CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The man who had been Pavel Young stopped short as he faced the unexpected mirror. He stared across his new office, frozen while the door sighed shut behind him, and his hollow-eyed face looked back, white with strain above his exquisitely tailored tunic. His civilian tunic.
Something happened inside him. His shoulders twitched with an almost electric shock. His nostrils flared, and he crossed the room quickly, his mouth twisted in shame too fresh to lose its fury, and hooked his fingers under the mirror's frame.
It was bracketed to the wall, not simply hung, and pain lanced up his arm as a fingernail tore. But he welcomed the hurt. It was an ally, fanning his hate-filled strength, and he grunted with effort as he drove his fingertips into the small gap like splitting wedges of flesh. Expensive wood paneling yielded with a pistol-sharp crack as the mirror ripped out of the wall, and he staggered back and hurled it from him. It sailed across the palatial office, spinning end-for-end with a soft, whirring sound, then hit the opposite wall with a shattering smash. Mirror-backed fragments of glass pattered across the carpet, ringing and rolling like splintered diamonds on the bare wood beyond the carpets edges, and madness glittered in his eyes.
A voice from the outer office exclaimed in muffled alarm as the mirrors destruction shook the room. The door opened abruptly, and a distinguished looking man with hair of iron gray looked in. His face revealed nothing, but his eyes widened as he saw the wild-eyed, panting Eleventh Earl of North Hollow standing in the center of the room. The earl was still bent forward in a throwing posture, shuddering as he sucked in huge gulps of air and glared fixedly at the shattered mirror.
"My Lord?" The iron-haired man's soft, courteous voice was touched with the tiniest edge of caution, but North Hollow ignored it. The other man cleared his throat and tried again, a bit louder. "My Lord?"
The earl shook himself. He closed his eyes and rammed his fingers through his hair, then drew a deep breath and turned to the newcomer.
"Yes, Osmond?"
"I heard the mirror fall." North Hollows mouth twitched at Osmond's choice of verb, and Osmond paused. "Shall I call a cleaning crew, My Lord?" he suggested delicately.
"No." North Hollow's voice was harsh. He drew another deep breath, then turned and walked deliberately behind his desk. He seated himself in the expensive new chair that had replaced his fathers life-support chair, and shook his head. "No," he said more calmly. "Leave it for now."
Osmond nodded, expression still bland, but his thoughts were wary. The newest Earl North Hollow could scarcely be blamed for feeling the strain, but there was something dangerous about him. The glitter in his eyes was too bright, too fixed, before he lowered them to the data console before him.
"That will be all, Osmond," North Hollow said after a moment, gaze still fixed on the console, and the other man withdrew without a sound. The door whispered shut behind him, and North Hollow slumped in his chair and scrubbed his face with his palms.
The mirror had brought it all back... again. Five days. Five hideous days and five nights more terrible still had passed since the Navy completed his dishonor. He closed his eyes, and the scene played itself out once more against the blood-red haze of his lids. He couldn't stop it. He didn't even know if he wanted to stop it, for agonizing as it was, it fed the hate that gave him the strength to go on.
He saw the iron-faced admiral once more, his eyes shouting out the disgust his regulation expression hid, as he read the court-martial's sentence aloud. He saw the watching ranks of black and gold while the snouts of HD cameras peered pitilessly down from vantage points and hovering air cars. He saw the junior-grade lieutenant marching forward, the brisk, impersonal movement of his gloved hands belied by the contempt in his eyes as they ripped the golden planets of a senior-grade captain from the collar of his mess dress uniform. The braid on his cuffs followed. It had been specially prepared for the event, tacked to his sleeves with a few fragile stitches that popped and tore with dreadful clarity in the silence. Then it was the medal ribbons on his chest, his shoulder boards, the unit patch with his last ship's name, the gold and scarlet Navy flash from his right shoulder.
He'd wanted to scream at them all. To spit upon their stupid concept of honor and reject their right to judge. But he couldn't. The shock and shame had cut too deep, the numbed horror of it had frozen him, and so he'd stood rigidly at attention, unable to do anything else, as the lieutenant removed the beret from his head. The white beret of a starship's commander, badged with the Kingdom's arms. Gloved fingers ripped the badge from it and returned it to his head, replacing it with contemptuous dismissal, as if he were a child unable even to dress himself, and still he stood at attention.
But then it was his sword, and he swayed ever so slightly. His eyes closed, unable to watch, as the lieutenant braced the needle-sharp point against the ground, holding it at a forty-five-degree angle, and raised a booted foot. He couldn't see it, but he heard that foot fall, heard the terrible, brittle snap of breaking steel.
He stood before them, no longer a Queen's officer. He stood in a ridiculous black suit, stripped of its finery, its badges of honor, and the breeze picked at the scraps of gold and ribbon which had meant so much more than he'd known before he lost them. The wind rolled them over the manicured grass while the broken halves of his shattered sword glittered at his feet in the brilliant sunlight.
"About face!" The admirals voice had snapped the command, but it no longer applied to him. His eyes had opened again, against his will. It was as if some outside force were determined to make him watch his final shame as those solid ranks turned their backs upon him in perfect unison.
"Forward, march!" the admiral snapped, and the officers who had not been found wanting obeyed. They marched away from him, with a precision Marines could not have bettered, timed by the slow, measured beat of a single drum, and left him alone and abandoned on the field of his dishonor....
His eyes popped open, escaping the substance of his nightmares—for a time. His mouth twisted with a foul, bitter curse, and his fists were white knuckled on the desk before him as the hate poured through him.
He was a man who was used to hate. It had always been a part of him, racing through his veins. When some arrogant commoner challenged his rightful authority, when some spiteful superior denied him the recognition which was his just due, the hate had been there, boiling like lye. And the hate had been there when he crushed some upstart inferior, as well. He'd tasted it when he used his power to punish those who dared defy him, but then it had burned sweet, like intoxicating wine.
This hate was different. It didn't burn; it blazed. It was a furnace within him, consuming him. This time his whole world had turned upon him, chewed him up and spat him out like so much carrion at the feet of the bitch who'd delivered him to destruction, and every cell of his being cried out for vengeance. Vengeance upon that slut Harrington, but not just upon her. He would—he must—destroy her and everyone else who had betrayed him, yet he needed even more. It had to be done right, in a way that returned their contempt sneer for sneer, that spat upon their precious codes and putrid honor.
His teeth grated, and he made himself sit still, trembling, until the raw fury receded. It didn't go away. It simply shrank back to something that let him move and think, speak without spewing the curses that seethed within.
He pressed a key on his com console, and his father's—no, his—senior aide answered instantly.
"Yes, My Lord?"
"I need to see Sakristos and Elliott, Osmond. And you. Immediately."
"Of course, My Lord."
The circuit went dead, and North Hollow tilted his chair back. He folded his hands in front of him, lips curled in an ugly smile, and nodded slow agreement with his thoughts as he waited.