It failed. It was inevitable. No one knew. The pact between Sniper and my Master could restrain Caesar, Papadelias, Spain, even Tully Mardi for a month, but a leader’s urging has only so much power over a frightened widow with a jagged stone. Not a day passed from the fifteenth to the twenty-third that did not see riot, fire, and somewhere or another a peppering of death. Still, the Will to Battle was not yet Battle. When every guest at a dinner has a motive for wanting the host dead, in one sense it doesn’t really matter who strikes first, the oppressed stepdaughter or the vengeful rival—either way, the victim dies. Yet, in another sense, it does matter which heart heeds conscience, and which breaks civilization’s most ancient law and makes itself a true hospiticide. Peace was our murdered host, the dwindling chance, nurtured by Senate, Kosala, and Ancelet, that our recent wrongs might be righted by Law. In one sense it did not matter which act snuffed that hope first, but those industrious guardians who bought us precious days deserve due credit, especially the strange ones.

Kosala: “This offer came from Dominic?”

Greenpeace: “Partly, though I developed the details.”

Kosala: “To give me one point one million properties?”

Greenpeace: “Distributed fairly evenly around the globe, well located, mostly urban. You’re welcome to renovate the existing buildings as needed. We’ll offer an indefinite lease, no payment asked, on condition they are returned to their current owners when the crisis, and the recovery from the crisis, are done. No time limit specified, but the situation should be reviewed annually starting in four years.”

Kosala: “And I’m to use these properties for what, precisely?”

Fine print spread, hypnotic as zebra stripes, across Kosala’s office wall as Mitsubishi Greenpeace Director Jyothi Bandyopadhyay summoned her draft. “The current language suggests hospitals, refugee housing, soup kitchens, storage of humanitarian supplies, fire stations, and quote ‘other comparable use.’ We didn’t want to limit it since no one knows what might actually happen in this conflict. Will we need quarantine sites? Radiation scrubbers? POW camps? We want you to decide what to use them for, since you’re the one who’s pledged to build a new emergency center in every city in the world.”

Dark times, reader, when a million free hospitals do not make a Cousin’s face brighten. “That plan isn’t public yet.”

Greenpeace: “Then both can be announced together. We want to give you as much freedom as possible to use this land to help the human race.”

Kosala: “And you hope that giving us rent-free land for hospitals will defuse the demands for the Mitsubishi to give up your land monopoly?”

Greenpeace: “Monopoly is a strong word.”

Kosala: “Majority.”

Greenpeace: “Majority is a strong word.”

Kosala: “It’s also true.”