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planet. This changes the weave, this changes everything.…”
    It annoyed Felph that Arachne prophesied his demise. If he were to be murdered, it would be a nuisance—having his memories downloaded into a new body, making all those minor adjustments that come with your unanticipated death.
    But somehow it annoyed him that the murder was off. “Wait,” Felph shook a finger at her. “Are you telling me that a dinner party is all it will take to win this reprieve? You think Zeus won’t kill me, if I arrange a party?”
    “At least for now,” she said. “Zeus is easily distracted. A young woman to ogle, especially a pregnant one, will intrigue him. I assume she is pretty—a Lord Protector would not likely marry an ugly woman. Go tell Zeus to help prepare for the party, and it will drive all thoughts of murder from his mind—for two or three days, at least.”
    Felph chuckled softly, shaking his head. “So, Zeus plots against me, and you would do nothing to stop him?”
    “Zeus takes no counsel from me—or anyone else,” Arachne said. “He’s stubborn.”
    Felph considered. His son, Zeus, was a brilliant young man, prone to ruthlessness. The young man wore a Guide that was supposed to control him, keep him from acting on his violent impulses. But Zeus had managed to remove the Guide three years past, and might do so once again. On that occasion, Zeus had tried to murder Felph. He’d first crept into the revivification chamber and tried to erase all records of Felph’s genetic mapping, along with certain other security programs. Only a minor error had kept Zeus’s plot from reaching fruition.
    Felph nodded slightly to Arachne, thinking, Well, if my son plots against me, perhaps I need a Lord Protector at my side .

Chapter 4
    Maggie was not impressed by Felph’s palace, nor was she impressed by the local mode of travel. The florafeem she, Gallen, and the bears rode thundered over a redrock ridge the color of flame; the roaring clack of the thousands of fanlike wings on the florafeem’s underbelly had dulled her hearing. The beast handler, who rode beside her, was a man named Dooring. He spoke loudly.
    Dooring had explained to her that the florafeems were native to Ruin, strange creatures that sucked nectar from the dew trees out in the tangles. Big animals. In shape they resembled some strange flower, with four “wings” shaped like petals, but the wings did not flap. Instead, thousands of bony fanlike appendages under the creature’s rigid surface fluttered at a tremendous speed, creating enough upward force to keep a florafeem aloft. On top, the creature’s skin seemed to be only a thick membrane over an upper frame of cartilaginous bone. That membrane was covered over by grasslike purple hairs, and small creatures lived on it.
    The florafeem measured some fifty meters in diameter. This beast had a saffron-colored silk pavilion erected on its back.
    Dozens of blue-scaled birds swooped and dived around the florafeem, feeding off insects that lived on its back, giving high, croaking calls. In the pavilion behind her, Maggie was vaguely aware of Gallen, resting his hand on her back, sometimes massaging her weary muscles.
    The bears, Orick and Tallea, both lay on their paws, staring ahead, tired.
    The journey to Felph’s palace had taken nearly three hours, and Maggie’s back felt stiff from sitting. Though she was past the point in her pregnancy where she should have felt morning sickness, she’d been fighting nausea for the past two hours. A dozen times she wished that she and Gallen had refused to travel by florafeem. The idea had seemed quaint upon invitation, yet she hadn’t known how unbearable the journey might be. Still it was not the discomfort of the journey that unsettled her on the final approach. It was Felph’s palace.
    As she topped the cliff, she saw it shining among the fields ahead like something from a fairy tale, yet utterly unlike anything so … insignificant. Felph’s palace was