On the other hand, she thought bitterly, if I can’t get the Exarch and the Senate to listen to me, and to believe, what happens next will be worse than getting here too late. Because then I’ll have to watch, and know that I could have been able to stop it.

She took a hoverlimo from the Geneva shuttle port to the building where Damien Redburn had his working office. The building wasn’t a famous landmark or an architectural prizewinner, just a many-storied box of steel and glass that housed the administrative personnel for a number of The Republic’s bureaucracies. In the days before the collapse of the HPG network—when travel to Geneva had been much simpler and more common than now—Tara had often heard it referred to jokingly as the Paperwork Palace.

One thing her rank was still good for—when she got out of the hoverlimo at the Palace’s front entrance, she was recognized and admitted at once. She took the elevator straight up to Redburn’s office. The office occupied a suite of rooms on a floor only accessible by means of a key-card, and the palace doorman summoned a member of the service staff to work the key and escort her upward as soon as she walked through the door.

The administrative assistant in Redburn’s outer office passed her through without a word. That was a bad sign, if the woman wasn’t trying even a little to ingratiate herself. It was still better than if Tara had been put on hold in the waiting area and left to contemplate her sins for long enough to feel properly insignificant.

Not yet cast into the outer darkness, Tara thought. I suppose that’s something.

Redburn was at his desk when she came in. He’d been working—she saw paper and folders and a data pad—but the work had all been laid aside before she entered. He gestured her to a seat in the room’s other chair, and she sat down.

“You’re prompt,” he said.

“The message said, ‘at my earliest convenience.’ So I came at once.”

Redburn regarded her across the desk, looking even more like the headmaster getting ready to ask who put the fluorescent purple dye in all the washing machines in the south wing.

It wasn’t me, honest, she thought, with a touch of silent hysteria. And I’ve got the purple underwear to prove it.

“Tell me about the situation on Northwind,” Redburn said. “I know that, with Paladin Crow’s help, you repulsed the Steel Wolves when they attacked last summer—”

“Yes.” She wanted to protest that the credit for the Steel Wolves’ earlier defeat belonged more to General Michael Griffin than to Ezekiel Crow. Taking on Anastasia Kerensky ’Mech-to– ’Mech, as Crow had done, was the sort of spectacular action that news reporters loved, but Michael Griffin had held Red Ledge Pass for thirty-six hours with nothing but untried infantry—and as a soldier she knew which feat counted for more in the scales of battle. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on the issue at hand. “The documents that I’ve provided you with deal with events that occurred during the Wolves’ second, more recent attack.”

The Exarch regarded her, stone-faced. “No such documents have come to this office.”

“But—” She stopped and began again. “I sent a messenger. Because I knew that assembling a relief force would take time. And the warning was important.”

Redburn shook his head. “There has been no messenger. And Paladin Ezekiel Crow tells a story far different from the one you told us in your message from the DropShip.”

Tara felt a slow, rolling queasiness in the pit of her stomach. This was bad. This was worse than bad. She had been betrayed not once, it looked like, but twice.

“What, exactly, did he say?”

Redburn’s expression was grave, almost sorrowful. “According to Paladin Crow, you were defeated by Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves, and sued for peace.”

“What?” The amazement choked in her throat like bile.

“The surrender terms are alleged to include handing over both Northwind and the Highlander regiments to the Steel Wolves.”

Amazement gave way to anger, rising up in an incredulous, adrenaline-fueled wave. She understood now the kind of rage that might cause someone to order a whole city burnt.

She swallowed the anger, pushed it down, and forced herself to keep her voice low and steady.

“Exarch Redburn, Ezekiel Crow lied to you.”

Redburn’s face revealed nothing. “Someone, certainly, is lying.”

“At least authorize me to take steps to resist the Wolves when they attack.” She knew that she was pleading; she was made even angrier by the realization. “I did not bring my Highlanders all the way from Northwind to Terra in order to stand idly by and watch while Anastasia Kerensky brings the Steel Wolves down on the lot of you!”

“Perhaps not,” said Redburn implacably. “But I can’t take the risk that you may have come not to resist the Steel Wolves, but to help open the door for them. Not without something to go on besides your unsupported word.”

Tara stood abruptly, pushing her chair back so hard that it toppled over. She let it lie on the carpet where it fell.

“Very well, Exarch. I will go back to the place you have assigned to us, and wait there for time to give you the proof you need.”

She stalked over to the office door, then paused. “And don’t come crying to me then that I didn’t warn you.”

She turned and left, closing the inner door with careful precision on her way out. She was almost to the door of the outer office when Redburn’s administrative assistant stopped her and handed her a card.

“I was asked to give this to you,” the assistant said. “While you were with the Exarch.”

Tara looked at it. It was a plain white business card, no ID codes or anything fancy like that, just a few lines of black type in a restrained, old-fashioned font:

Underneath the printing was an additional, handwritten note:

Pension Flambard, 14 Rue Simon-Durand

Geneva, Terra

Prefecture X

March 3134; local winter

Jonah Levin had not been waiting for long in the guest parlor of the Pension Flambard before he heard the street door open and close, followed by the sound of Tara Campbell’s quick, light steps in the foyer. Madame Flambard’s eyes widened when she recognized the visitor—the Countess of Northwind was too well known to The Republic’s media even to think of going anywhere incognito—but her discretion remained as absolute as ever. There had been more than one reason why a much younger Jonah Levin had preferred his lodgings at the Pension to other, more fashionable or luxurious quarters.

Madame ushered the Countess into the parlor, then vanished into the back recesses of the pension. Jonah suspected that she was planning to pump the newly hired and on-call Burton Horn for gossip—and that Horn would be doing the same in reverse. Neither one of them was likely to succeed, in Jonah’s opinion, but the effort would keep both of them amused.

Tara Campbell, on other hand, was not amused at all. Her interview with Damien Redburn clearly had not gone well. The Countess’s face was pale except for a betraying flush of red along her cheekbones, her full lips were pressed thin, and all her motions were tight and controlled, as though she had to hold herself back from physical reaction by main force.

So, Jonah reflected, the Countess of Northwind has a temper—not surprising, considering that she’s a born aristocrat with a hereditary claim on the loyalty of a whole planet. She knows how to control it, though, and that is surprising.