“It’s a Sadalbari mixed curry,” she said in response to his question, after a desultory conversation on military matters had flagged and left him casting about for another subject. “I had it so many times while I was posted there that I thought I was sick of it, and then I missed it after I got home. So I found some recipes and worked at it until I got it almost right.”

She paused long enough to add the cubed meat to the now hot oil, filling the kitchen nook with the sound of furious sizzling. “Or as close to right as I’m ever going to get it, anyhow. It’s kind of like politics that way.”

It was, he thought, an interesting comparison, as well as a telling character note. Aloud, he asked, “How’s that?”

“Never having anything be all the way right. Just as close to right as you can manage with the ingredients that you’ve got.” She shifted the cooking meat around in the sauté pan with a wooden spoon, frowning a little as she did so. “There’s a reason why I’m a soldier first and a politician a long way second.”

“Some people,” he commented, “would say that there isn’t that much difference between politics and warfare.”

“That’s because they don’t have jobs that make them do both.” She added seasonings to the cooking meat—salt and coarse black pepper and a generous pinch of a pinkish-brown powder that smelled like a combination of star anise and sandalwood. The air in the kitchen bloomed with sudden flavor. “I do, and I tell you truly, Paladin, I’d sooner fight a pitched field battle any day than try to negotiate a peacetime budget with the Council.”

She tossed in the chopped vegetables—more loud sizzling resulted, and a cloud of steam—and covered the sauté pan with a lid. Then she turned down the heat. “Now we let it alone for a while.”

The Countess of Northwind put her used cooking utensils into the dishwasher and wandered off into the living room area. Crow followed her. She sat down at one end of the wide, leather-upholstered couch, and gestured to Crow that he should take a seat next to her. He was more than willing to comply.

“The last thing in the universe I’d ever want,” Tara continued, “would be your job. All politics all the time, even when you’re fighting.”

“A Prefect who hates politics,” he said with mild—almost fond—amusement. “Such hardship.”

She scowled at him. “I do this job because it’s my duty, and because there isn’t anybody else. What’s your excuse?”

“It’s something that I can do, and do well.” There was nothing to be served here by false modesty, not when his statement was demonstrably true, so he didn’t bother. “And it needs to be done—and done again, over and over—to keep The Republic of the Sphere from falling into complete disorder.”

“I understand.”

Tara’s voice was full of a multitude of unasked questions and unstated acceptances, and he knew that she must be thinking of Chang-An burning, and of everything that he would have lost in its destruction. Her blue eyes, bright with sympathetic tears, spoke of kindness, and perhaps of something more. Moved by a sudden impulse—it had been a long time since anyone had offered him a moment of fellow feeling—he moved closer on the couch, then bent his head and kissed her.

She kissed him back.

She was not hesitant at all now, but firm and decisive, like a general seizing a battlefield advantage. He wondered, in a moment of blurry reflection, if such an exchange of mutual comfort had been as long ago for her as for him; then he gave up on analytical thought altogether. His hands were unbuttoning her uniform tunic almost on autopilot; her hands were equally busy undressing him.

The curry burned, and they ended up dining some hours later on flash-heated meals-in-a-box from the Barracks commissary, but they didn’t care.

24

Benderville

Oilfields Coast

Northwind

February 3134; dry season

The narrow road wound southward along the coast from Fort Barrett. At first the task force passed through small towns built up around inexpensive retirement communities for Kearney’s senior citizens and beach houses for vacationers from the continent’s interior. These thinned out as the city fell more than a couple of days’ civilian travel behind. Instead, the road ran between fishing villages next to canning and freezing plants, where rusty trawlers unloaded their catch at the long wharves. Those, too, became further and further apart, until even the paved road gave out, replaced by a one-lane track of sandy clay, graded—it looked to Will Elliot—once or twice a year.

The progress of the task force slowed as the road got worse. Will and his fellow scout/snipers spent most of their time showing around pictures of Anastasia Kerensky to shopkeepers, local law enforcement officers, and (at the suggestion of Will, who was small-town born himself) old people on front porches and small children at play. So far, their inquiries had not produced any useful results—although the children and the elderly, at least, had proved full of acute observations about the doings of their friends and neighbors.

“It’s because they’re the ones who don’t have most of their minds taken up with work and all,” he said to Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh over field rations at the noonday break. The rations today featured barley-and-mutton soup from a self-heating can, just the thing for the dry-season heat. “They see things that most people miss.”

“If you can get them to talk,” said Lexa. A reminiscent expression played over her face. “Half the stuff that went on in Barra Station when I was a kid, none of us ever talked to the grown-ups about.”

“That’s because you were a menace to society,” Jock said.

“Still am,” she said. “Only difference is, the regiment gave me a pretty new laser rifle to menace with.”

“I suppose that makes you the expert,” Will said. “So how do we get the kids to open up about things they aren’t mentioning to the grown-ups?”

“Have you considered bribery?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not exactly millionaires here,” Jock pointed out.

Lexa gave a scornful snort. “There’s other things besides money.” After a thoughtful pause, she added, “Of course, money almost always works.”

In the event, bribery turned out not to be needed after all. They came that evening to the smallest town yet. Benderville was nothing more than a scattering of decrepit houses plus a combined fuel station and general store. Half a dozen children rode the district hoverbus every day to and from a consolidated school five towns back up the road. The task force halted there for its evening meal at the same time as the school bus dropped off its passengers and turned around to head back north.

Dinner this evening was more self-heating soup, this time chicken and rice. As they had at noon, Will, Jock and Lexa hunkered together in the lee of the Joust tank. After a few minutes, Will became aware of a skinny towheaded kid with his textbooks done up in a string backpack, standing a few feet away and shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he watched the soldiers eat.

When Will caught his eye, the boy turned red and visibly worked up the nerve to speak. “You from Fort Barrett?”

“Aye,” said Will.

“Whatcha doin’ way out here?”

Will glanced at Jock and Lexa. Lexa nodded—go for it, her expression said; this one’s a talker. “Looking for someone.”

“Are they lost?”

Will shook his head. “They know exactly where they are. But we don’t know where to find them.”

The towheaded kid’s eyes got bigger. “Are they bad people?”

“Nasty as they come,” Lexa said, with an evil grin that suggested she knew all about nastiness.

“Oh,” the boy said, in a more subdued tone.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We kicked them hard the last time. Right, Sergeant Elliot?”