My stomach heaved, but Martin’s support kept me from writhing hard enough to strain my wound. An oath? Jehovah take an oath? The manacle that bound my arm to Martin’s could be broken or, in desperate times, the hand gnawed off, but to the Great Scroll’s Addressee words are more real and more unalterable than breathing, fact, or matter. The stuff that His Peer’s world is made of. Prison wraiths surged around me, dense as Tully’s war-cancer, weaving their spiral bonds of smoke-ribbon like maypole dancers in my mind. A God sworn vassal to the King of Spain? Divine Infinity and all His Goodness yoked to the self-interest of one arbitrary nation-strat? You did not see Him, reader, in the weeks before He was sworn in as Romanovan Tribune, how He pored over its oath of office with linguists, lawyers, sensayers, family, strangers, performing desperate and stubborn exegesis on every word until he satisfied himself that He could understand and execute the pledge to “exercise My judgment to identify and oppose laws which strip too much of human liberty.” So much thought He gave to an oath He could shed with resignation any second, as crabs shed their cramped shells. That was nothing to this—a lifelong oath of loyalty to the Spanish people? I retched again, and lost myself in a maze of insane solutions. Have Spain annex the whole Earth? Replace Jehovah’s bone marrow to purge him of the blood of kings? Travel back in time and murder Charlemagne before he could bear children? Surely, reader, you have wandered in the mire of half-sleep, and forged from dream logic plans that waking must call mad.

Martin spoke up at last, for my sake. “Caesar, Mycroft domum ferendus est. (Mycroft must be taken home.)”

Black-fisted MASON glanced at me with rage’s crimson still darkening his cheeks. Then he turned to Spain. “We will discuss this more another time.”

“Why?” The quick, light question would have sounded natural on other lips, but coming from the king, who fashions his words so gingerly, it sounded like a curse. “In this matter we are not people but peoples. Neither Europe nor your Empire can compromise on this. Discussion will not resolve it.”

MASON’s brows furrowed. “What will?”

Gentle, still so gentle, the king, as if he sees with every breath the millions that a king’s too-hasty word can ruin and so, Leviathan among the Lilliputians, steps on tiptoe. “Hopefully not violence.” His eyes beamed empathy. “I owe you an apology, Caesar. I let harm come to your Familiaris when you kindly lent them to me. I gave you my word of honor that I would return Mycroft Canner safely as soon as we completed the transport of the duke, and I failed.”

“The fault was not yours.” MASON would not look at Madame.

“The promise was mine,” the king answered quickly. “The stain is on my honor.”