“You’re not going to try to make it vanish?” Kris said, almost as shocked as she’d ever been in her life.
“Fix it! This is part of the kimono’s history now. Six hundred years from now, the wearer will point to the place where Princess-san Longknife was shot.”
Culture shock. Kris knew it was an occupational hazard of both her life as a princess and a Longknife. Still, it always surprised her when she walked into its sharp jab to the stomach.
Much more comfortable in sweats, Kris joined the men in the drawing room for the news. They hadn’t long to wait; Kris was the number one story on all the channels.
They showed her going in. They showed her coming out. Some presented her in quick cuts. Others lavished more time, including several that included her interchange with the reporters.
Tsusumu busted out laughing. “You didn’t! Don’t you know the Imperial Household staff are the most tight-lipped crew in human space?”
“Of course I knew,” Kris said. “But I am a stranger, and it was a good joke.”
Tsusumu quit laughing when the news flashed several stills of Kris with the Imperial Family, both before, during, and after the Tea Ceremony. It ended with a lovely shot of Kris and the Imperial Family silhouetted against the sunset before it transitioned to Kris rolling on the ground as the second shot hit near her. The reports quickly said Kris had not been hurt but showed nothing of how she had been protected by the Imperial Marines and Palace Guard.
“Gods, I am speechless” the lawyer finally said when he regained his voice. “I don’t know which to marvel at first. The kami that guards your life or His Majesty throwing down the gauntlet to Aki-san.”
“Pardon?” Kris said.
The lawyer and politician took a deep breath. “I have never seen such intimate coverage of the Emperor, certainly not of the whole family. Young woman, the Emperor has thrown his support behind you in a way never done before. There hasn’t been anything like this in the two hundred years since this line of the dynasty was founded.”
He rose to pace the room. “I don’t know what Aki will do, but I know that if the Emperor took such a bold hand in something my party was so deeply involved in, I would demand he abdicate.”
“And if he abdicated . . .?” Kris asked.
“Emiko would become the first Empress in several hundred years for either Japan, Yamato, or us.”
“How does Aki’s party feel about an Empress?” Jack asked.
Now Tsusumu was laughing again. “It would break their conservative hearts. My party, of course, would be delighted to have an idealistic young person on the throne. We’re looking forward to it.”
The lawyer ended up stroking his chin. “I would not like to be among the power brokers of the present administration tonight. Unless it was as a tiny mouse to listen. Though even a mouse would be ushered out if it could not keep from laughing at their dilemma.”
“Has this changed anything?” Kris asked.
“Unless they have the good sense to call off your trial, no. Now, if you don’t mind, I must be gone. There are several people I dearly want to discuss this with and, unfortunately, you are, as you said, a stranger and uninvolved with our local politics.”
“Only up to my neck,” Kris said.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head,” Tsusumu said. “It is even less likely to end its days on a pike before the Justice building. Much less likely.”
Kris watched him go, then found an overstuffed chair and settled into it alone. Jack took a seat on the couch within reach and waited quietly. Kris was only starting to realize how much she valued his silence and how much it must cost him.
“The Emperor knows your name,” she told Jack.
“I believe being noticed by the Emperor in days gone by was an honor,” he said, but he said it only to fill in some of the space around Kris’s silence.
Kris took a deep breath. “The Emperor also knows that you sleep in the north wing and I in the south wing. He approves very much of that.”
Jack scowled sardonically. “He does, does he?”
“What with me accused of seducing the admirals, can you blame him?”
“No. No, I can’t. It’s just the pits having to live my life to fulfill everyone else’s needs except yours and mine.”
Kris sighed and pulled a pillow close instead of Jack. “It is the pits. But if we can get through this court thing, maybe we can just be another poor couple trying to make their way in the world.”
“You think we could?”
“What can happen to us after they judge me?” Kris asked.
“You’re a Longknife,” Jack said. “Something always happens.”
52
Kris’s first day in court started bad and then got worse.
She was all decked out in starched undress whites and about to get into the limo beside Jack when “that” happened.
She quickly scrambled back into the house and found one of the young housekeepers with the proper feminine necessities. Fortunately, it hadn’t progressed to the point she needed new whites. As she rejoined Jack in the limo, he give her a raised eyebrow.
She whispered, “That time of the month.”
“Sorry about that, and today of all days,” he whispered. Was there something deep in his eyes, maybe a hint of regret that it was still just the two of them, and not a threesome.
Would that change anything? Kris wondered.
Kris was in no mood for bull, but that was all she got that day in court. It seemed that the law let the prosecutor go first, and that meant the defense had to listen to whatever the prosecution could get the judge to let its witnesses say. The defense only got to put an oar in the water at cross-examination.
But Kris’s lawyers seemed uninterested in cross. Lawyers, as in plural. There were half a dozen at the prosecutor’s table. Kris’s team matched them one for one.
The prosecutor gave an opening statement that accused Kris of everything under the sun, from going outlaw and starting a war all on her own, coming up with a lousy plan to do it, then seducing the admirals to go along.
“Seducing!” Kris whispered in Tsusumu’s ear.
“The word has other, nonsexual meanings,” her lawyer whispered back.
“But you know what he means.”
“Sit still. Keep quiet. Can’t you see how the judges are looking at you?”
Kris had been warned that her job in court was to sit still, look innocent, and keep her mouth shut until and only if her lawyer called on her to testify. Kris had no idea how hard that would be.
Well, she’d faced hostile lasers. She could face a few hostile words.
With an effort.
The prosecution paraded a long line of retired generals and admirals who all showed up in court in their dress uniforms bespeckled with medals. Everything about their bearing, dress and demeanor shouted, “I know what I’m talking about.”
And, boy, did they talk.
One by one, each of them meticulously tore apart Kris’s battle plan. They pointed out every turn at which the fight could have gone horribly wrong, long before it actually did. They highlighted every risk Kris took and every option she didn’t follow that might have led to a better outcome.
“Her scouting was ridiculous,” one admiral growled. “She had only one contact with the force she assumed was the aggressor. An assumption she had little or no basis for. She based all her further actions on the unsupported assumption that she knew where it was going and the speed it would maintain. Every one of her actions rested on that untested supposition. She had a force of corvettes and courier ships. Any competent commander would have put them to use as scouts.”
He thinks I should have scattered my tiny force even more! Kris scrawled on a pad for her lawyer to see. What happened to concentration of forces?