She nodded her thanks, more than a little dazed. She’d never had so much attention lavished on her. No one in her family had ever had time to lavish so much attention on her. Out she went, to see what Philadelphia was like.

It struck her as being a more serious, more disciplined place than New York City. Big, forthright, foursquare government buildings-some of them showing bomb damage, others being repaired-dominated downtown. They were all fairly new, having gone up since the Second Mexican War. Not only had the government grown greatly since then, but Philadelphia had taken on more and more of the role of capital. Washington, though remaining in law the center of government, was hideously vulnerable to Confederate guns-and had, in fact, been occupied by the CSA since the earliest days of the fighting.

Liberty Hall was another pile of brick and granite, rather less impressive than the Broad Street station. It looked more like the home of an insurance firm than that of a great democracy. Down in Washington, the Capitol was splendid…or had been, till Confederate cannon damaged it.

Liberty Hall stood near one of the many buildings through which the War Department sprawled. Men in uniform were everywhere on the street, far more common than in New York. New York at most accepted the war-reluctantly, sometimes angrily. Philadelphia embraced it. Seeing that sobered Flora. She wondered how parochial her opposition would seem.

She stayed out all day. When she got back, she found her clothes unpacked, pressed as promised, and set neatly in closets and drawers. Nothing was missing-she checked. Seven cents in change lay on the nightstand. It must have been in one of her trunks.

She dressed in her best tailored suit, a black and white plaid, for her first trip to the House. Despite her businesslike appearance, a functionary in semimilitary uniform tried to keep her out of the House chamber, saying, “The stairs to the visitors’ gallery are on your right, ma’am.”

“I am Congresswoman Flora Hamburger,” she said in a wintry voice, and had the satisfaction of seeing him turn pale. Another uniformed aide took her down to her desk.

She looked around the immense chamber, which was filling rapidly. The only other woman in the House was a Democrat, an elderly widow from outside of Pittsburgh whose husband had held the district for decades till he died a few days before the war broke out. Flora didn’t expect to have much in common with her. She didn’t expect to have much in common with the plump, prosperous men who were the majority here, either, though she did wave back when Hosea Blackford waved to her.

Then she was on her feet with her right hand raised in a different fashion. “I, Flora Hamburger, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of Representative of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

When she sat down again, her face bore an enormous smile. She belonged here. It was official. “Now to set this place to rights,” she muttered under her breath.

Winter nights up in southern Manitoba were long. Arthur McGregor wished they were longer still. If he lay in bed asleep, he would not have to think of his son Alexander, executed by the U.S. occupiers for sabotage-sabotage he had not committed, sabotage McGregor was convinced he had not even planned.

He stirred in bed, wishing he could sleep: a big, strong, hard-faced Scots farmer in his early forties, his dark hair grayer than it had been before the war started, grayer than it would have been had the Yankees stayed on their own side of the border. Damn them. His mouth silently shaped the words.

Maude stirred beside him. “You can’t bring him back, Arthur,” she murmured, as if he’d shouted instead of soundlessly whispering. “All you can do is make yourself feel worse. Rest if you can.”

“I want to,” he answered. “The harder I chase after sleep, though, the faster it runs away. It didn’t used to be like this.”

Maude lay quiet. It’s because I’m right, McGregor thought. Before the Americans came, he’d fallen asleep every night as if he were a blown-out lantern. Farm work did that to a man. It did that to a woman, too; Maude hadn’t lain awake beside him. Now worry and anguish fought their exhaustion to a standstill.

“We have to go on,” Maude said. “We have to go on for the sake of the girls.”

“Julia’s turning into a woman,” he said in dull wonder. “Thirteen. God, where does the time go? And Mary…” He didn’t go on. What he’d started to say was, Mary would kill every American in Manitoba if she could. That wasn’t the sort of thing you should say about an eight-year-old girl, even if it was true-maybe especially if it was true.

“Arthur-” Maude began. She fell silent again, and then spoke once more: “Whatever you do, Arthur, be careful.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered stolidly. “Been a goodish while since I let the horse kick me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Maude rolled over, turning her back on him. She was angry. She would have been angrier if she hadn’t had to tell him that, though. He was sure of it.

Eventually, he slept. When he went downstairs the next morning, Julia had oatmeal ready and fried a couple of eggs while he ate it. The oatmeal and the eggs came straight from what the farm produced. The coffee Julia poured, however, he’d bought in Rosenfeld, the nearest town. He made a face when he drank it. “I’m sorry, Father. Didn’t I make it right?” Julia asked anxiously.

“It’s as good as it can be,” he answered. “It’s about one part coffee to ten parts burnt roots and grain, is all. I expect the Americans think they’re good-hearted for letting us have any of the real bean at all.”

“Are you sure it’s all right?” Julia said. McGregor was a serious man in a practical way, as farmers have to be. Julia was serious, too, but more thoughtfully so; she’d been outraged at the lies the Yankees were having the schools teach, and even more outraged because some of her classmates accepted those lies for truth. Now she seemed to wonder if her father was trying to deceive her about the coffee.

“I’m sure,” he told her. “Your mother couldn’t have made it any better.” That did reassure her. McGregor went on, “And no matter what else, it’s hot. The Yanks can’t take that from us-unless they rob us of fuel, too, that is.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Julia said darkly.

McGregor wouldn’t have put it past them, either. As far as he was concerned, the Americans were nothing but locusts eating their way through everything he and the rest of the Canadians whose land they occupied had spent years-sometimes generations-building up. Whatever fragments they happened to leave behind, the Canadians could keep. His mouth twisted in what was not a smile. He hoped such generosity wouldn’t bankrupt them.

After finishing breakfast, he put on his coat, mittens, earmuffs, and a stout felt hat. He was already wearing two undershirts under a wool shirt and two pairs of long johns under jeans. Thus fortified against the weather, he opened the door, slamming it behind him as fast as he could.

As always, the first breath of outside air made him feel as if he’d inhaled a lungful of knives and saws. His work boots crunched in the snow as he made his slow way toward the barn. The second breath wasn’t so bad; by the third, the air was just cold. He’d felt it much colder; he doubted it was any more than ten below. This sort of winter weather came with living in Manitoba.

A north-south dirt road marked the eastern boundary of his farm. Most winters, it would have been all but empty of traffic. Not this one, nor the two previous. Big snorting White trucks painted green-gray growled over the frozen ground, hauling men and supplies toward the front south of Winnipeg.

“Not far enough south of Winnipeg,” McGregor said under his steaming breath. Canadian and British troops still held the United States out of the link between the west and the more densely populated provinces to the east, but the sound of artillery from the front was no more than a low mutter on the horizon, not the thunder it had been the summer before, when for a while he’d hoped the Yanks would be driven from his land.