Sandra laughed. It was like hearing crystal chime. Light and airy, and full of ringing peals. She wore her ash-blond hair extremely long, down to her curvaceous hips, refusing to bend her neck to the current, shorter styles. Often, she pulled it forward over her left shoulder, letting it cascade down her front. Today, she wore it in a straight fall down her back, the better to show off her scoop-necked blouse and the necklace Julian had bought for her on a quick visit to Athens.
Caleb circumnavigated Terra for the romantic spots. Julian and Harrison had gone to visit the ancient birthplace of democracy. Lots of goats and crumbling stone to see there.
Worse, though, than any long day reviewing logistics reports while touring a few final crumbs of history, was the fact that Sandra and Callandre enjoyed each other’s company.
“I can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to do that,” Sandra said, drawing a disapproving frown from Amanda. She looked back a cross-eyed expression, and the duchess couldn’t help a guilty smile at her ward’s obvious happiness.
“No more than he deserved for leaving so abruptly. No goodbye. Just a letter left in care of the Kell Hounds. And after everything I did for him.”
“Everything you . . . ?”
Now that was too much. Julian couldn’t even finish the question. He saw the extra security tightening up around them, which meant the prince wasn’t far behind, but he couldn’t let such a shot go unanswered.
“Maybe I missed something. Did you enjoy having an entire academic year voided by the honor board?”
Callandre shrugged, as if such things happened to her all the time. “You needed more work in your games-theory classes anyway.”
Listening to the quibbling, Sandra shook her head. “What did the two of you do?” she asked.
Julian could only imagine the guilty look plastered to his face. He felt heat bloom in his cheeks, and rise up the back of his neck. Callandre at least had enough shame left in her to glance away. “Just your usual academy hijinks,” he said, but the words sounded small even to him. “Besides, she started it.” Usually.
“Oh! Like I knew how to hot-wire a Zeus.”
Julian winced. He’d forgotten about that one.
Fortunately, he noticed a large SUV and a pair of armored sedans easing through the switchback of pylons on the Rue d’Égalité. Parts of the nearby crowd pressed forward against rope barriers, eager for a glimpse of a new celebrity, but the local gendarmes held them back.
“Cars pulling up,” Julian said, awkwardly deflecting the conversation away from his past with Calamity Kell. It deserved to be forgotten.
Harrison Davion’s arrival was enough to stir up any social event. Especially when the first prince of the Federated Suns opened his own door, before the security service fully vacated their SUV, and then leaned back in to offer his hand to Sterling McKenna. The Khan of the Raven Alliance was the one who alighted like royalty, her gray hunter’s eyes hooded. The two leaders waited curbside, Harrison waving to a few people in the nearby crowds while two men joined them from the second sedan.
Aaron Sandoval, The Republic’s Lord Governor of Prefecture IV, Julian recognized from his dossier. Erik Sandoval-Groell the champion had already met. And had not been impressed.
Amanda Hasek’s eyes froze over the moment Sterling McKenna stepped from the dark sedan. She cursed beneath a whispered breath then pulled Sandra and Caleb ahead of the group. Julian waited until his prince had caught up, though the ice in Harrison’s gaze as he recognized Callandre Kell promised that Julian would hear something about that later.
“Are we late?” Harrison asked, watching his sister-in-law lead the way inside.
The public viewings of Victor Steiner-Davion were closed off for certain hours of every day to provide security and serenity for the visiting dignitaries from so many worlds and realms. There was a fairly strict schedule for large parties, though it was understood that no one with the right credentials would be turned away, no matter the hour or the press of visitors.
This was, after all, the reason for such a grand summit of Inner Sphere leaders.
Julian consulted his watch, strapped to the underside of his wrist instead of on top. Lyran fashion, he remembered. One more thing he’d picked up while attending school abroad, and had never quite let go. “Early still, I think.”
Countess Campbell traded a brief greeting with both the first prince and Snow Raven khan, but chose to wait outside on the marble steps. Julian and Callandre followed Harrison and McKenna into the Cathedral, the quartet easily catching up to the others who were all momentarily robbed of speech and locomotion while viewing the magnificent vestibule. The ceiling frieze and baroque moldings. Deep-polished mahogany and marble floors that gleamed to perfection. A platoon of religious men and women waited to offer advice or answer questions, but it was fairly obvious which way to go. A runner of red carpet led from the main doors to a side entry, away from the nave. To the antechamber where Victor’s body lay in state.
The same door from which a long line of Kurita nobles and officers began filing.
Julian had met Vincent Kurita before. The Coordinator of the Draconis Combine was third in line, behind a token “guard” of two samurai warriors. They wore no uniform but matching kimonos and mantled white overcoats, and carried no swords in the presence of their liege lord. But Julian never doubted that the men were highly trained. It was in the way they carried themselves.
Vincent Kurita, of course, carried the twin swords of a samurai tucked into the wrapping around his elaborately embroidered silk robes. The only other man to go so armed followed right behind him. Taller than Vincent, and rangy with the implied strength of a man who had spent his entire life training for battle, Matsuhari Toranaga, Warlord of New Samarkand, carried his katana by the scabbard in his left hand. Ready to draw it on an instant’s notice in the service of his coordinator. Or so that story went.
Both men were contemporaries of Harrison Davion, and Vincent was also the son of Hohiro Kurita, who had owed Victor Steiner-Davion his life during the Clan invasion. So it was no surprise that the Combine had brought a respectful party to Terra to see Victor off.
The surprise came with how Vincent Kurita reacted to Harrison.
“Prince Harrison,” the coordinator greeted his opposite stiffly. His accent was sharp, used to the Japanese language. His dark eyes stared daggers at the woman Harrison escorted. “I’ve seen you in better company.”
At nearly two meters, Harrison could easily have looked down his nose at the smaller man. Instead, he shook his head in casual reproach while patting McKenna’s hand where it rested on his arm. “That is beneath you, Vincent.”
The two warrior samurai stilled at Harrison’s casual use of the coordinator’s name. Warlord Toranaga positively bristled.
“It looks more like this is about who’s beneath you,” Toranaga said loudly.
There were few women in the coordinator’s court. Two ladies both wearing traditional obi and a young woman wearing a basic military dress uniform with patches from the Sun Zhang Military Academy and the rank devices of a Tai-sa. Captain. The young officer surprised Julian in two ways, first being that he did not recognize her from any of the intelligence briefings Harrison had insisted he attend. Second, she was the only one able to hide her emotions. The other two women blushed at the rough, sexual innuendo, and the poor grace of Warlord Toranaga to say such in public.
If there was a better way to kill the hushed conversations and envelop the two parties in a hostile silence, Julian could not think of it. Everyone waited on the prince, to see how he would handle the flagrant insult. Even Sterling McKenna, who on most days would have a great deal to say over such a slight to her and her nation.
Julian quietly stepped up to Harrison’s side. He should have seen this coming the moment he recognized Vincent Kurita. Of course the Dragon had issues with McKenna. Her Raven Alliance nestled up against the Combine’s back, often an enemy and always a threat. In a way, the animosity was stronge
r there than over the five decades of low-intensity fighting inside the Draconis Rift.
Which was when he recalled the Sandovals!
Aaron Sandoval was Republic and not necessarily a Federated Suns loyalist. Regardless, the man was very accomplished, and him, Julian did not worry for. But Erik Sandoval-Groell . . . He came sponsored by March Lords inside the Suns’ Draconis March. It was Erik’s father and uncles, his brothers and cousins, who sponsored the pro-Davion movements within the Rift and kept that low-level war constantly raging. If Erik had a greater enemy on the planet than Toranaga, the other side of that fight, it could only be the coordinator himself.
Julian stepped to the side, putting himself in front of Erik, his heel coming down on the toe of the other man’s boot. Out of the corner of one eye he’d seen Erik open his mouth to make some comment. He’d also noticed Aaron Sandoval laying a hand on Erik’s arm, forestalling any outburst, and Callandre swung around behind Erik, likely without knowing exactly why but backing Julian’s play regardless.
In the space of a heartbeat, Erik Sandoval-Groell had been isolated and his soft yelp over bruised toes was lost to Harrison’s forced chuckle.
“Never a dull moment, Coordinator Kurita. So ka?”
Isn’t that so? Julian knew enough polite Japanese to hold his own, German and Nouveau Monde French as well. At his own expense, Harrison offered the Combine’s ruler a method to save face in light of his Warlord’s transgression.
Kurita drew himself up stiffly, assuming a superior air. “Hai, Prince Harrison. So ka.” That was so. He bowed curtly, barely more than a nod, but at least it satisfied the strict forms of Kuritan diplomacy.
Everyone went home satisfied, and alive.
A small crowd of minor dignitaries had built up behind Harrison’s party, no one willing to cross the tight no-man’s-land between the two rulers. Now, as tensions eased, Warlord Toranaga turned his back on coordinator and prince both as he stepped past them, striding hard for the Cathedral’s arched entryway. All eyes remained fixed on Vincent Kurita, who led the Combine delegation after his warlord.
Harrison nodded his sister-in-law and son ahead of him, and turned the small group from the Federated Suns back toward its original purpose: viewing the body of the fallen paladin.
“Never a dull moment?” Callandre asked, sotto voce. “What do you think the old bear—sorry—the prince meant by that? Never a dull moment . . . on Terra? In politics?”
It could have been anything. Or nothing. An inane comment to paint over the rough words. He whispered as much to her as the delegation began filing through the small antechamber door.
Callandre wasn’t buying. “You don’t believe that.”
No, he didn’t. If anything, in the past few weeks as Harrison demanded more from Julian and made him privy to ever greater secrets and plans, Julian had glimpsed more of the first prince’s life than he’d ever expected to see. And he knew that Harrison Davion, for all his bluff personality and personal foibles, did not make inane comments. Ever. Every moment of every day counted for something.
“Never a dull moment,” Julian whispered, staring ahead in the line at his uncle’s profile, “as leader.”
21
Arrest Senator Derius? We celebrate her courage and her leadership! The Republic was never meant to be an absolute monarchy. And with women such as Lina Derius, it will never become so.
Anyway, isn’t the senator still on Terra? If Exarch Levin cannot enforce such a decree on the capital, how does he expect to bend Liberty to his will?
—(newly appointed) Legate Nahib Jamal, Liberty, 28 April 3135
Terra
Republic of the Sphere
2 May 3135
Never a dull moment among our lessers. That was what Erik Sandoval-Groell heard in the prince’s reply.
The nape of his neck crawled with an embarrassed flush. He sensed his uncle’s eyes boring in between his shoulder blades as he preceded the lord governor and the prince into the viewing room, being escorted—guarded!—by Julian and the Lyran trull who had apparently glommed onto the prince’s champion.
Released at the door, Erik sidestepped into one of the rear corners. Too full of nervous energy to take a seat in the pews, too worried about his appearance to pace the wall or make a scene by leaving before the prince or his uncle were ready to go. And, if he happened to run into any members of the Combine delegation outside, he knew he could only make things worse.
Cut your losses and regroup. It was a lesson he had learned well in the past few years. His near-slip today did not invalidate the weeks of work he’d already put in on Terra. This, too, he could overcome.
So Erik hovered near the back, pressed to one side by the arriving party from the Federated Suns and then buttonholed by one of the prince’s security agents, who took up station against the back wall with Erik off his right shoulder.
The viewing room off of the nave was smaller than he’d thought it would be, given the grand architecture of the Republic Cathedral. Barely larger than a military briefing room, actually. Erik easily imagined the dozen double sets of pews as ready-room benches. The heavily draped walls could conceal the flatscreens over which maps and force estimates would march in military cadence. Near the front, Victor Steiner-Davion, resting before rising up for one last campaign. Paladin Tyrina Drummond stood guard over the venerable leader, protecting Victor’s rest but obviously ready to wake him once the troops were assembled. Erik imagined Victor sitting up, sliding back the ferroglass top to his sarcophagus, and then pacing a tight box around the stage as he harangued prince and duchess and governors, generals and senior officers, instructing them as to their roles in a grand new age.
An age without him.
The irreverent fantasy helped Erik calm his nerves, divorcing himself from the proceedings as well as from the fiasco that had nearly occurred inside the vestibule. It also let him view the room’s occupants in a new, neutral light. He recognized those who approached Victor’s resting place as if it contained a holy saint, truly moved to be in His presence. Also just as many who faked it; genuflecting before they swaggered up, feeling superior in the only way they could, that they lived while the great hero did not.
And one man who circled the room like an angered lion, prowling with restless, dangerous energy. Avoiding the viewing line and the rows of pews as he put on his own show of righteous indignation. Glaring at those who stared through him, or—worse—recognized him and then dismissed him out of hand.
Caleb Davion. Caleb Hasek Sandoval Davion.
Erik detached himself from the corner, moving slowly so as not to draw more than a curious glance from the nearby security agent. Those kind of men were nervous enough in controlled environments. It wasn’t the kind of attention Erik was looking for just now. He gave the man in the black suit a simple nod, acknowledging his presence and his purpose, and then steered well clear of Prince Harrison as he edged around the room, intercepting Caleb just behind the dais where Paladin Drummond stood her silent and respectful vigil.
“Never a dull moment,” Erik said. Not whispering, but speaking softly enough that his voice would not carry far.
Bringing back the prince’s words to Vincent Kurita, Erik gave the Davion heir a chance to reprimand him and thereby assume his own superiority.
But Caleb had his own interpretation. One that was obviously festering like a septic wound. He stopped, glared at Erik, then nodded once. Curt and regal.
“Never a dull moment,” Caleb repeated. “When you are at war.”
Now that was an interpretation Erik could get behind. One any Sandoval could, after the dynasty’s decades—centuries—of struggle against the Dragon. The Davion throne had avoided a very necessary war in the late thirty-first century, too exhausted from a decade of Jihad. Instead, it hung on the Sandovals and their fiefdom of the Draconis March the millstone of the so-called low-intensity conflict. A politician’s way of avoiding responsibility for what was, in effect, a limited and long-term period
of war.
“The Dragon never truly sleeps,” Erik said, voicing a family motto. “It merely gathers strength.”
“You are one of the Sandovals,” Caleb said haughtily, as if recognizing Erik bestowed imperial favor.
Of course, the dark topknot was a huge clue.
“I am, sire. Erik Sandoval-Groell.” A distaff line of the dynasty, but still strong. And related to Caleb within three generations. “Aide to Duke Aaron Sandoval, and a leader within the Swordsworn. A loyal subject of the Federated Suns.”
“How does a loyal subject of the Federated Suns rate title and rank within a Republic militia?” Caleb asked, suspicious.
“It’s all a matter of family, no matter where the borders are currently drawn. Wouldn’t you agree, Lord Davion?”
Which was as close as Erik could come—without Aaron Sandoval’s permission—to admitting the Swordsworn faction did indeed champion the Federated Suns and, by extension, House Davion. A token of faith, offered to Caleb, that he had friends inside The Republic, and within the room.
Caleb nodded Erik along with him. The two men paced each other, side by side, as they swung around behind the dais and found their own private conversation just to one side of Victor’s entombed body, screened by a trio of flags set in a stand at Victor’s feet. These were the flags of the Federated Suns, Lyran Alliance and ComStar’s ComGuards. Victor’s early life.
The flag of The Republic of the Sphere and the Terran ensign both stood at the tomb’s head. The colors Victor had died under.
Caleb plucked at one corner of the nearby flags, drawing it out to glance at the sword-and-sunburst crest of the Federated Suns. He had banked his dangerous energy, stepping it down now that he had found an audience.
“So,” he said, “as family, how would you say my father handled the . . . situation?”
Careful. “With great diplomacy.”
“By diplomacy, if you mean accepting the ungracious mockery of Vincent Kurita, and the direct and infuriating insult of the coordinator’s aide, I would agree.” Anger seethed in Caleb’s voice.
Sword of Sedition Page 20