The kzin screamed and leapt.

Traat-Admiral shrieked, shaking his fists in the air.  Stunners blinked in the hands of the guards ranged around the conference chamber, and the quarter-ton bulk of Kreetssa-Fleet-Systems-Analyst went limp and thudded to the flagstones in the center of the room.  Silence fell about the great round table; Traat-Admiral forced himself to breathe shallowly, mouth shut despite the writhing lips that urged him to bare his fangs.  That would mean inhaling too much of the scent of aggression that was overpowering the ventilators... now was time for an appeal to reason.

"Down on your bellies, you kitten-eating scavengers!" he screamed, his bat-like ears folded back out of the way in battle-readiness.  Chill and gloom shadowed the chamber, built as it was of massive sandstone blocks.  The light fixtures were twisted shapes of black iron holding globes of phosphorescent algae.  On the walls were trophies of arms and the heads of prey, monsters from a dozen worlds, feral humans and kzin-ear dueling trophies.  This part of the governor's palace was pure Old Kzin, and Traat-Admiral felt the comforting bulk of it above him, a heritage of ferocity and power.

He stood, which added to the height-advantage of the commander's dais; none of the dozen others dared rise from their cushions, even the conservative faction.  Good.  That added to his dominance; he was only two meters tall, middling for a kzin, but broad enough to seem squat, his orange-red pelt streaked with white where the fur had grown out over scars.  The ruff around his neck bottled out as he indicated the intricate geometric sigil of the Patriarchy on the wall behind him.

"I am the senior military commander in this system.  I am the heir of Chuut-Riit, duly attested.  Who disputes the authority of the Patriarch?"

One by one, the other commanders laid themselves chin-down on the floor, extending their ears and flattening their fur in propitiation.  It would do, even if he could tell from the twitching of naked pink tails that it was insincere.  The show of submission calmed him, and Traat-Admiral could feel the killing tension ease out of his muscles.  He turned to the aged kzin seated behind him and saluted claws-across-face.

"Honor to you, Conservor of the Ancestral Past," he said.  There was genuine respect in his voice.  It had been a long time since the machine came to Homeworld; a long time since the priest-sage class were the only memory the Kzin had.  Their females were nonsentient and warriors rarely lived past the slowing of their reflexes; memory was all the more sacred to them for that.  His was a conservative species, and they remembered.

"Honor to you," he continued.  "What is the fate of one who bares claws to the authority of the Patriarch?"

The Conservor looked up from the hands that rested easily on his knees.  Traat-Admiral felt a prickle of awe; the sage's control was eerie.  He even smelled calm, in a room full of warriors pressed to the edge of control in dominance-struggle.  When he spoke the verses of the Law, his voice made the hiss-spit of the Hero's Tongue sound as even as wind in tall grass.