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.”

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.”