“I think that is what Leo had in mind.”

“And perhaps he was thinking of, say, Isher as lord chancellor and Heugen as lord admiral?”

Jurand’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. “That’s exactly what he was thinking.”

“Then it seems sensible to fill the Arch Lector’s and High Consul’s chairs with seasoned bureaucrats. People who understand the challenges of reform and can bring a weight of experience with them.”

“That does seem sensible— Uh!” She made him twist away from a quick cut and trot back into space, shaking his head.

“I am of the firm opinion, however…” Cut, cut, jab. “That it would be a missed opportunity to return to the way things were in King Jezal’s reign.” Jab, jab, cut. “A regime that ensured its own downfall with its waste, and exploitation, and callous disregard for its subjects.” Steel rang with each word. “We need a new kind of person on the Closed Council. Engineers and architects. Investors and inventors.” Jurand came back at her and she parried once, twice, thrice. “People who understand the tools of the new age.” Jab, jab, jab. “Who can help us build a better Union.”

“I don’t know, Leo can be quite traditional in his—”

“We must move on, Jurand, and we must bring the people with us. After all that was lost in the Great Change. All that was destroyed…” She thought of Vick dan Teufel then, of all people. That oddly moving moment of unexpected honesty, beneath the House of Questions. She lowered her steels and looked Jurand in the eye. “It can’t all be for nothing, you understand?”

He blinked, then swallowed, and his own steels slowly drifted down. “I do.”

Savine shook herself. “Shall we break?” Jurand was starting to get her measure, and that would never do. “There was a time I could keep fencing for hours, but motherhood changes you in so many ways.”

“Oh, of course.”

“You are Leo’s oldest friend,” she said, with a wrong-footing change of subject. “His best friend.” One should never let an opponent get comfortable in a conversation, after all, any more than in fencing, or business, or politics. “And you are a perceptive man. You must know that he and I… are not entirely getting along.” She let him see her pain at that. Her regret. “But we simply must remain friends, for the sake of our children, for the sake of the nation. I have always felt one cannot have too many friends.” She came closer, looking up shyly from under her lashes. “Are…

we friends, Jurand?”

He was caught between sympathy and mistrust. “I would like us to be. I mean, I like to think we are.”

“I cannot tell you what a comfort that is.” She rested a gentle hand on his forearm. A little human contact, carefully administered, can have such a powerful effect. “To know that even if I have made a mess of things with Leo, we will always have a good friend in common.”