One more time, she thought, and never Tassa Kay again?

That was tempting, but in her heart Anastasia knew better. She might need Tassa Kay again sometime, and it was not her way to throw out a good knife because she’d been fool enough to cut her hand with it.

She poured herself a tumbler of the late drill rig manager’s potent liquor, then sat on the edge of the bed not drinking it. After a while footsteps sounded outside in the corridor—she tensed, then relaxed—and Nicholas Darwin entered.

Anastasia saw him again as if for the first time: the compact, muscular body; the dark skin that had always so pleasantly surprised her with its smoothness under her touch; the bright black eyes and the laughing mouth. He had been the best of all her lovers in so many ways, a match for her in temper and in stamina, with but a single flaw…

She set down her tumbler of whiskey, rose from the bed, and greeted him with a kiss.

“How are things on the DropShips?” she asked, pulling away before the kiss could deepen into something more. More would distract Darwin, which was good; it would also distract her, which was not.

“They are doing well. All the modifications are holding, and the ship captains report ready to lift at any time.”

“Good.” She took his hand and led him to the edge of the bed, pushing him on the shoulder to make him sit down. “That will do for a summary. We can go over the details later.”

Anastasia knelt on the bed behind Nicholas, with her arms wrapped around him and her lips close to the skin of his neck. She let her hands tease at the collar button of his shirt—the garment was Clan warm-climate issue, the fabric light and breathable but strong, made to resist rips and tears.

“What are you doing?” he asked. His voice sounded amused, warm and rich with anticipation.

“Unwrapping you,” she said.

She had the collar button undone, and moved on to the second button, her fingers teasing and tickling. Her teeth nibbled at his ear.

She continued in a whisper. “No way to play if the wrapping is still on.”

She undid the third button, then the fourth, and ran the fingernails of her left hand across the bare skin underneath. At the same time, she tickled the upper curve of his ear with her tongue, making him gasp a little with surprise and pleasure. He had nicely shaped ears, close to his head and not over large, and his skin tasted pleasantly of salt.

He laughed. “Missed me, then, while I was away?”

“Yes,” she said, and grabbed with her trailing left hand at the collar of his partially unbuttoned shirt.

With one sharp motion she jerked it down to midchest, pinioning his arms to his sides. Her right hand brought the point of her dagger up against the side of his throat, tight against the skin over the carotid artery.

“Do not move,” she said. “Do not even think of moving.”

“What—” He paused, drew in a shaky breath. “Why?”

“How long have you been in Jacob Bannson’s pay, Nicholas?”

Silence. And a pain in her gut, that he made no attempt to deny her accusation. He had to know, then, that proof existed, and that if anyone ever found the proof—as she had done—it would be damning.

She pressed the dagger in a little bit tighter. “How long?”

“Four years.”

Four years… that was before she ever came to Tigress and challenged Kal Radick for the Steel Wolves. She supposed she ought to take consolation from the thought that Darwin’s treachery had not been a personal betrayal. At the moment, she did not feel especially consoled.

“Why?”

“For the money. Bannson pays his informers well.”

“You betrayed the Steel Wolves to Jacob Bannson for money?” Her dagger didn’t move. She let all of her incredulity pour into her voice. “What does a Steel Wolf Warrior need with that?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why—?”

“Because with enough money,” Darwin said, “a man can choose to be whoever he wants to be. Wherever he wants to be. Life as a Warrior in Kal Radick’s Steel Wolves was better than life as an unemployed street rat in the Four Cities, but it was not really a choice.”

“What do you mean—‘not really a choice.’”

He gave a faint sigh. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“You have that right,” she said.

She struck with the knife, cutting deep and across, severing the carotids and the jugular in one blow.

“I do not understand.”

The New Barracks

Tara

Northwind

January 3134; local winter

After greeting One-Eyed Jack Farrell at the DropPort, Ezekiel Crow and Tara Campbell returned to the New Barracks, first by official vehicle and then—after leaving the vehicle and its driver at the main gate—on foot. The winter afternoon by now was moving on toward dusk. The sun hung low near the crests of the distant Rockspires, and shadows stretched out long on the ground.

As they walked, Crow pondered the fact that the Countess of Northwind had not liked Jack Farrell at all. She had been impeccably polite, of course, as only a cradle-trained diplomat could be—Farrell had probably never noticed the difference—but Crow had seen Tara Campbell’s genuine warmth and could tell when it was missing.

He noticed that he had been looking at her without speaking for several minutes, admiring how the dark gold of her eyebrows and eyelashes contrasted with her porcelain-fair complexion, and the way small tendrils of her close-cropped platinum hair curled against the nape of her neck. He looked away again quickly. It would not do to have her catch him gazing at her like an obsessed stalker or—even worse—a lovestruck adolescent.

Maybe it was already too late. Tara Campbell darted him a quick sidelong glance and said, almost hesitantly, “Are you dining at the Officers’ Club tonight?”

“I hadn’t decided yet.”

In actuality, he knew that he was going to follow his usual practice of heating up one of the assortment of packaged meals that he’d bought from the Barracks commissary and currently kept stored in his kitchen nook. But he did not say that. Instead, he waited to see what would happen next—because things had, undeniably, started to happen.

“We could—if you like—dine in my quarters.” Tara Campbell’s cheeks were faintly red. “I’ll cook.”

“I’d be honored,” he said.

She was still blushing—which was surprising, since he hadn’t thought anything embarrassed her. “Don’t expect anything spectacular,” she warned him. “I know how to make exactly three company dinners, and the kitchen staff at home would laugh at every single one of them.”

He went with her to her quarters, where she at once began pulling meat and assorted vegetables out of the kitchen’s tiny refrigerator, rice and oil and spices out of the overhead cabinet, and cooking utensils out of the storage space beneath. With a bit of amusement, he realized that she’d actually had her spur-of-the-moment invitation planned out well in advance—like a general planning out a military campaign.

The kitchen nook wasn’t big enough for him to offer assistance and do anything except get in the way. He contented himself with leaning against the edge of the doorway and watching her at work. She had a chopping board and a heavy knife, and was busy cutting up the meat—he wasn’t certain what kind it was, except that he didn’t think the flesh had come from any of the usual Terran stock meat animals. Something indigenous and probably reptilian, at a guess. He wasn’t going to pursue the matter; he’d eaten stranger things than lizard in the course of his diplomatic and military career.

With the cubes of whatever it was set aside in a bowl, she moved on to the vegetables: onions, garlic, squash, and peppers that Crow recognized, and something purple and tuberous that he didn’t. When all of those were chopped, she began heating the cooking oil in a big sauté pan, and set the rice to steaming in a separate pot.