“I can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to do that,” Sandra said, drawing a disapproving frown from Amanda. She looked back a cross-eyed expression, and the duchess couldn’t help a guilty smile at her ward’s obvious happiness.

“No more than he deserved for leaving so abruptly. No goodbye. Just a letter left in care of the Kell Hounds. And after everything I did for him.”

“Everything you…?”

Now that was too much. Julian couldn’t even finish the question. He saw the extra security tightening up around them, which meant the prince wasn’t far behind, but he couldn’t let such a shot go unanswered.

“Maybe I missed something. Did you enjoy having an entire academic year voided by the honor board?”

Callandre shrugged, as if such things happened to her all the time. “You needed more work in your games-theory classes anyway.”

Listening to the quibbling, Sandra shook her head. “What did the two of you do?” she asked.

Julian could only imagine the guilty look plastered to his face. He felt heat bloom in his cheeks, and rise up the back of his neck. Callandre at least had enough shame left in her to glance away. “Just your usual academy hijinks,” he said, but the words sounded small even to him. “Besides, she started it.” Usually.

“Oh! Like I knew how to hot-wire a Zeus.”

Julian winced. He’d forgotten about that one.

Fortunately, he noticed a large SUV and a pair of armored sedans easing through the switchback of pylons on the Rue d’Égalité. Parts of the nearby crowd pressed forward against rope barriers, eager for a glimpse of a new celebrity, but the local gendarmes held them back.

“Cars pulling up,” Julian said, awkwardly deflecting the conversation away from his past with Calamity Kell. It deserved to be forgotten.

Harrison Davion’s arrival was enough to stir up any social event. Especially when the first prince of the Federated Suns opened his own door, before the security service fully vacated their SUV, and then leaned back in to offer his hand to Sterling McKenna. The Khan of the Raven Alliance was the one who alighted like royalty, her gray hunter’s eyes hooded. The two leaders waited curbside, Harrison waving to a few people in the nearby crowds while two men joined them from the second sedan.

Aaron Sandoval, The Republic’s Lord Governor of Prefecture IV, Julian recognized from his dossier. Erik Sandoval-Groell the champion had already met. And had not been impressed.

Amanda Hasek’s eyes froze over the moment Sterling McKenna stepped from the dark sedan. She cursed beneath a whispered breath then pulled Sandra and Caleb ahead of the group. Julian waited until his prince had caught up, though the ice in Harrison’s gaze as he recognized Callandre Kell promised that Julian would hear something about that later.

“Are we late?” Harrison asked, watching his sister-in-law lead the way inside.

The public viewings of Victor Steiner-Davion were closed off for certain hours of every day to provide security and serenity for the visiting dignitaries from so many worlds and realms. There was a fairly strict schedule for large parties, though it was understood that no one with the right credentials would be turned away, no matter the hour or the press of visitors.

This was, after all, the reason for such a grand summit of Inner Sphere leaders.

Julian consulted his watch, strapped to the underside of his wrist instead of on top. Lyran fashion, he remembered. One more thing he’d picked up while attending school abroad, and had never quite let go. “Early still, I think.”

Countess Campbell traded a brief greeting with both the first prince and Snow Raven khan, but chose to wait outside on the marble steps. Julian and Callandre followed Harrison and McKenna into the Cathedral, the quartet easily catching up to the others who were all momentarily robbed of speech and locomotion while viewing the magnificent vestibule. The ceiling frieze and baroque moldings. Deep-polished mahogany and marble floors that gleamed to perfection. A platoon of religious men and women waited to offer advice or answer questions, but it was fairly obvious which way to go. A runner of red carpet led from the main doors to a side entry, away from the nave. To the antechamber where Victor’s body lay in state.

The same door from which a long line of Kurita nobles and officers began filing.

Julian had met Vincent Kurita before. The Coordinator of the Draconis Combine was third in line, behind a token “guard” of two samurai warriors. They wore no uniform but matching kimonos and mantled white overcoats, and carried no swords in the presence of their liege lord. But Julian never doubted that the men were highly trained. It was in the way they carried themselves.

Vincent Kurita, of course, carried the twin swords of a samurai tucked into the wrapping around his elaborately embroidered silk robes. The only other man to go so armed followed right behind him. Taller than Vincent, and rangy with the implied strength of a man who had spent his entire life training for battle, Matsuhari Toranaga, Warlord of New Samarkand, carried his katana by the scabbard in his left hand. Ready to draw it on an instant’s notice in the service of his coordinator. Or so that story went.

Both men were contemporaries of Harrison Davion, and Vincent was also the son of Hohiro Kurita, who had owed Victor Steiner-Davion his life during the Clan invasion. So it was no surprise that the Combine had brought a respectful party to Terra to see Victor off.

The surprise came with how Vincent Kurita reacted to Harrison.

“Prince Harrison,” the coordinator greeted his opposite stiffly. His accent was sharp, used to the Japanese language. His dark eyes stared daggers at the woman Harrison escorted. “I’ve seen you in better company.”

At nearly two meters, Harrison could easily have looked down his nose at the smaller man. Instead, he shook his head in casual reproach while patting McKenna’s hand where it rested on his arm. “That is beneath you, Vincent.”

The two warrior samurai stilled at Harrison’s casual use of the coordinator’s name. Warlord Toranaga positively bristled.

“It looks more like this is about who’s beneath you,” Toranaga said loudly.

There were few women in the coordinator’s court. Two ladies both wearing traditional obi and a young woman wearing a basic military dress uniform with patches from the Sun Zhang Military Academy and the rank devices of a Tai-sa. Captain. The young officer surprised Julian in two ways, first being that he did not recognize her from any of the intelligence briefings Harrison had insisted he attend. Second, she was the only one able to hide her emotions. The other two women blushed at the rough, sexual innuendo, and the poor grace of Warlord Toranaga to say such in public.

If there was a better way to kill the hushed conversations and envelop the two parties in a hostile silence, Julian could not think of it. Everyone waited on the prince, to see how he would handle the flagrant insult. Even Sterling McKenna, who on most days would have a great deal to say over such a slight to her and her nation.

Julian quietly stepped up to Harrison’s side. He should have seen this coming the moment he recognized Vincent Kurita. Of course the Dragon had issues with McKenna. Her Raven Alliance nestled up against the Combine’s back, often an enemy and always a threat. In a way, the animosity was stronger there than over the five decades of low-intensity fighting inside the Draconis Rift.

Which was when he recalled the Sandovals!

Aaron Sandoval was Republic and not necessarily a Federated Suns loyalist. Regardless, the man was very accomplished, and him, Julian did not worry for. But Erik Sandoval-Groell… He came sponsored by March Lords inside the Suns’ Draconis March. It was Erik’s father and uncles, his brothers and cousins, who sponsored the pro-Davion movements within the Rift and kept that low-level war constantly raging. If Erik had a greater enemy on the planet than Toranaga, the other side of that fight, it could only be the coordinator himself.