Sword of Sedition

Jonah stifled a weary smile. Hearing Gareth inadvertently call him by name had lifted the weight from the exarch’s shoulders for a brief instant. That kind of camaraderie was now missing from his life. But he clamped down on it quickly and smothered it under the blanket of duty.

He needed Gareth focused, not familiar.

“We all wish a lot of things,” he said. “Doesn’t mean we get to make the choice we like. Heather put together a solid operation. You need to hold up your end, and you need to do it without flinching.”

“You’re asking me to sandbag a friend. One of our own.”

An unavoidable evil, at this late hour, but not one to hang around the neck of his most inexperienced paladin. So Jonah slipped a bit more responsibility onto his own plate instead.

“I’m not asking,” he said.

Sir Co

He tapped the limo driver on the shoulder.

“Ease back, Charles. Buy us some time.”

Co

The joke wasn’t fu

“I’d feel better if you’d take the underground entrance,” the knight said, sitting with his back to the driver, facing his father.

“In seventeen years, Co

“You damn well should be.”

It slipped out before he could guard his tongue. That was the wrong way to convince his father of anything. He knew it. Senator Gerald Monroe was also Viscount Markab—which made Co

This scandal was hard enough on his father without Co

“Influencing military officials at the highest levels? Coercion?” Co

Monroe nodded, winced, clearly at odds with his own behavior. “The decisions I made, I made in good faith. You know that, Co

“I’m more worried about your ass, Father.” Co

“And rightly so. They believe their government failed them. Where else do people go when they can’t trust normal cha

Not after his father, preferably. But Co

Of course, marrying a local businesswoman with samurai blood in her family hadn’t hurt, either.

Certainly, it made for an interesting family mix. Co

Then again, today’s excitement he hadn’t bargained for.

The protestors had real people power behind them, massing out in front of Geneva’s senate building, sweeping in a living ocean of angry faces right up to the marble steps where a squad of large men in green fatigues waited, then around them and up to the gray, stately columns on the building’s portico. Some protestors waved placards. Most waved their fists, pumping them to chants of “Stone the Senate” and “One nation, one law,” among others.

There were a few pro-Senate islands weathering those turbulent seas, but they looked weary and besieged after a morning of being shouted down, shoved back, and generally failing in the face of the exarch’s popular support. Of course, such an immediate groundswell of grassroots strength did not just happen, and did not come cheaply.

Co

“Bump the curb, Charles. Put us right up against the main steps.”

Gerald Monroe smiled tightly at his son’s concern. “That’s illegal,” he reminded the knight.

Like the senator had any room to talk. “I’ll take the hit.”

The crowd saw the Excelsior, of course, and swarmed to either side of the executive hovercraft, squinting through tinted ferroglass to see who had the nerve to arrive out front. One of the small pro-Senate packs, cheering and waving signs that readNOBLE VICTORY! andEXARCH, NOT MONARCH! anchored itself to the left fender of the Excelsior as the lower skirting touched the curb.

Charles goosed the lift fans, slipping the hovercraft over the curb and up onto the Mall walk. Pro-Senate supporters helped clear a path to the steps, where the men in fatigues separated them from the worst of the mob and then formed a tight cordon around the car’s rear door.

“Friends of yours?” Senator Monroe asked.

Co

“I should have ordered them out in battlesuits,” he muttered. Maybe call out some Pegasus scouts while he was at it, and slip into the cockpit of his Rifleman. “Stay put Charles,” he ordered the driver. “This one’s on me.”

The Excelsior’s gull-wing door cracked open, and Co

Using the moment of confusion (and intimidation) to his advantage, Co

Co

“Senator Monroe,” the paladin said by way of greeting. He lounged against the wall, making himself comfortable. There was little respect in the title. “Enjoy your morning commute?”

“You set that up,” Co

It was hard thinking of Gareth as a paladin and therefore his superior. His advancement was too recent, coming on the eve of the election of the new exarch. They had served together for so long, first as knights-errant and then as knights. Both were from noble families. They had more in common than they had differences. Or so Co