Come the Revolution Read Online Free Page A

security teams and, past them, the family apartment. Our apartment was open design built around the living room in the middle with the kitchen and four bedroom suites radiating from it. The suites were Marr’s and mine, Tweezaa’s, and two for guests. Those were empty right now, but we gave The’On one and Borro, his bodyguard, the other. Normally bodyguards bunked with our security folks but Borro was nearly family.
    Each suite had a bedroom, bath, office, and den. We’d decorated mostly with soft reddish-tan carpets and furniture, and a lot of bright accent colors. One smart wall in the central living room was set up with Tweezaa’s family pictures, school and sports awards, a prize-winning essay, and a bunch of her drawings. A year ago the drawings had been interesting scrawls. Lately they’d started getting pretty good—still very impressionistic, and with some surreal color choices, but I thought she had an eye for important detail. Of course, I was biased.
    “So, did Gaant tell you anything useful about the edict?” The’On asked once the new round of greetings were done and he and I, Marr and Tweezaa settled in around the table in the family kitchen.
    “He hinted but he didn’t mention the edict outright, so as far as they know we’re still in the dark,” I said. “We know it will retroactively invalidate any will or trust which transfers control—not ownership, but control—of select family assets to a non-family member.”
    He nodded. “Yes. And since Marrissa is Tweezaa’s guardian, and clearly not a family member, the inheritance is forfeit. What a stupid edict! It will also break every charitable trust in Bakaa, don’t they realize that? Or don’t they care? The Wat will be inundated in lawsuits from foundations. Then they will realize their error and try to find a way to exempt everyone from the law but Tweezaa. Imbeciles!”
    “No argument from me. Gaant gave us some possibly useful information. For one thing, it’s obvious they don’t know we’ve seen the draft. They think they’re blindsiding us, so whatever your source was, it’s still secure.”
    “Good,” he said, “but after this insane attack against your shuttle, we have to assume Gaant and his political allies will move at once. The situation becomes unstable, hence unpredictable. Do you believe him—that he is behind the edict?”
    Marrissa and I exchanged a glance and I shrugged.
    “Sasha and I aren’t certain,” she answered. “He is more inclined to believe the claim than I am. Although I don’t know Gaant well, I have met him several times and seen him in meetings, both large ones and small working groups. He never impressed me as a particularly… deep thinker. He is the sort of glib spokesperson you expect to see on news feeds and giving keynote addresses, a person most comfortable in a holovid, but not actually working hard behind the scenes. You know exactly the sort I am talking about, Gapa.”
    Marr had never gotten comfortable calling e-Lotonaa The’On , and so she used Gapa, the diminutive form of his first name, Arigapaa.
    “Oh, certainly,” he said, nodding at her assessment of Gaant’s personality. “But that may be a look deliberately cultivated. He moves in the highest levels of society and among many of the e-Varokiim there is a stigma attached to having to work too hard. Whether Elaamu Gaant is a figurehead, or works on behalf of a political faction, or the other e-Traak heirs, or perhaps follows a personal motivation…”
    He tilted his head to the side and didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need to. There was no shortage of possible motives for this guy, or for anyone else lining up against Tweezaa and us, up to and including bat-shit-crazy anti-Human. What did their motives really matter? The move itself was important, and what we were going to do about it, nothing else. I’d rather have gone on talking about this Gaant guy all day, but sooner or later we had be adults, had to