Hector turned from the studio to peer into the crowd of onlookers in the dimly lit control booth. Geri was still there, off by the far comer, squeezed between an old politician and a slickly dressed female advertising executive. Geri was still pouting. Hector turned away before she saw him watching her.
“It seems clear,” one of the political pundits was saying out in the studio, “that Kanus can’t use the dueling machine to frighten us any more. And without fear, Kanus isn’t half the threat we thought he was.”
“I disagree,” Leoh said, shifting his bulk in the fraillooking web chair. “Kerak has made great strides in isolating Acquatainia diplomatically….”
“But we never depended on our neighbors for our own efense,” a newsman said. “Those so-called allies of ours were more of a drain on our treasury than a help to us.”
“But Kerak now has the industrial base of Szamo and outposts that flank Prime Minister Martine’s new defense line.”
“Kerak would never dare attack us, and if they did, we’d beat them just as we did the last time.”
“But an alliance with the Commonwealth. . ,.”
“We don’t need it. Kanus is a paper tiger, believe me. All bluff, all dueling machine trickery, but no real strength. He’ll probably be deposed by his own people in another year or two.”
Something made Hector shift his gaze from the semicircle of sonorous solons to the technical crews working the cameras and laser lights. Something made him squint into the pooled shadows far in the back of the studio, where a single tall, slim man stood. Hector couldn’t see his face, or what he was wearing, or the color of his hair. Only the knife-like outline of a figure that radiated danger; Odal.