Thirty-Seven

Dafyd questions the Soft Lothark and learns the Epikainot once destroyed the Carryx homeworld using resonant field interactions, a weapon the Carryx later adopted. The Sovran and librarians on that world died, but the empire continued unbroken because new Sovrans emerge from private creches maintained on every world-palace, enabling seamless succession.

He shares the lead with Clae and convenes Jessyn, Uuya Tomos, and Campar. The group recognizes that killing a single Sovran or even coordinating strikes would likely fail against hundreds of fortified creches. Despair spreads; Campar argues for pragmatic accommodation—becoming “corn and chickens” rather than dying futilely—prompting Dafyd to storm out.

In the dim nursery, Dafyd volunteers to feed and comfort newborns, briefly easing his anger. Clae arrives and confirms the archival pattern: Sovran transitions are routine, often unnoticed, and the recent Sovran ruled only eight years—above average.

Reflecting that he misread the Carryx hive logic by treating the Sovran as irreplaceable, Dafyd reframes the empire as a single organism that only yields to itself. From that insight, he voices a new, untested idea to Clae: if the Carryx are built to have exactly one Sovran, what happens if there are two?