But when she came out of the shuttleport entryway, looking for a hirecar, she saw one of the long black official cars, with the Familias seal on the doors, and the driver clearly recognized her.

"Lady Cecelia?"

"Yes?"

"Lady Miranda sent us for you. Your luggage?"

"In the dump," Cecelia said, handing over the ID strip. The driver nodded to his second, who took the strip and went off toward the dumps. Belatedly, Cecelia wondered if she should make sure of their identity and authorization-Heris, she thought, would be scolding her if Heris were here. But the driver was now holding out a flat packet.

"Lady Miranda wanted you to have this first," he said.

Cecelia opened it. A note from Miranda, and a flatpic of the driver and assistant. "You may not be worried," the note said, "but we have learned we must all take precautions. I look forward to seeing you."

In minutes, the assistant was back with Cecelia's few pieces of luggage, all marked with the striped tape that meant they'd passed Customs. Cecelia got into the car and wondered, as it shot forward into traffic, if they were taking the same route Bunny had followed the day he was killed.

She didn't ask.

At the Palace, everything seemed normal at first. The same uniforms at the gate, at the doors. The same quietly efficient staff who guided her first to her guest room overlooking a small garden, and then, when she had showered and changed, to Miranda's suite. It was hard to remember, in this quiet gracious place, that Bunny was dead, and all their peace in peril. She found herself expecting to see him coming down the corridor, his pleasantly foolish face lighting with a smile.

Until she came face to face with Miranda, and saw the devastation of that legendary beauty.

Cecelia wondered how the same exquisite curves of bone, the same flawless skin, could now express a wasteland. After the rituals of greeting, when the staff had placed a tea set on the low table and withdrawn, Cecelia could wait no longer. No need, when the porcelain surface had already shattered.

"Miranda, what have they told you about it-about who did it?"

"Nothing." Miranda poured a cup of tea and handed it to Cecelia; the cup did not rattle on the saucer. "I know the news media say it was the New Texas Militia, in retaliation for the executions. I know that the former head of security is on administrative leave. But they have very gently let me know that investigations are in progress, and I will be informed when it is time. Do have a pastry; you always liked these curly ones, didn't you?"

Cecelia ignored the offered pastry. "Miranda . . . I don't think it was the NewTex Militia."

"Why?" Miranda's face had no more expression than a cameo.

"I think it was someone . . . inside."

"Family?" Her voice was cool. Why wasn't she upset? Why wasn't she frightened? Had she been through too much?

Cecelia waited a moment, then went on. "Pedar said . . . that Bunny broke rules."

Miranda's mouth twitched; it might have been grimace or grin. "He did. He was so . . . so quiet, so . . . compliant, it always seemed. But from the first time he brought me a tart he'd filched from the cook, when we were children, and showed me where we could hide from our governesses . . .

he broke rules."

"More important than that," Cecelia said.

"I know." Miranda stared past Cecelia's left ear, as if she saw something a long way away, but was too tired to pay much attention.

"Miranda!" Even before Miranda turned her eyes back, Cecelia had bitten back the rest of it, all

that she wanted to say. You can't give up now. You have to keep going. You have a family-

"I have a family," Miranda said, in that cool level voice. "I have responsibilities. Children.

Grandchildren. You don't want me to forget that."

"Yes . . ." Cecelia had lowered her voice, and strove to sit quietly.

"I do not care." Miranda turned that cameo face full on Cecelia. "I do not care about the children-not even Brun, whom I most desperately want to care about. I do not care about the grandchildren, those bastard brats forced on my daughter-" Her breath caught in a ragged gasp, giving the lie to that do not care. Cecelia said nothing; there was nothing she could say. "I do not care," Miranda went on, "about anything but Branthcombe. Bunny. Whom, in this day and age, and in spite of rejuvenations and genetic selection and everything else we invented to spare us the pain of living . . . I loved. All my life, from the time he brought me that cherry tart, and we ate it in alternate bites, sitting on the back stairs . . . I loved him. It was a miracle to me that he loved me. That he survived the hunting season we still make our young people go through, that he remembered me after my years in seclusion at Cypress Hill, that he married me. And fathered my children, and no matter what stayed loyal and decent and-" Her voice broke at last, in a gasp that ended in sobs.

"My dear . . ." Cecelia reached out, uncertain. Miranda had been, for so long, another exquisite porcelain figurine in Cecelia's mental collection of beautiful women-like her sister, like all the women of that type-and she had never touched any of them for more than the rituals of class affection-the fingertips, the cheeks. But Miranda didn't recoil, and leaned into her as if Cecelia were her mother or her aunt.

The sobs went on a long time, and Cecelia had a cramp in the small of her back from twisting to accommodate Miranda's position, by the time Miranda quieted.

"Damnation," she said then. "I thought I was over it."

"I don't think you can get over it," Cecelia said.

"No. Not really. But over it enough to function. You're right, I have to do that much. But I really do not know how."

"Your advisors-"

"Are vultures." Miranda gave Cecelia a sideways glance and pulled back a little; Cecelia took that hint and stood, stretching. "You, never having married, may not realize just how complicated the situation is. Your estate is all yours, and you have the disposal of it-"

"When my ham-fisted relatives don't interfere," Cecelia said. She had tried, and failed, to put out of her mind her sister's interference in her will. The legal repercussions had dragged on for several years.

"True. But what I have is Bunny's legacy in several separate realms, some of which I stayed out of. The political-"

"Surely no one expects you to take over as Speaker-"

"No." Miranda's voice was sour. "Everyone is sure that the political realm is the one I know least about. More's the pity-since I actually do understand it, and could take over, if they'd only let me."

Cecelia managed not to gape, by a small margin. Miranda politically minded? Then she thought of Lorenza, who certainly had been, and repressed a shiver. She sat down again and poured herself a cup of tea.

"Lorenza," Miranda said, in another uncanny echo of Cecelia's thoughts. "Now there was another case of backstage expertise. She and I used to play the most delicate games of power . . . it would bore you, Cecelia, unless you could think of it in equestrian terms, but . . . if you could imagine yourself on a very, very advanced horse, which despised you but had, for some reason,

agreed to obey exactly your commands."

"I had one like that," Cecelia said, hoping to divert Miranda onto a more congenial topic.

Miranda's hiss of annoyance stopped her.

"We are not talking horses. Did you ever fence?"

Fence. Possible meanings ran through Cecelia's mind, the most recent out of her Spacepilots'

Glossary of Navigational Terms; she couldn't imagine Miranda as a jump-point explorer probing into unknown routes.

"Ancient sport," Miranda said. "Derived from an ancient method of warfare. Swordfighting, also called fencing."

"No," Cecelia said, feeling grumpy. She had just spent a half hour comforting a woman in collapse, and now she was being questioned like a schoolgirl about a sport she had always considered supremely silly. For one thing, it had nothing to do with fences that horses could jump over. "I don't . . . er . . . fence."

"You should," Miranda said. She stood, and moved restlessly around the room, touching the surfaces as if she felt her way, rather than saw them with her eyes. Curtain, curtain, bureau, chair . . .

"It's an excellent discipline, and apt for use aboard spaceships, for instance."

"Swords?" Cecelia could not quite keep the astonishment out of her voice. Was Miranda losing her mind? Tears, then politics, then swords?