Maia reminded himself that glee was unbefitting an emperor, and thought soberly as the crewwoman opened the narrow door at the front of the cabin, I must not acquire a taste for this pleasure. It was heady, but he knew it was poison. ... "We are most grateful, gentlemen. We will remember this always as the beginning of our reign." Much better this than that confused and frightened awakening in darkness, his own glassy, sharp-edged panic, Setheris's drunken viciousness.
One of Maia's really under-rated virtues (admittedly, he has many) is that he has this incredible capacity to redirect himself. There's a lot of examples through the book of him doing this thing where he decides a certain line of thought is not helpful and then, simply does not pursue that line of thought any further. Its one of the subtler skills that make him a good emperor. But the fact he's so generally good at it makes the times he can't do it much more glaring, and much more clearly evidence that he hasn't got out of his childhood unscathed.
