“Tomorrow night?” Julien said. “Come to my restaurant for dinner? It’s called Two Sticks, and it’s off Harmony Square. The cook’s a Cree and he’s brilliant.”
Sula had to wonder if the Cree chef thought it was his own restaurant, not Julien’s, but this was no time to ask questions of that kind. She agreed to join Julien for dinner at 2401.
“Shall I pick you up?” Casimir said. “Or are you still in transit from one place to another?”
“I’malways in transit,” Sula lied, “and now you know why. I’ll meet you at the club.”
“Care to go out tonight?”
Sula decided she was too angry to play a cliqueman’s girl. “Not tonight,” she said. “I’ve got to assassinate a judge.”
Casimir was taken aback. “Good luck with that,” he said.
She kissed him. “See you tomorrow.”
She walked with Macnamara to the cab rank and got a cab. He sat next to her in the seat, arms crossed, staring straight forward. One muscle in his jaw worked continually.
“So what’syour problem?” Sula demanded.
“Nothing,” he said. “My lady.”
“Good!” she said. “Because if there’s anything I don’t need, it’smore fucking problems. ”
They sat in stony silence. Sula had the cab let her off two streets from her apartment. Rain had started again, and she had to sprint, her jacket pulled over her head. One-Step, sharing a vendor’s awning with a few others caught in the downpour, did a double take as she ran past, her blond hair flying.
Inside, she tossed the wet wig onto the back of her chair and combed her short, dyed hair. She considered checking the news, but decided against it, knowing the news would only further irritate her.
In the end she decided a long bath was in order. Followed by her latest book of mathematical puzzles, and possibly a book she’d acquired at a stall two days ago,The Diplomatic History of Napoleonic Europe, something obviously printed by a history student for his own use, bound cheaply, then discarded. It was just the sort of page-turner she most enjoyed.
She took the book into the bath with her and found it an ambiguous comfort. Compared with the likes of Paul II or Godoy, her own superiors seemed positively…brilliant.
After her bath, she wrapped herself in a robe and went to the front room. The rain was still pouring down. For a long moment she watched herju yao pot as the crackled glaze reflected the beads of water that snaked down the window.
While watching the pot an idea occurred to her.
“Ah. Hah,” she said. The idea seemed an attractive one. She examined it carefully, probing it with her mind like a tongue examining the gap left by a missing tooth.
The idea began to seem better and better. She got a fresh piece of paper and a pen and outlined it, along with all possible ramifications.
There wasn’t a problem that she could see. Nor a way it could be traced to her.
Perhaps she could credit the influence of Metternich or Castlereagh or Talleyrand for the idea. Perhaps the afternoon of staring into Sergius Bakshi’s predator-fish eyes and wondering what was going on behind them.
Or perhaps the scheme came entirely from her own mind, from the mind that floated with the reflection of the raindrops on the window. In which case, she really had to admire her brain.
She destroyed the paper, leaving no evidence of her scheme. She looked at her right thumb, the thick pad of scar tissue where her print had once been.
It was very important that she not leave her fingerprints on this one.
NINETEEN
In the morning, Sula made deliveries with Macnamara and Spence. Macnamara was a little stiff but at least he wasn’t sulking too visibly.
In the afternoon, she went to the Petty Mount for a shopping expedition, and wore the result to meet Casimir at the Cat Street club. She was late, and as she approached the club with her large shoulder bag banging her hip with every stride, she found Casimir pacing the pavement next to the apricot-colored car. He was scowling down at the ground, his coat floating behind him like a cloak.
He looked up at her and relief flooded his face. Then he saw how she was dressed, in a long coat, black covered with shiny six-pointed particolored stars, like a rainbow snowfall.
“You got a coat like mine,” he said, surprised.
“Yes. We need to talk.”
“We can talk in the car.” He gestured toward the door.
“No. I need more privacy than that. Let’s try your office.”
Petulance tugged at his lip. “We’re already late.”
“Julien will be all right. His chef is brilliant.”
He nodded as if this remark made sense and followed her through the club. There were few patrons at this early hour, mostly quiet drinkers at the bar or workers who hadn’t managed to get home in time for dinner.
Sula bounded up the metal stairs leading to Casimir’s office. “How did the judge thing go?” he asked.
She had to search her mind for a moment to recall the story.
“Postponed,” she said.
He let her into his office. “Is that what you need to talk about? Because even though Sergius said I wasn’t supposed to help you, there are a few things I can do that Sergius doesn’t need to know about. Because-Oh, damn.”
They had entered his office, the spotless black-and-white room, and Sula had thrown her bag on a sofa and opened her coat to reveal that she wore nothing underneath it but stockings and her shoes.
“Damn,” Casimir repeated. His eyes traveled over her. “Damn, you’re beautiful.”
“Don’t just stand there,” Sula said.
It was the first time she had set out to please a man so totally and for so long. She moved Casimir over the room from one piece of furniture to the other. She took full advantage of the large, oversoft chairs. She used lips and tongue and fingertips, skin and scent, whispers and laughter. She would never have dared try this with Martinez-with him, she lacked this brand of confidence. There was something whorish about it, she supposed, though her own violent, mercifully brief encounter with whoring had been far more sordid and unpleasant than this.
She kept Casimir busy for an hour and a half, until the chiming of his comm grew far too insistent. He rose from one of the sofas, where he was sprawled with Sula on top of him, and made his way to his desk.
“Audio only,” he told the comm. “Answer. Yes, what is it?”
“Julien’s arrested,” said an unknown voice.
Sula sat up, an expression of concern on her face.
“When?” Casimir barked. “Where?”
“A few minutes ago, at the Two Sticks. He was there with Veronika.”
Calculation burned in Casimir’s gaze. “Was it the police or the Fleet?”
The voice shifted to a higher, more urgent register. “It was theLegion. They tookeverybody.”
Casimir stared intently at the far wall as if it held a puzzle he needed badly to put together. Sula rose and quietly walked to where her large shoulder bag waited. She opened it and began to withdraw clothing.
“Does Sergius know?” Casimir asked.
“He’s not at his office. That’s the only number I have for him.”
“Right. Thanks. I’ll call him myself.”
Casimir knew he couldn’t get away with a video-suppressed call to Sergius Bakshi, so he put on a shirt and combed his hair. He spoke in low tones and Sula heard little of what was said. She finished dressing, took a pistol from her bag and stuck it in her waistband behind her back.
Casimir finished his phone call. He looked at her with somber eyes.
“You’d better make yourself scarce,” Sula said. “They might be going after all of you.”
“That’s what Sergius told me,” he said.
“Or maybe,” Sula’s eyes narrowed, “they’re afteryou, and they went to the Two Sticks thinking you’d be there.”
“Or they might be afteryou, ” Casimir said, “and Julien and I are both incidental.”
“That hadn’t occurred to me,” she said.
Casimir began to draw on his clothing. “This looks bad,” he said. “But maybe you’ll get what you want.”
She looked at him.
“War,” he explained, “between us and the Naxids.”
“Thathad occurred to me,” she said.
It had occurred to her the previous night, in fact, while she gazed at reflections of raindrops in herju yao pot. Which was why, that morning, she’d gone to a public comm unit. She wore a worker’s coveralls and the blond wig and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over her face, and she’d taken the hat off her head and put it over the unit’s camera before she manually punched in the code that would connect her to the Legion of Diligence informer line.
“I want to give some information,” she said. “An anarchist cell is meeting tonight in a restaurant called the Two Sticks, off Harmony Square. They are planning sabotage. The meeting is set for twenty-four and one, in a private room. Don’t tell the local police, because they’re corrupt and would warn the saboteurs.”
She’d used the Earth accent that had once amused Caro Sula. She walked away from the comm without removing her hat from the camera pickup.
She must have been convincing because Julien was now under arrest.
“How shall I contact you?” Sula asked Casimir.
He adjusted his trousers, then gave her a code.
Sula nodded. “Got it.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “You don’t need to write it down?”
“I compose a mental algorithm that will allow me to remember the number,” she said. “It’s what I do with everyone’s numbers.”
He blinked. “Clever trick,” he said.
She kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “A very clever trick.”
The next day the Naxids went berserk. Someone with a rifle went onto a building overlooking the Axtattle Parkway, the main highway that connected Zanshaa City with the Naxids’ landing field at Wi-hun. The sniper waited for a convoy of Naxid vehicles to go by, then shot the driver of the first vehicle. Because the vehicles were using the automated lanes, the vehicle cruised on under computer control with a dead driver behind the controls. Then the sniper shot the next driver, and the next.
By the time the Naxids got things sorted out, at least eight Naxids were dead, and more wounded. The sniper, who was clearly using a weapon much better than the Sidney Mark One, made a clean getaway.
The Naxids decided to shoot fifty-one hostages for every dead Naxid. Sula had no idea how they decided on fifty-one. It wasn’t even a prime number.
Maybe whoever gave the order didn’t know that.
Casimir, who heard the news before anyone else, called Sula shortly after dawn to tell her to stay off the streets. She called the other members of Team 491 and told them to stay where they were, then stuck her head out the door and told One-Step to make himself scarce.
She spent the morning in her apartment with her book of diplomatic history and her mathematical puzzles. At midday her comm chimed with a message that Rashtag, the head of security for the Records Office, had changed his password for the Records Office computer. The new password was included in the message, so she contacted the Records Office computer and found that the Naxids had worked out howResistance was being distributed.
Rashtag was ordered to change the passwords of everyone in the office and to watch the office’s broadcast node for signs of unusual activity. Neither of these worried Sula: she would always get Rashtag’s new password when he changed it; and when she distributedResistance, she always turned off the logging on the broadcast node, so there would be no record of the node being used. It would require some fairly high-level coordination to detect her, and she saw no sign of that as yet.
It was only a matter of time, however.
Casimir called again after nightfall. “Can we meet?” he asked.
“Is it safe to go out?”
“The police have finished rounding up new hostages to replace the ones they shot today, and they’re back to processing ration cards. But just in case I’ll send a car.”
She told him to pick her up at the local train stop. He gave her a time. The car was a dark Hunhao sedan with one of the Torminel bodyguards at the controls. He took her to a small residential street on the edge of a Cree neighborhood-she saw Cree males on the streets exercising their quadruped females, who bounded about them like large puppies.
Casimir was in the apartment of a smiling, elderly couple who apparently did very well for themselves renting out their spare room as a safe house. The room was roomy and comfortable, with flower pots on the windowsills, fringed throw rugs, the scent of potpourri, family pictures on the walls, and a macrame border around the wall video. The remains of Casimir’s dinner sat on a tray along with a half-empty bottle of sparkling wine.
Sula kissed him hello and put her arms around him. His flesh was warm. His cologne had a pleasant earthy scent.
“I think we’ve got a false alarm,” Casimir said. “The Legion doesn’t seem to be after me. Or Sergius, or anyone but Julien. There haven’t been any raids. No inquiries. Nobody’s been seen doing surveillance.”
“That may change if Julien talks,” Sula said.
Casimir drew back. His face hardened. It was as if she’d just challenged the manhood of the whole Riverside Clique.
“Julien won’t talk,” he said. “He’s a good boy.”
“You don’t know what they’re going to do to him. The Naxids are serious. We can’t count on anything.”
Casimir’s lips gave a scornful twitch. “Julien grew up with Sergius Bakshi beating the crap out of him twice a week-and not for any reason either, just for the sheer hell of it. You think Julien’s going to be scared of the Naxids afterthat?”
Sula considered Sergius Bakshi’s dead predator eyes and large pale listless hands and thought that Casimir had a point. “So they won’t get a confession from Julien. There’s still Veronika.”
Casimir shook his head. “Veronika doesn’t know anything.” He gave her a pointed look. “She doesn’t know aboutyou. ”
“But she knows Julien was expecting the two of us for dinner. And the Naxids will have seen that Julien was sitting at a table set for four.”
Casimir shrugged. “They’ll have my name and half of yours. They’ll have a file on me and nothing on you. You’re not in any danger.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Sula said.
He looked at her for a moment, then softened. “I’m being careful,” he said in a subdued voice. He glanced around the room. “I’m here, aren’t I? In this little room, running my criminal empire by remote control.”
Sula grinned at him. He grinned back.
“Would you like something to eat or drink?” he asked.
“Whatever kind of soft drink they have would be fine.”
He carried out his dinner tray. Sula toured the room, tidied a few of Casimir’s belongings that had been carelessly discarded, then took off her shoes and sat on the floor. Casimir returned with two bottles of Citrine Fling. He seemed surprised to find her on the floor but joined her without comment. He handed her a bottle and touched it with his own. The resinous material made a light thud rather than a crystal ringing sound. He made a face.
“Here’s to our exciting evening,” he said.
“We’ll have to make all the excitement ourselves,” Sula said.
His eyes glittered. “Absolutely.” He took a sip of his drink, then gave her a reflective look. “I know even less about Lady Sula than I do about Gredel.”
She looked at him. “What do you want to know?”
There was a troubled look in his eye. “That story about your parents being executed. I suppose that was something that you said to get close to me.”
Sula shook her head. “My parents were executed when I was young. Flayed.”
He was surprised. “Really?”
“You can look it up if you want to. I’m in the military becau
se it’s the only job I’m permitted.”
“But you’re still a Peer.”
“Yes. But as Peers go, I’m poor. All the family’s wealth and property were confiscated.” She looked at him. “You’ve probably got scads more money than I do.”
Now he was even more surprised. “I’ve never met a whole lot of Peers, but you always get the impression they’re rolling in it.”
“I’d like to have enough to roll in.” She laughed, took a sip of her Fling. “Tell me. If they don’t find Julien guilty of anything, what happens to him?”
“The Legion? They’ll try to scare the piss out of him, then let him go.”
Sula considered this. “Are the Naxids lettinganyone go at all? Or does everyone they pick up for any reason join the hostage population in the lockups?”
He looked at her and ran a pensive thumb down his jaw. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Plus he could be hostage for his father’s good behavior.”
Casimir was thoughtful.
“Where would they send him?” Sula asked.
“Anywhere. The Blue Hatches, the Reservoir. Any jail or police station.” He frowned. “Certain police stations he could walk right out of.”
“Let’s hope he gets sent to one of those then.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
His eyes were troubled.
Good,she thought. There were certain thoughts she wanted him to dwell on for a while.
The first use of the Sidney Mark One rifle came the next morning, as a car drew up alongside two Naxid members of the Urban Patrol and gunned them down. Unfortunately, the driver failed to make a successful escape and three young Terrans were killed in a shootout that left two more members of the Patrol wounded.
Despite the fact that the assassins had been killed, the Naxids shot seventy-two hostages anyway. Why seventy-two? she wondered.
Team 491, alerted by Casimir through the Riverside Clique’s contacts in the police, stayed indoors for the day.
By then Sidney had his Mark Two ready. Sula called him as the team were out making deliveries, and he said things were excellent, not first-class, and she could pick up her package.
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