“Actually, if you have any of that truly excellent coffee of yours, I would kill for a cup.” Rabenstrange shook his head. “We do many things well in New Potsdam. Unfortunately, brewing potable coffee isn’t one of them.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” MacGuiness acknowledged, with only the smallest flicker of a smile, then turned to Honor. “And for you, Your Grace?” he inquired innocently.

“If Herzog von Rabenstrange is prepared to drink your coffee, then I’m happy for you, Mac,” she assured him gravely. “In my own case, however, I believe I’d prefer an Old Tillman.”

“Of course,” he murmured once more, and departed for his pantry.

“You’ve really gotten to know me and my menagerie entirely too well for my peace of mind, Chien-lu,” Honor said, and he chuckled.

“Perhaps I have,” he acknowledged, but then his smile faded. “Perhaps I have,” he repeated in a softer voice, “but I haven’t had the chance yet to tell you how distressed I was to hear about Colonel LaFollet. I know how much he meant to you.”

“Thank you.” Honor paused to swallow, then cleared her throat. “Thank you,” she repeated, “but I’m scarcely alone in having lost people I cared about.”

“No, you aren’t. Which rather brings me to the most burning issue, from my cousin’s perspective, I’m afraid.”

“Of course it does.” Honor nodded. “And on that particular point, I’m afraid I can’t give you the sort of positive assurance I can provide where Simões’ veracity is concerned.”

“That was our impression in New Potsdam.” Rabenstrange shook his head. “Of course, His Majesty and I had very little time to examine the documentation Empress Elizabeth sent to him before I got bundled aboard that miserable little dispatch boat. I had rather more time to consider it at length on the trip here, however, and it seemed evident that ‘positive assurance’ would be…elusive, under the circumstances. Which puts us in what I believe novelists call ‘a delicate position.’”

“I’ve been instructed by Empress Elizabeth and President Pritchart to inform you that if you wish to personally interview Dr. Simões, you’ll certainly be free to do so. For that matter, if you wish, you can bring along an intelligence expert of your choice. And we’re also willing to provide a treecat to tell you whether or not Simões is telling you the truth in response to specific questions.” She shrugged. “I realize we’d be providing the treecat, but it’s the closest we can come to providing a lie detector without risking triggering any suicide protocols that might be hidden away down inside him.”

“A concern which also explains why he hasn’t been interrogated with the assistance of…pharmaceutical enhancement, let’s say,” Rabenstrange observed.