“Your Majesty!” The President of the Directory stood up from the table where he and his colleagues had been arguing over an unrolled map of Vordan City. Patriot Guards were everywhere, standing beside the doorway and along the walls, armed with halberds and army muskets. Clearly, the Directory was taking no chances with its own safety.

“I can’t tell you how comforting it is to see you unharmed,” Maurisk went on, with an attempt at a smile. “I had heard reports that you’d left before the . . . event, but things are obviously very confused. We feared the worst.”

“Her Majesty is fine,” Sothe said. “No thanks to the efforts of the Patriot Guard, I might add. But many others are not.”

“I’ve sent for help,” Maurisk said. “Doctors are on the way from the University. And we’ve put the city on alert.”

Raesinia kept her eyes on Maurisk, saying nothing. His smile flickered, just briefly.

“Do you think,” she said after a moment, “the president and I could have a moment in private?”

Maurisk looked surprised, but he gestured sharply at the other Directory members. The speed with which they hurried out of the room spoke volumes about where the power in the Directory lay. Only Durenne, a tall, gangly man with a beak of a nose and a queue of long black hair, paused long enough to catch Raesinia’s eye before leaving. The Patriot Guards followed, but Sothe lingered.

“Wait outside,” Raesinia told her. “I won’t be long.”

Sothe hesitated briefly, then followed the guards out the front door. Maurisk and Raesinia were left alone in the café, its chairs scattered and overturned by fleeing patrons, its front windows shattered by the blast. Glass crunched under Raesinia’s heel as she stepped forward.

“I’m not going to ask you if you were responsible for this,” she said. “I’m sure you’d deny it, even just between us.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Your Majesty,” Maurisk said.

His tone was polite, but there was acid hatred in his eyes. After the death of the king and the upheaval that had created the Deputies-General, he’d discovered Raesinia’s double life as revolutionary conspirator and princess royal. He hated her for that, for using the idealistic fervor of his friends as a weapon to topple the Last Duke. The deaths that haunted Raesinia’s conscience seemed to matter less to him than the fact that he’d been a tool of the very monarchy he so despised.