Spain took a slow breath. “My peacekeeping forces are few. They can either concentrate on guarding vital spots or on training new forces, either on preparing short-term or preparing long-term, but not both. The same is true of my industry. I can make medicine, or I can make machines that can make a thousand times as much medicine later on, but if the latter takes too long it leaves me with nothing. I don’t know where to place my resources.”

Achilles frowned his sympathy. “I know right now nothing would be more valuable than for me to be able to say ‘this is it’ or ‘this isn’t it,’ to give us all a date, an hour we can call war. I can’t. I want that too. All anyone can do right now is err on the side of assuming war will come sooner rather than later.”

“And yet you yourself aren’t offering real help to anyone yet. Does that not betray the fact that you yourself think war is still some time off?”

“No, it just means I’d rather plunge in with nothing than help someone who turns out to be my enemy.”

“I’m not used to thinking of myself as having enemies.”

“Perry-Kraye was your enemy for years, you just didn’t let yourself admit it. Things might have gone better if you had. O.S. and those who used them were also your enemies, and, as things degenerate, you’ll have more.”

“I know.”

“Things will degenerate.”

“I know.”

Headstrong Achilles almost smiled. “You really do know, don’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You can read men. Mycroft says you read them better than anyone, your Nephew excepted.”

“Oh? Now, I’d have thought Mycroft would reserve that praise for Ancelet.” He shot me a long smile. “Or for my Donatien.” He paused even longer now, to test me. “And we must not underestimate my sister’s senses.”

Sister? Nephew? I know my dynasties, Mycroft. Isabel Carlos II had no siblings.

Of course not, reader, and the king, who hoped so long that Kraye-turned-Perry might still be redeemed, is no reader of men.

Faust: “Since you ask, the answer, in fact, is no, I don’t have a good sense of how things will fall out, largely because of you.”

Achilles: “Me?”

Faust: “Pick a number, any number.”

Achilles: “What?”

Faust: “Don’t pause, don’t overthink, just say a number, first one that pops into your head.”

Achilles: “Twelve.”

Faust: “Magnificent. How many of the others did you test before me?”

Achilles: “What?”