Kris smiled at a civilian’s reactions to her military honors. “Most didn’t hurt me,” she said. Not a lot. “But you wouldn’t want to see the other guy.”
“No doubt,” he said, and hurried on. “I have someone I want you to meet, my grandmama.” The woman he introduced Kris to really was the same woman Jack had been seriously trying to run down that morning!
“You took your gray-haired grandmother on a black ops mission!” Kris said, incredulously.
“He most certainly did,” the woman replied before her grandson could. “Once he made it clear how he intended to box you in, it was clear to me that a woman with your good repute would never let harm come to a fine woman of culture. I couldn’t very well have Mannie cruising the old folks’ home for some poor woman barely able to stand on her own two feet. It needed doing, and I could very well do it myself.”
“Kind of hard to argue with Grandmama,” Mannie said.
“And besides,” the elderly woman continued, “it was not a black ops. The sun was coming up. It was more like a dawn ops.”
Kris eyed Mannie. He shook his head.
“She knows very well what we are talking about,” he said. “She just hates it when slang disfigures an otherwise perfect language.”
“Say what you mean, boy, and do what you say.”
“That’s what I hope we are doing today, Grandmama. Now, if you’ll let me have the princess, I think we’re about ready to start.”
“Are you married?” Grandmama asked, not letting go of Kris’s elbow.
“No, ma’am,” Kris admitted.
Mannie had one of Kris’s elbows and was pointing her toward the stage. Grandmama had the other elbow and showed no willingness to either let go or move with them.
“Do you need any help?” Jack asked, the pure professionalism of his perfect uniform marred only by the smirk on his face.
“I could use a hand,” Kris admitted.
Jack clapped his two white-gloved palms together.
“Do you have any granddaughters?” Kris asked.
Grandmama’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been blessed with three of the loveliest granddaughters an old woman could ever wish for,” she said proudly.
“Jack’s not married,” Kris said, managing to get the elderly woman’s hand off her elbow and into Jack’s hands.
Jack’s smirk vanished, to be replaced with a scowl of biblical proportions.
Free at last, Kris followed Mannie toward the stage. As Grandmama pulled pictures from her purse, Jack struggled manfully to free himself from the white-haired woman . . . and failed.
Kris found herself maneuvered up three steps onto a dais. In front of her was a table with three copies of the new charter laid out in all their medieval splendor. There were three chairs and three inkwells with quill pens beside them. Vicky had already taken the center seat.
From the way Mannie’s eyebrows flicked up, Kris suspected he’d intended that seat for himself. He recovered quickly enough, the perfect picture of what Kris’s father often muttered under his breath. “Nothing is impossible . . . if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit for it.”
Clearly, Mannie was willing to do anything, so long as he got the signatures he wanted on those pieces of parchment.
Mannie pulled out Kris’s chair and seated her to Vicky’s right, then went around to stand behind the chair on his overlord’s daughter’s left.
“Friends and people of Sevastopol, we are gathered together here to formalize a new day for all of us. Today, we will establish a new future for us and our children. A future of hope and prosperity.” Kris wondered how long he would go on, but he seemed aware that often, less was more, especially when he hadn’t really had a chance to find out from Vicky if there were any unresolved issues that in their haste to get on to the next crisis, the charter was merely papering over.
He sat. The audience clapped. There were fifty to a hundred here, mostly harried civil servants who had been hauled away from their desks for this momentous occasion . . . with a few businessmen and -women hurriedly added to the mix.
Vicky rose when the room fell silent. “For my father,” she began, “I come to wish you success in all your lawful endeavors. I look forward to the future of the Greenfeld Alliance as a new generation takes its place in building a prosperous tomorrow for all of us.”
The applause this time was more subdued. The eyes of many went around the room. Marines in Greenfeld green and black stood along the wall, alternating with Wardhaven red and blue. If anyone found the blend unusual, no one risked a remark on it.
Now it was Kris’s turn. She stood and smiled pleasantly at the audience. Jack now stood close to the steps, Abby at his elbow. Keep it short and simple, stupid was in their eyes. Kris broadened her smile for them. Message received and understood.
“I would like to thank Lieutenant Victoria Smythe-Peterwald and Mayor Manuel Artamus for their mutual invitation to serve as witness to this momentous occasion. I hope that long after we have passed from this stage, our ancestors will point to the work that we do here today, and say, ‘That was well done. That was a gift for the ages.’ ”
That appeared to please everyone, both in the audience and up on the dais. The crowd’s applause for Kris’s speech was somewhere in the middle between Mannie’s reception and Vicky’s.
When the applause died down, Vicky reached for a quill, dipped it in the inkwell and applied it to the paper. She took the first available line.
Mannie signed in the same place on his copy of the charter.
Oops, Kris thought. That will make for interesting historical comments. Kris signed her copy in last place.
She tried.
She’d never actually used a quill pen. It took her two tries to get enough ink up the quill for it to make any mark on the charter. Then it took her three refills to get enough ink to finish Princess Kristine Longknife. Well, it was a long name.
Apparently Vicky had no problem. She got all three of her formal names down with only one pass at the inkwell.
Jack stepped up to the dais. He rolled a blotter over Kris’s signature, then moved her parchment gingerly over to Vicky’s place. A Greenfeld commander did the same for Vicky, moving it to Mannie. A white-tie-and-tails young man did the same for Mannie, bringing his copy to Kris. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was Danny from this morning’s raid, the one who had taken Grandmama home.
Apparently, he was a young man of many skills.
They went through the drill again. Kris had better luck with the quill; her signature looked rather decent on this copy. She noticed that Vicky was quick to sign at the top of the available space. Two of the three copies would give her that place of precedence.
Hopefully, two out of three would please her dad. On second thought, with all the copies signed, there was no reason why Mannie’s copy ever had to leave Sevastopol. With luck, what other people never knew would not upset anyone’s applecart.
By the third document, Kris could actually sign her name with a flourish. Not only did she get better, but the quill seemed to adapt itself to her penmanship.
There was applause when they finished, which probably had nothing to do with Kris’s feeling of accomplishment at having mastered an obsolete form of writing. Everyone smiled, and Danny collected all the copies to roll them up and distribute one to Vicky and another to Kris. The third copy was quickly framed in a waiting bit of ornate woodwork and mounted for display for all present to ooh and aah over.
For a day that had begun in the dark in so very many ways, Kris felt like she’d accomplished rather a lot.
Then she frowned as she remembered all she had left to do.
And quickly swallowed her frown lest it be misunderstood on this momentous occasion.
A select few were allowed up on the dais to shake hands with the mayor and his collection of visiting celebrities. Kris shook several hands, acknowledged several names she would never remember, and was about to nudge Jack to get her out of there.