Muscles aching, Venera swung down from the saddle of her horse. It was two weeks since the confirmation and she had lost no time in establishing her rule over Buridan—which, she had decided, had to include becoming a master rider.

She’d knocked down two walls and walled up the ends of one of the high-ceilinged cellar corridors, forming one long narrow room where her steed could trot. There were stalls at one end of this, and two workmen were industriously scattering straw and sand over the plating. “Deeper,” Venera told them. “We need several inches of it everywhere.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The men seemed unusually enthusiastic and focused on their task. Maybe they had heard that the new foals were to arrive later today. Probably it was just being in proximity with the one horse now residing here. Venera hadn’t yet met anyone who didn’t share that strange, apparently ancient love for horses that seemed inbuilt to humans.

Venera herself wasn’t immune to it. She patted Domenico and walked down the length of the long room, trailing one hand along the low fence that bisected it lengthwise. Her horsemaster stood at the far end, a clipboard clutched in his hand; he was arguing quietly with someone. “Is everything all right, gentlemen?” Venera asked.

The other man turned, lamplight slanting across his gnomish features, and Venera said, “Oh!” before she could stop herself.

Samson Odess screwed his fishlike face up into a smile and practically lunged over to shake her hand.

“I’m honored to meet you, Lady Thrace-Guiles!” His eyes betrayed no recognition, and Venera realized that she was standing in heavy shadow. “Liris is honored to offer you some land to stable your horses. You see, we’re diversifying and—”

She grinned weakly. It was too soon for this! She had hoped that the men and women of Liris would be consumed by their own internal matters, at least long enough for her new identity to become fixed. If Odess recognized her the news would be bound to percolate through the Fair. She didn’t believe in its vaunted secrecy any more than she believed that good always triumphed.

She let go of Odess’s hand before he could get entirely into his sales pitch, and turned away. “Charmed, I’m sure. Flance! Can you deal with this?”

“Oh, but Master Flance was unable to resolve one little matter,” said the horse master, stepping around Odess.

“Deal with it!” she snarled. She glimpsed a startled look in Odess’s eye before she swept by the two men and into the outer hallway.

Well, that had been an unexpected surge of adrenalin! She laughed at herself as she strode quickly through the vaulted, whitewashed spaces. In the half-minute it took her to slow down to a stroll, Venera took several turns and ended up in an area of the cellars she didn’t know.

Someone cleared his or her throat. Venera turned to find a man in servant’s livery approaching. He looked only vaguely familiar but that was hardly surprising considering the number of people she’d hired recently.

“Ma’am, this area hasn’t been cleaned up yet. Are you looking for something in particular?”

“No. I’m lost. Where did you just come from?”

“This way.” The man walked back the way they had both come. He was right about the state of the cellars; this passage hadn’t been reconstructed and was only minimally cleaned. Black portraits still hung on the walls, here and there an eye glaring out from behind centuries of dust and soot. The lanterns were widely spaced and a few men visible down a side way were reduced to silhouettes, their backdrop some bright distant doors.

“Down this way.” Her guide indicated a black stairwell Venera hadn’t seen before. Narrow and unlit, it plummeted steeply down.

Venera stopped. “What the—” Then she saw the pistol in his hand.

“Move,” grated the man. “Now.”

She almost called his bluff. One of those quick sidesteps Chaison had taught her, then a foot sweep… he would be on the floor before he knew it. But she hesitated just long enough for him to step out of reach. Caught unprepared for once, Venera stumbled into the blackness with him behind her.

“You’re in a lot of trouble,” she said.

“We’re not afraid of the authorities,” said her kidnaper contemptuously.

“I’m not talking about the authorities, I’m talking about me.” The stairs had ended on a narrow shelf above an indistinct, dark body of water. It was dank and cold down here; looking left and right she saw that she was standing on the edge of large tank—a cistern, no doubt.

“We’ve been watching you,” said the shadowy figure behind her. “I assure you we know what you’re capable of.” The pistol was in her back again and he was pushing her hard enough that she had trouble keeping her feet. Angrily she hurried ahead and emerged onto the iron plating next to the water. “I didn’t know I had this,” she commented as she turned right, toward the source of the light.

“It’s not yours, this is part of the municipal water supply,” said a half-familiar voice up ahead.

She eyed the black depths. Jump in? There might be a culvert she could swim through, the way heroes did in romance novels. Those heroes never drowned in the dark, though, and besides even if she made it out of here her appearance, soaking wet, in the streets of the city was bound to cause a scandal. She did not need that right now.

There was an open area at the far end of the tank. The same tables and crates she’d seen in the wine cellar were set up here, and the same young revolutionaries were sitting on them. Standing next to a lantern-lit desk was the youth with straight black hair and oval eyes. He was dressed in the long coat and tails she’d seen fashionable men wearing on the streets of the wheel; with his arms crossed the coat belled out enough for her to see the two pistols holstered at his waist. She was suddenly reminded of Garth’s apparel, which was like a down-at-heel version of the same costume.

“What’s the meaning of this?” she snapped, even as she counted people and exits (there was one of the latter, a closed iron door). “You’re not being very neighborly,” she added more softly.

“Sit her down and tie her up,” said the black-haired youth. He had a high tenor voice, not unmanly but refined, his words very precise. His eyes were gray and cold.

“Yes, Bryce.” The man who’d led her here sat her down on a stout wooden chair next to the table, and pulling her arms back proceeded to tie a clumsy knot around her wrists.

Venera craned her neck to look back. “You obviously don’t do this much,” she said. Then, spearing this Bryce fellow with a sharp eye, she added, “Kidnapping is precision work. You people don’t strike me as being organized enough to pull it off.”

Bryce’s eyebrows shot up, that same look of surprise he’d shown in the cellar. “If you’d been following our escapades you’d know what we’re capable of.”

“Bombing innocent crowds, yes,” she said acidly. “Hero’s work, that.”

He shrugged, but looked uncomfortable. “That one was meant for the council members,” he admitted. “It fell back and killed the man who threw it. That was a soldier’s death.”

She nodded. “Like most soldiers’ deaths, painfully unnecessary. What do you want?”

Bryce spun another chair around and sat down in it, folding his arms over its back. “We intend to bring down the great nations,” he said simply.

Venera considered how to reply. After a moment she said, “How can kidnapping me get you any closer to doing that? I’m an outsider, I’m sure nobody cares much whether I live or die. And nobody will ransom me.”

“True,” he agreed with a shrug. “But if you go missing, you’ll soon be declared a fraud and the title to Buridan will go up for grabs. It’ll be a free-for-all, and we intend to make sure that it starts a civil war.”