He let a hush lie over the grand room for a few precious heartbeats.

“Peace.”

Not war! As so many in the audience had certainly been thinking. Tara found herself praying. Cheering the assembled masses to listen to Redburn. For faith’s sake.

“There are those who would say that Victor worked hard, fought hard and never lost. Not when it mattered. Except that Victor lost his very first command to the Clans on Trellwan. He lost his mother, and also his first love, to political assassination. He lost friends and comrades to a thousand different battles fought over hundreds of worlds.

“Of course he lost,” Redburn said, forcing a calm over himself. “Of course he did. But I can tell you this. Victor was never defeated. Because he never, once, gave up.”

The former exarch had the crowd in his hands now. Tara sensed that. Most of the crowd, anyway, as there would also be those who remembered facing Victor across a battlefield, wishing the man would give up. Would turn away. Would just lie down and finally die.

But as Redburn warmed up to the list of specific events Victor had “fought” against, including the controversy surrounding Victor’s ultimate decision to abdicate his throne as a final conciliatory gesture to an Inner Sphere long suffering under the hardships of extended warfare, those who knew anything of Victor’s history were reminded again of what a heroic figure he truly was. And the litany of struggles and personal losses and overwhelming victories swept even Tara away. Tara, who knew the histories as well as anyone might. She stopped hearing the repeated slam as Redburn drove another nail into the coffin of the Senate loyalists, the ones ultimately responsible for Victor’s death. She closed her eyes again, and wrapped herself up in a warm blanket of memories and patriotic sensation.

Which lasted until a hand touched her on the elbow, and the breath of someone leaning down at her shoulder warmed her ear.

“Countess?”

More than a whisper. Strong and certain.

“Countess. It’s time.”

Tara opened her eyes slowly, glanced up to her right where a Buddhist monk hovered over her from the end of the pew. She wanted to deny the summons, even though she had expected it. They had all expected it, today of all days. Another large injustice.

The disruptions were minor, so far. Monks and acolytes and even some young priests, moving along the outer aisles, delivering small notes or reaching in to tap an expectant officer on the arm or shoulder.

Redburn continued, never letting the interruptions steal the crowd away from his words. His message.

“Not when wars threatened on every border,” he said as Tara stood and shuffled out from the pew. “Not even when good men stopped listening for a time. Victor persisted. He fought his way forward. He fought his entire life. And in the end, he even fought for his life, and ruined a dark conspiracy’s efforts to threaten the peace once again.”

Not ruined. Not completely. Delayed.

“They did not defeat him.”

A priest approached the row of paladins. Another stepped toward the fore, making certain the six standing for Victor also saw. Also knew.

“He defeated them.”

He did. Tara agreed. She stood at the end of her pew a moment, matching gazes with Damien Redburn, who looked out over the disturbed service, and silently agreed. But that was one battle in a much larger, long war.

And now they would go to carry on Victor’s legacy.

“Now?” Julian asked. “They are coming now?”

His whisper carried little farther than Prince Harrison. Perhaps Sandra and Amanda Hasek as well. Caleb leaned in from farther along, his gaze quizzical as he obviously tried to put it together. The speech. The disruptions.

Julian’s sudden conference with Harrison Davion.

But everyone else knew once the messages started filtering out across the chapel. Shoulders tapped and officers excusing themselves as silently and swiftly as they could. An expectant buzz as, one by one, the paladins slid out of their seats, forming a tight knot in the far, forward corner of the chapel.

Damien Redburn seized on the interruptions to add more animation into his eulogy. To drive the point home that his words, and the events happening on Terra, were very much linked.

“Victor’s loss is far from an ending, however. It is a beginning. It heralds a fresh start for The Republic, and new opportunities for all realms of the Inner Sphere to work together and fight for a better future. For peace.”

Toward that better future, Harrison simply handed over the slip of a note delivered by a priest’s hands. Julian unfolded it. He felt Sandra next to him, crowding up to his side, pretending she was not trying to read it, to catch a hint of what was about to happen.

The first half of the simple missive read only: It’s time. Terse and to the point, Julian imagined it was similar to the messages being passed about the entire chapel. Except for the second half. One word. A name.

Meaux. A small city about twenty kilometers outside Paris.

To which elements of the First Davion Guard had been secretly brought from the American southwest! Julian knew it at once. A thrill shook him as he anticipated Harrison’s next order.

“Go, Julian. There will be transport waiting for you outside. You will take local command at Meaux. Under Exarch Levin’s direct orders.”

“He authorized it?”

Julian slid forward to the edge of his pew. It was all streaming past him at a fair clip now. The funeral. The threat of imminent action. A Republic commission? All too fast.

“Under the Foreign Powers Visitors act. Temporarily.”

Julian reached over to give Sandra’s hand a quick squeeze, then slid past Harrison and Amanda, Caleb, then Riccard Streng, to the chapel’s left-side aisle. Harrison stood as well and followed him only to the end of the pew, as if anticipating the question that suddenly leaped to Julian’s thoughts.

“That act only applies in the event of a wartime alliance between the Federated Suns and The Republic,” he reminded his prince. They stood there, near the side of the chapel, both wearing the dress uniform of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns. Alone out of every House and faction represented.

An oddity that appeared to worry the prince not at all. “Which Exarch Levin has offered,” he said to Julian. “I told him, if you were sent, he should consider the alliance as good as signed.”

Julian glanced to the front of the Cathedral’s chapel. Redburn continued his eulogy of Victor Steiner-Davion, keeping hold of the room with brute force willpower. But few people were paying attention just now. Especially as the six honor-guard paladins filed off the altar. All but one, left to stand for Victor, no doubt chosen earlier by lot or by vote. There were duties, and there were duties, and the paladins would not forgo one obligation for another. One of their number would remain.

Sire David McKinnon. Eldest of the seventeen, and certainly a paladin exemplar in his own right.

And one other face at the front of the room looked back now, catching Julian’s eye. Exarch Levin. The onetime paladin and ruler of The Republic of the Sphere let nothing show on his face. Not concern or relief. But he nodded in Julian’s direction. Once. A strong vote of confidence.

“How long did you have to consider it?” After all the meetings and briefings into which Julian had been brought, it seemed strange to have missed out on this one.

“Since our final viewing this morning. Jonah offered the alliance in the vestibule.”

About two hours, in other words.

“How do you do this?” he asked. No worry in his voice. Simply awe for the man he had chosen to follow. “You’ve shown me so much this month, and I still didn’t see it.”

“You make it happen, Julian.” Harrison’s voice grew a touch short. As if explaining an answer that his best student should already know. “You do it because there is no one else. And now no time to delay any longer.”