45

A Small Neighborhood Restaurant

Geneva, Terra

Prefecture X

April 3134; local spring

Late in the evening after the battle, the Countess of Northwind and Paladin Jonah Levin sat talking over dinner in the small restaurant near the Pension Flambard where Jonah took most of his meals. The meal, and the venue, had been his idea. Tara Campbell had gone directly from the brutal stress of an all-day pitched battle to an equally brutal onslaught of news reporters and the Exarch’s public gratitude, with scarcely a chance to shower and change into a dress uniform, and she had clearly found the experience harrowing. The Genevan media corps were no respecters of personal boundaries, and extravagant public praise from Damien Redburn had clearly done little to wipe out Tara’s earlier, private grievances.

Jonah had watched the Countess of Northwind give her third in-depth personal interview in a row with unflagging courtesy and smiling charm, and had decided that a rescue mission was in order. He’d exercised his authority as a Paladin to break up the conference on the grounds that the Countess’s presence was urgently required within, and had taken her away, going into the depths of the government office building and out again through an inconspicuous service door. From there he brought her by circuitous ways to his neighborhood restaurant, where the proprietor neither knew nor cared that the middle-aged offworld gentleman who dined there regularly was a Paladin of the Sphere.

Jonah could tell even before they arrived at the restaurant that he had made the right choice. Tara Campbell said little until they were seated discreetly at a corner table not visible from the street. Perhaps, Jonah reflected, the owner knew who his guests were, after all. Then the tension that had held her together in public seemed to break all at once like a cut string, leaving her seeming much tireder, much younger, and much less self-assured.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” she said. “One more stupid question, and I would have cracked… and the way I feel right now, they’re all stupid questions.”

“Sleep and a good meal will help,” he promised.

“Will it make the news reporters any brighter? Will it make the Exarch—” She stopped and closed her mouth tightly. After a moment, she picked up her dinner roll and began breaking it apart into small, even pieces. Her hands were trembling. “Maybe I need to go home and go to bed right now. Except I can’t—we blew it up, you know, so that the Wolves couldn’t have it.”

The fate of Castle Northwind had been included in Tara Campbell’s original detailed report to the Exarch: a bare, concise statement, stripped clean of emotional resonance. Jonah was distressed with himself now for taking it at face value. He had thought of the castle as a landmark only, never realizing that it had also been the home of someone’s heart.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He continued, gently, “I know that food and rest don’t help with everything… but in the morning, not everybody will be stupid.”

Tara Campbell gave a shaky laugh. “I’ll take whatever improvement I can get.”

Dinner arrived—roast beef with horseradish and small new potatoes steamed in their jackets—simple food but filling, and well-prepared. Jonah was pleased to see that Tara, after taking a few tentative mouthfuls, attacked everything with a good appetite. The waiter—an observant man, and the restaurant owner had to know more about his guests that he was letting on—was assiduous in keeping her water glass brimming full no matter how often she emptied it. An all-day battle could leave even the hardiest of MechWarriors in a state of borderline dehydration. By the time the meal had reached its end—a dessert of pears simmered in red wine and flavored with cinnamon—Tara Campbell had relaxed enough to talk.

“I meant what I said about going home, though,” she said, when the conversation came around again to postbattle events. “I know that a lot of people seem to want me to stay here.”

“You’re a local celebrity,” he said. “At least temporarily. You exposed a traitor and you saved Terra from the Steel Wolves.”

“I didn’t expose anyone,” she insisted. “All I did was have the bad luck to be standing in the way when the truth came out. And as for saving Terra—every man and woman in the Northwind Highlanders did as much as I did, and gave as much as I did. Some of them gave everything, and there’s nothing The Republic or anyone else can do to give it back.”

“I know,” Jonah said. He had discovered that bitter truth himself, after the battle on Kurragin, and had taken a long time to come to terms with it. “But it’s you that everyone associates with those things. Whether you like it or not, that gives you a great deal of power at the present moment.”

Tara shook her head and made a pushing-away gesture with one hand. “I don’t want power in Geneva. Northwind is a big enough problem—the economy is shaky, the main DropPort and most of the capital are going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up, and we still have to provide defense for Prefecture III. I don’t know where the money for all of it is going to come from, either. You can’t tax people if they don’t have anything left.”

She gave a tired sigh. “I swear, fighting the Steel Wolves is already starting to look easy by comparison.”

That question at least, Jonah thought, was one that he had an answer for. “I wouldn’t worry too much,” he told her. “I expect that the Senate and the Exarch will be happy to express the thanks of a grateful Republic in the form of an appropriate recovery aid package.”

“Especially if I go back to Northwind with it?”

“Your departure will free them of an inconvenient reminder that Exarchs can be mistaken in their judgments, and that Paladins are not incorruptible.”

“Gratitude at a safe distance,” she said. “I can live with that.”

Jonah reminded himself that Tara Campbell had grown up around politics, and that not liking a game didn’t necessarily imply ignorance about how it was played. Less fearful now of her possible disillusionment, he said, “There’s a chance that some people may want to show their gratitude with more than aid packages.”

“What do you mean?”

“With Ezekiel Crow… gone… there are only sixteen Paladins remaining. And you are the heroine of the hour.”

Her shoulders stiffened. She met his gaze, her blue eyes clear and more than a little angry. “I’ll tell you right now: If they ask, the answer is no. It would be a slap in the face to every Knight of the Sphere who has a right to be considered, and it would be an insult to me, as well. I am the Countess of Northwind, and The Republic of the Sphere does not need to buy my loyalty with another title.”

“I doubt that anyone would think they did.”

“Maybe not,” she conceded, relaxing a little, but still looking dubious. “But even if they do it out of sheer goodwill and the kindness of their hearts, it would be stupid. I’m a decent administrator and a fair-to-middling field commander, and Prefecture III is about all I can handle.”

She grinned at him suddenly. “Ask me again in fifteen years or so, Paladin Levin—maybe then I’ll say yes.”