“You may have a point,” she said after a thoughtful moment. “Mind you, you wouldn’t have one if he didn’t have a shopping list for those other places. And I’m not sure how successful we’re going to be at keeping the pressure on now that High Ridge and that unmitigated asshole MacIntosh have managed to ‘damage control’ everything right under the carpet.”

“Let’s not forget New Kiev,” Zilwicki replied, and this time the shifting plate tectonics of anger rumbled in his deep voice. The countess looked a question at him, and he growled bitterly. “Whatever anyone else might think, High Ridge and MacIntosh couldn’t have pulled it off if she hadn’t let them.” Lady Cathy started to open her mouth, but his waving hand stopped whatever she’d meant to say. “I’m not saying they were stupid enough to actively involve her in any coverups or damage control strategy sessions. All I’m saying is that like every other fucking aristocrat supporting High Ridge, she’s not about to do one single goddamned thing that might risk rocking the boat and letting Alexander form a government. Not if all she has to do is close her eyes to something as unimportant as genetic slavery!”

“You’re right,” the countess admitted after a moment, her expression manifestly unhappy. Then she began to stalk around the apartment once again.

“I know people think I suffer from tunnel vision—those who don’t call it monomania—where slavery is concerned,” she said. “They’re probably even right. But anyone who isn’t outraged by it fails the litmus test for basic humanity. Besides, how can anyone talk about their support for civil rights, legal protections, social betterment, and all those other noble causes Marisa Turner preaches about so learnedly if they’re willing to shut their eyes to a trade in human beings—in specifically designed and conditioned human beings—that violates all of those pious principles?”

Her blue eyes flashed, her fair cheeks glowed with outrage that was not at all feigned, and Anton Zilwicki leaned back in his chair to admire her afresh. “Lady Prancer.” That was her friends’ teasing nickname for her, and it was apt. There was certainly something of the highbred filly about her restless movements and explosive temperament. But behind the filly there was something else, something uncomfortably akin to the hunting hunger of a Sphinx hexapuma. Zilwicki was one of the very few people who’d been allowed to see both of them, and he found both equally attractive in their own very different ways.

“So you don’t exactly see New Kiev as the ideal leader for the Liberal Party?” he inquired ironically, and she snorted bitterly in reply.

“If I’d ever had any doubts about it, they disappeared the instant she agreed to climb into bed with High Ridge,” the countess declared roundly. “Whatever the short-term tactical advantages might be, the long-term consequences are going to be disastrous. For her and for the party both.”

“You agree with me that sooner or later the wheels are bound to come off the High Ridge Government, then?”