Well, if the blood moon on election day here in the States means that the write-in campaign of the Having Your Brain Eaten by a Tentacled Horror Party does better than expected, then at least we'll know why there were no follow-on spaceships...

LOL.

out of curiosity, is the queen asleep on something or standing?

Sitting on her throne.

She sits upon the throne with her eyes closed, looking for all the world as if she had just happened to fall asleep there, sitting upright. Or perhaps as if she were caught mid-blink in a photograph.

Her heartbeat is audible, albeit slow, through the entire room.

Felix might be somewhat afraid of the potential of enemy summons hidden inside erstwhile minions.

And Arkady having the highest mystery skill (besides Piper) of the folks not involved won't hurt. One hopes.

I'm having a bit of trouble finding the original conversation. People not bound by fate are Anasha?

Could this be the conversation you're looking for?

Piper has in the past mentioned an Anakha, who is apparently immune to prophecy; his actions cannot be predicted. This has made it very difficult for Piper to find out much about Anakha in advance, for... obvious reasons.

Months worth of tension and pain all piled up and released in an odd way. If anyone needs Felix he'll be outside, extending his guard duty to the hallway beyond.

Are Piper and the thief in the room?

Wait it has only been 4 months? I would have assumed a lot longer.

Neither Piper nor Talen are in the room.

They were supposed to be with Sparhawk's group. It's likely that he knows where they are, and it seems unlikely that they've suffered any terrible fate (as he seems reasonably relaxed at the moment).

And yes, if you add up all the stuff you've done, then it's way more than four months. But the people back at the ship would swear that it's been less time than you know it has been. And now it seems that Sparhawk's calendar matches the ship's calendar... or at least matches it better than your calendar does.

To say that Arkady's speech was a bit information dense and abrupt might be an understatement, but he's looking to basically drop all the really heavy stuff at once as if it were commonplace. Tearing off the bandage quickly and all that. What with everything, he figures it will take her a bit to work through everything he just said.

Of course, he hasn't even mentioned the Zemoch priest in town somewhere yet....

Did Arkady read the room, or just fail to notice anything significant?