“Do not move,” she said. “Do not even think of moving.”
“What—” He paused, drew in a shaky breath. “Why?”
“How long have you been in Jacob Bannson’s pay, Nicholas?”
Silence. And a pain in her gut, that he made no attempt to deny her accusation. He had to know, then, that proof existed, and that if anyone ever found the proof—as she had done—it would be damning.
She pressed the dagger in a little bit tighter. “How long?”
“Four years.”
Four years… that was before she ever came to Tigress and challenged Kal Radick for the Steel Wolves. She supposed she ought to take consolation from the thought that Darwin’s treachery had not been a personal betrayal. At the moment, she did not feel especially consoled.
“Why?”
“For the money. Bannson pays his informers well.”
“You betrayed the Steel Wolves to Jacob Bannson for money?” Her dagger didn’t move. She let all of her incredulity pour into her voice. “What does a Steel Wolf Warrior need with that?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why—?”
“Because with enough money,” Darwin said, “a man can choose to be whoever he wants to be. Wherever he wants to be. Life as a Warrior in Kal Radick’s Steel Wolves was better than life as an unemployed street rat in the Four Cities, but it was not really a choice.”
“What do you mean—‘not really a choice.’”
He gave a faint sigh. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You have that right,” she said.
She struck with the knife, cutting deep and across, severing the carotids and the jugular in one blow.
“I do not understand.”
23
The New Barracks
Tara
Northwind
January 3134; local winter
After greeting One-Eyed Jack Farrell at the DropPort, Ezekiel Crow and Tara Campbell returned to the New Barracks, first by official vehicle and then—after leaving the vehicle and its driver at the main gate—on foot. The winter afternoon by now was moving on toward dusk. The sun hung low near the crests of the distant Rockspires, and shadows stretched out long on the ground.
As they walked, Crow pondered the fact that the Countess of Northwind had not liked Jack Farrell at all. She had been impeccably polite, of course, as only a cradle-trained diplomat could be—Farrell had probably never noticed the difference—but Crow had seen Tara Campbell’s genuine warmth and could tell when it was missing.
He noticed that he had been looking at her without speaking for several minutes, admiring how the dark gold of her eyebrows and eyelashes contrasted with her porcelain-fair complexion, and the way small tendrils of her close-cropped platinum hair curled against the nape of her neck. He looked away again quickly. It would not do to have her catch him gazing at her like an obsessed stalker or—even worse—a lovestruck adolescent.
Maybe it was already too late. Tara Campbell darted him a quick sidelong glance and said, almost hesitantly, “Are you dining at the Officers’ Club tonight?”
“I hadn’t decided yet.”
In actuality, he knew that he was going to follow his usual practice of heating up one of the assortment of packaged meals that he’d bought from the Barracks commissary and currently kept stored in his kitchen nook. But he did not say that. Instead, he waited to see what would happen next—because things had, undeniably, started to happen.
“We could—if you like—dine in my quarters.” Tara Campbell’s cheeks were faintly red. “I’ll cook.”
“I’d be honored,” he said.
She was still blushing—which was surprising, since he hadn’t thought anything embarrassed her. “Don’t expect anything spectacular,” she warned him. “I know how to make exactly three company dinners, and the kitchen staff at home would laugh at every single one of them.”
He went with her to her quarters, where she at once began pulling meat and assorted vegetables out of the kitchen’s tiny refrigerator, rice and oil and spices out of the overhead cabinet, and cooking utensils out of the storage space beneath. With a bit of amusement, he realized that she’d actually had her spur-of-the-moment invitation planned out well in advance—like a general planning out a military campaign.
The kitchen nook wasn’t big enough for him to offer assistance and do anything except get in the way. He contented himself with leaning against the edge of the doorway and watching her at work. She had a chopping board and a heavy knife, and was busy cutting up the meat—he wasn’t certain what kind it was, except that he didn’t think the flesh had come from any of the usual Terran stock meat animals. Something indigenous and probably reptilian, at a guess. He wasn’t going to pursue the matter; he’d eaten stranger things than lizard in the course of his diplomatic and military career.
With the cubes of whatever it was set aside in a bowl, she moved on to the vegetables: onions, garlic, squash, and peppers that Crow recognized, and something purple and tuberous that he didn’t. When all of those were chopped, she began heating the cooking oil in a big sauté pan, and set the rice to steaming in a separate pot.
“It’s a Sadalbari mixed curry,” she said in response to his question, after a desultory conversation on military matters had flagged and left him casting about for another subject. “I had it so many times while I was posted there that I thought I was sick of it, and then I missed it after I got home. So I found some recipes and worked at it until I got it almost right.”
She paused long enough to add the cubed meat to the now hot oil, filling the kitchen nook with the sound of furious sizzling. “Or as close to right as I’m ever going to get it, anyhow. It’s kind of like politics that way.”
It was, he thought, an interesting comparison, as well as a telling character note. Aloud, he asked, “How’s that?”
“Never having anything be all the way right. Just as close to right as you can manage with the ingredients that you’ve got.” She shifted the cooking meat around in the sauté pan with a wooden spoon, frowning a little as she did so. “There’s a reason why I’m a soldier first and a politician a long way second.”
“Some people,” he commented, “would say that there isn’t that much difference between politics and warfare.”
“That’s because they don’t have jobs that make them do both.” She added seasonings to the cooking meat—salt and coarse black pepper and a generous pinch of a pinkish-brown powder that smelled like a combination of star anise and sandalwood. The air in the kitchen bloomed with sudden flavor. “I do, and I tell you truly, Paladin, I’d sooner fight a pitched field battle any day than try to negotiate a peacetime budget with the Council.”
She tossed in the chopped vegetables—more loud sizzling resulted, and a cloud of steam—and covered the sauté pan with a lid. Then she turned down the heat. “Now we let it alone for a while.”
The Countess of Northwind put her used cooking utensils into the dishwasher and wandered off into the living room area. Crow followed her. She sat down at one end of the wide, leather-upholstered couch, and gestured to Crow that he should take a seat next to her. He was more than willing to comply.
“The last thing in the universe I’d ever want,” Tara continued, “would be your job. All politics all the time, even when you’re fighting.”
“A Prefect who hates politics,” he said with mild—almost fond—amusement. “Such hardship.”
She scowled at him. “I do this job because it’s my duty, and because there isn’t anybody else. What’s your excuse?”
“It’s something that I can do, and do well.” There was nothing to be served here by false modesty, not when his statement was demonstrably true, so he didn’t bother. “And it needs to be done—and done again, over and over—to keep The Republic of the Sphere from falling into complete disorder.”