Is she the smartest?

Didn't have a better way to describe it so I used quotation marks around "smartest bad guy in the room" for a reason. Wasn't trying to say that she's the actual smartest person but she might look like a genius when pointing out the information sharing that was hindered by the other bad guys not wanting to look bad at the table. It would make sense that Partagaz and higher ups would be able to see their immediate underlings locking down there territories more from each other than from rebels but also refusing to crack down on it because, up to that point, the situation was stable and yielded acceptible results. Once the situation progressed to the point that things were becoming unstable, somebody like Syril and Dedre, would be allowed to shake things up a bit.

For some reason I have it in my head that Dedre is a younger officer than her peers so I didn't make anything of her not yet having a life outside of work. She hadn't build up her fiefdom like the other officers had.

..."imperial kinderblock"...

Damn... didn't think about that way. I didn't think Dedre and Syril's mothers dinner scenes was any deeper than, "I'm an orphan, I was raised by the state/system, I've become quite self sufficient on my own, I'm not looking for a parent, I see what you're doing to Syril and I'm not going to allow it anymore."