“I see your logic. But it’s going to be hard to convince Marisa of it.”

“Marisa!” Descroix snorted contemptuously.

“Yes, Marisa. Whatever you may think, we still need the Liberals, and when Marisa sees this—” he indicated the text of the note again “—it’s going to be very difficult to convince her that we can’t make at least some concessions. You and I may understand the necessity of not giving in, but she has to consider the more… unruly members of her party. Especially now that Montaigne is making so many waves in the Commons.”

“In that case, don’t show it to her,” Descroix shot back. “She’s so good at closing her eyes to things it would be inconvenient for her to see. Why not take advantage of that with this?”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t like to do exactly that. But everyone in the Star Kingdom knows by now that Pritchart’s sent us a fresh note. And if we don’t make its contents public, in at least general terms, you can be certain that someone—Grosclaude himself, most probably—will see to it that a copy of the original gets leaked to the Opposition. And the ’faxes. But before we make anything public, we’re going to have to share the original with the entire Cabinet. Which means Marisa.”

“Let me think about that for a little while,” Descroix said after a moment. “You’re probably right. I don’t much like the thought of listening to her piss and moan about her precious ‘principles’ and the potential danger of Theisman’s new fleet. God knows she’s been willing enough to share the advantages of stalling the talks! I just think it would be nice if she were willing to shoulder a little of the responsibility, maybe even risk getting her own lily-white hands just a tiny bit soiled doing the dirty work someone has to do. But that doesn’t make you wrong about what would happen if we didn’t brief her in on this.”

The Foreign Secretary gazed off into the distance for several seconds, staring at something only she could see, then snorted softly.

“You know,” she mused, “you and I are the only members of the Cabinet who have actually seen this thing.”

“That’s exactly what we’ve just been talking about, isn’t it?” High Ridge’s brow furrowed in confusion, and she chuckled.

“Of course it is. But it’s just occurred to me that there’s no reason I couldn’t do a little judicious scissors work on Pritchart’s more… objectionable turns of phrase before I handed it to someone like Marisa.”

High Ridge looked at her in shock. She gazed back at him, then grimaced.

“Let’s not start getting holier than thou, Michael!”

“But—I mean, falsifying diplomatic notes—”

“No one’s talking about falsifying anything,” she interrupted. “I wouldn’t insert a single word. For that matter, I wouldn’t even change any of them. I’d just… prune out a few passages completely.”

“And if Pritchart publishes the text herself?”

“I vote we cross that bridge when we come to it. If we release a paraphrase that conveys the same basic information but without using her hardline language, she’ll probably let it go. My sense is that she’d cut us some face-saving slack in that regard. And if I’m wrong, I’m wrong.” She shrugged. “Be honest, Michael. Do you really think we’d have a lot more trouble holding Marisa if Pritchart published the entire text later than if we showed it to her ourselves right now?”