The Prophet and President-General Thurston undoubtedly know the strength of the League of Des Moines to the last man and pike, she thought. There’s no harm in encouraging people here by telling them the same things. Don’t make things secret just for secrecy’s sake, Sandra! That way lies madness.

She paused for a second, then decided and spoke: “It’s true that the High King is in Montival once more; and the former Princess Mathilda is now Her Highness, Mathilda, High Queen of Montival. Though of course we haven’t had the coronation yet, that will have to wait a little.”

That brought exclamations of delight, and she went on: “They’re hurrying south with a substantial force of troops, from our allies to the east and from the Okanogan baronies. And their diplomacy has secured a very much larger army to attack the enemy on their eastern border; over eighty thousand men are marching on Corwin, according to our latest news.”

We can fight wars across continents again instead of merely with our immediate neighbors, Sandra thought. Oh, hurrah for the light of returning civilization!

“And the Sword?” Deonisia asked breathlessly. “My lady?”

And there’s no point in pretending that the Sword isn’t what it undoubtedly is.

“The Sword of the Lady is . . .”

Terrifying, she thought. Like a myth, something out of the Chansons de Geste or Wagner, but actually there to be seen and touched. Putting me at serious risk of terminal worldview collapse.

Aloud she completed the sentence: “. . . all that rumor spoke of, and more. Forged in Heaven for the hand of our High King Artos, like Durendal and Curtana and Joyeuse.”

The siblings all smiled and glanced at each other. “That’s very good hearing, Your Grace,” Érard said. “God be praised, and Holy Mary who watches over the Association . . . I mean, Montival . . . and the Princess . . . High Queen . . . Mathilda!”

“God be praised indeed. And His mother and all the bright company of the saints,” she said, and joined in crossing herself.

With perhaps a sliver less sheer pleasure at her own hypocrisy than the gesture usually gave her, since it turned out from all the evidence that there really was something to it. It was hard, to be stripped of the cold comforts of her simple atheistic faith in middle-age. The more so as the evidence seemed to lead to the conclusion that all the religions were true, including the ones that flatly contradicted each other.

My head hurts when I try to reconcile that with . . . with anything! It’s one thing to be an atheist, and another to be a flat earth atheist. But whatever else is true, it’s also true that human beings can no more live without politics than they can without air. Politics I can handle.

“Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”