"— with the Honorable Delegate from Marian." The heavyset speaker stood at the podium, looking out over the assembled delegates of the Constitutional Convention and shook his head. "I have no doubt of her sincerity, nor do I question the probity of her motives," he continued gravely. "Yet the fact remains that she is proposing to barter away ancient, hard-won liberties in the name of political expediency. I cannot support such a proposal, and the delegation from New Tuscany regretfully votes in the negative."

Henri Krietzmann's expression gave no hint of his emotions. That sort of impassivity didn't come easily to him, but he'd had a crash course in it over the past endless weeks here on Flax. And he supposed Bernardus and Joachim were right. There was no point trying to hide what he felt when everyone here knew exactly why Dresden had sent him to the Convention, but it was a pragmatic necessity to appear impartial whenever he held the Convention's gavel. And, perhaps even more to the point, he had a moral responsibility to be impartial in the fashion in which he exercised his authority on the Convention's floor.

He watched Andrieaux Yvernau leave the microphone and return to his own seat, and a corner of his mind noted the rebellious expressions on a couple of the other New Tuscany delegates. It would appear the delegation's unanimity was less pronounced than Yvernau would have preferred. But it was still far more so than Krietzmann liked. Unlike Dresden, where hardscrabble -poverty was the great unifying condition, New Tuscany had its own exorbitantly wealthy (by Verge standards) upperclass, like Spindle and at least half of the Cluster's other systems. Yvernau was probably almost as rich as Samiha Lababibi. As such, the delegation chief faced both enormous opportunity and great risk once the annexation went through, and he wanted all the safeguards he could get. A few of the other New Tuscan delegates, without his vast personal fortune to protect, were growing impatient with him. Unfortunately, the delegation, like the New Tuscan government itself, was overwhelmingly dominated by the local oligarchs. It was highly unlikely any of the others would openly break with Yvernau. In fact, they were under binding instructions to follow his directives, which had put New Tuscany firmly into Aleksandra Tonkovic's political pocket.

Krietzmann waited until Yvernau settled back into his chair, then looked at the Christmas tree of blinking attention lights on his display.

"The Chair recognizes the Honorable Delegate from Tillerman," he said, gesturing for the woman in question to take the microphone.

"Thank you, Mr. President," Yolanda Harper, the Tillerman System's chief delegate said, standing up but never moving away from her seat, "but I'll keep this brief, and I don't think I'll need a mike to make m'self understood." The lanky, brown-haired, weathered woman turned to face the other delegations and threw up one calloused, farmer's hand in disgust. "That last was just about the biggest load of shit I've heard or seen since the last fertilizer shuttle arrived at my place this spring," she said in her blunt, hard-syllabled voice. "The Tillerman delegation unanimously endorses the resolution, and-"

The Chamber door flew open, and Krietzmann looked up in reflex outrage. The Convention's closed sessions weren't to be disturbed, and certainly not in such abrupt, unceremonious fashion! He opened his mouth to say something sharp, then paused. Maxwell Devereaux, the Convention Sergeant at Arms, wasn't trying to prevent the interruption; he was hurrying down the aisle from the open door in front of the haggard-faced, uniformed messenger, and his expression sent a sudden icy chill through Krietzmann's blood.

"I'm sorry, Henri-I mean, Mr. President," Devereaux said hoarsely. "I know we're not supposed to, but-" He drew a deep breath, and shook himself, like a man who'd just been punched in the gut. "This is Major Toboc. He just arrived with a dispatch from Split. I... think you'd better view it."

It was hard to tell which of the faces in the private conference room was most ashen.

Henri Krietzmann sat at the head of the table, with Samiha Lababibi at the opposite end. Joachim Alquezar sat to Krietzmann's left, facing Aleksandra Tonkovic across the tabletop, and silence was a cold, leaden weight, crushing down on them all. Finally, Krietzmann cleared his throat.

"Well," he said harshly, "I suppose we should all have seen this coming."

Tonkovic flinched, as if he'd slapped her. Then she stiffened in her chair, shoulders squaring, and glared at him.

"What do you mean by that crack?" she demanded sharply.

Krietzmann blinked at her in genuine surprise. For just a moment, he couldn't imagine what might have set her off. Then he realized, and his own anger flickered at the thought that she could be so petty as to think that at a moment like this-!

No, Henri, he told himself firmly. This isn't the time. And whatever else may be going through her head, she has to be hurting right now. Of course she's looking for someone to take some of that anger and pain out on. But, Jesus, I wish Bernardus were here!

"Contrary to what you may think, Aleksandra," he said, forcing his voice's harshness back into a tone of reason by sheer willpower, "that wasn't an attempt on my part to say 'I told you so.'"

"No?" She glowered at him. But then she scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, and her shoulders slumped once more. "No, I guess it wasn't," she said wearily. "It's just-" Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head, slowly.

"Henri wasn't saying he'd told you so, Aleksandra," Alquezar said after a moment. "And neither am I. But it's probably going to feel like we are."

She looked up at him, green eyes flashing, and it was his turn to shake his head.

"Look, Aleksandra. All of us, including you, have been saying for months now that some degree of backlash was inevitable. And we've all been admitting there's at least a lunatic fringe-like Westman-that was likely to take things into its own hands. But I don't think anyone, including me or Henri, ever expected something like this. We should've at least allowed for the possibility, though, and there's going to be a lot of recriminations-and self -recrimination-while we cope with the reality. Some of it's going to hurt, and a lot of it's going to be ugly. But here in this room, the four of us-especially!-have to be able to talk to each other as frankly as we possibly can."

She glared at him for a few more seconds, then nodded, manifestly unwillingly.

"All right. I can see that."

"Thank you," he said softly. Then he drew a deep breath. "But having said all that, Aleksandra, this is exactly the sort of incident I've been most afraid of. Oh, I never expected something this bloody, this... vicious, or on such a scale, so quickly. But I've been predicting violent acts of some sort, and I have to reiterate my position. The longer we drag out this Convention, the worse it's going to get. And the worse it gets, the more likely the Star Kingdom is to rethink its willingness to accept the original plebiscite at all."

"Oh, nonsense!" Tonkovic said sharply. Yet it was evident she was throttling her own deep surge of anger and trying to maintain at least some detachment. "Of course this was a horrible, horrible act! I've always known Agnes Nordbrandt was an idiot, but I never guessed she was a lunatic, as well. The woman has to be insane-she and her entire NRP! Not that an insanity defense's going to help her when we apprehend her! But blaming her actions on the fact that the Convention hasn't reported out a draft Constitution yet is ludicrous!"

"I didn't blame her actions on the delays. What I said is-"

"A moment, Joachim, please," Lababibi interrupted gently, and he paused, looking at her.

"Of course you're not saying that somehow Aleksandra's refusal to abandon her position created Nordbrandt or this 'Freedom Alliance of Kornati' nightmare of hers. But you are arguing that the extended debate here in Thimble helped create the opportunity for her to commit this atrocity. And that any failure to embrace your party's platform will only make things worse. Not to mention your implication that if things do get worse, Manticore will probably decide to reject our annexation request, after all."

Alquezar's jaw muscles clenched, and he glowered at her, his brown eyes hard. But then he flipped one hand in a gesture of unwilling assent-or at least concession.

"All right," he acknowledged. "I suppose I am. But I also think that whether Aleksandra agrees with me or not, these are serious concerns which need to be addressed."

"I think Joachim has a point," Krietzmann said in his most noninflammatory tones. Despite his effort to avoid any appearance of additional provocation, Tonkovic glared at him. And, he noticed, Lababibi didn't look especially happy, either.

"First," Tonkovic said, "let's remember whose planet this happened on. I'm not just the Split System's chief of delegation here at the Convention. I'm also the Planetary President of Kornati. Vuk Rajkovic is the acting head of state-my deputy, while I'm here on Thimble. And those people who were killed in the Nemanja Building were colleagues of mine. They were my friends , damn it! People I've known for decades-some of them literally all my life! And even the people I never met were my citizens, my people. Don't you ever think, not for one fleeting second, that I don't want Agnes Nordbrandt and every one of her butchering lunatics arrested, tried, and executed for this atrocity. And when the time comes, I'll put my own name in the hat when the court draws the lots for the firing squad!

"But you've seen the reports. I'm assuming you've read them as carefully as I did, and there's nothing in any of them to indicate that this Freedom Alliance of hers is anything but a tiny, super-violent splinter group. Yes, they planted bombs all over the capital. And yes, they got away with it. But not because they have thousands of members lurking behind every hedge, every door, with bombs in their hands. They obviously planned this all very carefully, and before she went underground, Nordbrandt was a member of Parliament herself. She had access to all our security data, all our contingency plans. Of course she knew where the loopholes were-where we were vulnerable! We should have completely overhauled all of our security arrangements as soon as she dropped out of sight. I admit that. And the responsibility for our failure to do so rests squarely on my shoulders. But they did it with homemade weapons. With commercially available blasting compound, and with timers and detonators any farmer on Kornati would have in the electronics bins in his barn. They planned it meticulously; they placed their bombs to inflict the maximum possible casualties and psychological shock; and much as I hate them, they showed as much skill as ruthlessness in carrying it out. They're obviously a serious threat, one we have to take seriously. But they're not ten meters tall, and they can't pour themselves through keyholes like vampires, and they damned sure aren't werewolves we're going to need silver pulser darts to kill!"