"Sheev, your eyes are so hard. Your posture is so contracted." Sereine tried to demonstrate by caving her shoulders in and stooping a little. "You're sort of shrinking into yourself." She curled her arms into pinchers and her hands into claws by way of demonstration.

A pair of smoldering blue eyes lifted from the troublesome midsection of the opening speech, which Palpatine was gamely attempting. Sereine tried to keep her voice gentle and quiet. Palpatine was not the sort who enjoyed feedback under any circumstances, but this section required extreme finesse.

An annoyed snap of his eyes to the right; then he drew himself into that beautiful, proudly lifted posture she liked so much.

"That's beautiful, Zora, but it's more for the beginning and the end. This whole two days isn't a speech that we're giving. It's a story we're performing. We've started out with a hook and something aspirational, and now you're just telling us a story. Just talk to me." She glanced over Sheev's shoulder as she said it and made eye contact with Tomal, who stood behind him and to his right in the Senate pod, trying to emphasize to her assistant director that this was one of Palpatine's phrases.

Just talk to me was near conversational voice, with a bit more inflection and expression. Sereine fell into a bit of this technique with every client as she worked with them—a sort of private language where some silly name reflected what timbre and tone was called for—but none more so than with Palpatine. He had so many different tones and moods and they had slowly settled into their own private code words for each one. If Tomal knew them, so much the better for him.

"Ease your shoulders down a bit, chin down a little. Just let the lines flow." They stood alone in the Naboo pod in the Rotunda at about the twentieth hour of the evening, partially for acoustics and partially because Sereine was assessing how a certain white robe with a little reflective quality to the fabric looked in this low light. Tomal had worn it to the session; it looked comically short on him.

A vacuum droid roared somewhere across the chamber.

Palpatine's shoulders settled a little. He lowered his chin just a bit and started the next paragraph. "Former Human slave Tarrin Dack has said of his time in forced labor in the spice mines of Kessel, "If we didn't work fast enough, they just stopped giving us water." She had just thought how right the tone sounded … when he stopped.

"I don't like this, Sereine," he complained. "The opening of that sentence is just awkward. It …"

He stopped, and then she saw him scroll down. Far down, likely skipping the entire midsection. She looked over his shoulder at Tomal, whose round eyes said, Uh-oh.

"Do a bit of the bill section, please," she said. "It's your voice quality that's going to keep people from going to sleep."

Palpatine scrolled up some, picked a section, and began. She nodded along. "I like that low round tone there." She gave Tomal another look; that was another code phrase. "It just pulls you right along, listening to that voice."

Palpatine stopped suddenly. "This bit isn't quite accurate, Sereine," he said, and typed in a correction; then he read to the end of the section and paused. His head came up; his shoulders came up, and Sereine smiled. Just what she was looking for. If he did it naturally here, she had hit the right note with the writing.

He looked at her with a quick rise of his brows and said, "All right, what?"

She glanced at Tomal again. This was how she knew she had Palpatine. It wasn't often that he asked for direction, but when she heard, All right, what? they were almost of one mind, and he would segue easily into anything she asked him to do.

"Now, in this section," she said, "you're like an avenging angel. These worlds that turn a blind eye, we want to take them to task, here. You're the Conscience of the Republic in this last section; it's like a character." She lifted her hands to her shoulders and then out, as if they were wings. "I want to hear that voice I heard when you were talking to Mothma—you know what you were talking about. That sharp tenor I heard. Chastising. Try that here." Another code; another look at Tomal.

They were taking a calculated risk here. Naming specific worlds and castigating them for their sins was not often done on the Senate floor—not when the speaker needed votes. In fact, not ever. But Sereine was counting on the emotional weight of the film and the graphic descriptions of torture to carry not only this audience, but the galactic audience as well. Palpatine's eyes narrowed as he began, and that sharp vibrato rang throughout the chamber so nicely she thought he could almost do it without a mic.

She smiled broadly. He didn't need her to tell him how good that sounded. "There it is!" she said. "Now, think about your upper body and expansion as you speak. You're like a great avenging angel, warning and demanding of repentance. It's like you're unfurling great golden wings. Bristle, the next time through."

She gasped suddenly. "Oh, I've got an idea!"

Palpatine looked at her.

"I want to flitline this section."

"I can't do that, it's against parliamentary procedure."

Centuries ago, Senate pods were allowed to roam anywhere they wished during a session. Many might be in the air at once; speakers buzzed one another in the air, confronting other delegations directly as they spoke. As passions rose, Senators had once driven the pods directly at one another, resulting in midair collisions, and even injuries on some occasions. The practice had been named "flitlining" and had been against the rules for some two hundred years now. Pods could approach the central podium only; and only when asking to speak.

But Finis was responsible for any reprimands, and it was his legislation.

And, it was important.

"You don't want to get called into the principal's office?" Sereine smiled. "It would certainly attract attention." She grabbed her datapad. "I'm going to ask Finis if he'll let us do it!" She tapped him a message.

In short order he appeared on her screen. "You're working on the floor now?" he said.

"Yes, we are."

"Where is Senator Palpatine?"

Sereine walked her datapad over and the Supreme Chancellor spoke to them both. "Interesting idea," he said, "but I believe I have a better one."

"Yes?" said Palpatine.

"I'll reprimand you, and you defy me, and continue, and then I'll formally censure you," said Valorum. "Nothing personal, you understand. But for you to make a speech like this, so obviously in the right, and then receive a formal censure will certainly make the news, with a somewhat sympathetic slant … and I believe that's what we all want, yes?"

"You get credit for being fair, since you're cosponsoring," said Sereine with a nod. "And you get off the hook for censuring an antislavery speech, since you're only being fair with the rules."

Finis frowned briefly. "I don't get five thousand complaints in the holding office the next morning …"

Palpatine smiled. "I believe you probably owe me a couple of formal censures anyway, Supreme Chancellor." He gave him a quick bow from his shoulders, in silent thanks for the two times Sereine knew he had more than earned a censure in his first six months and Finis had withheld it because he was so green. "Call it even after this?"

Finis smiled back. "I didn't say it, Senator, you did."

Palpatine laughed.

"I may even fine you."

"Oh!" said Sereine. "Make it a high enough fine that a couple of other Senators donating to help pay it will also make the news, and if other people donate, I can get quite a splash out of this. I don't mean Bail and Garm and Mon Ane. I mean unaffiliated Senators."

"I can speak to a few," said Finis.

Sereine looked at Palpatine. "What do you think?"

Palpatine looked at Finis. "I'm game if you are, Chancellor."

"Then, yes."

The transmission ended and Sereine's laughter echoed through the chamber. These were her among her favorite times at work, especially when they happened with Palpatine.

Palpatine stared at the controls on the pod's dashboard, many of which she'd never seen him use. "I believe these are programmable," he said. "No one uses that feature anymore for obvious reasons, but you can program a sequence of movements into this. Delegation to delegation to delegation."

"Better than losing your way in a chamber this size," said Sereine. "We'd look like idiots if we browbeat Kratow instead of Kessel. Who would know how to do that?"

"The technicians and droids who maintain the pods, I would imagine," said Palpatine.

Sereine looked at Tomal and pointed him to the door in search of one.

"If we're going to do this, I propose changing a couple of the delegations you mention here," said Palpatine. "I think it makes much more sense to confront Tattooine, for instance. The Hutts keep more slaves on that planet than any other three combined. And I would say instead …"

He scrolled to the last third, deleted an entire paragraph, and typed in a new one himself. Then he handed it to Sereine.

She scanned it and said, "So, you don't mind pissing off an entire planet of gangsters." And raised an eyebrow at him.

"Ederra," said Palpatine, and put an arm briefly around her waist for a quick squeeze. "I don't mind pissing off anyone."

Sereine took the moment to sneak a quick kiss on his cheek, wishing simultaneously that she had eaten dinner beforehand. Now the last third was going to be a timed speech, which meant rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

This was going to be a long night. A fun night and a triumphant night … but a long one.