Original fiction (novelette) from the publisher's site. The Imperium consists of those thousands of systems in the Milky Way Galaxy to which human beings have spread over the last ten millennia. Over that time, its ruling nobility has become, apart from the Emperor or Empress and those working cabinet ministers and planetary governors, a trifle on the self-indulgent, useless side. Lord Thomas Innes Loche Kinago is one who occasionally applies his intelligence and many talents to be actually helpful, a fact that must be concealed at all costs from his relatives.