He was chatting with Daoud near the stage—there had been even more speeches, but at least everyone had dry feet during these—when Lillian saw a shift in the flow of the crowd around them: a mass movement of bodies like an incoming tide that bore on its foam the statuesque figure of Opal Saeger.

Tall, raw-boned, with a jaw angled to cut granite, she wore a structural gown in matte white silk. She did not look like she knew how to move in it, and Lillian scented bad advice. On someone a little less blunt, it would have been a statement. On Saeger it looked like cardboard. They should have put her in a suit, or at least something a little simpler.

She drew up to the third point in what was now a triangle, offering her hand first to Daoud, and then Jinadh. Lillian plucked two coupes from a passing tray and slipped sideways through the crowd, careful not to spill.

“Spice cake,” she said, deliberately watching her hands as she approached. “I got you a—oh.”

“Ah,” said Jinadh. Lillian could hear the disappointment in his voice, but only by virtue of marriage. No one else would pick it up. “Ms. Saeger, this is my wife. Lillian DePaul.”

At least he took one of the coupes from her, so she could shake. “A pleasure to meet you, after hearing so much. How is the campaign trail treating you?”

“Better than the Ospies did,” said Saeger, and Lillian would have rolled her eyes if she weren’t on her best behavior. This woman could be the next prime minister. This woman could give her a job.

Torture-surviving resistance hero was a large part of Saeger’s appeal. It played well with angry folk who’d lost something to the Ospies. It got her positive coverage in the Clarion, Morning Bulletin, and on a few of the newer call signs cropping up on the airwaves. It didn’t sing so sweet with the people burned by the Catwalk’s bombing campaigns. Even if the selfsame organization had transitioned in popular assessment from terrorists to liberators, once they started distributing aid along the only rail lines they’d left operational. Aid that went largely to sympathetic towns and cities, or those that could be swayed by a soft hand. Anywhere perceived to have an Ospie majority starved.

The Telegraph reliably took a piece out of Saeger, branding her a disorganized upstart. Lillian was surprised to find herself agreeing with their op-eds for the first time in her life.

But politics wasn’t about agreeing with people; it was about mutual benefits and compromise. So Lillian smiled through Saeger’s grim rejoinder and replied with, “That’s not saying much.”

“No,” said Saeger. “It certainly isn’t. Load of good it did them, in the end. Thanks to Pulan Satri. And the rest of Porachis, eventually.”