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  Before Phelan could ask another question, the elevator came to a halt and the doors opened onto a narrow corridor. Wordlessly, Natasha led him down the hall until they came to a door emblazoned with a wolf's-head device on a shield. Phelan recognized it as the crest of the Wolf Clan and knew it was standard on all the living quarter doors aboard the Dire Wolf. What surprised him were the five red daggerstars below the crest. He could see they had been placed there very recently.

  Five stars! That's the number of stars that mark Khan Ulric's door. That means whoever this Cyrilla Ward is, she is a very important person within the Clans! And she must be very important within the House of Ward as well.

  Before Natasha could knock, the door slid up into the ceiling with a soft whoosh of air. Revealed was a white-haired woman who flung her arms open wide to take Natasha into a hearty embrace. "My God, Tasha, you haven't changed in all these years."

  Natasha returned the embrace, lifting Cyrilla Ward off the deck. "Neither have you, Ril."

  Cyrilla shook her head, letting her long white hair spread out over her shoulders as she broke the embrace. "It is a good thing you fight better than you lie, or you would have died long ago."

  "If only you knew the truth. If not for doctors and reconstructive surgery, I'd long since have ceased fighting and lying all together."

  Cyrilla invited both Natasha and Phelan into her temporary suite with a wave of the hand, but Phelan had the feeling she barely noticed him. Wary because of the way Khan Ulric always seemed to be testing him, the young warrior followed Natasha from the antechamber to the main room. Phelan tried to prepare himself for whatever might be waiting, but he grew more anxious with every step. When he saw the trap, he was glad that his caution had allowed him to kill the surprise he might otherwise have revealed.

  As they entered the room, another Wolf Clansman rose from his seat and fixed Phelan with an incendiary stare. The man's black hair, combed back to accentuate his widow's peak, gleamed with the oil he used to slick it down. A scar ran from above his left eye to his jawline and was still fresh enough to show the red of wounding.

  Vlad managed to keep his voice even. "How good to see you again, Natasha." Contempt curled the corners of his mouth as he addressed Phelan. "I trust your leg wound has healed well?"

  You mean the place where you slashed me during the adoption ceremony? "Yes, it has." Phelan returned Vlad's stare with his own glower. "I am told there will not even be much of a scar."

  Cyrilla placed a bony hand on Vlad's shoulder. "You may go now, Vladimir. I have found our conversation most enlightening." She steered the Clansman toward the door, but he did not break immediately to the pressure of her urging. Making a subtle show of hooking his thumbs in his belt, he framed the buckle with his hands and continued to return Phelan's unrelenting green gaze.

  Phelan could not keep his eyes from the buckle. Cast of silver and set with onyx, it showed the hound's-head crest of the Kell Hounds, the well-known mercenary unit of which Phelan was a member before his capture. Tyra Miraborg, the woman who had given it to him, had substituted the green of malachite for the red eyes used in the actual Kell Hound crest, matching them to Phelan's. When he was captured by Vlad and the Clans, Vlad had taken the belt buckle and continued to flaunt it as a reminder of Phelan's inferiority.

  Natasha appropriated the low-backed chair Vlad had vacated, but Phelan remained standing. Cyrilla returned to the small sitting room and drew her chair beside the one Natasha had taken. Patting Natasha's left hand, Cyrilla smiled broadly. "After all these years without word, I feared you had been killed."

  Natasha turned her hand up to give Cyrilla's a squeeze. "How could I let that happen?" she laughed. "I never forgot our childhood pact that we would finish out our days fighting against the Smoke Jaguars together. Did you think I would renege?"

  "No, no, I did not. We will speak more of his later," Cyrilla said gently. She looked up at Phelan, her brown eyes seeming to take measure in ways even more than physical.

  "So this is Phelan Wolf. Are you worthy of the commotion you have caused?"

  "I do not know how to answer that question." Phelan lifted his head and clasped his hands at the small of his back. "I do not know how to judge my worth to the Clan."

  Cyrilla watched him like a wolf eyeing a tasty rabbit. "You saved Khan Ulric's life on the bridge of the Dire Wolf, Quiaff?"

  Phelan looked down at the floor. "I did what was necessary to help those trapped on the bridge after the ship was rammed. My actions were not heroic. It was simply what had to be done."

  "He is modest, Quiaff, Tasha?"

  Natasha smiled proudly at Phelan. "I think he'd probably say he is just being honest. He comes from good stock, Ril. He was even entrusted to the Wolves for some of his upbringing. Still, this one can be a bit rash and argumentative at times."

  "No doubt because you did some of the raising, Tasha." Cyrilla turned back to Phelan. "Many people want to know more about the bondsman who saved the Khan and claims Ward blood. You are a curiosity that has brought honor to our House, and I thank you."

  The former Kell Hound let a grin light his face. "May you and Khan Ulric continue to take pride in my actions."

  "Very good, very good, indeed." Cyrilla tilted her head as she studied Phelan for a moment. "But you made a great mistake in pulling Vlad from the wreckage of the bridge of the Dire Wolf, young man."

  The statement startled Phelan, and he rubbed without thinking at the cut Vlad had given him during his adoption ceremony into the Clan. On one hand, he was praised for saving the Khan, but rebuked for saving another Wolf warrior. "I am confused. Vlad is a warrior of the Wolf Clan. How could I not save him and still serve the Clan?"

  Cyrilla considered his reply with a smile. "A valid point. Would you always put duty to the Clan above what might be your best interest?"

  "Hypothetical questions are always the ones that get me into trouble when I try to answer them."

  "A deft parry. Good." Cyrilla smiled again, folding her hands in her lap. "Do you understand why I think you should have let Vlad die?"

  "Not really, but having been with the Clans for a while, I think I can guess."

  "Good." Cyrilla leaned back into her chair. "Please explain."

  "Bottom line is that the fewer enemies you have, the longer you live." Phelan sighed heavily. "Ever since Vlad captured me in a battle on The Rock a year and a half ago, he has looked for every opportunity to prove that he is superior to me and anyone else from the Successor States. He is not alone in this attitude, but he is perhaps rather more enthusiastic in expressing it.

  "Though I beat Vlad in a fist fight on Rasalhague, he could say that I jumped him unexpectedly when he was still exhausted from the recent battle for the world. He lost no face, but Vlad's not one to allow himself so easy an out. Even giving me a severe beating aboard the Dire Wolf has not bled off his hatred because I never let him break me."

  The elder MechWarrior watched him carefully. "And this leads you to believe ..."

  Phelan shrugged. "One way or another, Vlad will do anything to get me. He took my adoption into the Clans as a personal affront. He was forced to welcome me into the House of Ward, a duty he seemed particularly loathe to perform."

  Cyrilla rested her chin on steepled fingers. "You must have known all this before you found him on the bridge."

  The young man nodded. "Yes, but I did not know the body lying there was his until I got to where he was. By then, I really had no choice."

  "Even knowing that he hates you with his whole heart and soul, quiaff?"

  Phelan smiled in spite of himself. "I never said I wouldn't regret save him. I only said I had no choice in the matter." He shrugged. "I am not the sort of MechWarrior who shoots up fleeing 'Mech pilots, and I am not the sort who could abandon someone wounded, be it enemy or friend, if I could do something to save them."

  Phelan looked from Cyrilla to Natasha with a rueful smile. "I will say one thing for Vlad. He can carry a grudge further than
anyone I have ever met. It's hard to believe he can hate me so much because I shot some armor off his 'Mech. Especially since he blew the hell out of my Wolfhound at the same time."

  "There is more to it than that, Phelan Wolf." Cyrilla pointed to a cream-colored chair near Phelan. "Please be seated. I think, in short order, I can help to clear up that mystery. Do you know what it means to have a Bloodname, quineg?"

  "Neg."

  "Three centuries ago, General Aleksandr Kerensky led ninety percent of the Star League's army from the space you call the Inner Sphere. He detested the civil wars and nationalistic pressures that had wracked the Star League from the time Stefan the Usurper proclaimed himself First Lord. After smashing the Usurper, Kerensky took his people away, hoping to keep them from the path of self-destruction toward which the rest of humanity seemed hell-bent."

  She leaned back in her chair, seeming to warm to the task of telling the tale of history. "Kerensky feared that his troops would begin to fight among themselves if they had no common cause to unite them. He reorganized the armies and mothballed seventy-five percent of the BattleMechs and materiel they had brought with them. He told his troops that bringing industry on line to replace parts would take time, so they had to limit the number of machines in use. He set up a system by which pilots were grouped into quartets tested yearly to see which would be the Primary or Secondary pilot for a 'Mech. The other two members of the team would perform support and tactical duties.

  "Unfortunately, General Kerensky's death shattered the last bond holding the former Star League troops together. Within a generation, the Star League troops who had left with Kerensky had battered themselves worse than all the damage the Successor States have done An one another since then. Colonies survived by the barest of margins, and cobbled-together BattleMechs stalked the landscape scavenging for spare parts, ammo, and food."

  The white-haired woman leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "The only exception was Strana Mechty, the depot world. The name is Russian and means Land of Dreams, so named to encourage people to work together. From there, Nicholas Kerensky and Jennifer Winson led some six hundred Kerensky loyalists on a crusade to destroy the bandits wandering the colony worlds, intending to unite them all under the control of Strana Mechty.

  "To these loyalists Nicholas Kerensky gave the highest honor he could imagine within the new society he formed. From that time forward, the surnames of these people would be designated as Bloodnames. Within any Clan, only twenty-five individuals are allowed to claim one of these Bloodnames. And such a claim is acknowledged only after that individual has defeated anyone else who makes a claim on the name."

  Cyrilla touched a button on the arm of her chair. A wall panel slid up to reveal a holovid viewing screen. With the touch of another button, the image of a nursery filled with row upon row of babies appeared on the screen. A half-dozen older people wandered among the children, attending to their needs with the gentle care of loving grandparents.

  "Nicholas Kerensky launched the Clans on an ambitious plan for rebuilding. Using the most advanced techniques available to our scientists, he began to match warriors and their bloodlines. Children were bred specifically to cultivate those traits that would make them the ultimate in warriors. As you have seen with Evantha, children intended as Elementals are bred for size and strength. Our pilots, like Carew, are bred physically small, but quick of mind and reflex to handle the difficulties of air combat."

  "And others, like Vlad and Ranna, are bred to be Mech-Warriors?"

  Cyrilla nodded. "What you see here is a sibko. One hundred children are produced from artificial wombs at the same time and then raised together. Natasha and I were raised in the same sibko, though we do not share any recent ancestors. As the children grow, they are trained and tested to determine if the desired traits have bred true. Yet before the first sibko is five years old, another from similar pairings will be started, and the first sibko will have lost twenty percent of its children to accidents or rejection because of poor test scores."

  Phelan frowned, not wanting to accept what he was hearing. "You mean children are allowed to die if their bloodline is not pure? That isn't natural selection. It's monstrous!"

  Natasha shook her head. "No, Phelan. You lived for a time as part of a Dragoons sibko on Outreach. From that experience, you know that we do not mistreat children while raising them. Every precaution is taken, but if a child dies, so be it. If a child fails a test, he enters another caste, where he can develop as a useful member of society. Furthermore, only the warrior caste raises its children in the sibko environment. The rest of Clan society functions much as does any in the Inner Sphere."

  Cyrilla pointed to the screen, where the scene had shifted to adolescents learning how to fight in light 'Mechs. "Nicholas wanted an army prepared to face any threat, be it from within or without. That was the reason for an enforced breeding program. By the age of twenty, only a quarter of the sibko will be eligible to become warriors. Within ten years, half will have been killed in combat, but the genetic material of any who have proven to be masterful warriors will enter into the Clan breeding program. They will achieve immortality, and for the vast majority, that will be the finest day of their lives. Except for a rare few, the majority will start back down soon after."

  Phelan saw anger flash through Natasha's eyes. "Back down?" he asked.

  "Yeah, back down." Natasha looked ready to spit fire. "In the Clans, a warrior is ancient by the time he reaches age thirty-five. If he hasn't won his Bloodname, he moves from active duty to training warriors. Ten years more, and he's considered ill-suited for anything more than filling and emptying infants."

  "That's absurd!" Phelan looked at Cyrilla for an explanation.

  "Not at all. By the time a warrior is thirty, he is facing competition from sibkos that are a generation behind him. By age forty, he fights against children from his own loins. He is at a definite disadvantage."

  "But my father was more than forty years old when I was born!"

  "And you are clearly superior to him, quineg?" Cyrilla looked at Natasha for confirmation, but the Black Widow laughed lightly and shook her head.

  Phelan blushed. "Someday, maybe, if I've got a stiff tailwind behind me and he's got one arm tied behind his back. God, this is crazy. At thirty, a warrior starts his slide down!" The young man half-closed his eyes. "I take it, though, that a warrior who has won a Bloodname is on a fast track and stays up longer?"

  Cyrilla nodded. "And he is guaranteed a place in the Clan breeding program."

  Phelan nodded slowly. "Ah, this puts many things into perspective. It explains Vlad's reaction when he discovered that I claimed a Jal Ward as an ancestor. It also explains why he welcomed me to the House of Ward during the adoption ceremony." He chuckled lightly at the memory of the ceremony. "It must have really burned him to be the one who had to welcome me after my adoption."

  Cyrilla smiled broadly. "Jal Ward left with the Star League troops in his father's place during the Exodus. He was one of the loyalists who fought with Nicholas Kerensky. He, his siblings, and all their descendants are eligible to make a claim on the Ward Bloodnames. We trace the bloodline through maternity. Because your grandfather married a cousin who carried the Ward blood means you are a member of the House of Ward."

  Phelan frowned. "If this is so, why am I called Phelan Wolf?"

  "Two reasons." Natasha ticked each off on her fingers as she explained. "First, anyone who is adopted into a Clan's Warrior caste—an event about as rare as Candace Liao and her sister Romano exchanging a civil word—receives the Clan name as his surname."

  Phelan held a hand up. "Then Jaime Wolf and his brother Joshua were adopted in the Wolf Clan's Warrior caste."

  At the mention of Joshua Wolf, Phelan saw pain arc through Natasha's eyes. "Yes," she said, composing herself immediately. "Their father 'married' outside the Warrior caste and got two sons on his wife. He petitioned for their adoption into the Warrior caste so his sons could fight beside
him if they proved worthy. And so they did.

  "However, the second reason you are not addressed with the surname of Ward is because you have not won that right." Natasha gave him a big grin. "Yet. And that is the main reason Vlad hates you so thoroughly. You are his big competition for the next time a Ward bloodname becomes available."

  "What? How could we win Bloodnames? The both of us are too young. There must be thousands of warriors with better claims, and the skills to win the claim."

  Cyrilla laughed lightly and shot a glance at the Black Widow. "Natasha won her Bloodname at the age of twenty-two. It was unprecedented at the time, and is a mark still un-conquered in the years she has spent in the Successor States. Ulric Kerensky won his Bloodname at the age of thirty, about fifteen years ago. I won my Bloodname at thirty-six— Tasha always said I was a late bloomer—and have held it for more than forty years."

  Natasha patted Cyrilla on the shoulder. "Phelan, you and Vlad are not too young to become involved in the contest the next time a Bloodname becomes open. All the Bloodname houses maintain a list of individuals deemed worthy of competing. The process for selecting and filling positions is arcane and difficult to explain, but consists mainly of nominations by the other Bloodnamed members of the House. They choose their candidates based on performance of duties, scores in testing, and reputation. Though Vlad's performance in the invasion, including your capture, has certainly enhanced his standing, you have attracted enough attention to make it possible to make the list as well. Remember, with the youth bias, burning bright and fast is a big advantage."

  "Is making the nomination list the only way to be considered for a Bloodname, Quiaff?"

  Both women exchanged glances. "Neg," Cyrilla answered. "Because politics has a way of excluding the worthy at times, there is a provision that at least one candidate in each Bloodname contest be selected through a series of grueling and often deadly combats. Though many have won their way onto the list in that manner, they often get so torn up during the preliminaries that they cannot perform well in the actual contest."