Not like his first wife, the treasonous bitch...He had left the old aristocrat in the Republic, having nurtured her vicious streak patiently until his own coup allowed him to turn it against her peers. Now rumor said she was Pongpianskul’s lover, won over by fraudulent Shaper charm and degraded senile intimacy. No matter, no matter. Long years had taken the sting from it; tonight’s stroke, if it came, was more important than any circumlunar moondock.