"Oh M- Helge. You kill me. Very well, it's this: You're a grown woman and you've got needs. And if you wait until the bun's finished baking and are reasonably discreet, nobody will raise an eyebrow. Once you've been publicly acknowledged as the queen-widow, you're… in effect you're married, to a dead, absentee husband. Marriage is about property, and status, and rank, and if you're fool enough you can throw it all away. So don't do that, okay? Take a lover, but be discreet, use contraception. And whatever you do, don't mess with the help, especially don't mess with your sworn vassals. Pick a man who's respectably married and owes you no obligation, and what you get up to harms no one. But unmarried men, or vassals? They're trouble."

Helge gaped, speechless. After a moment she managed to shut her mouth. "Mother!"

Patricia sighed. "Kid, the rules are different here. What have I been trying to beat into that thick skull of yours?"

"But, but-"

"You're confusing love and marriage. That old song, love and marriage, horse and carriage? It's rubbish." She snorted dismissively. "At least, that's not how any self-respecting aristocracy comports itself. You marry for power and heirs and you take your fun where you find it." For a moment she looked wistful: "That's one of the things I'm really going to miss about not living in the United States anymore. But just because a society runs on arranged marriages, it doesn't mean people don't fall in love. Just as long as they're discreet in public."

"Oh god." Helge made to run a hand through her hair, stopped at the last moment as she touched the jeweled pins that held it in place. "That is just so screwed up…"

"I realize it must seem that way to you." The dowager grimaced. "The rules here are very different."

"Ick."

"It's not that bad, kid." Patricia's grimace relaxed into a smile. "You're a widow. You've graduated from the marriage market, summa cum laude."

"I don't need to hear this right now," said Helge. "I am so not interested in men right now-"

"But you will be, and you need to know this stuff now, before it happens. Unless you want to let being a victim define you for the rest of your life, you're going to look back on this one day and shrug and say, 'but I moved on.' "

Helge stared at her mother sharply. "What do you mean?"

Patricia looked her in the eye. "Your-my husband-was a real piece of work. But I didn't let that get between us, between you and me, kid."

Helge looked away. "I'm not-"

"You're my daughter. Mine, not his. That's all the revenge that's good for me."

After a moment, Helge looked back at her mother. Her eyes were dark, glistening with unshed tears. "I had no idea."

"I didn't want you to. I really didn't want to lay that on you." Patricia held out a hand. After a moment, her daughter took it. "But you wanted to know why I want to change the Clan."

"Oh, Mom." Helge rose, then knelt in front of the wheelchair. She laid her head on her mother's lap, hugging her. "I'm sorry."

"Hush. It's not your fault."

"But I thought you-"

"Yeah, I know what you thought. It's the usual Clan mother/daughter rivalry. But like I said, we're not going to play by their rules. Are you with me?"

"Yes," said Helge.

"Excellent." Her mother stroked the nape of her neck lightly. "You and me, kid. Together we'll make this thing work."

In the end, the coup came down to simple economics. The emergency government had neglected to pay their employees for three weeks; whereas Sir Adam's party had, if not put a chicken in every pot, at least put a loaf of bread and tripe in dripping on every table that was spread with yesterday's copy of The Leveler in lieu of a tablecloth. They didn't have money but they had plenty of guns, and so they'd sent the party militia to seize control of the dockside warehouses. Wherein they found plenty of bulk grain that had been stockpiled for export, and which they lost no time in distributing to the people. It was a short-term gambit, but it paid off: Nothing buys friends in a famine like a temporarily full belly.

The morning of the coup came three days after the Patriot Club withdrew from the emergency assembly. Patriot gangs had taken to the streets of New London, protesting the Levelers' presence in the debating chamber with paving stones and pry bars. They'd scoured the army barracks, recruiting the wrong kind of soldiers-angry, unpaid young men, their bellies full of looted beer, looking for someone to blame. "We can't allow this to continue," Sir Adam had said, his voice tinny over the crackling electrograph conference call. "They'll cause chaos, and the people will blame us for losing control of the situation. So they must be stopped. Tomorrow morning, I want to see every man we've got turned out and ready for action. The Freedom Riders will patrol the streets around Parliament and the government buildings on Grosvenor Street; those of you in charge of departments will go to your offices with your guards and secure them against intrusion."

"What about the New Party and the other opposition groups?" asked one of the delegates on the line.

"I don't think we're going to waste our time worrying about them," said Sir Adam. "They're either broadly for us and our program, in which case we will listen to their input before we act-once the emergency is over-or they're against us, in which case they are part of the problem. The Freedom Riders will bar access to the Commons while we debate and pass the Enabling Act; let them protest once we've saved their necks from the noose. I'm more concerned about the Patriot mob. As soon as they work out what's going on they'll attempt to storm the citadel, and I want us to be ready for them."

Which was why, at four o'clock in the morning, instead of being sound asleep in bed, Erasmus was sitting in the passenger cab of a steamer, facing backwards, knee to knee with two strapping militiamen and nose to nose with Supervisor Philips, as it screamed up the broad boulevard fronting the East River at the head of a column of loudly buzzing motorcycle combinations. They were heading for the Propaganda Ministry offices in Bronckborough, to catch them at the tail end of a quiet graveyard shift. For lack of any other distraction, he scrutinized Philips closely; in his long black coat and forage cap he resembled a hungry crow.

"Soon be over, eh, sir?"

Philips's eyes swiveled sideways, towards the serg- No, under-officer, Erasmus reminded himself-must keep the new ranks straight-underofficer who had spoken. "One expects so, Wolfe, unless anyone tipped a wink to the traitors."

"Not me, sir!"

Erasmus suppressed his momentary amusement at the man's discomfort. Someone might have done so, despite the Party's control over the Post Office and the central electrograph exchanges, and if that was the case they might be heading straight into a field of beaten fire between heavy machine guns. In which case we'll pay with our lives. But Philips's reference to the Patriots as traitors-that was interesting. So easily do our names twist and bite us, Erasmus mused cynically.

The ministry offices stood at the crest of a north-south ridge-line at the intersection of two broad boulevards lined with plane trees; with clear fields of fire in all directions and no windows below the third floor, it was a characteristic example of the governmental architectural style that had arrived in the wake of the Black Fist Freedom Guard's assassination of King George Frederick's father. The steps fronting the building were guarded, but the railway sidings and loading docks at the back, through which huge rolls of newsprint arrived every evening to print the next day's edition of the Parliamentary Gazette were another matter. By the time Burgeson's car drew up beside a gap-doored loading bay, there wasn't a red shirt in sight: All the guards on duty wore the black pea coats and helmets of the Freedom Riders.