"Not well, but I don't think she's going to run out on us, as long as she feels we're standing alongside her."

"It's that bad? I've known her for, ah, nearly a year, and her highness does not strike me as disloyal to her friends."

Huw did not miss the significance of the honorific. "She hasn't acceded to that rank yet. Has she?"

"No." Brill's expression was bleak. "I don't think she's even realized, yet, what it means-she was having a difficult time understanding that vile business of Henryk's, much less thinking about what is going to happen…"

"Er, I think you're wrong." Huw emptied his glass in one long swallow. "Needed that. Excuse me. Did you buy her a pregnancy test kit?" He refilled her glass, then topped up his own.

"I-yes, but I haven't given it to her yet. She asked you about that?"

"She is remarkably open, but her ability to trust-anyone, I think-is badly damaged by the whole business of the succession. I I… I offered to help her obtain an abortion if she thought she needed one."

"Huw!" Brill clapped one hand to her mouth. Then: "Why?"

"She raised the subject." Huw hunched his shoulders. "I don't think she will, but… if she feels pressured, what will she do?"

"React," Brill said automatically. "Oh. Yes, that was cleverly played, my love. But you should have warned me. That's too clever by half. What if she'd called your bluff?"

"What if it wasn't a bluff?" He shrugged. "She's no use to our cause if she doesn't trust us. No use to anyone at all. That is true whether or not she has a royal bun in the oven. We're trying to break the pattern, not reinforce it."

"Uh-huh. Winning her trust is one thing." She leaned towards him. "But you'd help her shoot herself in the head?"

"If I was convinced that she wanted to, and knew what she was asking for… yes." He looked at Brilliana with a bleakness that sat badly with his age. "I'd try to save her first, mind you."

"Would you try to save me from my worst urges?" she asked sharply.

Huw put his glass down. "That's one of those questions to which there's no safe answer, isn't it?"

"Yes." She drained her own glass and reached across him, to put it down beside his. He shivered as she pushed her breasts against his side; her nipples were stiff. "My worst urge right now says I want you to fuck me like there's no tomorrow. Because tomorrow"-she ran her hand down his chest-"we might both be dead."

Erasmus was going over the next morning's news with John Winstanley and Oliver Smith, the party commissioners for truth and justice, when word of the abdication came in.

Smith was reading down a plate, his lips moving silently as he read the raised bright mirror-text of the lead: ".. and we call upon all right minded men to, hang on, here's a dropped-"

"Yes, yes," Erasmus said acidly. "No need for that, leave it to the subs. What I need to know is, do you think it's sound?"

"Is it sound?" Winstanley nodded lugubriously. "Well, that's the-"

The door rattled open. Burgeson looked up sharply. "What is it?" he demanded.

The messenger boy-or youth-looked unabashed: "It's Mr. Burroughs, sir! He wants you to come, quick like! 'E says it's important!"

Erasmus stared at him. "Where is he?" he demanded.

"'E's in the mayor's mansion, sir! There's news from out east-a train just came in, and there was folks on it who said the king's abdicated!"

Erasmus glanced at Smith. "I think you'd better hold the front page," he said mildly, "I'm going to go see what this is all about."

It was an overcast, gray summer's day outside, with a thin fog from the bay pumped up to a malignant brown haze by the smoke from a hundred thousand stoves and steam cars on this side of the bay. Fishing boats were maneuvering around the wharves, working their way in and out of the harbor as if the crisis of the past weeks was just a distant rumor. From the front steps, waiting as his men brought the car round to him, Erasmus could just make out the dots of the picket fleet in the distance, military yachts and korfes riding at anchor to defend the coast against the approach of French bombardiers or submarines. He eyed them warily every morning, half afraid they would finally make their move, choosing sides in the coming struggle. Word from the cadres aboard the ships was that the sailors were restive, unpaid for months now, but that the officers remained crown loyalists for the most part. Should putsch come to shove, it would be an ugly affair-and one that the realm's foreign enemies would be keen to exploit. Which was probably why John Frederick had not tried his luck by ordering the picket into the bay to put down the provisional government forces. It was a card he could only play once, and if it failed, he might as well dust off Cromwell's block. Although if the messenger lad was right…

By the time he arrived at the mayoral mansion, a light rain was falling and the onshore breeze was stiffening, blowing the smog apart. Erasmus paused for a deep breath as he stepped out of the back of the car, relishing the feel of air in lungs he'd almost despaired of a year ago. Where are you now, Miriam? he wondered briefly. It was her medication that had cured him, of that he was certain, even though the weird pills had turned his urine blue and disrupted his digestion. What other magic tricks do you have up your sleeve? It was something he'd have to explain to the chairman, sooner or later-if he could work out how to broach the subject without sounding as if he'd taken leave of his senses. "Follow," he said over his shoulder. The two bodyguards and the woman from the stenography pool moved hastily into position.

The committee offices on the first floor were seething-nobody was at their posts except for the militia guards, their rifles clenched in nervous hands. "Where's the chairman?" Erasmus demanded when they came to the first checkpoint.

"He's in the committee room, sir," said the senior man-Erasmus, being a regular enough visitor (and a member of the committee to boot), ranked above the regular interrogation such a question might have drawn from a stranger. "Can you tell us what's going on?"

"That's why I'm here." Erasmus grimaced. "There'll be a statement later." He glanced at his stenographer. "Minute that for me." He swept through the corridors towards the former dining room that Sir Adam had requisitioned as a meeting place for the committee, only pausing at the door where two heavies in the red, white, and blue armbands of internal security waited with shotguns. "Erasmus Burgeson, commissioner for information, here to see the chairman," announced one of his guards.

"Aye, right." These guards were going by the book. Erasmus waited patiently as the senior one uncapped a speaking tube and announced him, then listened for instructions. "You're to go in, sir. Your party"-a thumb gesture-"can wait in the guardroom."

Burgeson nodded at them. "You heard him." And then he opened the door.

The Committee for Democratic Accountability was neither accountable, nor democratic, nor even much of a committee-these words were all statements of aspiration, as much as anything else, for in the early days of building a better nation these words held power, and it was Sir Adam's hope that his institutions would grow into their names. Personally, Erasmus thought this was dangerously naive-he'd read a number of books that Miriam had loaned him, strange books describing the historical processes of her even stranger world-but it was at least worth a try. Not all revolutions ended up eating their young, and heaven knew it was an opportunity to break with the dead hand of the oppressive past, but the thought that this revolution might go the way of some of those in Miriam's books had kept him awake into the small hours on more nights than he cared to think about.