“Since you brought a weapon into this circle,” Marks said, “I claim the right to do the same.” He reached inside his uniform tunic and brought out a knife.
Anastasia heard the sound of muffled exclamations and indrawn breaths from the ring of watchers. Turning a silken halter into a garrote, as she had done, was a titillating dance on the edge of what was permitted. Drawing steel, on the other hand, was a gross offense against custom.
Worse, Anastasia knew that there was no sure defense against someone with a knife. If a man with a knife could get within three meters of his target, not even a slug-pistol made for a foolproof defense. She turned to present her left side, her weaker side, toward the Star Colonel. If she had to take a hit, she decided, she would let her left arm take it. She could afford that much, if it allowed her to make a telling stroke in return.
The stroke would have to be telling. She might not have a second chance.
The Star Colonel tossed his blade from his right hand to his left. “Are you no longer ready to play?” he asked. “Come on, where is the Kerensky courage?”
He claimed before witnesses to doubt her courage—and she half naked, and now bare-handed. She knocked her mental estimation of Marks a notch further down. She’d killed better men than he was—one of them was lying on the deck behind him right now.
Colonel Marks had the blade in his left hand. He pivoted right and swung the blade downward at the same moment, so that it protruded from the little-finger side of his fist, laying it back against his forearm. He reached for Anastasia, taking her left wrist in his right hand, pulling her down and toward him.
She twisted her wrist outward, breaking the grip. At the same moment, she kicked with her left foot, aiming for a kneecap.
Marks whirled away from the kick, slashing with the knife at the same moment. Anastasia blocked down and out with her right forearm. Too late, too slow. The tip of the knife slashed a line of burning pain across her exposed midriff.
Marks tossed the blade back to his right hand and lunged forward, aiming for the center of her chest. Anastasia pivoted away; the blade went past her rather than into her.
As she moved, she felt the injured tissue tearing across her abdomen. The pain blossomed like a brilliant light behind her eyes, leaving a blackness when it faded. She shook her head to clear it. Her body continued the fight, a block and a counterstrike, without her fully conscious direction, before she mastered the pain, tucked it into a small part of her mind to be dealt with later.
“I could just stand here, stay out of your way, waiting for you to bleed to death or your guts to fall out,” Colonel Marks said. “Or you can offer me your neck, and I will make it quick and clean. Which do you want?”
“Neither,” Anastasia said. She kept her voice cool and level. She’d be damned if she let on she was hurt, by word, by gesture, by expression. The pain was manageable now, even as she felt blood running down her legs. “There is not any surrender here.”
“Your choice,” Colonel Marks said.
Anastasia moved a bit to her right, circling. The Colonel kept his distance and his relative position.
You think you are in control, Anastasia thought. You are following my lead. I have the initiative. I am acting, you are reacting. And you have desperately overplayed your hand.
She took a step forward, her hands in a ready position. The Colonel took a step backward. She moved to her right again, and the Star Colonel matched her movement. He was watching her every move, but she wasn’t watching him. Her attention was on the deck behind him, where Colonel Dorn lay with a silk scarf wrapped around his crushed neck.
There. Anastasia had Marks lined up. She lunged forward, starting a rising side-kick. Marks stepped back, out of range, and tripped against Dorn’s body.
He hesitated. He did not trip or fall. But his smooth action was broken, and Anastasia was ready for it. She sprang against him, bearing both of them to the deck.
She landed on top, knees on either side of his chest, his knife hand trapped in both of her hands. She twisted his fist until the blade pointed down. Then she fell forward, throwing her entire weight against his arm.
The knife penetrated his chest. He convulsed and pink-tinged foam sprayed from his nose and mouth. She rolled free, pushing back to her feet, and watched as he tried to remove the blade. His efforts grew less and less organized. He convulsed once again, and lay still.
She spun way from the body and glared at the rest of the Steel Wolves’ Star Colonels.
“Anyone else?” she shouted. “If anybody else wants to break tradition and challenge me to a knife fight, now is the time to do it!”
Nobody spoke. The pain of the knife wound took up more and more of her attention, but she refused to fall. She stood for what felt like a long time, breathing heavily and swaying a little on her feet. No one came forward. She was aware, in the part of her mind that was not occupied by a fascination with the splashing noise of her own blood hitting the polished deckplates, that the Star Colonels were breaking up the combat circle and moving away.
A shadowy figure approached her from her right-hand side. The cargo bay was growing unaccountably dim, in spite of the work lights. When she concentrated, the shadow resolved itself into Ian Murchison.
“You can fall down now and let me get to work on patching you,” her Bondsman said. His gloved hands were busy pulling things she didn’t recognize out of his medical bag, and his voice had a harsh note in it that made her wonder, fuzzily, if the silly man had actually believed that she was going to lose. “I think you’ve made your point with the boys in uniform.”
13
Belgorod DropPort
Terra
Prefecture X
March 3134; local winter
Jonah Levin endured the long trip from Kervil to Terra with equanimity. With the HPG network down, and with wars and rumors of wars cropping up all around The Republic of the Sphere, he felt lucky to have found a berth at all, let alone passage on a DropShip heading more or less directly to where he was going. Five days to Kervil’s jump point, a jump to an intermediate point for the purpose of recharging the JumpShip’s Kearny-Fuchida drive, then a jump to Terran space and nine days transit to Terra itself—an easy trip compared to some he’d made in the course of his years in The Republic’s service.
As usual, the greatest danger on shipboard was boredom. Jonah passed the time going over his questions about the current state of The Republic of the Sphere—questions about all of those things that could not be entrusted to written or electronic correspondence, and about all of those things that required a physically present person in order to be observed.
Eventually, it was time for him to pack his bag and stand by for departure.
The Belgorod DropPort in old Russia was lit by high-intensity flares that banished the night while leaving inky shadows anywhere the white glare was absent. Jonah was one of the first passengers off the DropShip, unhindered by the need to retrieve any trunks or boxes from the ship’s cargo handlers. Years of experience in The Republic’s service had taught him the virtues of traveling light. Almost anything that he needed he could purchase or borrow right on Terra, and he could do so faster than hauling it across space as luggage.
He presented his papers to the functionary at the first gate.
“Welcome to Earth, Paladin,” the man said, glancing at the identity swab and the screen readout that matched, calling up Jonah’s technical stats as it did so. “Downstairs and to your right, sir.”
The functionary turned to the next passenger in line, reaching for identification as at the same time he said, in the same warm tone of greeting, “Welcome to Earth, milady.”
Jonah was not offended by the obviously standard-issue courtesy—although he suspected that some others might be. The man was undoubtedly hired for his ability to exercise patience and maintain a friendly demeanor, no matter how tired and irritable the passengers he dealt with might become. And this was, after all, Terra. Even an out-of-the-way
cargo DropPort like Belgorod would see people of importance coming through on a regular basis.
He continued onward as he’d been directed, downstairs and to the right, along a passageway lined with marble and floored with steel. The indirect lighting was pale white and obviously artificial, and the air moaned and clanked in the environmental system, giving out warmth and a mixed smell of industrial-strength floor cleaners and—from what source, he couldn’t imagine—boiled cabbage.
At the end of the passageway, a second rank of port officials stood behind movable barricades. These officials would have been watching the readout repeater screens, and would know exactly who was on the arriving ships. One of them moved forward now, her eyes fixed on Jonah.
“Good evening, Paladin,” the woman said, as soon as she was standing at a correct and polite two-meter distance. “What brings you to Terra?”
“Business,” Jonah replied. “I’ll be continuing on to Geneva as soon as I’ve had a chance to rest here for a few hours. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make advance arrangements for a place to stay. Perhaps you could recommend someplace—?”
“It would be my pleasure.” The port official turned, snapping her fingers at the same time and pointing to a hoverlimo driver. “A hotel? The Gospodin Manuel O’Kelly is the best in town, Paladin.”
“That will do admirably,” Jonah replied.
He allowed himself to be led to the exit, out under a sky washed clean of stars by the high-intensity lights. The wind smelled of dust and oil, heavy with water vapor—not at all like ship’s air, or like the heated and conditioned atmosphere of the port buildings. He stretched, breathed deeply, and entered the hoverlimo.
The hotel was a grand place, set back behind lawns, hedges, and statuary, with a row of flagpoles lining the drive to the main entrance. Jonah insisted on taking his bag himself, only surrendering it to the concierge inside.
“A room,” Jonah said to the deskman. “And”—he consulted his chronometer—“a wake-up call in six hours.”
Paladins do not lie long in bed, he thought, when The Republic is on fire.
Six hours later, dawn was tinging the eastern sky. Jonah availed himself of room service for breakfast, made an appointment at a twenty-four-hour tailor for clothing suitable for a visit to the Exarch, and turned on the tri-vid to the English language news channel. He’d need to wait until Geneva for the deep briefings, but some time spent watching the generally available news would allow him to catch up on the state of The Republic of the Sphere, as viewed by its oldest and most famous member world.
As soon as he had finished breakfast and the sun was well up, he paid his visit to the custom tailor, then returned to his hotel and used the room’s communications console to call for a messenger from the planet-girdling General Delivery service. Part express couriers and part confidential agents for hire, GenDel’s operatives were bonded and reliable, and an invaluable resource for all those people who needed to do business on Terra, but who didn’t wish—or couldn’t afford—to maintain permanent offices there. Jonah had availed himself of the firm’s services more than once, and had been satisfied with the results.
Half an hour later, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of a messenger in the red-and-blue GenDel uniform.
“I see from the tri-vid news that Paladin Crow is somewhere onplanet,” Jonah told the messenger. “Ezekiel Crow. Find him. Say to him that Paladin Jonah Levin sends his compliments, and wishes to speak with him at the earliest convenient time.”
“Will you be expecting a reply?” the messenger asked, seemingly unsurprised by the latitude of his instructions. GenDel employees prided themselves on handling much more difficult assignments—company legend told of a courier who had searched for ten years, including a stint with a company of mercenaries, in order to deliver a “Come home, all is forgiven” letter to the run-away eldest daughter of a Terran banking house.
“Yes,” Levin said. “Bring it to me in Geneva, at the Pension Flambard. Tell General Delivery to send its bill for your services there as well.”
“As the Paladin commands.”
“One more thing,” Jonah said. “How much is General Delivery paying you?”
“More than enough,” the messenger said. He regarded Jonah with an interested expression. “Although the term of my current contract with them is drawing to an end in the near future.”
“I’m currently expecting to be on Terra for an extended stay,” Jonah said. “If my past experiences here are any guide, I’ll need to hire someone during that period who can handle investigations and legwork for me without attracting unwanted attention.”
“Are you offering me the job?”
“Assuming that your performance in this current assignment is satisfactory,” said Jonah. “Then, yes. I can pay you at the GenDel rate plus expenses and performance bonuses, which should provide you with a financial cushion while you renegotiate your contract.”
“I’ll need to finish this job for GenDel first,” the man said. “But after that—I’ll get back to you, Paladin, and if you’re satisfied with my work, I’ll probably say yes.”
The man bowed respectfully and departed. We’ll see what comes of that, Jonah thought as the door of the hotel room swung closed behind him. At the very least, I may have secured myself a trustworthy legman pro tempore.
He returned to the tri-vid box and the broadcast news. The currently running stories had cycled back to the arrival on Terra of Paladin Ezekiel Crow. The latest information on that subject was that Crow was scheduled to address the Senate in private session tomorrow afternoon. Jonah considered using his prerogative to enter the Senate chamber and hear the presentation, but ultimately decided against it. The full text and video files of Crow’s speech would be made available to those with a Paladin’s level of data access as soon as the meeting was over, and Jonah could go through them in detail without making it obvious to all concerned that he was doing so.
By now the day had advanced well into midmorning, and the windows of the suite in the Gospodin Manuel O’Kelly were flooded with natural sunlight. Jonah Levin looked out over the city and across the rolling plains beyond. The view seemed peaceful enough, and the long row of flagpoles in front of the hotel flew the banners of the worlds that made up The Republic of the Sphere.
Jonah turned again to the communications console. He had many calls to make today before he caught the shuttle-hop to Geneva. But he could not help wondering, as he left the window and the view it gave him, how many of those banners would be missing in a year’s time.
14
Pension Flambard, 14 Rue Simon-Durand
Geneva, Terra
Prefecture X
March 3134; local winter
Jonah Levin didn’t like visiting the Terran capital of Geneva in wintertime, or even early spring. The cold weather made scar tissue ache over old wounds, and broken bones that time had mended and reknitted would remind him again of every long-ago insult.
Most of the reminders came from the desperate battle that had nearly killed him, and that had brought him unsought fame and advancement, but he had acquired newer ones here and there as well, over the years. The life of a Knight of the Sphere was not one of peace and quiet, no matter how much a person might try to make it turn out that way. That was another reason Anna never liked to see him go away from home, although she wouldn’t say as much aloud. She was always afraid that she’d end up visiting him in the hospital afterward.
Jonah had offered more than once to find a less hazardous line of work. His heart, though, wasn’t in the offer and Anna knew it. He valued too much the way that a Knight could act directly to redress grievances and do justice when needed, instead of having to humbly petition some higher-level bureaucrat who might give or withhold needed help, purely in order to serve a political agenda.
The rulers of The Republic meant well. They were men and women of—for the most part—high ideals. But they were a long way removed, most of them, from those other men and w
omen whose lives they sometimes expended in the service of the government.
As usual, the inner voice of conscience and reason (which sounded, during the times Jonah was not at home, a great deal like Anna) took the opportunity to point out that the rulers of The Republic were no longer “them,” but “us.” Jonah Levin was as much a Paladin—one of the seventeen men and women who ruled The Republic at its highest levels, and from whose numbers the next Exarch would be elected—as was Heather GioAvanti or Victor Steiner-Davion.
That still didn’t mean he liked freezing rain and snow, or even bright cold days like this one, when the sky was an intense and pitiless blue and the sunlight off Lake Geneva blinded his eyes without giving warmth. He had known that the change was coming. He’d packed for it, and had adjusted the climate controls in his quarters on the DropShip during the long transit.
Nevertheless, he was cold, toes and fingers and nose and ears. He was glad to reach the small residential hotel on the Rue Simon-Durand that had been his preferred lodging place in Geneva since he was first made a Knight and started having to make periodic visits to The Republic’s capital city.
He passed through the doors and entered the pocket-size lobby and guest parlor, made warm by efficient central heating and by the psychological effect of the briskly burning faux logs on the small hearth. The crackling fire was only molded ceramic heating elements and a specialized tri-vid display—preserving clean air above the city was too important to allow for the real thing—but it made an effective imitation. Jonah resisted the urge to go stand in front of it and toast his extremities back to normal, and went straight to the front desk instead.
Madame Flambard herself was at the desk. The plump, gray-haired woman broke into a smile at the sight of him.
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