Routing the Steel Wolves had not left the Countess and the Paladin without employment. Northwind had problems enough to keep any number of people busy. The Bloodstone region in particular was suffering from economic depression because the fighting in Red Ledge Pass had resulted in extensive damage to the local infrastructure.

“We’ve got the road repairs done, at least,” Tara Campbell said. “That was a priority. Highway 66 at Red Ledge is the single year-round road through the northern Rockspires.”

“You know the local situation better than I,” said Crow, with the air of one conceding a point.

Captain Bishop got the impression that this was merely the latest round in a discussion between Tara Campbell and Ezekiel Crow that had been going on for long time before she arrived. She was finding the relationship between the Countess and the Paladin interesting to watch. The two of them seemed hyperconscious of each other, each one watching covertly while the other was looking away, then quickly glancing elsewhere as soon as their eyes met.

That not-quite-exchange of glances, and the way that Tara Campbell and Ezekiel Crow unconsciously maneuvered around the worktable—so that they always wound up a fraction inside formal speaking distance, but never quite close enough for actual touching—were enough to convince Captain Bishop that the two of them shared a powerful attraction. Bishop wondered if they’d figured the attraction out for themselves yet. If a specimen like Crow had been giving her looks like that, she’d have made a point of looking back by now.

Crow was still talking. “But you can’t neglect military preparedness.” He picked up a folder of printouts from the table and gestured with it. “We’ve got recommendations here from senior regimental staff, in favor of continuing the buildup, and their arguments are most persuasive.”

Tara Campbell gave an audible sigh. “The Prefect of Prefecture III agrees with you wholeheartedly, Paladin Crow. But the Countess of Northwind has a voice in this argument too, and she’s reminding the Prefect that unemployment in the Bloodstone region is up to 19 percent, that our main DropPort is only functioning at three-quarters capacity, and that the planetary economy hasn’t yet fully recovered from the destabilizing effects of the HPG crash. We have to take more than the military situation into account when we’re portioning out resources which are, unfortunately, finite.”

“The negative consequences—” Crow began.

“Are considerable, no matter which way we fall into error. So we’ll keep on robbing Peter to pay Paul, and borrowing from Paul to compensate Peter for his losses, and cutting nonessentials wherever we can.” The Countess of Northwind sighed again. “Not that any two people on Northwind have ever managed to agree on what’s essential and what’s not.”

Crow nodded. “If we hold social services funding at current levels—”

“It’ll mean writing off the mountain communities,” protested Tara Campbell. “They don’t have enough private money to take up the slack.” She paused, thinking. “Kearney’s booming, though; we could divert resources from there. They’ll bitch and moan, but so long as all they do is bitch and moan… let’s have a look at those spreadsheets again.”

The Countess and the Paladin went back to going over the spreadsheet printouts together, their heads closer than ever, talking to one another in low voices. Captain Bishop left them to it. She refilled her coffee mug from the big silver urn with the Northwind crest, and returned to her own job of dealing with the Prefect’s incoming message traffic.

Some of the traffic was stuff that had no business being brought to the Prefect’s attention at all. There was a surprising amount of that, and all of it got sent back with a stern note about making sure that it reached the proper recipient. Another, smaller portion of the traffic could be handled routinely by the Prefect’s aide without the Prefect needing anything besides a summary after the fact. There was quite a bit of that stuff as well, and dealing with it constituted the main part of Captain Bishop’s day-to-day job. Slightly rarer were problems for which the Prefect’s aide could recommend a course of action, and for which she could expect—on most occasions—to have her recommendations followed.

Finally, there were those very rare messages which had to be brought to the Prefect’s personal attention immediately, if not sooner. Captain Tara Bishop hadn’t really been expecting to encounter an example of the last kind of problem, but life in the Regiment had a way of presenting people with the unexpected. Five minutes into dealing with the morning traffic, she laid a message printout onto the big table next to the stack of heavily annotated spreadsheets.

The Countess of Northwind picked up the message and read it, then passed on the sheet of paper to Ezekiel Crow.

“This changes everything,” she said to the Paladin. “If Anastasia Kerensky has been sighted on Northwind, and if her DropShips never returned to Tigress—”

“Then both Kerensky and her DropShips are most likely still here.”

“Still here somewhere, and we don’t know where.” Tara Campbell turned to Captain Bishop. “Captain, send for Brigadier General Michael Griffin. I have work for him to do.”

11

Castle Northwind

Rockspire Mountains

Northwind

December 3133; local winter

Brigadier General Michael Griffin had traveled to Castle Northwind on official business before, and he knew enough not to bother attempting to approach it overland. The remote glacial valley could be reached by road, but not quickly. The journey required several hours of travel along the main highway, followed by more hours spent climbing into the heart of the Rockspires on a strip of winding two-lane blacktop, culminating in passage through a heavy-duty security barrier and a final half-hour ascent via the Countess’s private driveway.

Over the years, the setting had proved quite effective as a means of ensuring privacy—or at least, that any interruptions would not be trivial ones. Michael Griffin, like most visitors with urgent news to impart, came to Castle Northwind by air.

The pilot of Griffin’s VTOL descended below the cloud cover at last. Griffin watched through the window beside his seat as the aircraft made its final approach to the castle.

Even on an overcast day like this one, the vista was impressive. Castle Northwind lay in the most dramatic part of the Rockspire Mountains, where the jagged, perpetually snowcapped peaks had been further scored by the advancing and retreating glaciers during Northwind’s most recent ice age. Here, glacial action had scooped a long valley out of the granite, cradling a series of intermountain meadows and a deep, spring-fed lake. The castle stood on the high ground above the lake, with a precipitous mountainside for a backdrop; seeing it, Griffin could understand why the long-ago first Count of Northwind, given the choice of any place on the planet in which to build his principal residence, had chosen this spot.

The VTOL landing pad was separated from the castle by a small wooded hill, for the sake of deadening the sounds of landing and takeoff—and also as yet another measure to discourage casual or unexpected visitors. The early Counts and Countesses of Northwind had valued their privacy, and the current Countess followed tradition, coming here to work when she didn’t want interruptions.

Yet, thought Griffin, she had summoned him. The fact left him tense with anticipation. He already suspected the root cause of her summons—he had seen the morning’s message traffic from domestic intelligence, and as Prefect, Tara Campbell would have gotten the same report. General Griffin felt a touch of unworthy pleasure underneath the tension and anxiety—Paladin Ezekiel Crow was with the Countess, but she had not asked for the Paladin, she had asked for him. She would have—he hoped—orders for him.