\u201cApparently several million years ago,\u201d Tom says, \u201cthe Fan Hoeng\u2019s clan of royal assassins realized that instead of killing for <\/i>the King, they could cut the middleman and deliver the savings to their people by being <\/i>the King. Ever since then, all the contenders for the Fan Hoeng throne must spend at least ten years on one of their space empire\u2019s client planets killing for money or politics in order to demonstrate that they have what it takes to be a King.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOr Queen,\u201d Jane says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, yes,\u201d says Tom. \u201cI mean, since she\u2019s a girl and all.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shrugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaria Souvante\u2019s considered one of the most talented space princess assassins of her generation (footnote),\u201d Tom says, returning to his reading, \u201cbut she\u2019ll always give her target one . . . slim . . . chance to survive!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s our target, then,\u201d says Edmund, snapping his fingers. \u201cThat . . . slim . . . chance!\u201d<\/p>\n
He high-5s Jane, who does not really think this is worth high-5ing over but is not going to just leave him hanging over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cApparently several million years ago,\u201d Tom says, \u201cthe Fan Hoeng\u2019s clan of royal assassins realized that instead of killing for the King, they could cut the middleman and deliver the savings to their people by being the King. Ever since then, all the contenders for the Fan Hoeng throne must spend at least ten years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-3846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-4","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Maria8.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3846"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6357,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions\/6357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3846"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=3846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}