“Make the line this row of tiles,” Tara said. She pointed with her foot to the decorative border that ran around the central area of the practice room. “First one out or over—”

“Pays a forfeit of the winner’s choosing,” Crow said. “It’s always good to have something riding on the outcome.”

“Fair enough. Rules?” If they’d been trained in the same traditions, she wouldn’t have needed to ask, but that was another bit of information obscured by the Paladin’s unconventional choice of practice garb.

“Nothing allowed that might be permanently damaging,” Crow said, “or that might limit our ability to defend Northwind.”

Tara nodded. “Seems reasonable. So… no eye gouging, but ear biting is allowed.”

“If the Countess of Northwind desires to bite my ears, she is invited to try,” Crow said. He was, Tara thought, actually smiling a little as he said it. “Shall we begin?”

Tara smiled back. “Surely.”

Again Crow bowed. This time he turned the motion into a forward duck and roll that brought him to his feet close to her, but still out of her striking range.

“Nice move,” she said, laughing, and spun forward with a kick intending to draw him out of line.

He didn’t go for it—she would have been surprised if he had—but instead pulled off his glove and threw it at her face. She ducked, and in the moment her eyes broke contact with his, he spun forward with his own kick.

“You wore”—Tara half turned and set an arm block to trap the leg as he kicked—“those gloves on purpose, didn’t you? Clever.”

She had the leg, she twisted, and Crow went with the twist rather than risk a dislocation. He fell, pulled, and shot to his feet, free again and standing closer still.

“The Countess does me honor,” he said, and dropped an arm around her shoulders, grasping the fabric of her thin shirt. He pulled her around, and threaded his other arm under her armpit and behind her skull, pressing her head forward. “Let’s take a walk together, shall we?”

He turned her, with pressure on her head, and pushed, forcing her to walk toward the line of red tiles that marked the boundary of their fighting zone. He was pressed tight against her, front to back. The line drew closer.

Just as her foot would have had to go across, impelled by Crow’s superior strength, Tara raised her free hand and clapped it over the hand that rested on the back of her neck. She pressed down hard on it, so that the Paladin couldn’t have moved his hand away even if he wanted to. At the same moment, she crossed one leg in front of the other, and let herself fall forward.

She went into a clumsy roll, but Crow had to go with her—either go with her or break her neck, and break the terms of the contest at the same time. She fell, she rolled, taking both of them over the line of tiles. Then she relaxed, letting her body go limp.

“You’re across the line,” Crow said. The drop-and-roll had ended with him falling beneath her, and she could feel his breath stirring the hairs on the back of her neck as he spoke.

“I think,” Tara said, “that you touched the ground first. Paladin.”

A moment.

“Yes,” Crow said. “I believe that I did.”

What she would have said then in reply, Tara never knew. She heard footsteps approaching, and scrambled to her feet in time to see Brigadier General Michael Griffin pause in the practice room’s open doorway. She became aware that she was more flustered than she ought to be, and equally aware of Crow—not flustered so much as suddenly hypercorrect—rising and moving to stand a few feet away, well out of personal distance.

Crow’s darker coloring made his passing emotions hard to read. But for her part, Tara suspected irritably that she was blushing, and hoped that General Griffin would attribute the higher color to exertion rather than to any more inconvenient emotion. Michael Griffin and Ezekiel Crow had not worked easily together when the Paladin first came to Northwind, and Griffin had not been pleased when Crow, at Exarch Damien Redburn’s request, had remained on-planet to assist with the post-war recovery. He would be even less pleased if he thought that the Countess and the Paladin were depending upon each other for more than just political support.

But General Griffin—crisply pressed and clean-shaven as always (except for the well-trimmed ginger mustache which appeared to be his one vanity)—remained the soul of politeness. “My lady. Paladin Crow.”

Tara brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. It was time to get it trimmed again, she thought absently. She’d kept it spiky-short ever since her teen years, but the past few months on Northwind had been so busy that she kept letting it go too long between cuts.

“What brings you here, General?” she asked, leaving unsaid the implied but clear follow-up: And couldn’t it have waited?

But, of course, it couldn’t have. General Griffin wouldn’t have interrupted one of her rare chances for private recreation without an excellent reason, and his expression showed it.

“Regimental intelligence reports, my lady,” he said. “The latest DropShip to arrive in port brought disturbing news from our off-world intelligence assets, specifically from our agents-in-place on Tigress.”

Tara shut her mouth on words not becoming to an already sweaty and undignified Countess. Tigress was home to the Steel Wolves, members of Clan Wolf resident in what had been—and what would remain, if Prefect Tara Campbell had any say in the matter—The Republic of the Sphere. Forces from Tigress, under the command of the Steel Wolves’ new leader Anastasia Kerensky, had invaded Northwind less than a year before, only to be repulsed with hard fighting.

“What’s happening on Tigress?” asked Ezekiel Crow.

“According to our agents,” Griffin said, “the Steel Wolf forces that sallied from Tigress to attack Northwind have not yet returned to the Four Cities.”

“Is that all?”

Griffin shook his head. “Reports also have other units departing Tigress at this time, destination unknown.”

Tara, her momentary anger back under control, asked, “How fresh is this intel?”

“Not as fresh as I’d like, I’m afraid. The messenger had to make three DropShip transits—one of them in the wrong direction—before he could risk putting himself onto a ship heading home.”

“Do we have any reports of Steel Wolf activity anywhere in Prefecture III after the date on this report?” Crow asked.

“Steel Wolf activity, yes,” Griffin said. “But it’s all small-scale stuff, and Anastasia Kerensky’s name is never associated with any of the attacks.”

“Could she have been challenged and lost her position?” Tara wondered. “She’d have been vulnerable, after losing to us like she did last summer.”

“It’s possible,” said Griffin. “But a new leader would have made him– or herself known, at least on Tigress, and our agents there haven’t reported any significant changes in the Wolves’ command structure.”

A moment of grim silence followed. Finally Tara let herself give voice to what they all had to be thinking.

“The bitch is up to something. I just know it.”