“Marshal Chekwri,” Solbli whispered softly in his ear, overriding the earbud cancel. She rarely got this wrong.

“Marshal Chekwri!” Banstegeyn said loudly, mostly to shut the Iwenick up, and turned to greet the Commander in Chief of the Home System Regiment.

The marshal of the First bowed to all, clapped her hands gently in front of her. “May I drag you away?” she asked him. She looked at Geljemyn. “Madame President?”

Geljemyn nodded. “If you must,” she said.

“All yours!” Yegres said merrily. “Don’t hurry bringing him back! Ha ha!”

“Excuse me,” Banstegeyn said. He beamed a smile round all of them, though it soured a little when it got to Yegres.

He suspected only Orpe would be truly sad to see him go.

He followed the marshal back up the steps, trailed by Jevan and Solbli. When they got inside, the marshal turned to his AdC and secretary and smiled as she said, “Thank you.”

Jevan and Solbli looked at Banstegeyn, who gave the tiniest of nods. They looked forlorn as he and the marshal stepped into an elevator.

When the lift started to drop, he looked at the marshal and said, “What?”

The marshal just looked at him with her tired old eyes in her tired old face, and smiled thinly.

He hoisted one eyebrow, then nodded. “Hmm,” he said, more to himself than her.

There were places under the parliament building few people ever got to see, or even knew were there. This was one. The room was round with concave black walls but was otherwise unremarkable, holding a round table and some seats; Banstegeyn’s office was bigger. And had a better view, obviously. More of note had been the three metre-thick doors they had had to negotiate to get here, each of which had swung closed behind them.

“Now?” Banstegeyn asked the marshal after the room’s own massive door had thudded shut.

“Now,” the marshal confirmed.

“How bad is it?”

Chekwri nodded. “It is within what was expected. We just have more detail, choices for action.” She glanced towards the centre of the room. “Shall we?”

They sat. “Scavengers? The other thing? What?”

“The other thing,” Marshal Chekwri confirmed.

Banstegeyn sighed. Chekwri was one of only a handful of people who knew – not counting whoever knew who wasn’t supposed to; he shivered to think how many of them there might be. “What detail, what choices?” he asked her.

“The leak was only to the Fourteenth,” the marshal told him.

He nodded. One regiment. That wasn’t so bad. Still bad enough. “Would be, wouldn’t it?” he said. The Fourteenth – the Socialist-Republican People’s Liberation Regiment, 14, to give it its full title – had been the most sceptical regarding Sublimation from the start, even if it too had finally – at least apparently – come onside. “Who was responsible?”

“Nobody,” the marshal told him.

He looked at her. “Somebody is always responsible,” he told her.