"Lieutenant is it?" I asked, giving him a searching look which obviously categorized both his undress and his 'attention' posture. "I should have worn something with epaulets." Without responding to his question I took a seat at the table in the center of the room and poured two glasses of amasec from the sideboard. There was a regicide game set up on the table and I picked up a piece and turned it over in my hand while he dressed. A social visit sounded a little formal to my mind but I reminded myself that I had just roused him from bed for no good reason. Maybe the first decent sleep he had had given how much was on his plate right at the moment.

"I don't know if I'd call it a social visit exactly..." I began, setting the piece down with a musical clack sound.

"This is really the only thing that I own that ... well that doesn't feel like a costume." That didn't make a tremendous amount of sense given that this dress literally was a costume but I felt some that because we had shared a real moment while I was wearing it, that it had become something more than a prop for deceptions. Clearly I was getting fuzzy being mixed up with the high and mighty.