“Better than me,” he said, “at least when they are in Geddan.” Which was true. She wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting any word game in Porashtu. She could speak and write it with fluency, but the kind of linguistic and cultural nuance a crossword puzzle required? Beyond her reach.

His, too, from the scribbled-out letters in each box. How he could keep his answers straight from his mistakes, she didn’t know. “This one, here?” she asked, pointing. He nodded.

On the wireless, a mournful little foxtrot number wound down and was replaced by the chimes that heralded an hourly news broadcast. Lillian looked up from the paper toward the radio, as though watching its dial would clarify the signal.

“Good evening to the folks at home,” said the anchor. “This is Hour by Hour, and I’m Marlowe Flanders with your late-breaking nightly news.”

Flanders had a smarmy Amberlinian drone that put Lillian’s teeth on edge, though it probably played well with city-born listeners.

“Do we have to—?” said Jinadh, but Lillian shushed him.

“Now normally,” Flanders continued, “I’d lead up to the big story with a lot of little tidbits from today. But today the tidbits have been blasted out of the water by a story I only got a whiff of this afternoon.”

That was a bit … sensational, for the hourly bulletin. Lillian sat up straighter, crossword puzzle forgotten.

“Hunting down Ospies hasn’t been a priority of the provisional government,” said Flanders. “If anything, they’ve decided to let bygones be bygones. In fact, as some of you may know, former Ospie foreign service member Lillian DePaul is a part of the provisional government’s press office.”

Lillian’s hand, holding Jinadh’s pen, fell to the paper in her lap.

“If you were keeping up with the news under Acherby, you saw her fall from favor. But you also know she didn’t drop the Ospies for the greater good. DePaul collaborated with the Ospies in Porachis for three years before eloping to Asu with a Porachin noble. For three years, she did due diligence keeping up Acherby’s image in the world at large. Coerced, she says: forced to do their dirty work to save her son.”

Stephen shifted, staring intently at a spot on the carpet.

“And that was good enough for some of you,” said Flanders. “I won’t judge. We all had a hard time of it under Acherby. But the story I’ve got for you now makes that a much harder sell.”

Ink flowed from the pen’s nib into the fibers of the paper, soaking them black in a spreading circle. She stared at the empty boxes Jinadh had asked her to help fill, and knew what was coming next.