“Don’t talk nonsense.” Felix Faust never seems so exhausted as when he must repeat himself. “You’re the King of Spain. You can’t marry a prostitute. What would your friend the pope say?”

Spain jumped like a startled hare at every rustle from the bedroom, where a cloud of maids oversaw Madame’s convalescence after the latest tests to track the health of her impending Son. The obstetrician had shooed out all visitors, too many suitors competing to hold Madame’s hands and ask repetitious questions. When the images of the Fetus were ready for viewing, the gentlemen would be summoned to share the moment with the blushing mother-to-be, but until then they were banished to her little foyer, whose painted cherubs seemed to grin with glee at the discord sown among Earth’s leaders by the doctor’s confirmation of the father.

“I’ll abdicate if I have to!” The King fidgeted as he paced, fingering the hem of his blue Prime Minister’s sash, its row of gold stars perfect with his waistcoat of champagne silk. “I won’t leave my child to be raised in secret like some object of shame.”

“Your Majesty, why do we have to say it’s your child?” Twenty-two years ago Censor Ancelet looked more haggard than he does now, sleep-starved, scrawny, all the symptoms of self-neglect which would not be cured until marriage merged his tiny all-vocateur French Graylaw bash’ with Kosala’s huge and loving Indian Cousin one. “Without the test,” he pressed, “could anyone in this room say with certainty the child wasn’t ours?” His eyes tested them all, the King first, then Faust, Director Andō, and the Emperor.

Ganymede raised an idle alabaster hand. The young Duke lounged on the central sofa, the perfection of his flesh, still sparkling with youth, nude except for a translucent faux-Greek drape of the sort that only sculptures, nymphs, and gods can get away with. This was seven years after Danaë’s marriage, and the twins had succeeded in winning Andō the Chief Director’s seat at last, but Ganymede himself had not yet made the transition from objet d’art to President.

“That’s a fair point.” Andō’s voice brightened. “It could as easily be my son. Who’s to say it’s not?”

“It’s not,” His Majesty answered flatly. “Things would be simpler if it were.”

“Then why not let it be? What the public doesn’t know—”

“Is still fact.”

Andō made fists within his sleeves, the timed dyes of the Mitsubishi cloth just starting to ripen from summer green to autumn gold. “Isn’t who raises a child more important than—”

“You can’t be serious, Andō.” Ganymede did not lift his murder-blue eyes from a volume of la Fontaine, whose verses served as distraction from his irritation at the arrival of a Child who would irrevocably outrank him. “A royal prince given over to a common businessman to raise? Marrying my sister may give you the effective rank of Earl, but you’re only a Mitsubishi by adoption, and even the Mitsubishi are barely nobility.”

Andō spun, glaring less at the Duke than at the acquiescing silence of the King and Emperor.