by David Drake
“Vanness?” Adele said. The fellow brightened to be addressed directly. “There’s obviously some partying going on. The streets may not be safe, so I want you to escort Prester to her lodgings.”
She reached into her belt purse. “Here,” she added. “I’ll give you something in case you find a taxi.”
Adele wasn’t sure precisely what Hogg had said to the Chancellor, but that worthy had released the Electoral Librarian’s first-quarter honorarium. Presumably this had involved a commission to the Chancellor, but by now Adele had enough contact with Daniel’s servant to know that there were other possibilities. Hogg might have warned that a gang of Cinnabar sailors would smash up the Chancellor’s residence if the honorarium weren’t paid.
And while Bosun’s Mate Woetjans and her crew couldn’t have been more friendly and respectful to Adele herself, the threat might not have been empty. The casual violence with which the sailors cleared gawking locals from their path when they were working suggested they were ready to take the shortest way to accomplishing a task.
Adele noted dispassionately that when Prester smiled, her face was genuinely pretty. “But Ms. Mundy,” Vanness protested. “You’re at risk—”
Booted feet stamped through the door behind Adele. She turned in surprise. Armed guards wearing black and yellow berets spilled into the library. There were six or eight of them.
Markos’s pale aide was one of the group. Instead of a beret she wore Zojira colors on ribbons around her upper arms. Her short cape was clasped at her throat, but the wings were slung back over her shoulders. She held a communicator in one hand and a center-grip submachine gun in the other.
“Zojiras!” Vanness shouted. He stepped forward, thrusting out his hands. God knew what he intended—to put his body between Adele and the gunmen, she supposed.
A Zojira fired, hitting Vanness in the chest and shoulder, though even at point-blank range half the burst blew splintered craters in shelving. Confetti exploded from a rank of genealogies. Kostroman weaponry was bulkier than its Cinnabar equivalent, and perhaps it wasn’t as reliable, but there was nothing trivial about its effect.
Vanness spun backward, hit the floor, and bounced face up again. The submachine gun’s bullets were too light to have any significant inertia. The victim’s own spasming muscles flung him as though he’d been struck by lightning. Each projectile released its kinetic energy like a miniature bomb on the first solid object it struck.
Vanness’s left side was a mass of blood and chips of exposed bone, but Adele doubted any of his vital organs were punctured. He had a very good chance to survive if they could bandage him before he bled out through the gaping surface wounds.
Vanness didn’t cry out when he was hit. Prester screamed on a rising note, pressing her hands against her temples as if to hold her brain in.
“Put that gun up!” Adele said. She knelt beside Vanness, wondering what to use for a bandage. His own trousers were filthy from the hundreds of books he’d handled today.
The air was fanged with the smell of ozone and burned metal. The submachine gun’s barrel generated a magnetic flux so dense that it ionized each pellet’s light-metal driving skirt during the run up the bore.
The Zojira shooter pushed Adele away and put the muzzle of his gun against Vanness’s forehead. Adele grabbed the barrel and jerked it aside. The sheathing of temperature-stable plastic burned her fingers. Somebody clubbed her from behind with a gun butt.
Adele fell sideways. The Zojira fired. Vanness’s head erupted in a volcano of blood and solid matter. Each of the submachine gun’s discharges was as sharp as stone snapping.
Vanness’s back arched and his arms flung wide. His palms were black.
Adele lay face up. Her left side was numb, though the fiery tingling in her toes and fingertips meant she would have normal feeling back soon—if she lived.
The gunman who’d killed Vanness swung his submachine gun toward Adele. Its bore was a tiny tunnel glowing from the long bursts. Another Zojira, probably the one who’d slugged her from behind, was aiming at her head from the other side. Maybe they’d let recoil raise the gun muzzles when they fired so that they killed each other as well as her….
Markos’s aide shouted an order as crisp as the gunshots. She spoke in a Kostroman dialect, not Universal. That angry word was the first time Adele had heard emotion in the aide’s voice.
The shooter straightened and snarled back at her. The aide socketed her submachine gun in the Zojira’s navel. In Universal as precise as the directions in a gazetteer she said, “Step back and only speak when I tell you to speak. I won’t warn you again.”
Adele saw that she wasn’t alone in thinking the aide was as deadly as a spider. The gunman turned and fired his submachine gun into a window to let out his frustrations.
The projectiles’ high velocity meant that they punched neat circles the size of fifty-florin coins in the glass instead of breaking it. The plasma puffing from the muzzle flickered in reflection from the undamaged panes.
“Search and see who else is here,” the aide said calmly to the Zojiras she led. She raised the communicator and spoke into it.
“Nobody else is here,” Adele said in a husky voice. “Just the three of us.”
There were six thugs, all of them male. They prowled the short rank of stacks, holding their guns out at arm’s length as though to fend off any figure leaping from among the books. Two of them opened cartons and peered at the contents.
Adele got to her feet. Her right temple throbbed, but the momentary dizziness had passed. She stretched her left arm to the side and twisted it, making sure that it moved normally again.
Prester knelt on the floor with her forehead pressed against a bookcase. She was sobbing and her hands still squeezed her temples. Blood from the ruin of Vanness’s head had dribbled to her bare toes, but she didn’t seem to be aware of that.
The aide lowered the communicator and smiled faintly at Adele. “I’m to escort you to the Grand Salon, mistress,” she said. Two of the gunmen looked at her. She nodded to them and added, “You two come with me. You others, take the woman there to the cage in the gardens. Report to whoever’s in charge for reassignment.”
“She’s just an assistant,” Adele said softly. “She isn’t even a Hajas. Just the niece of a cousin of the Chancellor.”
The aide shrugged. “Not my department,” she said. “Maybe nothing will happen to her.”
Two of the gunmen lifted Prester by the elbows. She hung as a dead weight, her feet drawing smears of blood on the tile floor.
“Shall we go, mistress?” the aide said. She waggled the submachine gun. That wasn’t a threat; the weapon simply happened to be in her hand. Adele doubted that the woman ever threatened in the usual blustering sense of the word.
Without speaking, Adele Mundy walked into the hall and turned toward the staircase. If she delayed she’d find herself stepping in the trail of tacky blood Prester left on the floor.
* * *
The arched windows of Candace’s four-story townhouse were shuttered, and there were no lights on in the front rooms to glimmer through the cracks. Candace lived with a retinue of twenty servants, so even if he himself had left the city there was certain to be somebody still in the house.
Daniel stepped into the shallow door alcove and knocked with the pads of his fingertips. The slapping sound of flesh on steel was enough to be heard inside without rousing the whole street. The panel was armored to resist battering rams.
Each of the tiles covering the facade was divided diagonally, half blue and half white; figured friezes separated the floors. The pattern seemed to strobe in direct sunlight because the rods and cones of the human eye didn’t register at quite the same point on the retina. Now Daniel’s only reaction was to wish the background was a neutral gray that his uniform would blend with. He felt as exposed as an infant in a hog pen.
There wasn’t much traffic in Kostroma City tonight. You couldn’t really call the situation quiet, tho
ugh, because every few minutes there were gunshots somewhere in the darkness. Occasionally a firefight spread its lingering roar, and twice Daniel heard plasma cannon in use. The beams of ions had a hissing snarl that distance quickly muffled, but stone or concrete in their path fractured loudly.
Metal burned. A door like this one would expand in a bellowing white inferno, rising to the fourth story and scouring tiles from the wall in shattered fragments.
An eyehole opened at the side of the alcove. There was no illumination within, but Daniel caught the movement as a lighter shadow appearing among darker ones.
“It’s Lieutenant Daniel Leary,” he hissed. “Quick, let me in before somebody comes by.”
The eyehole closed. Daniel waited a moment for bolts to draw back. He heard nothing. He patted the panel again with his fingertips.
Ducted fans thrummed through the sky. The vehicle was too low over the housetops for Daniel to see it, but he could tell from its powerful note that the motors supported not an ordinary aircar but the twenty-odd tons of an APC. Window sashes rattled.
The Alliance vehicle passed on, still invisible. There was no sound within the house.
Daniel hammered on the door panel with his balled fist, making the steel ring. “Candace!” he shouted. “Let me in! Now! It’s Daniel Leary!”
There was argument inside. Daniel couldn’t hear the words, but the rhythm of angry voices penetrated the metal. Daniel slammed his fist once more into the door. Making this much noise might get him killed, but by God! he wouldn’t go alone.
It was a tall door and had three separate bolts. They clashed back: top, bottom and finally the heavy crossbar in the center. The door swung outward for safety: an attacker would have to break down the heavy leaf, not simply bash the bolts out of their sockets. Daniel stepped back as the panel opened enough for him to slip through, barely, into the anteroom.
He stumbled as he entered. At some point the original floor had been replaced by a mosaic showing sea life battling in gaudy colors. The new floor had been laid directly over the old one, raising the level by more than an inch. The incongruity of Daniel’s misstep made him giggle.
Candace was white-faced and furious. He wore his service pistol in a gilt-leather holster. With him in the anteroom were five servants. Two carried sporting shotguns, two had clubs—legs wrenched off a heavy table; and the last, a wizened little man, held a chef’s knife with a blade as long as his forearm.
Daniel thought of the night the Three Circles Conspiracy broke; thought also of the plasma cannon in the APCs cruising the city. The door would burn like the white heart of a sun….
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing here?” Candace shouted. “I have half a mind to hold you for a patrol to pick up! I swear to God, if I weren’t afraid of getting involved that’s just what I’d do!”
Four of the servants were as frightened as their master. The little man with the knife was another matter entirely. If it came down to cases, Daniel would try to kick him in the crotch and pray for a better result than he expected.
“I need some help, Candace,” Daniel said in a calm voice. “You know why. Some clothes, a gun, and the loan of your aircar. Then I’ll be out of your life.”
There was a doorway to either side of the anteroom. Directly in front of Daniel a hall led to the courtyard and, on the right, a staircase to the upper floors. One of the men with clubs carried a yellow glowlamp, the only light.
“Good God, man, are you insane?” Candace said. “Listen, the Candaces aren’t political. Don’t you understand what that means? This house has been in our family for four hundred years. I’m not going to throw it away by getting involved in matters that are no business of mine!”
Daniel looked at the Kostroman. He tried to imagine life as Benno Candace. He smiled.
“Can’t you even pretend you’re a man?” Daniel asked pleasantly. “No? Well, I suppose it’d be too much of a stretch.”
He nodded toward the servants. “If one of you dogs will open the door,” he said, “I’ll be on my way. A Leary doesn’t stay where he’s not wanted.”
The man with the knife grinned. Daniel grinned back. He doubted the fellow was as clever as Hogg, but there was an undoubted resemblance.
A servant handed his shotgun to a fellow. He stepped past Daniel and put his weight against the door.
“Look, Leary,” Candace said, spreading his hands. “When this blows over we’ll have a drink and laugh about tonight. But it may not blow over, don’t you see? This isn’t like a normal coup. This is—everything’s different. Everything!”
The servant had opened the panel no wider than it was when Daniel entered. Daniel put his left palm flat against the embossed leather padding on the door’s inner side and straightened his arm.
The door swung slowly, but it didn’t stop until it banged against the stops on the outer jamb. “Good night, Lieutenant,” Daniel said. “I wish you the fortune your sense of honor deserves.”
He stepped into the street, deliberately pausing to dust his uniform with his hands. No point in letting Candace know which direction the fugitive had gone.
The fugitive didn’t have the least idea where he ought to go. His apartment, he supposed. In the unlikely event there weren’t Alliance soldiers there by now, he could grab some civilian clothes.
The door thumped shut behind him. Instantly, as though there’d been a switch in the doorjamb, light fanned across the street from a third-story window. In the present darkness it had the glare of a searchlight.
Daniel looked up. One of the shutter leaves had been thrown back. From this angle, nearly vertical, he saw only a wedge of pale pink ceiling.
Margrethe leaned over the windowsill with a bundle in her arms. The light from behind flowed through her russet hair. She pitched the bundle outward. She’d snatched the shutter closed again before Daniel caught her gift.
He’d braced himself but the bundle turned out to be cloth, bulk without weight. He carried it into the narrow gap between Candace’s house and its neighbor to the right. He immediately understood what he was holding.
The jacket was dark, dark blue if the light had been better. The trousers were of the same material with a stripe down the seam that would be red. They were rolled around a peaked blue cap with a frontal of embossed brass.
He sighed. With this, there was just a chance that he could brazen his way into the palace where he hoped Woetjans’s crew was hiding. So far as Daniel knew, their billet wasn’t listed in any records.
Daniel Leary stripped off his Cinnabar uniform. Trousers first, he donned the service uniform of a naval lieutenant of the Commonwealth of Kostroma.
* * *
Well over a hundred people milled in the Grand Salon, which was being used as both coup headquarters and a holding cell for the dozen or so top prisoners taken thus far. Walter III—properly Walter Hajas again, Adele presumed—was present but his mistress wasn’t. The Chancellor, barefoot in her fur-trimmed nightdress, babbled to a Zojira who ignored her as he spoke into his hand-held communicator.
Adele smiled faintly at the Chancellor’s discomfort. She tried not to dislike people, merely their actions. The Chancellor’s combination of graft, pompousness, and bullying came close to making her an exception.
The guards included both troops of the Zojira clan and Alliance soldiers whose battle dress looked as though drab paint had been dripped over the fabric. The Zojiras were possibly a cut above the armed thugs who’d burst into the library; these would be the personal bodyguard of the clan chief and new Elector, Leonidas Zojira.
She wondered whether there’d been a previous Elector of the name or if Zojira was Leonidas I. Given the direct involvement of Alliance forces in the coup, the question was probably meaningless. The real ruler of Kostroma would be the Alliance advisor, if not a planetary administrator appointed from Pleasaunce.
Adele was no expert on the military, but the Alliance troops looked very tough and competent. They wore body armor wi
th bandoliers of weapons and munitions besides the submachine guns that were their primary armament. The Alliance planners had naturally chosen shock troops for the initial assault.
Markos’s aide paused just inside the doorway, scanning the room for the figure she wanted. “Wait here, please, mistress,” she said, as unfailingly polite as she was colorless. She left Adele with the two Zojiras and moved through the crowd with her usual swift grace.
One of the Zojiras let out his breath in a sigh of relief. Adele smiled again, still faintly.
Leonidas stood in the center of the great room, surrounded by aides who like him wore court dress in black and yellow. They looked like so many hornets, a Terran insect tough enough to stow away and become an unpleasant feature of almost as many worlds as had cockroaches.
In the group with the Zojira grandees were several Alliance officers. One of them wore battle dress like the troops on guard, but the khaki uniforms of the other two looked like a simpler version of what the naval members of the Alliance delegation wore to the Elector’s dinner a few nights before.
None of those negotiators was in the Grand Salon tonight. Markos was here, however, standing like the axis around which the world moved. He smiled in black triumph.
A loud explosion sounded in the near distance. The palace shook. The Alliance officers in the central group all spoke into their communicators, while the Kostromans with them froze and looked apprehensive. One of the naval officers lowered her communicator and said something nonchalant to those around her. General conversation resumed.
Markos saw his aide approaching. They must have exchanged signals that not even Adele saw. The aide returned to Adele and said, “He’ll see you now, mistress.”
She looked at the Zojiras who’d come from the library with her and added, “You’re dismissed. Report to whoever’s in charge in the garden.”
The Kostromans whirled and left the salon. They were moving so fast that the submachine gun one carried clanged into the doorpost.