“So it would seem to mean a great deal,” Kisho Nova Cat said. He offered it off-handedly, not really as part of the conversation. Staring up at the hall’s domed ceiling, unfocused gray eyes looking right through the sculpted ice moons of Denebola, he tilted his head slowly to one side as if following an image only he could see. “Especially to you, Caleb Davion.”

Yori Sakamoto laid a hand on Kisho’s arm, as if to warn him off. The Nova Cat warrior blinked, then shuddered as if in the grips of illness. “I am sorry, Kurita Yori– san.” He turned and sketched a half-bow to Caleb. “I did not mean—”

Kurita! If Kisho had searched for hours to find a better conversational hand grenade to throw into the small party of mixed nobles and warriors, he couldn’t have done better. Conversation ceased at once. Daoshen Liao and his entourage were forgotten as all eyes turned against Yori and her companion. Some curious. Some hostile. Most of them, like Julian, confused.

Not Caleb. The name slapped him across the face with a stinging rebuke, compounding his own error in not recognizing a scion of Liao. Now, he had been made a fool of by the Kurita delegation as well!

“Kurita,” Caleb said, tasting the name and finding it distasteful. “Not Sakamoto. Did you think we wouldn’t discover this?” he demanded.

Yori stood transfixed, her eyes wide. “Iie. It is not that.”

Surprisingly, it was Sandra Fenlon who stepped up and offered the young officer her support, gently grasping her hand. “What is it, then? Were you ordered to disguise your name?”

“I chose to,” Yori replied, casting her gaze at the floor. “My grandfather was Franklin Sakamoto, a bastard of the noble Kurita line. It seemed less a dishonor to the coordinator, to borrow my grandfather’s name, than to arrive bearing Theodore Kurita’s disgrace. I meant no insult to the rest of you.”

“Just like a Drac,” Caleb sneered. He pounced on the newest victim, the revelation of Yori’s secret eclipsing Kisho’s offhand rebuke. “Smile with one side of her face, lie out of the other.”

“And just like a Davion, to go on the attack to cover their own weakness,” Yori shot back.

Embarrassed she might be, for herself or her coordinator, but the woman was still samurai. She was going to be no one’s victim. Not easily.

“The Davions are never weak,” Caleb said, warming to the challenge. Carefully sidestepping his own vulnerability. “When we attack, we win. I would think the Combine, of all realms, would realize this by now.”

“How is that?”

“In the Jihad’s early years, after your Black Dragons prompted renewed aggression, we occupied Galedon, Matsuida, even Benjamin before pulling back to turn our strength against the Word of Blake. And during the Clan invasion it took intervention by the Federated Suns to save Luthien, and Theodore’s son on Teniente. In the War of 3039—”

Having wilted before Caleb’s initial onslaught, Yori bounced back quickly now that he had walked into her trap. “In the War of 3039, Hanse Davion committed more resources than was healthy for his realm. All in an effort to look strong against mounting criticism for the costs the Federated Suns bore from the Fourth Succession War. Oh, he had crippled the Confederation, hai. But even he later admitted that 3039 was a mistake.”

Caleb scoffed. “I know of no such admission.”

“Outreach,” Julian interjected. “3051. He reportedly said as much to Theodore Kurita himself.”

His cousin, the prince’s champion, took the side of a Drac over the Davion heir’s? Caleb stood stunned at the betrayal.

“And the coordinator,” Julian continued, regurgitating more of his studies of military and political history, “admitted that the Combine’s defense was little more than an empty shell. A bluff that just happened to work.” He smiled disarmingly. “You dig deeply enough, you can find blame and regrets enough to go around on either side of an engagement.”

As a peace-making attempt, Caleb felt that Julian could have done better. Like jumping in on his side with the appropriate facts and shutting down Yori Kurita. Had Julian missed the fact that Yori’s spirited debate had actually swung a few approving nods in her direction? Alaric Wolf and Jasek Kelswa-Steiner, and Lars Magnusson? Even Nikol Marik seemed ready to forget Yori’s deception. Dogs, banding together to snap at the heels of the stronger, more successful, Federated Suns.

Whatever small feeling of camaraderie had been in the group vanished at that instant for Caleb.

“I do not necessarily agree with that,” he said.

Yori, who’d looked for a moment as if she’d been ready to accept Julian’s analysis for the face-saving gesture it was, suddenly stiffened her spine. “Then I cannot, as well.”

“A Trial of Refusal?” Alaric Wolf asked Lars, sounding amused at the battle of wills playing out before them all.

But Lars Magnusson shrugged away the idea. “They both refuse. This seems more a point of honor to me.” He laughed. “He said, she said.”

“Do not discuss us as if we are not standing right here,” Caleb snapped, fuming. He felt a light sweat beading at the nape of his neck as his flush of anger burned hot and steady.

Alaric Wolf grinned, no doubt enjoying getting something back for his earlier treatment. “If you had made the challenge for yourself,” he said with acidic bite, “we would not need to. Though I suppose The Republic would be resistant to the idea of a live-fire trial taking place here on Terra.”

Tara Campbell glanced once to Jasek Kelswa-Steiner, as if expecting his support. “That would not be Exarch Levin’s preferred method for diplomats or warriors settling their differences, no.”

Jasek, though, offered a second plan. “Why not use simulators, then?” He ignored Tara’s glare. “No blood, no foul.”

“No fun,” Alaric added. But he nodded. “For honor only, then. They could refight a battle from the War of 3039.”

Yori hedged a brief second, then, “That would seem appropriate.” Though she said it half-heartedly.

“It would seem childish and pointless to me,” Caleb scoffed. “I see no reason to further subject myself to your juvenile games.”

Alaric smiled. “Then we will simply assume the Combine victorious.”

“How can there be a victory when there is no contest?” Caleb asked.

“Because as you agreed before, some are more equal than others.”

Caught out on his own words, Caleb felt the noose tightening. He had put off dealing with whatever trouble his relationship with Danai might bring, but now there was the Combine rearing its dragon’s head.

When you fight a dragon, you send your best knight.

“Very well,” Caleb agreed. “This shall be settled. But between military minds. For his”—interference—“his exemplary analysis of a few moments ago, I name Julian as my champion.”

Alaric sneered. “He is the prince’s champion, not the prince-ling’s.”

And for that slur alone, Caleb decided that Alaric Wolf needed to be taught some manners. “If his inclusion frightens you so much, Wolf, perhaps you should fight on the side of Yori Kurita and the Combine.”

Was that a flicker of doubt shadowing Alaric’s eyes? He glanced aside, as if searching for someone, then nodded. Subdued, but not submitting. “Aff. So be it.”

“The War of ’39 also involved House Steiner,” Callandre Kell jumped in. “I will second Julian, if he’ll have me.”

“And I—” Jasek stepped forward. “Sounds like fun.”

It obviously sounded like a lot of things to Julian, whose face clouded under a dark storm of emotions, but “fun” did not appear to be among them. Caleb stared back calmly, having trapped his cousin as a fitting punishment for his earlier offenses. Laying hands on Caleb. Treating with the enemy. Prince’s champion or no, Julian should be reminded where his loyalties lay.

Sandra glared openly at Caleb, and then gave Julian a supportive nod. Tara Campbell waited, patiently, for Julian’s decision, while others also looked to the countess now as a kind of neutral party. A referee for the event.