7

Makuhari Beach, Quant-tze, Biham

Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere

24 December 3134

The sea air was mercifully cool and crisp, with an aroma of salt and the faintest lacing of aluminum. A light gust of wind skimmed Sir Reginald Eriksson’s forehead, fingering the thinning remnants of what had once been a silky cap of hair the color of corn tassels but was now bleached white as a sun-dried bone. Eriksson patted his hair into place with his left hand, but that meant he moved his feet a little to compensate for the way the sand shifted, and a needle of pain stabbed at his right hip. Annoyed, he leaned into his cane to redistribute his weight. Like him, the cane was a relic: wood-kilned amaranth with a bright violet grain and a brass L-shaped handle worn smooth by three generations of Erikssons. Sir Reginald’s only child, Rachel, had died in childbirth forty years ago, her baby stillborn. With them went the hopes of a noble line.

A wave crested, curled and then fell in upon itself, foaming along a tawny stretch of sand before withdrawing in lengthening fingers that pulled away with a soft hiss. Time’s like that sea, always moving, forever impatient. And if time was the remorseless sea, then he was the sand, he supposed, being slowly eaten away by time’s passage.

The sand whispered again, though this time from behind; boots trudging over pulverized earth. And then he heard her voice: “You’re a hard man to find, Sir Reginald.”

Eriksson gave a dry chuckle as she came alongside. “Perhaps, Katana, I want to discourage the fainthearted. I could have you arrested, you know. You’re quite the outlaw.” He eyed her, liking what he saw. By God, she looked good, fit. The sun made her skin glow. Her deep black hair was a bit longer now, edging her oval face with undulating waves. The style made her look less severe and highlighted the high bones of her cheeks, the slightly feline tilt of her black eyes. Besides her calf-high black leather boots, Katana wore olive green combat fatigues, a stylized, apple green katakana numeral five on her left collar set off against a cherry red background. Stitched over the right breast pocket was her faction’s symbol: a riff of the Kurita dragon edging a circle of fiery red on which three black diamonds and one white formed the four sides of a diamond standing on point. His eyes flicked to her waist, and his brows lifted. “No swords?”

She smiled. “I didn’t expect you’d need saving today, Sir Reginald. Last I heard you’d chased all the bandits off Biham.”

“Hardly. Biham’s got nothing worth smuggling, though. I’ll never forget how you looked that day. Teeth bared, swords flying… I didn’t know hands moved that fast.”

Katana wrinkled her nose and shrugged, a peculiarly girlish gesture, and Eriksson’s mind flashed back to 3119, when she was seventeen, and he’d nearly lost his life. If Katana hadn’t happened out of that gym at precisely the right moment, I’d have been sliced and diced by those smugglers. Katana made hash of two men in little more than thirty seconds, probably less. Put the fear of God in him, too.

“What are you smiling at?”

Eriksson blinked back to attention. “Oh, nothing. Mind wanders a bit, years catching up, that’s all.” He saw her eyes skip to his cane, the hand clutching its brass head, and he looked through her eyes: at the age spots staining his hands, his swollen knuckles, the way his shoulders had rounded his upper torso into the beginnings of a question mark. “Not a pretty sight,” he remarked lightly.

“We’re both older.”

“True. You’ve changed, and I don’t mean just with the passage of years. What you are doing now, taking worlds, claiming them for the Combine… that’s not the loyal woman I knew.”

Her gaze never wavered. “We all change, Sir Reginald.”

“No, despite your shifting allegiances, you haven’t changed. You were a brash young thing at seventeen, and you’re just as pig-headed at thirty-two. You’ve got guts, talent, determination… but most of all? You’re still an angry, lost little girl.”

Her bemused smile wilted. “You’re being unfair, Sir Reginald.”

“If anyone is being unfair, it’s you. I’ve known you for a long time, Katana. The thing driving you hasn’t changed one whit. You’ve never fit in. I didn’t know you before your mother died, but you and your father had a parting of the ways about the time you met me, wasn’t it?”

Now Katana made no pretense of hiding her anger and hurt. Her cheeks flushed copper with blood and emotion. “I didn’t trade my father in for you, and I didn’t jilt you for the Combine.”

“No? Tell me, Katana, what does that”—he flicked a finger at her Dragon’s Fury patch—“that design, what does it stand for?”

Katana expelled a breath of surprise. “This is the Kurita dragon, only it’s not quite the same. The circle’s made by the Dragon itself, not the Dragon contained within or by the circle. The black diamonds signify the three districts of the Combine, Benjamin, Pesht, and New Samarkand; the white for what’s missing, the hole made when the Combine gave away the Dieron District. And then together the four diamonds make up the fifth element: the district lost to the Clans.”

“Really? Are you quite sure that what’s missing isn’t in you?” He saw that shock quickly replaced her hurt. “Katana, we fought side by side for our lives. I sponsored your admission to Northwind Academy. I was honored to be at your side when you were made a prefect. But you’re the one opening a gulf I can’t bridge. I am a knight, and though The Republic may be crumbling around me, there are some things that must not stand,” he said, and then, with a sudden ferocity added, “This path you’re on will lead you to destruction, Katana, or you will destroy everything I hold dear in your wake. You have disgraced the trust our Republic has given you, and this shall not stand! This shall not stand!” With an angry gesture of dismissal, he pivoted on his left foot, jerking away, facing again toward the relentless sea. His right hip shrieked with pain, but he hardly felt it. He hurled his words into the wind. “I am old and I am broken, but I am not beaten. You may find it easy to discard honor, but I still have mine, by God, I still have that!”

Overhead, seabirds wheeled and screamed, and his heart banged wildly against his chest. He thought, grimly, that if he had a heart attack here and now, well, at least he’d gotten what ailed him off his chest. And who to tell her if I don’t?

When she spoke, her voice was low and subdued. “The Combine must be made whole again.”

He turned to face her. Anger made him brutal. “Because you’ve decided? Who are you, Katana? Your family’s been disgraced; your nobility’s a matter of history, not fact. And you are not the coordinator. Vincent Kurita has not declared a war.”

“I fight in the Dragon’s name.”

“Really? Since when? Kurita is silent. And don’t blame the outage; we haven’t been blown back into the Stone Age. Kurita’s silence means he neither condemns nor endorses you. You’re on your own, Katana.”

“And you, Sir Reginald?”

“I will never support you. But”—he dragged in a breath—“I will not speak out against you either… unless you invade Biham or cross into Prefecture II. If you do, then I will fight you.”

“Then I would regret having to defeat you.”

All at once, his flame of anger guttered and died. He looked away, his shoulders sagging. He felt very old. He looked down at his hand and saw that the fingers trembled. “Katana.” His voice grew thick, and he had to clear his throat. “My dear, wh y are you here? For my blessing?”