The kind of estate he had forever called home.

Privilege and potential. They walk so close together, his father had always said.

Conner was still getting used to the past tense.

“Can I have anything else brought to you?” Lina Derius asked, stepping up behind him. She attended him with the efficiency and warmth of a well-heeled hostess.

He was holding things up. He knew it. Conner shook his head.

“Another drink, Conner?”

An empty highball glass rested, abandoned, on the stone ledge near his right hand. The polished stone felt cold to the touch despite the warm spring day. But then a lot of things had felt cold to him these last few weeks. His father’s apartments in Geneva. The empty condolences from other knights. The exarch’s letter of concern and “deep regrets.”

Did the exarch regret Gerald Monroe’s death? Or the trouble Conner had stirred up in the weeks following?

Both, he hoped.

“I’m fine,” he said, swearing off another drink while business was being discussed.

He let Lina take his arm and escort him back into the mansion. Twenty years his senior, she still carried herself with a youthful energy that often made more experienced politicians underestimate her. Shimmering, bronze-colored hair and bright, clear green eyes helped reinforce that air of innocence, though Conner had seen enough evidence of her backroom deals in the last two weeks to wean him of any such illusion.

Senators Michael Riktofven and Melanie Vladistock waited inside the third-floor library. They sat easily in opposing chairs, talking across an antique, spindle-legged table inlaid with gold and ivory. The inlay detailed a map of the Inner Sphere, with borders circa 3050. Before the Jihad. Before even the Clan invasion. Only the Five Successor States and the Free Rasalhague speed bump that later was all but consumed by Clans Wolf and Ghost Bear.

A digital reader sat in Davion space. A scattering of data wafers littered House Kurita’s Draconis Combine and part of the Capellan Confederation. The Free Worlds League lay unblemished but ignored. House Steiner’s Lyran Commonwealth cradled the senators’ glasses.

“Ah, Lina.” Riktofven shifted in his seat to include them in the conversation again. “You’ve brought back our wayward son.” He gestured at the reader and data wafers. “Is there anything more we can show you, Lord Monroe?” he asked.

“I’ve seen quite enough,” Conner said.

Millions of C-bills, kroners and Republic stones spent in the ambitious program to sponsor warriors and, later, some of the most respected knights Conner had ever known. A cascade of money, some from his father as well, paid out in many small fortunes to raise a host of “right thinking” soldiers with The Republic’s best interests at heart.

Meaning they were willingly supportive of the nobles who had—some of them—ruled worlds and duchies in the Inner Sphere when Stone’s Republic was not yet conceived.

Senator Vladistock smiled thinly. “‘Quite enough,’ you do not want to see any more? Or ‘quite enough,’ you are convinced of our policy?” Her smiles seemed incapable of reaching her dark, dark eyes. “There is a large difference.”

“Yes. There is.”

The three Republic senators weren’t certain what to make of that, so they played it political and said nothing. Riktofven refilled his glass from a nearby crystal decanter. The two women owned better game faces, and stared at Conner with serpents’ gazes.

“Have we at least,” Lina finally said with strained patience, “proven your father’s level of involvement to your satisfaction?”

Down to the last decimal place. Conner had spent several weeks digging through his father’s accounts and personal files. He knew what Gerald Monroe had mortgaged in this effort, and he had to give the trio credit that they had held nothing back. Not even when it exposed them to greater scrutiny. If he ran to Jonah Levin with what he knew now…

Then again, if Levin had come to him first, or Gareth or Paladin GioAvanti, perhaps they would have been greeted with a warmer reception. And perhaps Conner’s father would still be alive.

I do not weigh the sins of the father against the son, Exarch Levin had written.

Except that Gerald Monroe had not accounted his actions as any kind of treason or sin. The senator had been nothing less than a patriot. The loyal opposition to the exarch and his military grip on The Republic. Conner had walked a line between both worlds for so long that he was not easily swayed by either argument, pro-exarch or pro-Senate, military or nobility. And neither was he blind to their shortcomings.

“If Geoffrey Mallowes is involved in everything he’s accused of, then may he burn in hell. But I know my father would never have condoned such radical action, and I now know he wasn’t even inadvertently involved. Which makes his death a crime as well as a tragedy.”

“And the armed quarantine of Senator Ptolomeny an abuse of power,” Michael Riktofven replied. He balled his hands into impotent fists.

“Not that Exarch Levin will stand up to the same scrutiny and the new restrictions he’d like to place us under,” Lina Derius added. “But who would ever hold him accountable?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? And everyone in the room knew the answer.

Even Conner.

“The Senate,” he said softly. “Only the Senate.”

Fukuro

Draconis Combine

13 March 3135

The samurai came at Yori Kurita with katana naked in his hand. He moved with short, shuffling steps. Legs bowed wide. Bare feet flat against the nonskid deck. Always keeping his center—his wa–in perfect balance.

Not an easy task in a DropShip under thrust, where minor course corrections caused microshifts in the artificial gravity.

Even this would not last long. Ryū Hokori, the Dragon’s Pride, was under power only long enough to complete a short transit between carrying JumpShips. A window of opportunity in which the crew should be performing maintenance tasks too complex for the weightlessness of space travel. Someone would answer for the lack of productivity. But that was later.

Just now, Yori’s entire world focused down on the bright edge of Hatsuwe’s sword, where striations within the blade danced like pale flames under the yellowish cast of the ’Mech-bay overheads. She banished the distant blue arc of a welding torch from her mind, the acrid odor of hot metal, and the caustic scent of industrial solvent spread nearby to soak up a coolant spill. Distractions. For the same reason, she had braided back her long, luxurious fall of dark hair and stripped from her kimono down to MechWarrior togs. Shorts and halter top.

She waited. Hand on the hilt of her own katana, leaving it in the sheath while she read his approach.

Hatsuwe gave away very little. His wide-legged hakama draped comfortably, the way they were meant to do, hiding his step until nearly made. His upper body, stripped to bare chest and arms, remained in a rigid poise with sword held in the strong position over his right shoulder. Yori would have very little time to react.

Only the anger smoldering in his black eyes gave her an advantage. His wa was still disturbed. And without harmony, a samurai could be led into mistakes.

She should know.

With a powerful yell Hatsuwe leaped forward, katana flashing in at her exposed midriff. But Yori had seen the quiver of tightening muscles along his abdomen. Her draw timed it just right, covering her entire right side with the length of her own blade.