He took nearer to a quarter of an hour, but when he returned he’d had a shower and run his outerwear through a fastcleaner. “Sorry ’bout that. Do I look better?”

“You look fine,” she said diplomatically. “At least, you’ll pass. Are you going to fall over on me?”

“Nope.” He dry swallowed a capsule and shuddered slightly. “Not until we get back to the ship.” He tapped the pocket with his keyboard in it. “Captured enough color for three features, interviewed four midlevel government officials and six random civilians, grabbed about four hours of full-motion. One last push and—” This time his smile looked less stressed.

“Okay, let’s go.” She took his hand again and led him along the street.

“You know where we’re going? The embassy reception hall?”

“Never been there.” She pointed at the floor. “Got a guide.”

“Oh good, tell everyone where we’re going,” he muttered. “I just hope they don’t mistake me for a vagrant.”

“An, uh, what? What was that?”

“A vagrant?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “They don’t have them where you come from? Lucky.”

She checked the word in her lexicon. “I’ll tell them you’re my guest,” she said, and patted his hand. Having Frank around made her feel safe, like walking through a strange town with a huge and ferocious guard dog — the biological kind — to protect her. Her spirits rose as they neared the embassy.

Embassies were traditionally the public representatives of a nation abroad. As such, they tended to be built with a swagger, gratuitously broad facades and conspicuously gilded flagpoles. The Muscovite embassy was typical of the breed, a big, classically styled limestone-and-marble heap squatting sullenly behind a row of poplar trees, a discreet virtual fence, and a lawn that appeared to have been trimmed with a micrometer gauge and nail scissors. But something about it wasn’t quite right. It might have been the flag out front — set to half-mast ever since the dreadful day, years ago, when the diplomatic causal channel went dead — or something more subtle. There was a down-at-heel air to it, of retired gentry keeping up appearances but quietly living beyond their means.

And then there was the security cordon.

“I’m Wed — uh, Victoria Strowger,” Wednesday chattered to the two armed cops as they examined her passport, “and this is Frank Johnson, my guest, and isn’t this exciting?” She clapped her hands as they waved her through the archway of an explosive sniffer. “I can’t believe I’ve been invited to a real embassy function! Wow, is that the Ambassador? No?”

“You don’t have to lay it on quite that thick,” Frank said tiredly, catching up with her a minute later. “They’re not idiots. Pull a stunt like that at a real checkpoint, and they’ll have you in an interrogation cell before your feet touch the ground.”

“Huh?” She shook her head. “A real checkpoint? What was that about, then?”

“What it was about was telling everybody that there are guards about. There are all sorts of real defenses all around us, and barely out of view. Dogs, drones, all sorts of surveillance crap. Guess I was right — this stinks of a high-alert panic.”

“Oh.” She leaned closer to him as she glanced around. There was a large marquee dome behind one wing of the embassy, lights strung between trees — and a handful of adults, one or two of them in elaborate finery but most of them simply wearing office garb, wandering around clutching glasses of fizzy wine. “Are we in danger?” From what Herman said—

“I don’t think so. At least, I hope not.”

There were tables in the dome, attentive catering staff and bottles of wine and battalions of glasses waiting to be filled, a spread of canapes and hand rolls and other bite-sized snacks laid out for the guests. A clump of bored-looking visitors clutched their obligatory glass and disposable platter, and in one or two cases a sad-looking handheld flag. The first time Wednesday saw a flag she had to look away, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Patriotism had never been a huge Muscovite virtue, and to see the way the fat woman in the red pants held on to her flag as if it were a life preserver made Wednesday want to slap her and yell Grow up! It’s all over! Except it also felt like … like watching Jerm, aged three, playing with the pewter pot containing Grandpa’s ashes. Abuse of the dead, an infection of history. And now, he was gone. She looked away, sniffed, and tried to clear the haze in her eyes. She’d never much liked her kid brother anyway, but not having him around to dislike felt wrong.

A man and a woman wearing sober outfits that would have been at home in a law office were working the guest crowd in a low-key manner. Wednesday’s turn came remarkably fast. “Hello, I’m pleased you could be here today,” said the woman, fixing Wednesday with a professionally polished smile that was almost as tightly lacquered as her hair. “I’m Mary-Louise. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you before?”

“Hi, I’m Wednesday.” She forced a tired smile. Crying earlier had dried out the skin around her eyes. “I’m just passing through, actually, on board the Romanov. Is this a regular event?”

“We host one like it every year to mark the anniversary. Is there one where you live, can I ask?”

“I don’t think so,” Wednesday said doubtfully. “Centris Magna, in Septagon. Quite a lot of us went there from Old Newfie—”

“Station eleven! Is that where you came from?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, very good! I had a cousin there. Listen, here’s Subminister Hasek, come to be very cultural with us tonight. We’ve got food, drink, a media presentation, and Rhona Geiss will be singing — but I’ve got to see to everyone else. Help yourself to everything, and if you need anything else, Mr. Tranh there will see to you.” She vanished in a flurry of wide sleeves and coattails, leaving Wednesday to watch in bemusement as a corpulent old man the size of a brown bear shambled slowly into the dome, a gleaming, polished woman at either side. One of them reminded Wednesday of Steffi so much that she blinked, overtaken by an urge to say hello to the friendly ship’s officer. When she looked again, the moment of recognition passed. A gaggle of teenagers gave ground to the threesome reluctantly as they walked in front of a circle of stewards setting up a table.

Wednesday accepted a glass of wine and cast around for Frank, but he’d wandered off somewhere while the greeters had been working her. Expect trouble. Sure, but what kind?

A row of glass doors had been shoved back from the room at one side of the embassy, and a couple of embassy staffers were arranging rows of chairs across the floor, then out onto the manicured lawn. The far wall of the reception room had become a screen, a blue-white-green disc eerily similar to the one Wednesday had seen from orbit as she boarded the orbit-to-surface elevator capsule. It floated in the middle of a sea of stars. Home, she thought, dully. She hadn’t felt homesick for years, not really, and then it had been for Old Newfie rather than this abstraction of a place she’d been born on — but now she felt a certain dangerous nostalgia begin to bite, and an equal and opposite cynical impulse to sneer at the idea. What has Moscow ever done for me? she asked herself. Then memory stabbed at her: her parents, the look on Mayor Pocock’s face as they’d hauled down the flag in the hub concourse before the evacuation … too many memories. Memories she couldn’t escape.

Herman spoke in her earbud: “Most people come for the readings, remain for the singing of the national anthem, then leave and get steaming drunk. You might want to emulate them.”

Twenty minutes and one glass of wine later, Wednesday found a corner seat at one end of the front row. The other visitors were filtering in slowly, nothing like as organized as a funeral party entering a chapel of rest. By all appearances a number of them were already leading her at the drinking.