Viera nodded, pushed aside the bits of potato she’d been cutting, and reached for a bunch of slightly wilted-looking carrots. Marcus looked around. The population of the church had thinned out considerably since Raesinia took charge, and Mrs. Felda was taking the opportunity to give it a thorough cleaning. The smell of salts and vinegar was strong in the air, as were the shouts of the apparently tireless old woman as she ran after her charges.

“So what should we do about it?” Marcus said.

“The powder?” Viera paused in her chopping, shrugged, and went back to it. “It depends. It’s not going to hinder Janus much, so from that point of view we don’t need to do much more than warn them when they get here.”

Marcus nodded, feeling a little relieved, but she went on.

“On the other hand, if they are mining the buildings, and they know what they’re doing, then they’re going to bring down an awful lot of masonry. And I doubt they’ll give the game away by warning the people who live there. So from that point of view”—she separated the top of the carrot with a particularly sharp whack of the knife—“it might be worth our trying to stop them.”

“Damn,” Marcus said quietly. Janus, if he were in command, might weigh the pros and cons of rescuing the people in the rigged buildings. Raesinia would not. And Raesinia’s in command now.

“One thing we should definitely do is have a firefighting crew ready,” Viera said, starting on another carrot. “It’s too cold and wet to get a serious blaze going, but flash powder burns spread a lot of hot sparks around.”

Marcus nodded absently, distracted by a commotion at the front door. Raesinia had returned. Cora and Walnut went to greet her—the teenager was half a head taller, and the huge man dwarfed the queen, but it was clear nonetheless who was in charge. Marcus had seen it a dozen times now, but he still marveled. I always wondered how a girl like her managed to put together a conspiracy that toppled the government. It no longer seemed so mysterious.

It reminded him of Janus, in an odd way. People around Raesinia were drawn into her orbit, the same way the general exerted a palpable force on nearly everyone he met. The difference, Marcus thought, was that where Janus was well aware of the extent of his personal magnetism and used it to his advantage, Raesinia was almost unconscious of hers. She doesn’t plan like Janus. She just keeps moving forward, one step at a time, and we fall in behind her.