COUP

From: JulianDelphiki%milcom@hegemon.gov

To: Volescu%levers@plasticgenome.edu

Re: Why keep hiding when you don't have to?

Look, if we wanted you dead or punished, don't you think it would have happened already? Your protector is gone and there's not a country on Earth that will protect you if we lay out the facts of your "achievements."

What you did, you did. Now help us find our children, wherever you've hidden them.

Peter Wiggin had brought Petra Arkanian with him because she knew Caliph Alai. They had both been in Ender's Jeesh together. And it was Alai who had sheltered her and Bean in the weeks before the Muslim invasion of China—or liberation of Asia, depending on which propaganda mill you shopped at.

But now it seemed that having Petra with him meant nothing at all. Nobody in Damascus acted as if it even mattered that the Hegemon had come like a supplicant to see the Caliph. Not that Peter had arrived with any publicity—this was a private visit, with him and Petra passing themselves off as a tourist couple.

Complete with bickering. Because Petra had no patience with him. Everything he did and said and even thought was wrong. And last night, when he finally demanded, "Tell me what you really hate about me, Petra, instead of pretending it's all this trivial stuff."

Her answer had been devastating: "Because the only difference I ever saw between you and Achilles was that you let others do your killing for you."

It was so patently unfair. Peter had devoted himself to trying to avoid war.