“Damn.” She slammed back the last of the Glen Grant and headed out into the lobby at a near run, pulling out her phone as she went. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the plain man was doing the same thing with an urgency almost equal to her own.

I wonder who the hell he’s talking to? she thought, her right thumb already hitting the Countess of Northwind’s private code. If she’s disconnected, there’s no help for it, I’m going to have to go up to the penthouse and pound on the door myself. But Tara Campbell’s familiar voice said, “Yes?” after the first ring.

Bishop ignored the sharp-edged implication that this had better be good. “Countess, the Steel Wolves just came through at the jump point and are heading in.”

Hotel Duquesne

Geneva, Terra

Prefecture X

April 3134; local spring

Ezekiel Crow slept uneasily in his bed at the Hotel Duquesne. His nights since leaving Northwind had all been restless, and his dreams were bad.

He had recurrent nightmares about an enemy whose face he couldn’t see, dogging his footsteps through scenes of war and devastation: the mass graves of Chang-An, after the CapCon troops had their way with the city; the streets of Northwind’s capital, defended at every square and intersection by grim-faced Highlanders caught between the hammer of the Steel Wolves and the anvil of Jack Farrell’s mercenaries; the placid streets of Geneva, untouched by war for centuries and even surviving the Word of Blake Jihad unscathed, stained in his nightmares by fresh blood. He revisited them all, night after night, and always the shadowy figure was there as well.

The images had more truth in them than paranoia; his waking hours were haunted by the same awareness. Whoever had pulled together and rewoven the raveled threads of his past had to have intended more than a one-time act of blackmail, however devastating to the recipient that act might have been. Crow’s enemy hadn’t been content to destroy the trust between him and the Countess of Northwind—the trust, and every good thing that might have grown from it. Sending the evidence directly to Tara Campbell would have sufficed for that.

Instead, his enemy had arranged for Crow to destroy Tara’s trust himself.

That alone was enough to convince him that gaining Northwind for Anastasia Kerensky had never been the shadow stranger’s goal. The Steel Wolves’ victory had been only a side benefit, or perhaps not important at all. He, Ezekiel Crow—Daniel Peterson, once of Liao—had been from the beginning the one real target.

In the dark hours of the night, Crow was forced to admit that the shadow stranger had done his work exceedingly well. He’d succeeded so thoroughly on Northwind that Crow was now engaged in the most desperate fight of his life—a struggle for his career, for his reputation, for his very identity—even if nobody on Terra knew of the battle but him.

It did not surprise Crow that he should be the target of so much concentrated enmity. It was perhaps even inevitable, now that the one thing that had kept his past safely buried for so many years—the fact that no one had ever spoken aloud the true name of the infamous Betrayer of Liao—had been taken away.

But a hatred that strong wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to show its face. Sooner or later, the hidden enemy would no longer be content with making Ezekiel Crow shove the knife into his own guts. He would want to step out of the shadows and twist it himself.

Until that day came, however, Crow would fight back—because it wasn’t in his nature to let himself be defined by either the words or the silences of others—and he would have bad dreams.

He woke from his most recent nightmare to the sound of the room phone ringing. Still half asleep, he reached out an arm and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Ezekiel, my friend.”

The voice, recently familiar, was most definitely not that of a friend. Crow knew better than to use Alexei Suvorov’s name over an unsecured line. “What is it?” he asked.

“A word of timely warning, in regard to the package that my firm handled for you recently.”

Package, thought Crow. Tara Campbell’s messenger.

“Yes?”

“There have been recent attempts to redeliver it. You’ll be glad to hear that the latest one seems to have been successful.”

Glad? he thought. No, probably not.

“Did you get a signature from the recipient?” he asked.

“Yes, indeed.” Suvorov sounded like he was enjoying the conversation. If he was, Crow thought, it wouldn’t be surprising. Crow’s breakup of the Footfall smuggling ring had set the crime lord back several million stones, and had come close to bringing him to trial. “Paladin Jonah Levin.”

“Thank you.”

Crow hung up and let the wave of despair wash over him. Jonah Levin was the worst possible person to have obtained proof of Tara Campbell’s story. The Paladin from Kervil was, so far as Crow knew, the only genuinely incorruptible person he had ever met. Levin wouldn’t be deterred from doing justice, and he would definitely not appreciate Crow having lied to him directly about the matter.

Maybe, Crow told himself, it’s time to start thinking about cutting your losses and getting out.

In the morning, he decided, he would go to Belgorod, and begin making arrangements for transporting one man and a Blade ’Mech to someplace else.

Someplace a long way from The Republic of the Sphere.

Highlander Encampment

Belgorod, Terra

Prefecture X

April 3134; local spring

Ever since the news had came out that unknown DropShips were emerging at the Terran jump point, the Northwind Highlanders encamped near Belgorod had been on high alert. No one had as yet produced absolute confirmation that the incoming ships belonged to Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves, but no one was foolish enough, either, to believe that they didn’t. When word came of a second wave of unidentified DropShips following close on the track of the first, that made things even worse, since the most likely explanation was that the new ships were more Steel Wolves, being kept in reserve for a second-wave attack.

The uncertainty made for taut nerves all around. The arrival of slightly warmer weather only served to compound everyone’s troubles by turning the ground underfoot into sloppy, spongy mud with the consistency—and the tenacity—of very thick glue.

Evening after dinner on the eighth day found Will Elliot and his friends sitting at a table in the Sergeants’ Mess tent. By now, the three of them had evolved their own separate ways of dealing with the tension. Will was writing a letter home, Jock Gordon was mending a torn pocket flap on a set of fatigues, and Lexa McIntosh had taken her boots off and was painting her toenails dark blue and stenciling them with silver-glitter stars.

Speaking of feet and shoes, he thought, and looked across the table at Lexa. She’d finished painting the toes on her right foot, and was now applying silver glitter to the big toe of her left foot with an expression of intense concentration. “I still don’t understand why you’re doing that.”