Next to Will, Jock Gordon laughed. “Sounds like somebody else was wondering the same things we were.”

“You think you’re bright enough to wonder something new and different?” said Lexa. “Shut up and listen to the man.”

“It’s true that I advised the Prefect to that end,” Crow was saying to the news reporter. “The Steel Wolves may have abandoned their allegiance to The Republic of the Sphere, but they are not yet such bitter enemies that Northwind may not need them some day as friends, and they know well enough who won this fight. Destroying them would only have given you an enemy who would hate you for generations. Better to let them go, with honor, in the hope of more peaceful days to come.”

“How about the Prefect, my lord? Did she see things the same way, or is it true—as people are saying—that you used your authority to overrule her decision?”

Ezekiel Crow smiled. “I don’t think the people of Northwind know their own Countess very well, if they’re willing to believe that anybody—even a Paladin—could make Tara Campbell do something that she truly didn’t want to do.”

The news reporter’s reply was lost to history, at least as far as Will Elliot was concerned, when Lexa McIntosh gave an approving and earsplitting whoop.

“That’s our Countess!” Lexa shouted. “Here’s to her!”

She drained her drink and sent the empty glass crashing to the floor. In the next breath, Jock Gordon followed her example, and within an instant the White Horse Bar was full of the noise of shouted toasts and breaking glass. Will hesitated only a moment longer, then threw down his own empty glass to mingle with the shards of all the others.

On the tri-vid, unheeded, the news channel went back to images of the Steel Wolf DropShips lifting, one by one.