“Yes, I had planned to ask you to.”

“You did, before you died. Why did you ask me to name myself for her?”

“Because I hoped it would inspire you to take seriously what’s coming next, and what it would require from you,” Attavio VI said. “Do you know about the Count of Claremont, on End?”

“I do,” Cardenia said. “An old lover of yours.”

Attavio VI smiled. “No, not at all. A friend. A very good friend, and a scientist. One who brought me information that no one else had, and that no one else would have wanted to see. One who needed to do his work and research insulated from the stupidities of court, and government, and even of the community of scientists in the Interdependency. He’s someone who has been collecting data for more than thirty years now. He knows more about what’s coming next than anyone else. A thing you must be prepared for. A thing you are not in the least prepared for, now. And a thing I worry that you will not be strong enough to see through.”

Cardenia stared at the apparition of Attavio VI, which stood there, a small, pleasant, distracted smile on its face.

“Well?” Cardenia said, finally. “What is it?”

Chapter 4

“Who here knows what the Interdependency is?” Marce Claremont asked, from the well of the planetarium.

From the chairs of the planetarium, the hands of several eight-year-olds shot upward. Marce scanned the hands, looking for the one who seemed to most urgently need to answer the question. He picked a hand sitting in the second arc of chairs. “Yes? You.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” the child said. Behind the child, Marce saw one of the adult chaperones roll her eyes, get up, grab the child by the hand, and start walking him to the bathrooms. Then he picked another kid.

“It’s the nation of systems we all live in,” said the girl.

“That’s right,” Marce said, and pressed a button on his tablet to dim the lights and start his presentation. “It’s the nation of systems in which we live. But what does that really mean?”

Before he could continue, the planetarium rocked slightly as what sounded like two interceptors buzzed the university science center the planetarium was part of. The children started at the noise, the chaperones trying to hush them and telling them everything would be all right.

Marce doubted everything was actually going to be all right. The University of Opole, which housed the science center, was far from the capital and the focus of the fighting. But in the last week things had taken a decisive turn against the duke and his loyalist forces, and now even the far provinces had sprouted rebels, and the violence that came with revolution.