Reports, reports, reports. Treatises, concessions, petty squabbles
over seating arrangements. And the complete lack of Prince Bartholomew
to actually sit at meetings. It was enough to make a person...well, fed up.

Brin sits quietly, in a room he has barely used, overlooking the courtyard
of the Fatima Castle, the occasional guard stiffly marching up and down,
turning comically at corners, going back the way they came. Brin's smile is
barely visible as his face lies half-buried in his folded arms, as he leans
on the window sill he has pulled the chair up to, his almost unkempt hair
now falling in his eyes. ... To be a guard, just comically mincing up and down
a square, looking forward only to something, _anything_ happening, to break
the mind-bending...banality of it all. To be Brin Gaisce, calmly turning up 2
minutes late, to sit at the free seat left over after the squabble he has
learned to ignore. To politely wait his turn to speak over the rabble.To wonder
what this is achieving, when nothing can get done.

Brin stands, gently shaking a small grey bundle out of his sleeve, into a
small box beside the bed. Dutifully ignoring its protests, he sets off at
a leisurely pace to be late for the next meeting.