"One group found out somehow that there was an Investor Queen living in exile, and they managed to make it to her shadow, for protection. And someone—you can imagine who—talked the Queen into letting them stay, if they paid a certain tax. That tax became the Queen’s Percentage, and the settlement became Czarina-Kluster. Valery’s parents—yes, parents ; it was a natural birth—were among those Superbrights. She didn’t have the schooling Shapers use, so she ranks in at only one forty-five or so.