Lady Anne

The Queen. That is simply the name they use for Prince in these parts when the Prince is female.

Lady Anne controls Greater London. Her Haven is a gothic mansion south of the city proper, at the end of a lane that has not been repaved since the war. Iron fence rusting at the joints. Gargoyles on the roof. Ivy on the walls. The kind of old that makes you understand what the word means when applied to things that are not dead. Inside, the ancient air is not decrepitude but antique — spotlessly clean, perfectly functional, carrying an unmistakable sense of history.

In October 1969, Lodin flew from Chicago to London to meet with Lady Anne. The pretext was unspecified business; the reality was a chess game between two powers who measured their moves in centuries. Her court grants feeding permission with one stipulation: the theatre district is off limits.

When Lodin arrives, Pershing greets him at the door. The retainers hear a fragment of conversation through a closed door:

“So, Prince Lodin, I’m very glad you have arrived. Did you encounter any problems during your journey?”

“None, my Lady, that troubled me to any degree.”

In the game room where the retainers wait, a chess set sits mid-game — white losing material but winning position. The white pawns have faces. Eight individual people carved into the expendable pieces. The black pawns are blank.