Blood of the Isle

by Loren L. Coleman

Good memories. Happier times.

  Still, the musty, paper smell that permeated every room was a welcome, warm embrace and not the melancholy reminder he had feared when Niccolò suggested taking the library as a personal residence and the Stormhammers’ command post.

  It was a strong political move as well. Under the auspices of previous lord governors, the mansion residence attached to the library was the home of Skye’s Steward—an appointed aide who served as liaison to the world governor on behalf of the prefecture’s ruler. With strong lord governors, in fact, legislation passed through the offices of the Steward first and to the world governor second. There was no small amount of prestige attached to the local mansion, and the man who resided within. And it had been available. Duke Gregory was one of the rare Republic leaders to hold both world and prefecture leadership positions at the same time, which was a measure of the duke’s—and the family’s—powerful support within the Isle of Skye region. When Jasek’s father had need to appoint a Steward, mostly during times when he traveled off-world, that appointee took up temporary residence at the Governor’s Mansion in New Gloucester, which was otherwise treated as the duke’s summer offices.

  Now Jasek prowled around a long table in the library’s Commonwealth Room, the space dedicated to cataloging the latest texts coming out of Lyran space. The banner of House Steiner—the clenched gauntlet—hung below a wide skylight, equal to the mezzanine level that wrapped around three sides of the grand room. Jasek’s senior officers worked in busy clusters, updating force strength estimates and designing strategies based on what the Jade Falcons might try next. Junior officers drafted as aides ferried and fetched noteputers, maps, and reams of hard copy at request.

  His graceful strides ate up the blue carpet one meter at a time while his eyes scoured a noteputer’s amber screen. He tapped in a request for more detail, handed the ’puter off to the team formed around Colonel Petrucci and Tamara Duke, then accepted a thermal-insulated mug of spiced coffee and a sheaf of reports from Niccolò GioAvanti.

  He took a sip of the hot beverage, enjoying the cinnamon flavor. The coffee warmed him on its way down, and a hint of cloves rolled out on the aftertaste. The drink was fine, but the intel . . .

  “Not good,” he said after a cursory glance at the hard-copy material. Jasek had been briefed by Tara Campbell—in her newfound manner of terse, clipped sentences—about what to expect.

  “The Highlanders’ force readiness is hardly up to battalion-level strength. That’s the best they can do?”

  Niccolò shrugged. “It’s what they have, Landgrave.” In public, his best friend always defaulted to the formal address due a member of the nobility. No matter how much Jasek berated him for it later. “The Highlanders have spent a great deal of blood for The Republic lately.”

  It was hard to fault Tara Campbell for fighting the depredations of Steel Wolves, Dragon’s Fury, Swordsworn, and any number of other factions rising within The Republic. Her loyalty was beyond question. But the lack of direction from higher up, a lack of support from The Republic’s standing army . . . it was like fending jackals off a dying body with a slowly splintering stick.

  “What a damned waste of good men and materiel.”

  Tugging at his family braid, one of his more obvious stalling tactics, Niccolò finally volunteered, “Difficulties must never be allowed to persist in order to avoid war. Wars can only be deferred to the advantage of others.”

  A military maxim that Jasek placed from several old texts. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing, Nicco?” Jasek was never certain when his friend was being wise or intentionally witless. “Avoiding war? With the Jade Falcons? With The Republic?” With his father?

  He would never ask that last question aloud. He did not have to. Niccolò knew him well enough to understand the demons that wrestled within.

  And as usual, when the questions grew toughest, Niccolò defaulted to vagueness. “ ‘The hereditary prince has less cause and less need to offend than a new one,” ’ he quoted directly this time.

  A roundabout method of reminding Jasek that any struggle directly against his father put him immediately at odds with the old worlds of the Isle of Skye. Was his only answer to let Skye fail on its own, and then pick up what pieces remained? He drank deep and hard, barely able to taste, punishing himself with the close-to-scalding beverage. He set the mug down on the table.

  “I want a better solution,” he told his friend. Louder, he said, “We’re chasing the problem in circles, people. Find another way.”

  “You couldn’t have been more interested in another way before you stripped Skye of its defenses?”

  The familiar scorn snapped Jasek around at once. Duke Gregory stood inside the double-wide arch at the room’s entrance, waiting to be recognized. Some of Jasek’s more junior officers snapped to nervous attention. Everyone rose at the table, showing respect for a duke’s title at the very least.

  New demons stoked the fire burning in Jasek’s heart. His blood coursed. “Leaving Skye in the manner I did was ‘another way,’ Father.” He put just as much sarcasm into the two words as the elder man. “Would you care to discuss my other options publicly”—he nodded at the gathered Stormhammers—“or in private?”

  “Avoiding public spectacles has not exactly been your way, Jasek.” Still, Duke Gregory stepped inside the arch, clearing the way for people to leave. “Perhaps privacy is warranted for what we have to discuss.”

  A few of the Lyran Rangers, remembering their previous time in the Triarii and the Principes, acknowledged the duke’s dismissal with a rapid departure from the room. Jasek noticed that even Tamara Duke took two steps before stopping to wait for Colonel Petrucci, who remained in place. Jasek nodded a dismissal to his senior staff. Colonels Vandel and Wolf, with no ties at all to the former Republic military, were slowest out the door, and only a few paces behind Niccolò GioAvanti.

  Alexia Wolf cast one quizzical glance back at Jasek, which Duke Gregory caught, and then was gone.

  Security agents stationed outside the room pulled shut heavy doors that filled the archway with golden-stained oak. There was a kind of finality in the heavy thud of their closing.

  Alone with his son, Duke Gregory threw formality and carefully studied appearances out the window. He let some of the weight he carried slough away. Slouching into a chair at the head of the table, he spread his hands on the warm, varnished surface, looking for all intents and purposes like a father sitting down to a meal with his family.

  The last several months had not been kind to his father, Jasek saw. The extra gray sprouting in his beard and at his temples, the bags that showed more clearly under his eyes when he relaxed the political mask, the weary slump to his shoulders. But the same ardent fire still burned behind the duke’s bright, hazel eyes.

  “Legate Eckard informed me that you had commandeered the library,” Duke Gregory finally said. “Nice maneuver. Confers legitimacy. Your idea, or Nicco’s?”

  Jasek let the silence answer for him.

  The lord governor nodded. “He always was the more politically savvy,” he said with a touch of regret. “You,” he continued, “you had the military mind, boy, and the drive. And the devil’s own charm, which you inherited from your mother. I just wish you had picked up more of her devotion to Skye.”

  “Perhaps I did.” Jasek strolled around the far end of the table, headed back along its length toward his father. He ambled, in no particular hurry, stopping from time to time to rest a hand on one of the empty chairs.

  “Maybe I picked up more than you wanted me to. Mother was not the slavish adherent to Devlin Stone’s philosophies that you are. She believed in The Republic only so far as it benefited our people.” He said “our people” in a way that excluded his father, and an angry flush warmed the old duke’s high brow.

  “You are going to educate me about my own wife now?”

  “Do I need to? Or have you already forgotten the mealtime debates when she pushed back against your enthusiasm f
or Stone’s Republic?”

  The duke’s hands balled into fists, but Jasek noticed a slight tremble, as if he had touched a raw nerve. “Your mother never stood against me,” his father said, tight-lipped.

  “No,” Jasek agreed calmly. “Not like I have done. She tempered you. It was a good match. At the right time in Skye’s history.” A stab of longing cut into Jasek’s chest. His mother was five years passed away. At times, he wondered if she would have accepted his stand against The Republic. “But it is history, Father. Our worlds have come as far as they can under The Republic.”

  “So now you’d like me to toe the media line and welcome you back as the savior of Skye?” the duke asked. He snorted his disbelief. “I came within millimeters of having you arrested for treason and thrown into a deep, dark hole, with Niccolò not far behind you.”

  “We both know you can’t touch Nicco. The GioAvantis are too powerful an old Skye family.”

  “Damn the luck,” the duke admitted, “or he would be arrested. Or worse.”

  “That was uncalled for.” Jasek clenched both hands around the high back of a nearby chair. “Nicco was like a second son to you.”

  His father levered himself to his feet. “And just as loyal, it turned out,” he said hotly. “Maybe if I’d stripped him of favor as a pup, you’d have done better being raised an only child.” He calmed himself with visible effort. “But now my prodigal son has returned, eh? Well, I’m not about to kill the fatted calf for you, boy.”

  Jasek nodded curtly, not having expected such a welcome from his father. The two of them simply could not agree to disagree, and too much tied them together, making a clean break just as impossible. Blood ties. And their mutual concern for the worlds of Skye.

  “Not asking it,” he replied.

  “But you’re going to ask me for something,” his father said, dialing back on the open antagonism a few notches. He nodded at the table full of documents and glowing noteputer pads. “Four days you’ve been working in here. You must have some idea of what you want, and how you’ll proceed.”

  Jasek pulled out the chair he gripped, only two seats down from his father, and slipped into it. A tall pile of hard-copy documents rested on the table in front of him. “Skye is wounded,” he said, toying with the pile. Slick-panel folders slid haphazardly against each other. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that. I know Tara . . . Countess Campbell . . . has kept you informed. But I wonder if you understand how close you are to losing this world.”

  “I’m sure you’ll remind me every day,” his father said through clenched teeth.

  Jasek let a touch of his ire show in his eyes. “One good push,” he said, shoving at the top of the document stack. The pile tipped and slid apart, scattering files and documents over the polished wood surface.

  The demonstration seemed to rattle the duke more than hard words would have. He sat down again. “Think you could take my world with these Stormhammers of yours?”

  “Yes.” Jasek didn’t bother to deny that his people had looked at that. “We could. But it would not solve the greater problem. We could take Skye, but never hold it. Not against the Jade Falcons.”

  “Fortunate for me that my entire realm is under assault, then.”

  “It allowed you to accept help from the Steel Wolves,” Jasek reminded him. “Surely you can extend the same courtesy to my people.”

  The duke bit off the first reply that formed on his lips. He thought a moment, putting a bit of steel back into his shoulders as he squared them off against his son. “What do you have in mind?” he asked finally. Quietly. A man backed against a wall, staring down a loaded gun.

  Jasek’s finger was on the trigger. He folded his hands on the table in front of him, to keep their tremble from showing.

  “Tara Campbell allowed that she’d take help from Anastasia Kerensky. With her offer in hand, I hope to bring them back to Skye. Them”—he swallowed dryly—“and any other allies I can rally to our defense.”

  His father slapped at the table, the bang reverberating around the large, empty room. It ricocheted back from the open mezzanine with a tinny echo. “You’re talking about House Steiner!” he accused Jasek. “Isn’t one enemy at a time enough?”

  “The Lyran Commonwealth is not massing on our borders. They did not send in a large military force on some fabricated excuse. But they just might offer us some help if it meant protecting their own interests as well.”

  “Once they come back, we’ll never dislodge them.” Duke Gregory shook his head, denying the vision. “I’d rather see Skye burning around my ears.”

  Jasek recoiled. “Truly?” he asked. He waited for his father to bluster that he hadn’t meant his words literally, but the lord governor remained silent. Always a good political move.

  “Well, you just might get that wish before this is all said and done,” Jasek said. He slid back his chair and rose, leaning over the corner of the table. “And that is an image I want you to hold very, very close to your heart, Father. You have a good champion for Skye in Tara Campbell. I know you have your own plans in motion as well. You always do. But before you make a final decision, I want you to think on one idea.

  “That if it comes down to a choice between the Steiner fist and the Jade Falcon raptor,” he asked, “which would you rather live under?”

  13

  New London

  Skye

  9 October 3134

  Following Niccolò GioAvanti down the corridor and around a corner from the closed door and the two security agents, Alexia Wolf quickly and quietly padded up a set of wide green marble stairs only a few steps behind him. The intense young merchant shot her a measuring stare, which she returned with interest. But he said nothing, which suited her as well.

  She had no idea what he was up to. Only that she felt certain he would not take to being shut out of the father-and-son discussion. In the short time she had known him, Niccolò had proved himself resourceful, spirited, and utterly devoted to Jasek.

  One of Jasek’s greatest draws, in fact, was the quality of men and women he kept around him, and his means of doing so. It was the first measure of a leader’s intelligence and strength, to see what kind of advisers he kept. Jasek Kelswa-Steiner did not suffer fools or sycophants. He searched out strong-willed people who challenged him.

  Meritocracy might be an Inner Sphere term, but it was a concept that all Clan warriors understood.

  “. . . the devil’s own charm . . .”

  The snatch of conversation whispered to her at the head of the stairs. She turned her head, searching for more, but if it had been there at all, it was lost now.

  Niccolò stealthed ahead of her, down the narrow third-floor corridor, without any reaction whatsoever. Alexia followed, thinking rapidly on what she thought she’d heard. It could have been Jasek’s father. Certainly it described Jasek. One glance was enough to cause her heart to pound in her throat and set her skin tingling with anticipation. The duke’s son had a raw, powerful magnetism that attracted men and women equally. She recognized this, though that did nothing to prevent her being affected by it. She at least did not confuse it with the self-serving righteousness many of Jasek’s soldiers wore like a protective mantle.

  Or love, which was also an Inner Sphere term but a concept not wholly unknown among the Clans.

  More snippets of conversation whispered in her ear as she chased after GioAvanti. “. . . Stone’s philosophies . . .” and then “. . . our people . . .”

  “. . . about my own wife now?”

  She was certain this time. Something about the library’s acoustics formed an echo chamber, dumping tidbits of the conversation taking place below into this deserted upstairs corridor.

  Alexia guessed where Niccolò was leading her even before they passed through a small sculpture gallery and then stepped to either side of a door that opened onto the mezzanine level above the Commonwealth Room. A wide parapet ran around three sides with shelves of books guarding the walls and a balcony rail ov
erlooking the center of the room. The warm scent of so many leather-bound volumes was stronger up here. She tasted paper on the back of her tongue. Staying close to the wall, they were invisible to the lower level, but they had a perfect vantage point for eavesdropping.

  Niccolò slouched against a shelf of books.

  Alexia adopted a modified parade rest.

  The two stared at each other across the open doorway. It became a kind of game, to see who could react the least to what was being said below. She caught a glimpse of amusement on his pinched face when Duke Gregory admitted that he could not touch Niccolò because of his family ties. Alexia thought he should have been more concerned that Jasek’s father saw the merchant as an obstacle to overcome.

  And she did not doubt that he noticed her eyebrow twitch when Jasek talked about finding Anastasia Kerensky and her Steel Wolves. Then the conversation turned back toward the idea of Jasek approaching the Lyran Commonwealth.

  “I’d rather see Skye burning around my ears,” the lord governor gritted.

  “If it comes down to a choice between the Steiner fist and the Jade Falcon raptor,” Jasek asked, “which would you rather live under?”

  Silence followed Jasek’s question. Alexia doubted that either man noticed that at this moment, both stood under the House Steiner banner that hung suspended beneath the room’s skylight.

  The clenched gauntlet was familiar to Alexia from her time with the Wolf enclave on Arc-Royal, but it had never meant much to her until Jasek made it important. This was the reason she had sought him out, followed him to Nusakan and now back to Skye. Jasek was a leader, and offered her direction as well as this second chance at a warrior’s life. On Arc-Royal, when she failed to test out, it had been because she thought that being a warrior was enough. The end-all of her life.

  It had taken a rebellious Republic noble to give her a measure of true purpose. Maybe not her own, not yet, but it was a start.

  Finally, from below, Jasek’s father answered, “I do not accept your terms. One choice must be to remain under The Republic’s banner.”