"He's got no right to do it the way he's doing it, though," the man insisted. "England can't tax us, not in law. Only we can tax ourselves."

"That's how we see it. England sees it differently." Again, Victor spoke carefully. Ordinary people could talk as free as they pleased. No one cared about them. But chances were somebody in this crowded room would report his words to the English authorities… and someone else would report them to the local leaders squabbling with those authorities. He didn't want either side to conclude he was a traitor.

He didn't want the two sides banging heads, either. Whether he could do anything to stop them might be a different question.

Another man banged his mug down hard on the tabletop in front of him. "Me, I'm damned if I'll buy anything that comes from England, as long as she's going to play these dirty games," he declared. "We can make do with what we turn out for ourselves."

"That's right!" someone else shouted. Heads bobbed up and down. Support for the latest boycott ran strong.

A hundred years earlier, the settlers couldn't have done without England. The mother country made too many things they couldn't make for themselves. No more. Oh, some luxury goods, furs and silks and furniture and fripperies, still came from across the sea. But Atlantis could do without those, even if certain rich Atlanteans-some of them Radcliffs and Radcliffes-still pined for them.

"D'you buy English, Major?" asked the man who'd said the king had no right to tax Atlanteans.

A hush fell. Everyone waited on Victor's answer. He passed it off with a laugh, or tried to: "What? This far inland? I didn't think they let English goods get past the coast."

When the laugh rose, it was an angry one. England might think of the Atlantean settlers as bumpkins one and all. The rich merchants in the seaside towns resented what the English thought of them-and thought the same thing of their inland cousins.