“Thank you for letting me continue. These next three lists contain the names of all known harbinger adepts, that is, people with mastery of technical knowledge which we believe could hatch new harbingers within the next year. The first file lists those adepts who yielded themselves to us freely, whom we now hold cloistered in an occult, where we are certain none of you can touch them. The second lists adepts who did not yield; these we abducted, and now hold by force in an equally shrouded occult. The third lists adepts we were not able to access, who remain dangers to the Earth and life upon it. Our criers have proclaimed these lists in all alpha fora, so the public knows what we have done, and what safety it has bought.”

A hush. “You are…” It was the King of Spain who framed it first. “You are holding people against their will?”

The former Censor did fast math. “More than a thousand people?”

“I am empowered to offer wergild for the Members we have taken from you, but we expect few of you will accept.”

“Money?” I have rarely seen Bryar Kosala make fists. “You would bribe us to condone kidnapping?”

Delian: “It is not a bribe. Most of you have forms of wergild in your laws. We offer only what precedent dictates we should.”

Cousin: “You’re holding more than a thousand people against their will!”

Delian: “None of those taken has been injured,” to Jehovah, “no thinking thing unmade. They have been peacebonded.” The grim crispness of those syllables ‘peacebonded’ made us all shudder, Achilles most of all, our battle-starved Achilles. He loves war, reader, needs it, every bit as much as he hates it.

Cousin: “Just to stop them from—”

Delian: “Endangering all life on Earth.”

Cousin: “There’s a difference between having an ability and being willing to use it. No Cousin would—”

Delian: “Succumb to torture? Or to receiving a ba’kid’s fingers in the mail?”

Cousin: “You know we’re neutral, just working for peace.”

Delian: “We hope you remain so. If you use the Space Elevators to transport aid and never arms, they may not become a military target, and may survive this. Their loss would be a great setback to all human achievement.”

A sound from MASON’s throat. Was that a sob?

Kosala herself was not unmoved as the image rose in her mind of the destruction of those great ladders to the heavens, from which all children first see proof that Earth is round and blue. Her mind’s eye saw those cables snap, the anchor-stations moan and split like fruit clawed open by some selfish monster, but she is stronger before such fears than Caesar is, and did not sob. “And you just expect us all to trust you? Leaving all this in your hands? A superweapons monopoly? And a thousand innocent people held against their will?”