For a moment, Jasek believed that she did. He saw the softening around her eyes, and the cautious smile most women displayed when they’d made a decision about their feelings. He would have sworn he saw her rise up on the balls of her feet, ready to lean in to him.
But then Tara pulled back. Her eyes shone with resolve as she stepped away. She shook her head.
“I’m married to The Republic, Jasek. It’s what I promised myself, and that’s the way it has to be.”
Duty before all. Jasek understood that, even if it tore at him. By the pained look on Tara’s face, her decision was costing her too.
“You’ll change your mind,” he said, turning back to the window. She had to change her mind. For everything else he’d given up in the last two years, and everything he’d lost, she was the one thing he no longer was certain he could stand to be without.
“Don’t count on it,” she shot back at him quickly.
But she stood beside him a moment longer anyway. It felt very comfortable until she cleared her throat nervously. “Take care of yourself, Jasek. All right? I would like to know that you’re . . . safe.” Then she too left.
It was a very awkward parting, and he nearly went after her right then. Maybe she wanted him to. Maybe not. He let her go. There was time enough for such pursuits, he told himself. This first day back on Nusakan, there were other priorities that needed handling. His father, for one. Spreading out the Stormhammers’ intelligence network again, for another. Whatever was happening back on Terra, they needed to know something as soon as possible.
And then there were the new allegations against Vic Parkins to investigate. Whether the hauptmann abandoned his superior officer on the battlefield or had been engaged and truly unable to respond. Nicco had repeatedly advised Jasek that Tamara’s romantic loyalty fostered a potential discipline problem, but still, she deserved better.
So much to do. Tara Campbell would have to wait. She wasn’t going anywhere.
He hoped.
Niccolò had waited by the elevators. The doors on Tara’s car were barely shut when Jasek walked up, his face solemn. “Bad day at the office?”
“We’re back on Nusakan, and most of us are alive, if a bit battered.” Jasek had little doubt his friend saw how much he was hurting. “It’s a good start.”
“We knew going in that Skye was lost,” Niccolò reminded him. “Had to be lost.”
Jasek said nothing. He summoned a new car.
“Fifth Rise?” the GioAvanti scion asked. It was where Duke Gregory waited. It would be a necessary stop.
“Yes,” Jasek agreed, hardening himself to the difficult decisions he now faced. The Isle of Skye was about to go through very hard times. The Stormhammers had to be ready to cushion the blows.
The elevator arrived, heavy doors rolling back quietly. Both men stepped inside the waiting car.
“There is nothing more difficult to plan, more uncertain of success, or more dangerous to manage than the establishment of a new order of government,” his best friend said. “And that is exactly what you are trying to accomplish, Landgrave.”
“But not alone,” Jasek whispered as he watched the doors roll shut. “Not alone.”
At the mansion residence on Fifth Rise, Jasek Kelswa-Steiner found his father standing on a small balcony just off Governor Paulo’s drawing room. A glass of dark red wine sat forgotten on a nearby bistro table. Hands clasped behind his back, hair shining glossily under Nusakan’s sun, the lord governor stared out over Cheops, given a commanding view of the sculpted city as it flowed down the mountainside.
“It’s a beautiful city,” he said, sensing Jasek’s arrival.
Jasek joined him at the railing. “But you won’t be staying.”
“No. Nusakan is your world, boy. Lyons will make a better home for my lord governorship in absentia. It’s a strong world, and they hold fast to The Republic there.”
At least it was said without the usual rancor. After seeing off Alexia and with Tara’s uncertain good-bye, Jasek had no strength for another fight. A strained silence fell between them as they tried to enjoy a moment of peace. Such moments came so rarely. Jasek listened to birdsong and tasted the sweet fragrance of cherry trees wafting from Governor Paulo’s nearby orchards. The sun warmed his skin. Shielding his eyes, he stared down Cheops’ five Hills and Rises and saw the distant DropPort, where large vehicles crawled like ants among gray spheroidal hills.
It reminded him too much of what he’d recently lost.
“Would you rather have been left behind?” Jasek asked after a moment. His father had not been a willing participant in the evacuation, after all. He’d not even known about the bargain of hegira until the DropShip carrying him had left Skye’s atmosphere.
“I would rather have been given the choice. Not pulled out of Second Bristol by your storm troopers.”
“I sent Nicco.”
“And a squad of Hauberk.” The duke scratched absentmindedly at his beard. More steel gray had crept in at the edges of his mouth, his sideburns. “It was all very smoothly done, and no doubt planned for some time. My Ducal Guard did not even tumble to it until we were already inside the DropShip.”
This civility was murder. Jasek began to wonder if he would feel more comfortable with his father flushed red and ranting. “I’m sorry we could not save Skye.” But his words fell flat.
“You never meant to save Skye, no more than you meant to give me a choice in leaving.” His father turned away from the view, and there was a bite of steel in his voice again. “I’m not a fool, boy. You played this your way from the start. Media attention. Lyran involvement. And the fall of Skye. Admit it.”
Jasek shrugged, rested his forearms on the balustrade. “I would have taken a victory over the Jade Falcons if there had been one in the offing, but you and I both know that it wasn’t going to happen. Not without substantial support from Prefecture X. Exarch Redburn left you—left Tara—fighting a losing battle.”
He shoved himself away from the rail suddenly. “You told me—you taught me—to play the long game. Well, I have, Father. Nicco and I saw months ago that the Jade Falcons held too many advantages. All that was left was to choose the final battlefield, and I forced it on them. They are stuck now. Stuck holding Skye. Now we move where we will, and attack at our convenience, because they can’t afford to give it up. It’s been tied around their necks like a millstone.”
His father nodded. “And whoever frees Skye earns the undying gratitude of the people. Even if he comes bearing the Lyran fist. Well, it might work. If it’s you who succeeds and not I.” He turned back toward the city, large hands gripping the balustrade’s stone rail. There was still a great deal of strength in them. “But that’s only going to happen over my dead body.”
“And vice versa, I’m certain,” Jasek said deadpan, even though it tore at him to admit it. His father seemed to have no difficulty with the idea, though. “Tara warned me, you know.”
His father grunted in response, but Jasek waited him out.
“If it was going to happen, it would have already.”
“And here I’ve been looking over my shoulder for the better part of two years waiting for the attempt. Why didn’t you?” he asked, throat tight around the words. “Why didn’t you have me killed when I broke from you?”
“Don’t think I haven’t come close a time or two,” his father admitted calmly, as if discussing the pleasant Nusakan weather. “But there were always . . . considerations.”
“Such as?”
“Even though you think you are playing the long game, Jasek, you aren’t. In fact, you’ve barely made it out of my sight. You’re impatient. You’re reckless. Time will do the job for me, if you don’t come to your senses first.”
Jasek nearly smiled, hearing his name from his father’s lips. If the darts flung behind it hadn’t felt so accurate and so sharp. “What if you’re wrong?”
A shrug. “Then you are still blood of my blood. And in the end you may be all the
Isle has left.”
He considered that for a few moments. It sounded almost like an admission of respect. But he could not forget his father’s adamant declaration in their last, bitter conversation before Jasek first left Skye with the Stormhammers.
Skye will never need your kind of leadership.
We’ll see what Skye needs, Father.
Neither of them would know the answer until one or the other stood victorious in the Isle.
“We’ll see,” he stated flatly, then turned from the cityscape view, toward the balcony door.
“And you’ll continue looking over your shoulder, won’t you, boy?”
Jasek stopped in the doorway. It took great strength of will not to look back. He imagined his father leaning against the stone railing still, but had the old duke turned to watch his son depart? If Jasek glanced over his shoulder, just one last time, would they each see the other searching for some kind of common ground?
Or would he only feel foolish for surrendering another round to his father?
He stepped through the open doorway, leaving the duke and lord governor of Prefecture IX to himself. The battle for Skye was just beginning, Jasek knew. There would be other days to measure themselves against each other. Better days, he hoped. Though maybe, he acknowledged, this was all that was left between them. Soft words and hard feelings.
And the blood of the Isle.
About the Author
Loren L. Coleman grew up in the Pacific Northwest. An avid reader, he became infatuated with stories and the art of storytelling at an early age. He wrote creative works when he was as young as twelve years old, and began to write actual fiction stories in high school for a creative-writing class, but it was during his enlistment in the U.S. Navy that he began working seriously at the craft. Discharged in 1993, he went to work as a freelance fiction writer and eventually became a full-time novelist.
His first novel, Double-Blind, was pubished in 1998. He has since explored the universes of BattleTech, Magic: The Gathering, Crimson Skies, MechWarrior: Dark Age, and Star Trek. Around the time of this printing, he has written and published fifteen novels and a great deal of shorter fiction, and been involved with several computer games. Currently, he is working on a new trilogy set in the Conan universe.
When he isn’t writing, Loren plays Xbox games, collects far too many DVDs, and holds a black belt in traditional Tae Kwon Do. He has lived in many parts of the country. Currently he resides in Washington State with his wife, Heather Joy, two sons, Talon LaRon and Conner Rhys Monroe, and a daughter, Alexia Joy. The family owns three of the obligatory writer’s cats, Chaos, Ranger and Rumor, and one dog, Loki, who like any dog is just happy to be here.
His personal Web site can be found at www.rasqal.com.
Contents
Acknowledgments
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Epilogue
About the Author
Blood of the Isle Page 31
