“I know,” she said more seriously, and tapped a command into the terminal at her desk. She studied the display for a few seconds, and then entered a brief note.

“I just picked Wednesday out of a hat,” she admitted, “but it looks like it will actually work anyway. And it’s a good thing, too, because I’ve got an exam at Saganami Island that afternoon. I’m going to be swamped grading papers in my copious free time at least through the weekend. So if you can get it to me by Wednesday morning, or even better, by Tuesday evening, I’ll fit it in somehow before I get buried under papers.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Your Grace,” Maxwell told her, “but don’t you have a session in the Lords Wednesday, as well? I thought I saw a notice that the Government intended to move its new budget this week, and even though this is important, I wouldn’t want it to interfere with any preparations for that.”

“No,” Honor said with another, more heartfelt grimace. “It’s been moved to next Wednesday. I’m not sure why, but the Government notified us day before yesterday that they were moving the debate back a week. And there won’t be a lot of preparation to do, either. High Ridge will say exactly the same things he’s been saying for the last three T-years, and Earl White Haven and I will say exactly the same things we’ve been saying for the last three years. Then the House will vote—narrowly, of course—to draft the budget the Government wants, the Commons will move amendments to change it, the Lords will strip them back out again, and absolutely nothing will change.”

Maxwell looked at her, wondering if she realized just how bitter (and exhausted) she sounded at that instant. Not that he was surprised to hear it.

The House of Lord’s power to initiate finance bills was only part of its advantage in controlling the power of the purse in the Star Kingdom. In addition, any bill which actually passed had to pass in the final form approved by the Lords. That meant that, as Honor had just complained, the Lords could effectively strip out any Commons-sponsored amendment of which it disapproved and require a straight up-or-down vote on its own version of any financial bill. Under normal circumstances, the Commons still had quite a lot of say-so, since it could always refuse to approve the Lords’ final version and—especially—refuse approval for any extraordinary funding measures required to support the Lords’ budgets. But these circumstances weren’t normal. The “extraordinary funding measures” were already in place, and the authority the Lords also enjoyed to pass special financial enabling authority for core government services on an emergency basis even without the Commons’ approval in the event of a budgetary standoff was the icing on the cake.

Of course, prudent prime ministers were usually careful not to overstrain their weapons. For the Lords to ride roughshod over the Commons required a situation in which a sufficiently sizable piece of the electorate would be prepared to blame the Commons for failure to achieve compromise. Under those circumstances, the house which had to stand for reelection faced a fatal disadvantage, but if the Lords had been foolish enough to court situations in which they would be blamed for the ensuing shutdown of most government services, the long-term resentment might have allowed the Crown to strip the senior house of the power of the purse long ago.