Czarina-Kluster’s cliques had the power of minor factions in their own right. The cliques formed a shadow government in C-K, a moral parallel to the distracted formal rule of the Queen’s Advisors. Clique elites moved behind the scenes, imitating their paragon Wellspring in deliberate webs of self-spun obfuscation. The forms of power and its realities had been gently disentangled. The social arbiters of the Polycarbon Clique, the Lifesiders, or the Green Camarilla could work wonders with a dropped hint or a lifted eyebrow.