It would not surprise Ethlyn one bit to learn that Claude had a friend at home who wanted to strangle him for such habits. She would only be able to sympathize after this display. But the subject of their current conversation was too grave to continue her appraisal of his habits (even if she would have been happy to continue the argument at any other time).

"Nor I," she said. "In truth, I expected something far more brutal... when Jerry said that it would be brief, I assumed that it would be trial by ordeal." She was sure that Claude would know the sort of thing she was talking about--hot coals, boiling cauldrons. And she still couldn't help but think that there was a catch in this somewhere.

But she had chosen Claude. He was one of only a few people left here that she would be comfortable picking over her own past with--and even of those others, she had a feeling that he might look at things in a more clear-eyed way. With all that she had seen for herself in the labyrinth, she knew that Claude was no stranger to painful political realities. If there was truth in her accusation--or if it was as unjust as she had believed for so long--she knew he wouldn't say that it was all fine just because they were close. "Thank you, my friend." She leaned back in her chair, her cup of tea held in both hands. "I used to tell everyone here that I've been wrongly accused because I tried to stop my birthplace from falling into corruption. But now I wonder if we really did all we could--or if there was some way that we missed."

It might require a lot of history to get at the answer.