“I still am.”

Carlyle breathed a short sigh. “Only if you do this. There’s one more chance, Julia. You can save the Cousins. It’s not hard to prove you’ve been manipulating the CFB. All their key staff are your parishioners, and I’m sure, if an expert analyzed the way they’ve been editing how letters are sorted, they could see that it supported your goals.”

“That’s not proof.”

“True, it’s not, it’s circumstantial, enough to cause doubt but not enough to bring to trial. On the other hand, if you confess—”

“Confess?”

“Confess that you have been calling the shots in the CFB.”

“Why, in the name of sanity, would I confess?”

“Because, if everyone thinks you controlled the CFB, they won’t look for anything deeper. The press smells blood, Julia. They’re not going to let up until they’ve sunk their teeth into someone. It could be you instead of the heart of the Cousins.”

Julia stretched back. “Mmm. Doesn’t sound very appealing.”

“No? The whole point of you sending me into the CFB was to help them fight more sinister outside control. You achieved that, twice in fact.”

“Twice?”

“You helped the CFB fight back against the original outside manipulation, and you also slowed Danaë’s brood down. If you tell everyone you only hijacked the CFB in order to keep Danaë out, we can expose what the Mitsubishi set-sets were doing, make it look like there was nothing rotten in the CFB before Madame started moving in on it, and no one ever needs to learn the truth. The Cousins stay safe, Madame is exposed, and you wind up a hero.”

Julia’s eyes went wide. “Madame? You think I was fighting Madame directly? That’s very flattering, Carlyle, but honestly I thought I trained you better than this.”

“Doesn’t Danaë Mitsubishi work for Madame? If President Ganymede was born at Madame’s, their twin sister was too.”

Julia shook her head. “You’re useless when it comes to period thinking, aren’t you, Carlyle? When a lady weds she throws away all allegiance to her parents and transfers it to her husband. Danaë isn’t working for Madame. It’s Director Andō who wants the Cousins torn down, not Madame.”

“Andō?” Carlyle trembled. “That… That’s even worse! The Mitsubishi Director themself trying to tear the Cousins down. That’s what you have to tell the police!”

“Why?” Julia shot back. “Why should I? I like Danaë, we have endless fun.”

Carlyle’s brows knit. “They’re destroying a Hive! Is that not registering in your mind? Almost two billion people. There’s never been a social disaster on this scale!”

“That may be true,” Julia answered, “but it’s for the world’s good.”

“What?”

“I know it is hard for you to see, Carlyle, but the Cousins have to go. The Masons are on their way to a monopoly which will destroy the Hive system. The Cousins are enabling that. You want to know what Darcy Sok was really doing in the CFB? Altering the sorting programs, distorting the data? They were trying to counter the control that’s already there.”