The bathroom stood next to a swinging door leading into the body of the house. I pushed on it—anyone could make a mistake—and a Carnifice guard sprang to life in the hall beyond. He saw my green media badge and said, “House is off–limits to guests, ma’am. If you’re looking for the bathroom it’s next to this door. And don’t you want to be at the press conference? It’s starting in two minutes.”

I murmured an apology and slipped into the bathroom. The first swim heat would start immediately after the press conference. It was the one for the littlest children, in which the Baladines’ younger daughter was competing. Both Eleanor and BB would be at the pool for that, or at least Robbie had seemed to think so. “They’ll both want to see the girls beat everyone else, or if they lose, BB and Eleanor will want to show them everything they did wrong. They love that kind of stuff.”

He told me that at dinner Friday evening. When he came into the visitors’ room at Camp Muggerton on lagging steps, his head down, I felt an uncomfortable parallel to the visitors’ room at Coolis, but when he saw me his face lit up.

I had been afraid he’d blow my cover out of surprise, but after a moment’s confusion he said, “Oh, I thought—oh, it’s you, Aunt Claudia.”

Over chicken and mashed potatoes at a diner in Columbia, he begged me to take him away. I wished I could but told him that would put real teeth into his father’s kidnapping charge and I might not manage an acquittal.

He started crying, apologizing between sobs, but Camp Muggerton was a miserable place, the hazing was horrible, he couldn’t get anything right, he was always last at everything. And they were on strict orders about his diet, did I know that?

I knew that—Major Enderby had stressed it when I was sent to his office for a visitor’s pass. The major was pleased to see a family member paying a visit: most of the boys were home for the holiday weekend, and young Robert felt left out, having to stay in camp, but Commander and Mrs. Baladine thought it better he not be put in the way of the temptation of a big party. I gave my most dazzling smile and nodded gravely when the major told me Robbie was not allowed fat or sweets of any kind—so no Big Macs and shakes, ma’am.

I said that Robbie’s weight was a trial to the whole family and everyone wondered where it came from. Certainly not my sister’s and my side, although Commander Baladine’s mother had been a plump little woman.