To Regina, Brica showed an alarming lack of interest in the subtleties of human interaction. “It isn’t that,” Regina said slowly, massaging her daughter’s hands. “Not really. Myrddin is no fool, whatever else he is. He knows the value of record keeping as well as I do. His problem is not the record keeping but who’s keeping the records.”

“You?”

“Myrddin sees me as a rival for Artorius’s attention. He whispers in one ear about the glory of the Celtae and the magic of the old ways; I whisper in the other about record keeping and tax revenues. We are like two poles, like past and future.”

Brica grinned. “But you are the one who sleeps with the riothamus.”

“Yes. Though I think that if Myrddin thought he could lure Artorius to his bed he would cut himself a new hole—”

Brica’s mouth gaped. “Mother!”

Regina patted her hand. “Reassuring to know I can still shock you, dear. Anyhow, I think the riothamus likes having us both around, even having us fight, so he can take in contrasting opinions. The mark of a wise leader . . .”

Artorius still called her his queen, his Morrigan. But their relationship nowadays had little to do with the fierce love of gods—little to do with passion, in fact, for he rarely visited her bed, even in the rare intervals he broke off from his campaigning and alliance building to return to the fort by the Caml.

Artorius’s bold early notions of stepping down and submitting himself to election had long been quietly dropped. But he and Regina had privately spoken of his own eventual succession, and the need for him to find male descendants. It was unspoken between them, but it was obvious that she would not be the source of his children and the derbfine that would follow. She suspected he was also talking to other advisers, such as Myrddin—and perhaps he was already taking other women to his bed. But she cared nothing for that; her liaison with Artorius, in ensuring her own survival and Brica’s, was serving her purposes.

As Regina mused, Brica’s attention was drifting. Galba was moving about at the back of the manufactory, wiping his hands on a rag and joking with another worker.