In a way that was good, Lady Clare decided, because it meant the only people who really counted in that room were her and Lazlo. Plus the Prince Imperial, obviously...
“There’s a third alternative,” Lazlo said loudly, much too loudly. Which was interesting in itself. Either the man could feel control slipping away or he was having trouble keeping his temper. Lady Clare couldn’t decide which she considered most unlikely.
“Is there?” asked Lady Clare, interrupting just as Lazlo opened his mouth to speak again.
The tall man flushed. He was leaning forward on the balls of his feet, like an athlete on the starting block, as impatient as any runner. Too fast, Lady Clare thought disapprovingly. You’re going at it too fast. A vein throbbed in his temple and a tic pulled at the corner of one eye. He was under much more pressure than she’d realized. Lady Clare just wondered why she was so certain it wasn’t the same pressure as the rest of them were suffering.
“What’s the third option?” she asked, cutting in again as Count Lazlo opened his mouth. Out of the corner of her eye, Lady Clare could see the Prince Imperial smother a grin.
“The Prince Imperial could rule under the protection of the Fourth Reich...” Lazlo said furiously.
“And for how long?” Lady Clare asked softly. “Until the last of the Ishies ups camp and leaves? Until CySat C3N pull out their final vidman?”
“No,” Lazlo shook his head. “Forever, until...” He fumbled with the words. “For as long as the Prince Imperial wants,” Lazlo finished lamely. He couldn’t very well say until the prince died, because everyone knew the old man didn’t intend to.
“Rule under the Reich? No.” The old man leant forward in his chair so suddenly he slopped coffee into his Sevres saucer, rutting the cup and saucer down carefully, he absent-mindedly dried his hand on the hem of his smoking jacket. “No,” he said more firmly. “I hope everyone agrees that is not an option...” Grey eyes swept the room like intelligent fire and Lady Clare found herself nodding along with everyone except Lazlo.
“Paris fights to the end and maybe, just maybe, the Empire decides to fight back, inspired by our example.” The old man smiled sardonically, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Or we save the city and...” The prince spread his hands theatrically. He was smiling.
He was fucking good at it, thought Lady Clare, surprised by her own crudity. The old man could have been standing in a ballroom addressing 500 of the Empire’s richest movers and shakers, or talking over a newsfeed to 500,000,000 of his erstwhile subjects. No one listening blind would have known he was talking to five scared councillors.
The Prince Imperial looked at Lazlo and then nodded — but it was to himself. Whatever his decision was, there would be no point trying to argue him out of it. The Bonaparte stubbornness was legendary. He would surrender Paris rather than see it destroyed, decided Lady Clare. The man always had been an old-fashioned liberal at heart: it was one of his worst failings.
“I intend to retire to my study,” said the Prince Imperial, looking straight at Lady Clare. He could have been speaking to her alone and it seemed to Lady Clare that he was. Standing unsteadily, the old man walked shakily across the damp carpet, turning back to the entrance.
“This is not a decision I can make,” he said sadly. “You must decide as you see fit... And when you have, you must let me know your decision.” One ringed hand went up to still Lady Clare’s protest. “You are my advisor, advise me...”
Lady Clare looked at Lazlo and smiled, coldly, pulling images out of her memory. Not of the night they had spent together, disgusting though she’d found that. But of a clone that Lazlo kept hidden at his stone hunting lodge high on the edge of the Lot Valley. The big-boned blonde-haired peasant girl didn’t look like a Kyoko, but she was. Lady Clare had blackmailed Lazlo’s doctor in Cahors to run a DNA scan on the girl’s final double-X pair. It had picked up a Sabine Industries copyright tacked into the chromosome’s sugar-phosphate backbone.
Coding for intelligence she could understand. She’d insisted on that for LizAlec, along with some more unconventional modifications, and coding for beauty, for good health, even for sweetness of disposition, those she could understand, just. But that didn’t stop Lady Clare finding distasteful the idea of gene coding a sexual partner for stupidity.
“Well,” Lady Clare said. “Shall we take that vote?”
They didn’t, of course, not then. Lazlo wanted time to talk to the others, strike deals. Lady Clare knew that and she let him have it. Watching as the tall man moved round the other Ministers, glad-handing newly promoted underlings to whom he wouldn’t have given the nod had he met them in the marble corridors of the Tuileries two months before.
Lady Clare did nothing, except check if the coffee in the silver pot was still warm. It wasn’t, but she drank another cup anyway, without touching a bowl of vast crystals of amber-hued cane sugar from the Prince Imperial’s own estates in St Lucia. Her legs were so tired that all Lady Clare really wanted to do was sit. But anything that showed she might be tired, hung-over and old wasn’t appropriate with Lazlo present. So Lady Clare perched herself on the edge of a side table as if bored by the anxious groups that hung around Count Lazlo.
And while she was sitting being ostentatiously bored, Lady Clare tried to work out in her head exactly what she did want, keeping it personal like her analyst had always told her, until she fired him for repetition. In order, her list ran:
LizAlec back.
Her house undamaged (and with it Paris).
Her job...
The list was both selfish and personal. But Lady Clare didn’t have a problem with that. Global was out and she was learning to think small, or so she told herself. But still, she couldn’t have it all. To save LizAlec meant voting for surrender, the kidnappers’ warning had been unequivocal on that. Vote to fight and LizAlec died — if she wasn’t already dead.
The decision got no easier for being worried at. And Lady Clare was beginning to understand that it wasn’t that her head told her one thing and her heart another: she just didn’t know. Prejudice was the worst possible motive for selecting a side, but stripped down to nothing, which was where she stood, prejudice was all Lady Clare had. That, and a silent, almost unstated belief that if genetics counted for anything then LizAlec was a lot more dangerous and capable than anyone yet realized.
Hard thoughts for a mother to handle, but Lady Clare could and would. If Lazlo was for surrender then she was against it. As for LizAlec... Statistical probability and basic common sense said she was already dead, but Lady Clare couldn’t quite believe it, any more than she quite believed her daughter was still alive. Emotionally she hoped, but intellectually she was agnostic.
Her certainty had gone, hollowed out by hunger, by the loss of LizAlec and by the apparently endless storms. That wind had stripped resolve from her as brutally as it had ripped tiles from the roof of the Hotel Sabatini. Like the city, she was drowning in mud, in debilitating indecision. But she would do what she had to: decide.
“We fight...”
It wasn’t a suggestion: the words were her statement of intent. She still outranked everyone in the study, even if she only outranked Lazlo now by length of service. The decision was hers to take, though open statements weren’t her usual style.
The room stilled.
“We fight,” Lady Clare said fiercely, “because we don’t have any alternative.” Staring round, Lady Clare could tell that the others weren’t convinced, and she wasn’t surprised. Fat, balding or weak, they were even less impressed by the thought of having to get out there and fight than they were by the idea of dying. And she didn’t blame them. In their place she’d have felt the same.