mark the fourth time Jigha had been involved, although the first as Minister. His role was to offer concessions, negotiate new and existing contracts— in short accomplish everything except actually signing the treaty renewal. Only the Sovereign could enter into or renew international treaties. Jigha had at his fingertips every conceivable metric regarding commerce, industry, and production in Tragacanth, as well as a staff to manage it all. He always went into negotiations of this sort exquisitely well-prepared.
    The meetings were set to happen over a period of three days. The first day went quite well, and a fair amount of progress was made. So much, in fact, that Jigha reported to His Majesty that the treaty signing might need to be moved up to the morning, rather than evening, of the third day. That would involve a little Royal schedule juggling, but Aspet said it could be achieved if necessary.
    The morning of the second day brought dawn showers quickly giving way to sunshine. The delegates gathered after breakfast in the conference room and were pouring glasses of water for themselves and going over notes before the formal continuation of the meetings when Jigha suddenly put his water glass down and slumped over. At first no one really paid any attention, but when the time to start the meeting came and went without any response, or indeed movement at all, from the Minister one of his aides tapped him on the shoulder. Jigha slowly raised his head and everyone gasped. He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth and unable to talk.
    The Minister was rushed to the Royal Infirmary and His Majesty notified via comm.
    “Looks like Goameel has taken suddenly ill. Suspiciously ill. Think you can handle negotiating a trade treaty?” Aspet said to Boogla over breakfast.
    “I... don’t know. With enough background material, I suppose.”
    “Great. All the material you’ll need will be in the conference room. Goameel always takes a veritable library with him to these things. I’ll go introduce you and ask them to postpone the meeting for an hour to so you can read some papers and talk to his aides. Let’s go before the Solemadrinans get restless and decide to raise their prices.”
    Everyone on both sides of the negotiating table was skeptical of the Magineer Liaison’s ability to navigate the intricacies of a trade agreement on so little notice, but as usual Boogla surprised them all. She took virtually every bargaining chip Goameel had brought along and employed them to their fullest extent—even one over which no one had expected to achieve an agreement. By the last break of the day, she had gotten every single concession Tragacanth had sought and two more in addition. There was one session left, the purpose of which was to summarize and confirm the agreements made so that the formal treaty could be drawn up overnight to be signed in the morning by both sides.
    Boogla sat at the conference table going through a stack of ledgers, looking for data on a particular military-related materiel acquisition program when she noticed some odd entries. She studied them for a while, correlating the debits against actual equipment requisitions and discovered that there was a considerable discrepancy for