High Ridge made himself return her smile with one of his own. One with a carefully gauged edge of steel. Pseudocroc or not, Descroix wasn’t in charge of this meeting. He was, and the sun-bright spaciousness of his luxurious woodpaneled office was the outward sign and confirmation of his ascendancy. The antique clocks which had cluttered its shelves, coffee tables, and credenzas during the Duke of Cromarty’s tenure had disappeared, replaced by his own knickknacks and memorabilia, but this was the same office from which four T-centuries of prime ministers had governed the Star Kingdom, and his smile reminded her of the power he represented.

“Oh, I think we can assume the situation will remain unchanged,” Descroix assured him. Her eyes acknowledged his expression’s message, but even as they did, her own smile showed a decided complacency. “We can keep them talking for as long as we need to. After all, what else can they do?”

“I’m still not convinced we should have completely ignored their last proposals,” another voice said, and High Ridge turned to consider the third member of the quartet which had assembled in his office to await Janacek’s arrival. Marisa Turner, Countess of New Kiev and Chancellor of the Exchequer since the last Cabinet reorganization, looked troubled. Then again, she often looked troubled. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand political necessity when it looked her right in the eye, but she sometimes found pursuing that necessity… distasteful.

Which has never prevented her from pursuing it anyway, he reminded himself cynically.

“We didn’t have much choice, Marisa,” Descroix assured her, and shrugged when New Kiev looked at her. “If we’re going to be completely honest,” the Foreign Secretary continued, “on the surface, their proposal was much too reasonable. If we’d accepted it, certain elements in Parliament would probably have insisted that we seriously consider using it as the basis for a formal treaty. Which would have opened the door to the territorial concessions from us which were also part of their new proposals. And which, of course, would have required us to give up far too much of all that our courageous Navy won for us.”

New Kiev’s expression flickered for an instant, but High Ridge noticed that she raised no objection to Descroix’s explanation. Which underscored her willingness to do what pragmatism required, however unpleasant she might find that, because she understood the subtext of the explanation as well as anyone else in the office.

In the final analysis, everyone in the present Government understood all the reasons not to bring the war against the Peeps to a formal conclusion. There was no real need, given the Star Kingdom’s overwhelming technical superiority. The Havenite Secretary of War, Theisman, obviously understood just how helpless his forces were in the face of that superiority. Even if he hadn’t, in High Ridge’s private opinion, he’d never have the nerve to resort once more to open military action against a star nation which had so decisively defeated his own. If he’d come equipped with that sort of testosterone supply, he would never have supinely surrendered the absolute power which had lain in his grasp to someone like Pritchart!