The king made her face him. «You can’t be here. The others were reluctant enough to let me take Their Grace into my care, but they were adamant I permit them no contact with others involved in the conspiracy. That includes you.»

«Me?» Painted lashes fluttered over eyes sparkling with innocence. «Oh, that’s absurd. This is all a conspiracy against me, not one of mine, remember? I’m no more involved with O.S. than is Felix! Or Cornel! Ganymede is my ward. I raised him since infancy. I know what he needs, his favorite foods, how sensitive he is. Let me nurse him. If anyone can coax him back to health, I can.»

Ganymede, still in my lap, breathed hard. ‘Ward’—here was a cold term. Was he an orphan, then? She merely a ‘guardian,’ this woman who had crafted him and his sister gene by gene from the ducal genome she had purchased? Who had rented the womb that carried him? Who oversaw his birth, his education, and held him a thousand times against her breast in childhood, but never once to nurse? Madame has many ‘wards,’ bred and polished in her boudoir. They have no other parent, but she has only one Son.

The king still held her fast. «I’m sorry, Madame. If anyone found out you two even came in contact, they’d ship Ganymede straight back to the public jail again. Let me take care of things. You can send the twins’ old nurse over if you want, but you yourself can’t be here.»

She gave a pouting frown. «Erlea says you’re talking about abdication.»

Spain choked. «What?!»

Hobbes: “What?!”

Reader (laughingly): “Oh, poor dear Thomas.”

Hobbes: “The Leviathan cut its own head off in the middle of a war! He’ll have more deaths on his conscience than any man living or dead!”

Reader: “Yes, well, you for one are dead for the moment, friend Thomas, so the king can’t hear you, and I already agree with you, so there’s no point reiterating here.”

Hobbes: “Without the sovereign, society turns back into a nest of beasts! All Europe will tumble into chaos! All the world!”

Reader: “Calm, Thomas, calm. It’s not as dire as that. Leave this to Mycroft. You know he has your volume in his pocket even now, filling out the empty bulge where Apollo’s Iliad lay so long hidden. Intervening centuries may keep you and me from interfering, but Mycroft is contemporary with these events, and has the king’s ear. Our little Greek is not about to let Spain doom Europe.”