Not even when he walked past the empty table where Erik’s backup men had been seated.

For the space of three heartbeats, Erik froze. Plates of food sat on the other table, hardly touched, and the two soft drinks were half consumed. No waiter appeared to bus the table, or look concerned at the absence. Something normal, then. Bathroom!

Erik tossed his own napkin down with a casualness he did not feel and walked with forced nonchalance to the restroom. It was painted as brightly and warmly as the rest of the restaurant, with burned orange tiles running up the walls and a pattern of red clay bricks decorating the stall walls. The same light guitar music piped in through ceiling speakers. There was also a burned-hair smell that didn’t seem to belong.

He glanced beneath the stall door, saw too many feet, and kicked the door hard, breaking the lock. He leaned in to see the collapsed forms of his men resting up against the back wall, the two men Erik had let precede him into the restaurant. Still alive, with taser burns charred into the small hairs behind their ears.

They had been lured or forced from their table and disposed of without anyone noticing. Not even him.

Splashes of cold water woke them up enough that Erik could leave them without the next customer walking in and raising an alarm. Then the young nobleman left the restroom and went immediately to the front register to pay for his meal. And Farrell’s, as it turned out. Erik used hard currency, and tried to maintain a calm countenance.

Especially when he returned to his table and pocketed the black business card.

Just in case.

Terra

The Republic of the Sphere

16 February 3135

Geneva woke early.

At three in the morning, the Hall of Government stirred to life. Secretaries and political aides opened up offices, gathered together documents and data crystals, many while on headset links to confirm the day’s appointments. A nervous kind of energy bled through the halls, and would not dissipate until hours after the arrival of the ministers, the legislators and knights who minded The Republic’s business.

Exarch Jonah Levin hadn’t yet gone to bed.

Crossing the Rotunda, letting himself through the velvet ropes that guarded a set of open doors, Jonah found the Chamber of Paladins brightly lit and eerily empty. A high, domed room, it possessed a mixture of senatorial grandeur and Arthurian legend: white stone and blue-gray marble, runners of plush, crimson carpet, the gallery, large enough to seat all three-hundred-plus knights of the Sphere. On the main floor seventeen separate stations were arranged in a half-circle facing the exarch’s dock—the stations from which Jonah’s peers had elected him to The Republic’s highest post barely two months earlier.

And only Gareth Sinclair occupied this impressive space. He was waiting, standing before his private booth and tapping halfheartedly at the glowing blue holographic keyboard, or using his light stylus to occasionally draw commands right onto the screen.

“All is in place?” Jonah asked, his voice amplified by the chamber’s acoustics. The question rolled around the main floor.

Paladin Sinclair nodded, his back still to the door, and Jonah.

“Then may I ask what in Stone’s name you are still doing here?” He put a bit more bite into his voice as he stepped onto the main floor and strode toward his youngest paladin.

Gareth regained a measure of martial bearing, suddenly aware whom he addressed. The young man pivoted away from his station, facing Jonah with respectful attention.

“Heather did not leave much to chance,” Sinclair reported. “I’m not sure she fully trusts… my abilities. The crowds will be in place in three hours. I’m monitoring the latest reports from here.”

Jonah frowned. “This is a closed system. Paladins in chamber are not to have direct contact with the outside.” At least, that was the way he remembered his own orientation as a new paladin.

“Not so much. There are emergency protocols built into the building’s data center that allow this room to be converted into a military command post. I tapped into that and slaved my office console to this station.” He shrugged. “I’m interrupted less in this room.”

Jonah stepped up next to the younger man, stealing a glance at the work. Yes, it displayed reports of police dispatches regarding the plans to cordon off several city intersections in Geneva in preparation for today’s activities. It bothered him that Sinclair had circumvented security.

“Though not the first,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry, Exarch?”

Jonah faced his man. He saw the telling signs of long hours and hard decisions on Gareth’s face. Shadows beneath the eyes and the bloodshot gaze. Reddish-blond stubble. Slumped shoulders.

“I said, you are not the first to bypass the chamber’s security. In December’s conclave, during the election debate, I received …anonymous communications.”

He almost let it go at that. It was information Jonah had trusted only to his ghost paladin. But, damn it, he had to start trusting more of his people at some point.

“Threats, Gareth. From among the paladins.”

“Surely not?” Gareth started as if he’d been slapped. “I mean, sure, Anders Kessel was running roughshod over me through our private messages, but maybe someone from outside…”

Jonah leaned in to the console, tapping at the floating keypad to override Gareth’s security with his own clearance. Easier this way. Slipping through his own security walls, the exarch brought up the scandalvid headlines that Jonah had saved to his private files. Senator Geoffrey Mallowes “held in an undisclosed location,” the caption read. The once-proud man looked harried and broken, wearing a prison-transport shock collar.

“I’ve seen it,” Gareth admitted.

“The entire world has seen it.” Jonah fixed the younger man with a withering glare. “It will be the headline on a dozen other planets by week’s end. My point is, that photo was leaked to the press by a paladin.”

That broke through Sinclair’s stoic reserve. The younger man braced himself up to boot-camp attention. “Is there something you are trying to say? Sir.”

“Just this. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. What we’re doing has to be done, and there aren’t many I trust to see it through. And if Heather GioAvanti did not trust your abilities, I promise you, she would have made any reservations known to me and you would be the one chasing rumors of a new Liao offensive on Kansu, not Janella Lakewood.”

To be fair, Gareth seemed to duly consider every word before replying. And his voice lost its token display of offense.

“I guess I have been feeling sorry for myself. But this… it feels—”

“Wrong?” Jonah finished for the young paladin. “Stone’s blood, Gareth! You think I don’t feel that? But what choice did Mallowes and his cronies leave us? Leaving aside, for the moment, that Mallowes tried to have me killed and was certainly involved in the murder of Victor Steiner-Davion, the great man you were considered worthy enough to replace, he led a conspiracy to control thought and overthrow The Republic. It is nothing less than that.”

“I know, I know. And I’ve nothing but contempt left for the man, believe me, Jonah. I wish our families had never crossed paths.”