“I’m just saying—”
“‘Not now.’ Right.”
Moving carefully, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. Murchison reached out and supported her with a hand under one arm. Success.
She stayed that way for a moment, taking stock. Legs holding her up—good. Head clearing more moment by moment—good. She tried a few careful steps, then said, “As long as I don’t make any sudden moves, it’ll do. Time to go out and put the fear of me back into people.”
“No need to worry just yet.” She wasn’t certain about the note in Murchison’s voice, but she thought it might be amusement. “They’ve all been too busy promoting themselves to bother causing trouble.”
For a moment she failed to understand him. Then she remembered that he was not Clan, or at least not yet, and would not know.
“Trials of Position,” she said. She laughed under her breath, but cut it short when the knife wound protested. “I suppose I did create a couple of openings at the top.”
She contemplated, for a moment, the beautiful chaos of it all. The Star Colonels who had been junior to Marks and Dorn would have begun it by challenging one another for seniority. Then the more ambitious Star Captains would have started their own round of challenges for the empty Star Colonel slots, and the ripple effect would have extended all the way down into the ranks. She shook her head regretfully, and pushed Tassa Kay and her taste for brawls and bad company well back into the dark recesses of Anastasia Kerensky’s mind.
“I need to get out there,” she said. “Before somebody else gets the idea that they can do this job better than I can.”
“Sit back down. I’ll find you some clothes.”
“Who do you think you are, giving me orders?” She sat down on the edge of the bed anyway, and watched him searching efficiently through her duffel.
“Your Bondsman.” He emerged from the duffel with a pair of hip-riding trousers and a loose shirt. “You should be able to wear these and not mess your bandages up too much.”
Murchison helped her dress. His touch was asexual and oddly impersonal, and in a way she was glad of it. The last time a man’s hands had touched her in those places, it had been Nicholas Darwin, Jacob Bannson’s mole.
“I cut his throat,” she said suddenly. “And hung his body up for the carrion birds.”
“I know,” said Murchison. He was helping her on with her boots—tall boots—to make her into Anastasia Kerensky whether she felt like being Anastasia or not. “I was there.”
“What did they do with Marks and Dorn?”
“Out the air lock to space.”
“Good.” She was fully dressed now, armored in the identity of her rank and Bloodname, ready to go and walk alone among her Wolves. “Then our business here is finished, and it is time to make the jump to Terra.”
25
Highlander Encampment
Belgorod
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
In the regimental encampment near Belgorod, Tara Campbell lay awake. The night air was cold, but the weather in general had grown perceptibly warmer since she and her Highlanders had first arrived, and there was the smell of a thaw on the wind. She’d had a long day, followed by a long evening spent in discussing possible strategies and tactics—and the vexing question of just where, exactly, was Anastasia Kerensky—with her senior commanders. She’d collapsed at the end of it on the cot in her command tent and tried to sleep.
She could, she supposed, have taken a hotel room for herself in downtown Belgorod, or stayed in Geneva on The Republic’s hospitality. She could even have looked up one or another of her parents’ old Terran friends, either diplomatic or military, and begged for a place to stay from them.
She could have, but she didn’t. She’d been taught from childhood—by her parents and others—that she could not expect to lead men and women whose hardships, and even small inconveniences, she could not be bothered to share. If the Northwind Highlanders were going to be relegated by the Exarch and the Senate to freezing in tents on the Russian plain, the least the Countess of Northwind could do was freeze right along with them.
The sense of her own righteousness didn’t make her any warmer, unfortunately, or the cot any more comfortable. She was still awake well after midnight when her aide, Captain Bishop, appeared at the entrance to the tent and cleared her throat.
“There’s a message coming in for you, ma’am. At the communications tent.”
“Now?” Tara sat up, grabbed her fatigue trousers and blouse from the folding chair by the head of her cot, and started pulling them on in the dark. “Is it the Steel Wolves?”
“No, ma’am.” The regret in Captain Bishop’s voice sounded genuine. “It’s Jacob Bannson. A radio message from his private DropShip. He’s landing in eighteen hours, and he says he wants to talk to you.”
“Bannson?” Tara’s mind was blank. She couldn’t imagine what the business tycoon would have to say to her under these circumstances. She shook her head to clear it, reminding herself that Bannson might want to talk to Tara Campbell, the Northwind aristocrat, or to Tara Campbell, the politician, rather than Tara Campbell, the commander out in the field. Just because she tended to forget her other identities from time to time didn’t mean that anyone else ever did. “What does Bannson want with me?”
“He says it’s about Paladin Ezekiel Crow.”
“Bannson? Has word on Crow?” Tara’s mind raced as she pulled on her socks and began lacing her boots. No matter how rich and important Bannson was, he wasn’t worth going over frozen ground barefoot for. “What does Jacob Bannson have to do with Ezekiel Crow?”
“Damned if I know, ma’am,” Captain Bishop replied. “But he says you’ll be interested.”
“He does, does he? We’ll see about that.”
Tara shrugged her heavy wool greatcoat over her shoulders, jammed her beret on her head, and left the command tent at a pace not quite a run. Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves would have been worth running for. Jacob Bannson wasn’t. Quite.
The communications tent was dimly lit, and empty except for the soldiers keeping the night watch. Tara slid into the empty chair at the main console and took the handset that the tech handed to her.
“Tara Campbell here.”
She waited through the pause as signals traveled back and forth—the jerky rhythm of a radio conversation at space-travel distance. Then, “Jacob Bannson, Countess.”
“My aide says you want to speak to me about”—this wasn’t an encrypted conversation, and she chose her next words with care, wishing that she knew how much Bannson had already betrayed onto the airwaves—“a certain person.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you want to say about—that person?”
“I have some information that you might find interesting.”
“Not over an unsecured line.”
“A meeting, then,” Bannson said. “Where?”
She didn’t have to think long. Jonah Levin was a friend, or at least had believed her unsupported word enough to send his man out looking for the missing evidence. He’d want to hear whatever Bannson had to say. “Geneva.”
“Geneva it is, then. The penthouse suite at the Hotel Duquesne. I’ll be waiting for you. Bannson out.”
Tara gave the handset back to the tech on duty and turned to her aide. “Things are starting to move. I don’t want to set anything into motion that isn’t moving already, so direct contact with Paladin Levin at this point might be a bad idea.”