"Illegally born!"

"Well. By the records these days he was legally born under Anitami law but since Anitam did not actually rule anything at the time he was kind of illegally born under Oahkar law. They announced that none of our credits counted, when they invaded, and they forced people to have abortions. Luckily they were stretched a little thin and couldn't enforce that very well in undeveloped rural areas."

"What's an abortion?"

"When a person is pregnant you can kill their baby without killing them by giving them certain drugs or doing surgery."

"Oh."

"Early in a pregnancy it's not a baby yet, this big with no brain or anything." He shows something pea-sized with his hand. "It is still very hard on people who have to do it, and making people get abortions to stay in compliance with population controls is not a wise thing to do because people will be desperate and miserable."

Nod.

"The Oahk Empire might not have collapsed as quickly if all their local populations did not hate them and all their local populations might not have hated them if they'd been reasonable about babies."

"It just happened when the Emperor died, right? How would people liking them more help with that?"

"Coups do not usually happen in well-run countries where everything is going smoothly. Usually to get enough people behind a coup something has to be going very wrong, that has these people convinced it is worth a high risk of death to correct it."

"Oh, you need a lot of people?"

"Not hundreds - usually not even dozens - but it is very rare to pull it off with only a few. If it were, coups would happen a lot more often."

Nod.

They head up to the mountains. They get on a different kind of train, which goes faster, and it zips through cities and then shorter city and then farm, very fast.

Cool. ...inadequately sunshiney. She snacks on the way.

Her parents, not being plants, did not think of this disadvantage! They did bring snacks, though, and card games with negotiable rules.

Negotiable rules are best.

Their little blue is getting so much practice at negotiating!

Their summer house is big and sprawling and tall and stone and old. It has a long winding pool that goes from an indoor courtyard under a ballroom to an outdoor courtyard that looks out on gardens and mountain wilderness. It has a dozen bedrooms. It has portraits of dead blue-haired ancestors, solemn and funnily-dressed. It has an in-home movie theatre.

She inspects the pool for swimmability. Does it have any plant-unfriendly chemicals?

It does!

"The water is poisoned!"

" - hmmm?"

"There's something in it. I can't swim there."

" - oh, there's probably cleaning agents in it so swimming people don't get sick. I'll ask the pool company to come clean it out. Do you know how to swim?"

"I don't remember. But I fall a lot."