Well, be fair, Felicia, she told herself. It’s not all fear of what the Manties’ weapons can do, now is it? Some of those people have started getting messengers from transstellars based in their home systems. A glimmer of what withdrawing all those Manticoran merchantmen and shutting down the hyper bridges really means is starting to sink in, and they don’t like that a bit. They want the hide of anyone associated with the people getting ready to inflict that much hurt on their corporate sponsors.

No doubt they did, yet what had surprised her even more than the fury coming at her home system from so many quarters was the fact that some of the other delegations had actually spoken in Beowulf’s behalf. Not that Beowulf’s actions met with complete approbation even from them, because they didn’t. But at least some of the League’s elected representatives truly did seem more concerned about getting at the truth, or even considering the legal and constitutional implications of Bewoulf’s acts, than with simply scapegoating someone else.

Of course, there weren’t very many of them.

Oh, be fair, she scolded herself again, rather more seriously. Standing up to this kind of hysteria at all requires more guts than anyone running for the Assembly ever expected to need! You always recognized it was really only a rubber stamp for people like the Mandarins, didn’t you? Sure, you wanted to change that, but you knew damned well deep inside that you weren’t going to. Nobody was.

And now nobody’s ever going to have the chance to.

She gave herself a mental shake as that last thought ran through her mind. They weren’t going to break the Mandarins’ grip today, no. She knew that. But there was still hope for the future, wasn’t there? Didn’t there have to be? Look at what had happened in the Republic of Haven. They’d recovered their Constitution, and it looked like they were making that stand up, too. Of course, the Republic was a lot smaller than the League, and its corruption had been given nowhere near as long to sink into the blood and the bone of their political processes. Yet people like Eloise Pritchart and Thomas Theisman had pulled it off, and that meant it truly was possible for the League as well.

And it looks like the League’s going to get just as badly hammered militarily as the People’s Republic ever did, she reminded herself glumly. The question’s whether or not it’ll learn enough along the way to—

The shimmering reverberation of a deep-toned musical chime echoed over the Chamber of Stars’ vastness, interrupting her thoughts.

The Assembly was in session.

* * *