text: I have been sleeping on the kitchen floor, because the bed smells nasty and has a disgusting lluyew, even after Nrararn chased all the insects off of it. The kitchen floor was easy to scrub, being made of tiles. It was also probably horribly uncomfortable for a hoven, but you know my opinion of discomfort. Nrararn was sleeping on top of me, which he found comfortable and both of us found friendly.
  
  Of course we both woke up instantly — OK, Nrararn a bit more instantly than me — from the danger roaring at the door. A loud and grumbly sort of roar; it could kill us or hurt us badly, in our soft shapes. We shrugged at each other, and I put the Hoplonton around us both, and the Ulthana's Targe. With that protection the roar quieted down to a grumbly mumble.
  
  By that time, the danger had gotten out a jangly set of keys and opened the door. We looked, and saw a pack of intruders. Some were harmless: the superintendent, Quarri, Sporthen, two other judicial-looking hovens that I did not know. The danger was three others: Branner and two other hovens. They looked plenty dangerous. Each one held a quite large twistor bazooka, such as one might use to rip a tank into bits if one liked weapons. The weapons were the loudest danger, but the three warriors themselves were only a bit softer.
  
  "Good evening," I said to them.
  
  "You're still up and dressed at this hour?" asked the superintendent.
  
  "I am," I said, because I was. "You are too," I said, because he was too.
  
  "A few questions had arisen about your recent application to RARU," said Sporthen. "May we come in?"
  
  "To save you the inconvenience of firing twistor cannons through the walls? Certainly, come in," I said. They did. "I'm sorry that I can't offer you all seats. The superintendent hasn't been rushed about getting furniture." The superintendent scowled at me.
  
  Sporthen put a professional tone in his voice. "We have noticed certain inconsistencies and peculiarities in your stories. We would like to entertain the possibility that you are guilty of nothing worse than an entirely understandable cowardice and confusion of communication."
  
  I grinned. "And waking a girl up in the middle of the night by breaking into her apartment is the best way to figure that out?"
  
  "You don't seem to have gone to bed yet," he said. "Were you alerted somehow?"
  
  "No, I was sleeping in my clothes, and my cat woke me up from your noise," I said.
  
  One of the other judicial people, who had been looking around my apartment, said, "Your bed hasn't been slept in."
  
  "I don't like the way it smells," I said, getting another frown from the superintendent. "Does my habit of sleeping on the floor in my clothes render me unfit for RARU? Of the sort that needs three augmented soldiers to deal with?" The three of them smirked.
  
  Sporthen shook his head seriously. "Not that. Not to put too fine a point on it, Joffinet, but there are serious questions about whether you are what you say you are. We wonder that you might be a spy or an agent provocateur, a traitor to your species and your nation."
  
  I had to laugh. "I'm certainly not a traitor to my species or my nation."
  
  Nobody else laughed, except Nrararn who did it quietly. Sporthen said, "In which case you have nothing to fear, and your application to RARU will be approved. In the meantime, we wish to investigate certain matters."
  
  "What, then?" I asked.
  
  "First of all, there is the matter of your identity. It is impossible to live in Trest for any length of time without leaving certain administrative traces. There are databases of religious affiliation, voting records, addresses, tax payment, and many other things. Going further back, there are educational records, confirmations, parentage, and so on. An exhaustive search of these finds not a single mention of one Joffinet Meragathium or any reasonable variant thereof. Joffinet is of course one of the most common personal names; Meragathium seems to be invented of whole cloth."
  
  I asked "Nobody ever approaches a revolutionary organization using a false name?" "Nrararn, remind me to ask Tarcuna about those records before next time."
  
  "It is not unheard-of. It does not make a strong basis for an application, however," he said.
  
  "And you bring warriors and cannons to deal with the people you reject?" I asked.
  
  "In general we simply avoid the matter. In your case, though, there are suggestions of exacerbating circumstances. You told Quarri quite distinctly that you saw the movies of the cyoziworm surgery, but you told me just as distinctly that you saw the event itself. An inconsistency — not criminal in itself, but one which indicates a more general falsity of your story. In any case, you seem quite sure that cyoziworms are real, and that the punishment camps are intended to contain them. One is moved to wonder that you might be an agent of the dragons sent to RARU to break our unity of spirit."
  
  I smiled. "I'm definitely not that!"
  
  "Again, I look forward to your proof that you are not. I will make a sincere apology when that happens. Unlike the draconic propensity to kill people or toss them into punishment camps on a whim, we uphold Trest's legal traditions as best we can."
  
  "Right. What else?" I couldn't think of anything clever to say.
  
  "The most worrisome part of the story is your speed of reaction. You caught an upset cup of cocoa before it could fall in Versley's apartment, which is so extraordinary that Quarri took note. I had the waiter at the Laich Street Café drop a tray, and got to witness your extraordinary speed myself."
  
  "I am faster than most hovens." Physically. Not so fast of mind. Not only had I given myself away, I hadn't even realized it 'til he told me.
  
  "Branner, could you do that? Catch a falling restaurant tray in one hand and right two things on it, without spilling much, as has been described?"
  
  Branner grinned. "No problem."
  
  "Could you before you were augmented?"
  
  Branner snorted. "No. Don't be silly. No person would have much of a chance at it without augmentation. Not as you described the scene before."
  
  "Plus, there are such minor matters as your extraordinary quantity of money given your backstory, and your persistent use of the word 'hovens' rather than simply 'people'. We are thus forced to consider the extremely disturbing case in which you are an augmented agent in the service of the dragons."
  
  "I'm certainly not that," I said, because it was true.
  
  "Your claim is noted. We are, sadly, unable to have a full trial with proper witnesses. Especially since you seem to have no history in Dorday, and hence no witnesses for us to call. So, would you submit to an injection of truth drugs? The alternative of course is up to these military gentlemen." The warriors grinned dangerously. They rarely got to fight their own kind.
  
  Nrararn made the decision for me. He rather elegantly breathed a bolt of lightning that forked in three and ruined all the twistor bazookas. The room became much safer.
  
  "Nice! Can I marry you?" I asked him.
  
  "Please do!"
  
  Branner evidently had a different opinion. "Monster!" he shouted, and dived at Nrararn as fast as an augmented agent could, reaching to strangle the cat or break his neck. Nrararn turned back into his usual pretty self, but sized to fit in the apartment. Branner wrapped his arms around Nrararn's azure neck. Then he howled as Nrararn's lightning-braided mane destroyed his hands.
  
  "A dragon! The cat was a dragon somehow!" wailed Quarri, and turned to flee. I was rather annoyed at him, and put the Lure of Dreams into him. The superintendent and one of the soldiers started tending to Branner.
  
  Sporthen stared, shaking. "I was more correct than I ever imagined."
  
  I glared at him, and yelled, "You are more wrong than you ever imagined!"
  
  He glared at me, and said in a cold dignified tone, "How much more of a spy could you be, than to bring a dragon to our meetings in person?"
  
  So I turned back into myself too, sized to fit the apartment. "I actually brought two dragons."
  
  "The Black Curse!" wailed one of the magistrates, and also turned to flee. I don't much like that nickname, so I put the Lure of Dreams into him as well. Bad dreams, too.
  
  I smiled the wicked draconic smile. "Since you have been so kind as to come a-calling, you simply must stay and enjoy our hospitality."
  
  "Rather rude guests," said Nrararn, in much the same tone. He stank of rage, though less than me. "One should never hug a cat without asking his permission. One never knows just how dangerous the cat might be."
  
  The two unhurt soldiers started smelling brave and growling more dangerously, preparing to jump on one of us. "I get the one near me," I wrote, and tried to knock him down with my tail. He dodged that, being augmented, so I feinted a bite at him and drove him a step sideways while he shot at me with a handgun, to a very convenient spot for my forepaw. His ribs crunched in a very interesting way, since they were part metal. A loud report shook the room; Nrararn had destroyed the other soldier's leg with lightning.
  
  The remaining hovens stared at their ruined augmented soldiers. "Anyone fancy a spot of healing?" I asked. "Branner, I do believe I saved your life before, more or less. Shall I do it again?"
  
  "Actually, I could use a bit myself," said Nrararn. His soldier had stabbed his flank three times with a knife, hard enough to draw a bit of blood. "So could you; you've got three bullet wounds." Nothing terribly serious, but I healed both of us. The soldiers were bleeding and demolished. I didn't want them to escape their punishment so easily, so I put healing spells into them too, and then made them sleep.
  
  The other hovens had made some attempt to run away. Nrararn blocked the door. "Jyothky, will you be wanting these hovens too?"
  
  "Well, yes, thank you very much. I should be glad to uphold Trest's laws onto them. The draciarchic laws."
  
  Sporthen explained, "We did not know you were dragons! We thought you were an augmented agent! We didn't know that you even could turn into a person!" Which was irrelevant and insultingly phrased, so we ignored him.
  
  Nrararn gave me a concerned look. "You usually like to find a reason to spare them."
  
  "Not this time. These hovens have rather annoyed me." I had worked very hard to be a perfect hoven myself, and they hadn't let me. "Besides, if we let them get away, all the revolutionaries will know that we're spying on them in hoven form, and it'll be twelve times as troublesome next time."
  
  Quarri tried to beg, which was boring, so I made him sleep too. One of the magistrates tried to sneak into the kitchen and call someone, so I made all the hovens except Sporthen sleep. I wanted to argue with someone, and poor Nrararn didn't deserve it.
  
  "So, let us continue our conversation, Sporthen," I said in a silky voice. "It is what you came here for, after all, is it not? And be assured that you shall have the truth. I've never lied to you in any case." He looked briefly hopeful, as though I were giving him a chance to talk his way out of his doom. So I told him, "But don't worry. You won't be getting back to RARU with it."
  
  "Going to kill him, Jyothky?" asked Nrararn.
  
  "I'd like to, I've never been so furious at a small person. But he didn't actually quite attack me. Only the soldiers did that."
  
  "Well, ask Ythac and Llredh. I'm sure they can spare a few traitorous magistrates, and they certainly owe you," said Nrararn, who is as sweet as he is pretty.
  
  When you corner them, hovens get brave and defiant sometimes. "You'll get no more secrets out of me, monster!"
  
  "I don't want any secrets out of you. You can't imagine that you have any secrets from us anyway. Do you know how I found your organization in the first place? I asked Ythac to pick a secret subversive society for me to infiltrate. He knows all about RARU. He knows all about Branner's super-secret Barracks, too, which my fiancé and I seem to have 3/8 defeated without even 1/8 trying or even meaning to."
  
  "Liar! Why come spying on us if you knew everything?"
  
  "Oh, you want to know the ever-so-horribly-wicked thing that we are planning and you are working so hard and risking your lives to try to prevent? Do you want to know what massive evil Ythac is preparing for your country and your people?" I let him fret for a moment.
  
  "Jyothky, I have never smelled you so angry."
  
  "You have, when Roroku humilated us in public. You might not have noticed, there was a lot going on that day. These hovens... We absolutely do not deserve to be killed for this! And how dare they be willing to kill each other, like they thought we were! And breaking into our apartment in the middle of the night, and trying to break your neck! I am furious, and rightly so!"
  
  Out loud, I hissed, "Ythac sent us to try to find some way in which he can rule Trest better. Better for hovens. Do you know that everything he's done as your master is for your good? Everything!"
  
  "And you say that you are truthful!" Sporthen shouted back. It's easy to draw an important hoven into an argument.
  
  "Yes, indeed. Do you have any counterexamples?"
  
  "There's the stone of Merraro! The destruction of our laws and our government! The punishment camps!"
  
  "The first two are simply your misconceptions. Of course you're better off under under our laws. For yourself you make some terrible laws! It is a crime to worship your made-up gods the wrong way! But the camps are not for punishment. They would be nice camps, if hovens like you didn't build them so badly and slowly. They are quarantine camps, to keep a truly horrible parasite away from you."
  
  "I didn't believe you when you were pretending to be a person and said that. I don't believe it now."
  
  "Then I will make you believe," I proclaimed.
  
  "Your lies will never trick me! And what does it matter what I believe, if you're going to imprison me or kill me anyway?"
  
  "I'm not going to be in a hurry about it," I hissed at him. "It will be part of my entertainment to watch you languish or die knowing that you wasted your life fighting the absolutely wrong side of the fight." Which seemed a bit of a filthy thing to say, but it really wasn't convenient to go melt a mountain at this point.
  
  "If you get him colonized, Llredh will be upset with you," Nrararn pointed out.
  
  "That is a problem. Even if I kill him right afterwards. Well, there's another way to do it too," I answered. And, out loud, "Where does Dulac live?"
  
  "I wouldn't tell you even if I knew," shouted Sporthen.
  
  Nrararn poked around the kitchen a bit. "It's in the phone book, though."
  
  "We'll collect him. Versley too, and some of the chiefs of RARU. Let's see what happens to their movement when they know what they're fighting for."
  
  Yes, I am the villain of my own diary. Why did you expect anything better from a dragon?