"I hear Major Devis turned you down," Moff Tagge remarked.
"As Governor of Braxant," Jaina answered tartly, but she allowed a smile.
Tagge grinned back, and finished his business at the wall-mounted drinks cabinet, dropping ice into her glass.
She was sitting on the corner of the big desk in her office in the Moff Council building, one leg stretched out so the toecap of her high-heeled boot was balanced on the floor, the other playfully swinging. She felt like a bizarre combination of military dictator and sexy secretary, which she supposed encapsulated her relationship with Moff Tagge pretty well.
She caught the tumbler of whisky that he pushed across the desk to her, and gave him a look as she realised he was heading for the big command chair behind the desk.
"That's my seat," she said.
"Yes, Grand Moff," he nodded, walking past the seat to stand in front of her.
She slipped off the desk and stood at attention, provocatively close. Even in the heels, she didn't quite match his height. "You're no fun."
"You dumped me after one date," he reminded her, with a friendly smile. "So my job is to teach you how to run the technical side of the Empire. How's the Preybird working out?"
"I'm impressed," Jaina nodded. "They're good fighters. Imperial, but not at all what I'd expected."
Tagge nodded, and took a sip of his drink. She wondered if he'd replace the Preybird with a TIE, now he'd proved his point. "Anything specific that you would like to discuss, Your Highness?"
She gave him another funny look. She wasn't quite sure what to make of his habit of anticipating the Imperial title that she was supposed to be assuming, or the Moffs' determination to put the issue to a democratic vote. "Before getting on to the details of all this Empress stuff," she said, picking up the hand-held display from the desk beside where she'd been sitting, "I've been looking over my... homework?"
"I was an instructor at the Imperial Academy, Your Highness," he noted dryly. "Do you object to homework?"
"No sir," she answered, flirting a little. "But making me review the logistical procurement files for my own apartment seems a little mean."
"Some of the stuff in your new wardrobe is vintage," he teased. "And a few of the pieces of furniture had to be imported."
Smuggled, she thought, but said nothing. "I thought you'd taught me a lesson when you gave the place a makeover. Now I find that the real lesson is in how to abstract everything into transport and deployment, and the questions of efficiency that this involves."
"The Empire's a big version of the same arrangements that go into your apartment. Preybirds. Uniforms. Whisky. Bantha Biscuits. Everything does fit together."
"That's just the thing." Jaina shook her head, her new Imperial hairstyle swaying in a way she really liked. "Tahiri, of all people, reminded me the other day that in the Alliance... in Rebel space—" she shifted half-automatically to the Empire's preferred term for the Galactic Alliance, and was rewarded with a raised glass in salute—"In Rebel space, they use the Senate elections and attempts to unseat the Chief of State as a way to negotiate political tensions, without actually resolving those tensions, rather than just getting on and managing everything sensibly. You take account of public mood—even d'Ashewl says you have to, if you're smart." She gave him a confused look. "You're not going to turn me into an apologist for absolutism, but you're making the virtues of democracy hard to defend in Imperial language. Half your planets even have one form of democracy or another, however limited, for domestic policy. They're just... happily idiosyncratic."
She exhaled, flicked back her hair behind one ear.
Tagge nodded. "Lesson one. Language is contextual."
"Smartass."
"Smartarse," he corrected her, chinking his whisky glass off hers. "Spoken like a true Rebel. Now get drunk?"
So we can have sex? she wondered, downing her glass—but that was perhaps what she wanted. She'd learned just how Moff d'Ashewl liked to do things, she'd visited a bondage club with Sacker, safely anonymous in a nerfhide hood, she was exchanging flirty texts with Major Devis, and she was definitely in a relationship with Tahiri—non-exclusive, Tahiri teased, reminding her she'd not formally broken up with Moff Tagge either after their one not-very-successful date. Sexually speaking, though, Tagge was the one member of her new inner circle she'd not managed to get together with yet. She held out her glass, and saw he'd finished his in time with hers. "Get me another one, Moff Tagge?"