But even for those who had not pieced it together from the insignia marking her sedan, Tara’s face was one of the most recognized in The Republic and certainly here on Terra. Her platinum hair, upswept and spiked on top, was quickly becoming the latest fashion trend on this world and many more. Green eyes and lightly freckled nose lent her an innocent air the nonthinking public found very appealing, while her no-nonsense speeches endeared her to people who bothered to use their brain cells for something other than knee-jerk responses to the party line.

Calls of “Countess” and “Lady Campbell” begged for her attention. She gave it sparingly, with quick, firm smiles as she paced her way through the crowd of newsvid journalists in search of her prey. When she recognized a larger studio or personality, Tara would stop for a moment and exchange a pleasantry. She’d spent the last few weeks cultivating many friendships, after all. It was time to harvest that crop.

Her strategy garnered her an instant retinue, with holovid cameras and microphones committed to her every word. But about her mission, she stuck to a prepared line.

“I’m here on behalf of Northwind and all soldiers in the field who are demanding better of both sides of this disagreement.”

It said everything about how she felt. And it committed her to nothing, though it raised the general level of excitement around her. The sense of a coming showdown.

Tara smiled, and worked the crowd.

The buzz swept ahead of her as she blazed her way into Magnum Park. Her vanguard of prominent news figures made certain of that. Soon it would find the onetime knight, and reflect back in a counterwave much like a radar signal returning from a distant target. Conner Monroe, Tara had felt certain, would not be too far distant from the newsvid crews. He wanted publicity. Needed the watchful eye of the public on him should he be arrested or harassed in any way. That exposure was the lifeblood of a political insurgent.

She forgot, momentarily, that the man had also been a knight. And had learned some very hard lessons from two of the exarch’s best.

“Countess,” Conner Rhys-Monroe greeted her, stepping in at her elbow and laying a discreet hand on the side of her arm. He spoke loud enough for the news journalists to hear. “I’m so glad to see you have come forward on the side of sanity.”

Always seize the high ground. A military and political maxim. By outracing the returning buzz, he had caught her just short of her own prepared statement. And as his own retinue swept in with him, forming a cordon around the pair to separate them from the closest microphone, he ensured a moment of privacy in what was otherwise a very public forum.

Conner Rhys-Monroe was not quite the same man Tara expected. He had always been somewhat controversial, and she had expected a wildness about him still. The pierced ears. The Mohawk that had styled him an independent soul. But he had drastically reined in those impulses. Now he trimmed his hair an even length, very short but more in keeping with his new social circles. His multiple earrings had given way to a pair of tasteful emerald studs, matching his peridot eyes. He dressed in a fashionable suit. Conservative, with a banded collar to eschew any need for a necktie.

The wild knight, gone respectable.

“Sir Conner,” Tara said, granting him his title regardless of circumstance. He started to shake his head, but she continued. “Deny it all you wish, sir knight. We both know that you cannot walk away so easily from what you have made of yourself. First and last, you are a knight of the Sphere.”

Her return thrust, not necessarily aimed at him. It might not have made the newsvid recorders, but it did reach the ears of several in Conner’s circle of companions and aides. Obviously, by the sidelong glances and uneasy shrugs, it did not sit well with several of them.

A few even stepped backward, and Tara filled the void by challenging the nearest man with a quick move forward.

“Does it truly bother you, Lord Geist?” Tara recognized the man from the file of Conner’s likeliest supporters prepared for her by David McKinnon. This man a visiting noble from Markab. “With the Dragon stirring on the other side of our borders—and within your Prefecture as well—are you so eager to throw off the protection of The Republic? To risk your charges, citizen and resident, to the horrors of escalating violence?”

Tara had backed him up several steps, right into a crowd of reporters with a rainbow of logos among them. Sound sticks and trivid camera eyes were thrust his direction.

“N-no. Of course not,” Geist said. A sentiment that would play well back home, of course, but wasn’t completely popular with Conner’s wardens.

Quite so, since Tara now recognized two other senators in the surrounding crowd—both of them fading back to avoid any need to go on the record. By uniform, Tara also counted a dozen or more military officers from the Triarii and Principes Guards. The fracture lines were widening.

And Conner conceded no ground. “I made myself a knight,” he said, taking her arm again as if there had been no interruption. But the damage was done, as newsvid journalists and knots of glamour-struck civilians mingled freely among the ex-knight’s stalwart supporters. As Conner led Tara deeper into the park, the crowd moved with them and the newshounds swept around like dogs on the scent.

“I was born a noble. A viscount’s son.”

“And now you are Viscount Marduk. I am very sorry for the way things turned out for you.”

He could not help the pain-filled glare directed back at the Hall of Government. “It was not your hand that set events in motion.”

“No,” Tara agreed. Steeling herself against the need to inflict more pain on the young man, she said, “That would be your father, among others.”

Conner recoiled as if slapped, all but stumbling to a halt. Several people surrounding the pair reacted much the same way. Angry glares drove hot knives into her back. The reporters crowded in for better angles.

People relayed their words far back into the crowd, beginning several new arguments.

The ex-knight walked stiffly, wooden. “That, Countess, was extremely beyond the bounds of courtesy.”

His voice was low and hoarse. His manner turned frosty as if Tara had thrown a switch. Which, in effect, she had.

“I’m not here to coddle you, Viscount. Or to join your cause.” She raised her voice, ensuring that even the junior newsvid hounds at the edge of the crowd heard her clearly. “And if none of you can own up to your own part in this tragic state of affairs, then you are all living inside of Hectar’s fable.”

“Hectar?” Conner asked.

“An old Scots legend.” And the news journalists—the savvy ones—would look it up for themselves by air time. She softened her voice. “Hectar was a nobleman of ancient Terra convinced that the other lords were out to get him. He ordered built around his keep grand walls. Too tall to scale. Too thick to batter down. Impregnable. But there was only one small problem.”

“What’s that?”

“No gates. Gates were always the weakness of any keep, after all. So poor Hectar had no way out. He had built his own prison, walling himself away from his people, who fell into despair and ruin without their lord. And so the other lords did move in, taking away Hectar’s lands and subjugating his people. And he was left with only his walls.”

Conner stomped to a halt. Tara doubted he even recognized his own anger and grief, he was so caught up in the moment.

“When I heard that you had arrived on planet,” he said, “I had hope. And I waited, to see what you would do. Learning you had come here, now, today, that hope seemed well placed. You of all people, who turned down a paladinship and have steadfastly maintained your own independence in the face of high-level criticism, I thought would understand. The Republic is bigger than the host of paladins and knights who protect her. Bigger than the exarch. Bigger, even, than Devlin Stone, as we have proved in his absence. But it is, and always will be, only as big as the people of The Republic who make up the body politic. And the voice of the people has always been the nobility.”