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would surprise him.
    "I was in that trailer on the planet Vangelis. Sitting in that
little cubicle of an office, looking out over the tarmac. Do you
remember?"
    "I remember the heat, my lord."
    "Was it hot? Yes, I suppose it was. I didn't notice the heat.
We'd been in hotter places."
    "True, my lord." Bennett continued his tidying up,
rearranging chairs that had been moved during a conference, emptying
coffee cups, whisking away paper napkins.
    "I was thinking about that day Tusk brought him in to see me.
'Dion' he said his name was. He didn't know his last name. I remember
that red-gold hair, those blue, blue eyes. Do you know, Bennett—when
I think back on that moment, it seems to me that everything in my
life was gray up until then. I don't remember seeing colors before
then. Not for years." He sighed, rubbed his eyes, which ached
from staring fixedly into the sun's glare.
    Bennett cast a surreptitious glance at his commander. Others
addressed him as "Sir John" or "Lord Dixter," but
to Bennett he was always the "general," just as he had been
for the fifteen or so years the sergeant-major had been in Dixter's
service.
    Bennett had memories of his own. He looked at John Dixter,
resplendent in his uniform that had at least out immaculate. A
uniform decorated with medals—medals of honor awarded him by
innumerable star systems, primary among them being the lion s-head
sun that had been pinned onto his chest by the young king's own hand.
Dion's first official act.
    Bennett looked around the enormous office, took in the desk that was
practically as large as the trailer on Vangelis to which the general
had been referring. The sergeant-major thought back to the first time
he'd met John Dixter, in a bar on Laskar. It had been shortly after
the Revolution. As a suspected royalist, Dixter was on the run. There
was a price on his head. He made his living as a mercenary, operating
out of Laskar. This bar was the only bar on Laskar Dixter ever
entered. The only bar where he ever got truly drunk. That night,
Dixter told Bennett—a complete stranger—why.
    In this bar, years before the Revolution, John Dixter had met the one
woman he would ever love—the Lady Maigrey. The one woman he
could never have, for she was Blood Royal and John Dixter was . . .
ordinary. He told Bennett how he had loved her, how he'd lost her the
night of the Revolution. What he hadn't told Bennett, what the
general had not foreseen, was that years later he would find her
again.
    Only to lose her again.
    Perhaps it was just as well he hadn't foreseen. Dixter was drunk
enough that night as it was.
    And so the sergeant-major had carried the general home that night and
had not left his side since. Remembering Dixter then—dressed in
a faded, tattered uniform, slumped over the bar—and seeing him
now, Lord of the Admiralty, Bennett was forced to blink back a most
unmilitary moisture in his eyes. The sergeant-major marched across
the room, cleared his throat with a loud harrumph, and stared hard at
the general.
    "What is that stain on your uniform, my lord?"
    Dixter glanced vaguely in the direction of his aide's disapproving
gaze. "Where? Oh, that. Coffee, I would imagine."
    "You appear to have set your elbow in it, my lord."
    "It's those confounded small cups. Like drinking out of an
eggshell. I can't get a grip on that fancy gold-plated handle and I
end up sloshing coffee into the saucer. Then I hit it with my arm.
... What the devil are you doing?"
    "You will have to change jackets, my lord."
    "For a little coffee stain?"
    "And the cheese pastry on your lapel, my lord."
    "Confound it, Bennett, I'm not scheduled to see anyone—"
    A trilling whine interrupted. Bennett was forced to leave off
struggling with his general in order to answer the phone. While he
did so, Dixter left the window, returned to his desk. He took the
opportunity to dip a napkin in a glass of water, rub ineffectually at
the stain.
    Bennett's eyebrows