Talented and not-so-talented troupes staged skits and performance art. Her favorites, in a sour sense of humor, were the men and women dressed up as paladins—white jumpsuits with gold braiding that fairly approximated the uniform Gareth wore—who led around others in noblelike robes by chains clipped to their noses. The paladin impersonators were often walking caricatures of the real people. Crippled old men with blinders on to represent David McKinnon and his like. Strident women with a great deal of leather and spiked collars, giving off an attack-dog air. Dwarves with Napolean hats and whips: small taskmasters, meant to be a walking insult to the memory of Victor Steiner-Davion.
Those were the cruelest of the lot, in Tara’s opinion. Free speech be damned.
Especially in the shadow of Geneva’s Hall of Government, where the exarch and the paladins had worked so hard over so many decades to maintain peace throughout The Republic. Now, if the exarch cared to look down from his formal office, he’d see his capital under siege from an instant tent city.
Only up close could one see the organization behind the brute-force affront. Well-supplied vendors hawking hotdogs and kabobs, nutrition bars and fresh fruit at megamart prices. Some people had brought their own portable grills, and were busy charring burgers over open flames to feed long lines as quickly as possible, for free. And in any direction one cared to look, crates of bottled water were hand-carried and given out for free.
“It’s a mess,” Gareth declared, looking only at the surface.
“A very deliberate, very well-organized mess.” Tara pointed out the water delivery. Also the men and women carrying loudspeakers who managed to disappear into a crowd at any sign of a uniformed policeman or soldier. “No wonder it’s been so hard to meet with Conner Rhys-Monroe. This must have taken weeks to organize.”
Easily. Gareth had already told Tara about the large demonstration he had arranged on the Senate mall. The logistics it had required, and the thousands of man-hours. But if that effort had been the military equivalent of a tactical strike, what Conner and his Senate friends pulled together amounted to a full-on invasion.
By the hundreds and thousands people converged on Geneva. By DropShip and ballistic shuttle, carrier planes, trains, bus and car. There wasn’t a spare hotel room, campsite or apartment for a hundred kilometers. The paltry thousand-count mob Gareth had whipped together in support of Heather GioAvanti’s plan to bring the senators to heel was swept aside like sand before the tide.
Of course, Tara had tried to meet with the rogue knight. After several attempts, she had abandoned her formal requests and instead spent time visiting the few nearby military bases, currently suffering a crisis of confidence. Public outcry was one thing, but when service members of high and low rank began to openly debate policy, trouble followed. Putting out fires and reinforcing her base of popular support in order to strengthen the exarch’s position had become her first and second priorities.
Especially since Conner’s “legend” as a maverick was both well known and well loved by the people of Terra.
“There are the news vans,” Gareth said. He pointed out a small line of paneled hovervans behind a row of canteen vehicles. “We’re close.”
“Around that line and into the midst of the hounds, then,” Tara told her driver. “Gareth, stay in the vehicle.”
“Why?”
“You and Conner have history. Good and bad, now. I don’t need that in my way.”
Gareth’s natural urge may have been to argue, but the paladin obviously knew good sense when he heard it. He nodded a quick affirmative to her plan. Just in time, as the sedan rocked to a halt in front of a recording news crew. He leaned back, evading the camera angle as Tara popped open her own door, and she was loose among the pack.
Her sedan couldn’t help attracting the attention of anyone with an eye for news. The flag of Northwind fluttered over the left fender, a privilege of rank for any noble of that world, and the three gold sunbursts stitched along the flag’s lower edge promised a person of count’s rank. Over the right fender flew the ensign of The Republic, marked below with a single star. A general’s star. Her equivalent rank as commander of the Highlanders.
It got her noticed.
Strobes flashed and lenses swung her direction even before she exited the car. As if attending a gala event, Tara hung on the door for an extra second. There were no waves to invisible friends or side-turn poses to show off her couture. Today, she wore a simple Highlander’s uniform that merely modified The Republic’s standard with a red braid around the right shoulder and a swatch of Clan Campbell tartan from left shoulder to right hip.
But even for those who had not pieced it together from the insignia marking her sedan, Tara’s face was one of the most recognized in The Republic and certainly here on Terra. Her platinum hair, upswept and spiked on top, was quickly becoming the latest fashion trend on this world and many more. Green eyes and lightly freckled nose lent her an innocent air the nonthinking public found very appealing, while her no-nonsense speeches endeared her to people who bothered to use their brain cells for something other than knee-jerk responses to the party line.
Calls of “Countess” and “Lady Campbell” begged for her attention. She gave it sparingly, with quick, firm smiles as she paced her way through the crowd of newsvid journalists in search of her prey. When she recognized a larger studio or personality, Tara would stop for a moment and exchange a pleasantry. She’d spent the last few weeks cultivating many friendships, after all. It was time to harvest that crop.
Her strategy garnered her an instant retinue, with holovid cameras and microphones committed to her every word. But about her mission, she stuck to a prepared line.
“I’m here on behalf of Northwind and all soldiers in the field who are demanding better of both sides of this disagreement.”
It said everything about how she felt. And it committed her to nothing, though it raised the general level of excitement around her. The sense of a coming showdown.
Tara smiled, and worked the crowd.
The buzz swept ahead of her as she blazed her way into Magnum Park. Her vanguard of prominent news figures made certain of that. Soon it would find the onetime knight, and reflect back in a counterwave much like a radar signal returning from a distant target. Conner Monroe, Tara had felt certain, would not be too far distant from the newsvid crews. He wanted publicity. Needed the watchful eye of the public on him should he be arrested or harassed in any way. That exposure was the lifeblood of a political insurgent.
She forgot, momentarily, that the man had also been a knight. And had learned some very hard lessons from two of the exarch’s best.
“Countess,” Conner Rhys-Monroe greeted her, stepping in at her elbow and laying a discreet hand on the side of her arm. He spoke loud enough for the news journalists to hear. “I’m so glad to see you have come forward on the side of sanity.”
Always seize the high ground. A military and political maxim. By outracing the returning buzz, he had caught her just short of her own prepared statement. And as his own retinue swept in with him, forming a cordon around the pair to separate them from the closest microphone, he ensured a moment of privacy in what was otherwise a very public forum.
Conner Rhys-Monroe was not quite the same man Tara expected. He had always been somewhat controversial, and she had expected a wildness about him still. The pierced ears. The Mohawk that had styled him an independent soul. But he had drastically reined in those impulses. Now he trimmed his hair an even length, very short but more in keeping with his new social circles. His multiple earrings had given way to a pair of tasteful emerald studs, matching his peridot eyes. He dressed in a fashionable suit. Conservative, with a banded collar to eschew any need for a necktie.
The wild knight, gone respectable.
“Sir Conner,” Tara said, granting him his title regardless of circumstance. He started to shake his head, but she continued. “Deny it all you wish, sir knight. We both know that you cannot walk away so easily
from what you have made of yourself. First and last, you are a knight of the Sphere.”
Her return thrust, not necessarily aimed at him. It might not have made the newsvid recorders, but it did reach the ears of several in Conner’s circle of companions and aides. Obviously, by the sidelong glances and uneasy shrugs, it did not sit well with several of them.
A few even stepped backward, and Tara filled the void by challenging the nearest man with a quick move forward.
“Does it truly bother you, Lord Geist?” Tara recognized the man from the file of Conner’s likeliest supporters prepared for her by David McKinnon. This man a visiting noble from Markab. “With the Dragon stirring on the other side of our borders—and within your Prefecture as well—are you so eager to throw off the protection of The Republic? To risk your charges, citizen and resident, to the horrors of escalating violence?”
Tara had backed him up several steps, right into a crowd of reporters with a rainbow of logos among them. Sound sticks and trivid camera eyes were thrust his direction.
“N-no. Of course not,” Geist said. A sentiment that would play well back home, of course, but wasn’t completely popular with Conner’s wardens.
Quite so, since Tara now recognized two other senators in the surrounding crowd—both of them fading back to avoid any need to go on the record. By uniform, Tara also counted a dozen or more military officers from the Triarii and Principes Guards. The fracture lines were widening.
And Conner conceded no ground. “I made myself a knight,” he said, taking her arm again as if there had been no interruption. But the damage was done, as newsvid journalists and knots of glamour-struck civilians mingled freely among the ex-knight’s stalwart supporters. As Conner led Tara deeper into the park, the crowd moved with them and the newshounds swept around like dogs on the scent.
“I was born a noble. A viscount’s son.”
“And now you are Viscount Marduk. I am very sorry for the way things turned out for you.”
He could not help the pain-filled glare directed back at the Hall of Government. “It was not your hand that set events in motion.”
“No,” Tara agreed. Steeling herself against the need to inflict more pain on the young man, she said, “That would be your father, among others.”
Conner recoiled as if slapped, all but stumbling to a halt. Several people surrounding the pair reacted much the same way. Angry glares drove hot knives into her back. The reporters crowded in for better angles.
People relayed their words far back into the crowd, beginning several new arguments.
The ex-knight walked stiffly, wooden. “That, Countess, was extremely beyond the bounds of courtesy.”
His voice was low and hoarse. His manner turned frosty as if Tara had thrown a switch. Which, in effect, she had.
“I’m not here to coddle you, Viscount. Or to join your cause.” She raised her voice, ensuring that even the junior newsvid hounds at the edge of the crowd heard her clearly. “And if none of you can own up to your own part in this tragic state of affairs, then you are all living inside of Hectar’s fable.”
“Hectar?” Conner asked.
“An old Scots legend.” And the news journalists—the savvy ones—would look it up for themselves by air time. She softened her voice. “Hectar was a nobleman of ancient Terra convinced that the other lords were out to get him. He ordered built around his keep grand walls. Too tall to scale. Too thick to batter down. Impregnable. But there was only one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
“No gates. Gates were always the weakness of any keep, after all. So poor Hectar had no way out. He had built his own prison, walling himself away from his people, who fell into despair and ruin without their lord. And so the other lords did move in, taking away Hectar’s lands and subjugating his people. And he was left with only his walls.”
Conner stomped to a halt. Tara doubted he even recognized his own anger and grief, he was so caught up in the moment.
“When I heard that you had arrived on planet,” he said, “I had hope. And I waited, to see what you would do. Learning you had come here, now, today, that hope seemed well placed. You of all people, who turned down a paladinship and have steadfastly maintained your own independence in the face of high-level criticism, I thought would understand. The Republic is bigger than the host of paladins and knights who protect her. Bigger than the exarch. Bigger, even, than Devlin Stone, as we have proved in his absence. But it is, and always will be, only as big as the people of The Republic who make up the body politic. And the voice of the people has always been the nobility.”
There were cheers and chants to applaud the end of Conner’s impromptu speech. Fists thrust into the air. Righteous fire alight in so many eyes. Tara saw now how this former knight of the realm had pulled together so much support. For all his youthful impulses in the past, Conner Rhys-Monroe was a natural leader. Charismatic and forceful, daring in a way that people responded to, and so few nobles ever attained.
Quite simply, he was a very dangerous man.
A man coming into his own at exactly the wrong time. One, Tara felt certain, who could eventually have made a great paladin and some day become exarch. But that budding talent had been twisted with the suicide death of his father. A death Conner placed squarely on the shoulders of Jonah Levin and his paladins.
“I wish I could hold a mirror up to you right now.” She said this softly. For his ears only. “You sound bitter and very much alone.”
“Alone? Look around me.” He stepped back a pace and basked in the adoration of officers and a few proud lords.
There were no other senators, not now, but it was enough to make a good impression for the cameras.
“Step in at our side, Tara.” Conner turned back to her, his peridot eyes aflame, extending his offer with burning intensity. “Join your voice to ours. The exarch will have to listen then. With the great leaders of the Inner Sphere arriving soon, we can force him to the table. Everything can be put right once more.”
“Everything can be put to the flame so much easier,” she said, challenging him openly once again. “You’re playing with fire, and in doing so you risk lives, worlds and perhaps The Republic entire.”
She willed him to listen. To hear her. Her words reached a few of those around him, and by nightfall they would be discussed around supper tables and in many closed meetings, but Conner was wrapped up in his own grief and his fresh purpose.
“Left to the military, The Republic is now caught up in a two-front war. We are surrounded by enemies, and have seen even the paladins corrupted by circumstance in the last year. Don’t lecture us about what we risk.”
There was a great chorus of cheers, but not so many as before. Enough, though, for the rogue knight.
“Join us. Help lead, if you would, as only the warrior nobility can. As a member of the loyal opposition.”
A role Conner no doubt thought he filled.
Tara stepped away from him, instead. It wasn’t a hard choice to make. She’d walked away from more enticing offers in her life. And to her, The Republic came first and foremost.
“I can’t hear you, Conner,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your voice has become nothing more than a whisper, behind very tall walls.”
Hectar. What a wonderful tale.
Erik Sandoval-Groell trailed along at the edge of the crowd surrounding Tara Campbell and Conner Rhys-Monroe, sipping at a bottle of lukewarm water and straining his hearing to follow the sparring match underway. Elbows jostled him, and the stench of unwashed bodies pressed close. But a little discomfort was a small price to pay for such valuable instruction. So far he had to give Conner more points on raw emotion and delivery, though the countess’s subtle play seemed more suited to win a victory in the long run.
Regardless, both leaders made for an interesting study. Tara for her subtle nuances and the way in which she worked the crowd and let the crowd, at times, work through her. From landed aristocrat to tough-as-n
ails warrior, she made the changes as easily as Erik might step across a threshold. And no one seemed to notice that she simply played a part, or when she changed roles right in front of them.
And Conner, as knight or senator, proved more baffling but far more interesting. Youth and vigor and a complete disregard for Tara’s subtle play. Not much older than Erik, if at all, the onetime knight showed much of the same righteous energy that Erik had once felt for the Sandoval dynasty. Maybe it took someone with a history of similar problems to recognize it. And he did. Doglike devotion. That had been one of his problems.
That, and a complete confidence in his own superiority.
The events on Mara changed that, when Erik’s cousin threw in with the Stone-blind population and rallied enough military force to stop his Rangers from taking (and holding) the world for the Draconis March. He had left the world, believing his life to be in ruin. Sent into the company and care of his uncle, Duke Aaron Sandoval. Aaron’s plans were far more subtle, and yet reached farther than Erik’s father had ever considered: the return of dozens of Republic worlds to House Davion, and even a dream of Terra as a Federated Suns holding. Aaron had taught Erik, through trials and terrible errors, how to play a long game.
How to recognize himself as a pawn on a very large board.
“What does not kill me makes me stronger,” the young noble whispered. Then listened as Tara Campbell played more to the cameras and Conner’s direct supporters than to the ex-knight. Fascinating.
But was it useful? And was it in time?
Lord Governor Aaron Sandoval was now on his way to Terra after narrowly avoiding a Capellan push against St. Andre. Aaron had made it look like Paladin Kessel all but threw him off the planet, which was playing well on other planets secured by the Swordsworn and the various planetary militias in Aaron’s coalition. And Aaron owed his timely departure to Erik, a fact he would make certain his uncle did not fail to remember.
There would be questions asked, ones that Erik had no intention of answering. Time to advance across the board.
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