“I ask you only because, Reverend Father, you are one of the few able men I know who is not impossibly busy. Merely very busy.”

Dmwoski nodded. “The forces of the Order and of the lay militia of the Queen of Angels Commonwealth march even as we speak; the Abbey and its daughter-houses and the civil administration are functioning well.”

“I expected nothing else,” Ignatius said. “It’s not the first time we’ve marched north towards Portland.”

They both appreciated the irony of that; the last time it had been to fight the Association, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, at the end of the War of the Eye.

“And now . . .”

He indicated his desk as he sat behind it. It wasn’t precisely cluttered; he was a man of painstaking neatness, the habits of a monk and a soldier and an engineer combined. But it was certainly crowded, and it also held a tray with the remains of a working lunch of bread, butter, cheese, sausage and a vegetable salad. The room was brightly lit by an overhead skylight, but the shabbiness of long disuse lingered in corners that had evaded a whirlwind of hasty patching and renovation.

“I am in the midst of trying to erect the skeleton of an administrative structure to coordinate our efforts while His Majesty fights a major war. All in the course of a month and without a legal or constitutional framework as yet. Not to mention no source of funds once what we brought from Iowa runs out.”

“I hope that is not self-pity I hear in your tone, my son. The reward for work well done . . .”

“Is more work, yes.”

“It seems the Association is providing generous assistance,” Dmwoski said, a slight dryness in his tone.

“As you see, rather too much so; that is why I picked this building, unused since the Change and obviously temporary. It would have been easier just to use the Lady Regent’s administrative apparatus . . .”

“. . . which would have meant a most unfortunate precedent, and all the other states would be justly terrified that the new kingdom is the Association in disguise, yes,” Dmwoski said.

“Your lecture to the novices on that curious old concept of initial path dependency suddenly seems much more relevant,” Ignatius said.

They shared a brief chuckle. The Order was a militant offshoot of the original Benedictine house at Mt. Angel; that mutation had been a necessity of survival in the terrible years, approved by the Church a decade later when contact had been restored with the new Pope and Curia in Badia. It had organized an enclave of survival, and it had played a significant role in the wars against the Association and Norman Arminger’s schismatic antipope Leo. In the years since the Order had helped bring civilization back to remote areas, spreading skills, teaching and guarding. That necessarily meant a fairly close acquaintance with politics, if only to protect their bailiwick around Mt. Angel and the daughter-houses.