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through the tall
windows reaching from floor to ceiling. There, she could see the canals winding through the heart of Port Gabriel, whose pale blue waters were dotted here and there with the white sails of yachts
and with automated sea transports.
    Most of her attention, however, was taken by the barges crowding the riverside docks. They were huge flat-bodied vessels sprouting innumerable pennants and flags, all decorated with the red and
gold seal of the Sacerdotal Demarchy of Uchida.
    She had tried, as she had done every morning now for more than two years, to access the public parts of the Tabernacle information service. And, as ever, she failed.
    ‘I’m quite all right, Mater Cassanas,’ said Gabrielle finally, before sitting up carefully. Her machine-head implants were feeding her a constant drip of background data about
her surroundings: the composition of the sheets between which she lay, or the trace elements in the air she breathed, even the current locations of orbital factories and Accord peacekeeper
platforms above the surface of Redstone. She could track them, if and when she chose to, even follow them as they passed from one horizon to the next, and beyond.
    But there was so much more information closer to hand to which her access was heavily restricted. It was for her own safety, they claimed, because too many public-data links could be subverted
by the Demarchy’s enemies and used to launch covert viral attacks against her. Even so, it was enormously frustrating to be gifted with so very powerful a tool and yet be prevented from
making use of more than a tiny fraction of its capabilities.
    What made it worse was the knowledge that machine-heads had, for a very long time, been regularly employed as the pilots of interstellar craft throughout the Accord and beyond. Their implants
allowed them to interface directly with such craft, and the idea of being a starship pilot had never failed to fill Gabrielle with wonder. Yet it had always been an impossible yearning.
    Cassanas looked doubtful despite Gabrielle’s reassurances, pursing the lips of her long horse-like face. But Gabrielle glared at the old woman until she finally bowed in acquiescence, a
flush of red colouring her withered cheeks.
    ‘Of course, Madame Gabrielle,’ Cassanas muttered, peering back at her with unmistakable hostility from below the yellow-and-black cap that identified her as an attendant.
    The old woman’s eyes dipped briefly towards Gabrielle’s belly, swaddled beneath constricting sheets. In that moment Gabrielle felt suddenly, overwhelmingly certain that the old woman
knew precisely what she was trying to hide.
    But she also knew that Cassanas would say and do nothing, out of fear for her own son’s life.
    Even so, Gabrielle felt her heartbeat grow faster, her hands again forming into fists beneath the heavy linen, where Mater Cassanas could not see them.
    She then thought of Karl – proud, strong Karl Petrova. Despite all their talk, she had never really believed a day might finally come when all their dreams of escaping could be
realized.
    ‘You’re scheduled to have breakfast with your advisers, before departing for Dios,’ declared Cassanas, clearly struggling to maintain her professional composure. She motioned
with her eyes towards the door leading into an antechamber. ‘Therefore I think perhaps we should get started immediately.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Gabrielle, aware of the slight quaver in her voice as she replied.
    She waited, as taught from childhood, until Cassanas had peeled off the sheets, before swinging her bare feet out and onto the cold marble floor. She then followed the old woman into the
antechamber, where her robes of office had been laid out on a chaise-longue, ready for the morning ahead.
    Cassanas picked up several items, draping them over one arm in preparation for dressing her charge. As Gabrielle watched her, she thought back on the endless mundanity of all the days of her
life