The Accidental War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Other Chen assets had been similarly compromised. Clan Chen had been facing ruin, until Lord Roland Martinez had approached him with a business arrangement. The Martinez clan would rent all his cargo ships, even the ones cut off or in enemy hands, for a period of five years. In return, Lord Roland expected Chen to steer military contracts his way, favors that Lord Chen—a member of the Fleet Control Board—was in a good position to grant.

  Lord Chen had no problem shifting government business toward his financial savior. Trading favors was a long-established element of the system by which the Convocation, the Peers, and the empire itself functioned. Clan Martinez was ridiculously rich even by Chen standards, and they were useful allies. All had worked out well for Chen until Lord Roland turned up at the Chen Palace one morning with a demand—Roland Martinez wanted his daughter.

  Not for himself, but for his younger brother, Gareth. Who was, admittedly, a clever man and a hero of the war, but who was still a Martinez. A provincial Peer from the distant world of Laredo, with a ghastly backwater accent that all the training in the world had not polished from his palate.

  Laredo had not been settled—had not even been discovered—when the Chen Palace first rose in Zanshaa’s High City. What right had this clan of arrivistes to demand a Chen—and not only a Chen, but the Chen heir?

  In vain Lord Chen argued against the match. Terza barely knew Lord Gareth Martinez, he explained. She had only recently lost her fiancé in battle, her mourning period should be respected. The war had unsettled everything, perhaps they could discuss the young couple’s future after the peace . . .

  But Roland had beaten him down with the simplest of arguments: Clan Chen would take Gareth Martinez, or Clan Chen could go down to ruin.

  And so Lord Chen had given—had sold—his daughter. His wife had been so mortified by the match that she’d left Zanshaa permanently and now traveled aimlessly from one world to the next, visiting old friends and relations and spending months at a time at spas and exclusive resorts. Spending Chen’s money, or, as if adding insult to injury, sometimes the money that Clan Martinez had loaned him.

  Terza, still wearing in her hair the white mourning threads for her lost fiancé, Lord Richard Li, had taken the news of her fate with a calm resolution that bespoke her breeding, and she submitted herself to the tragic marriage that must have cut short all her hopes. Lord Chen had never so admired his daughter as at that moment.

  Chen had submitted to Roland’s demands, but he had no intention of remaining under Roland’s thumb forever. Once Clan Chen was on its feet, it would have no need of Lord Roland, Gareth Martinez, or any other member of their parvenu breed.

  It had taken longer than expected for Lord Chen to free himself from Roland’s clutches. The agreement over the ships expired after five years, leaving Chen with a profit, but Chen still needed to replace what was lost during the war, and that required more borrowing. Only now, with strong profits in shipping and his other enterprises, had Lord Chen been able to pay off the last of the loans.

  Lord Roland had been surprised that he’d wanted to pay them off at all. He hadn’t been pressing for reimbursement. And when Lord Chen had made the last repayment, Lord Roland had made a point of telling him that if he ever ran short, he could call upon Martinez funds at any time.

  I will no longer be your puppet, Lord Chen had thought. And Terza will no longer be your prize.

  “Yes,” Chen said. “We’ve repaired all the damage done by the war. The economy is booming. And . . . we are no longer under obligation to anybody.”

  Terza sipped her tea. “I’m very pleased,” she said.

  “To anybody,” Chen repeated. “And of course—” Again he sought her hand. “You are no longer obliged to anyone.”

  A slight frown crossed her perfect, serene brow. “Financially, you mean?”

  “In any way.”

  “I have children. I imagine I’m obliged to them.”

  “Yes. That’s true.” Lord Chen began to sense that his point was beginning to be lost in digression. He let go of Terza’s hand, reached for his teacup, and tried to compose his thoughts. He decided to opt for confession.

  “I’ve always been uneasy,” he said, “over the way your marriage was arranged.”

  There was a flicker of intensity in Terza’s dark eyes, a flicker there and then gone, to be replaced by her usual tranquil gaze.

  “It was war,” she said. “There was no time for the usual formalities.”

  “There is time now.”

  A crooked smile quirked the corner of her mouth. “It’s a little late for a betrothal party, don’t you think?”

  “No,” said Lord Chen. “No, it’s not.” He said the last word with, he thought, too much emphasis.

  Composing himself, he said, “You should consider yourself free to choose the life you wish. You’re still young, and we aren’t obliged to anyone, not any longer.”

  Terza said nothing, only frowned into her teacup. Lord Chen decided to view this as encouragement, and he went on.

  “Gareth Martinez is a worthy fellow,” he said. “Brilliant in his sphere, I’ll grant you that. But in your sphere—our sphere—his limitations must be obvious.” He tugged at his collar and found it damp with sweat. “As Lady Chen, you’ll have a brilliant future ahead of you. You’ll be a member of the Convocation, you’ll be among the highest in the land. I can see you chairing one of the important committees, or becoming governor of someplace important, like Seizho or even Zanshaa itself.”

  Lord Chen raised his palms. “How can Gareth help you in any of this? And what can he do that is meaningful while you are rising? He’d just be someone attached to you, with nothing to do. It would drive him mad, an active man like that.”

  A look of deep concentration settled onto Terza’s face. She spoke slowly, as if each word had taken a great deal of thought.

  “You wish me to preserve my husband’s sanity . . . by divorcing him?”

  Chen sighed. “There are many more suitable men in the High City—surely you realize that?”

  “He’s the father of my children. He’s the father of my—of our—heir.”

  “You’re young,” Chen insisted. “You can have more children with another man. A man with whom you could be an equal.”

  And who will provide you with another heir, he thought. An heir with more suitable ancestors.

  Trumpets and kettledrums sounded in the air. Lord Chen glanced in the direction of the Cosgrove Palace and snarled. Then he turned back to Terza.

  “Our bloodlines are immaculate,” he said. “We go back almost to the beginning of human history.”

  “You mean almost to the conquest of Earth.”

  Chen flapped an impatient hand. “There was no history before that, just barbarian tribes slaughtering each other.” He leaned toward his daughter. “Once there was a reason for your marriage to Gareth Martinez. I wish only to say that the reason no longer exists, and you should be free to attach yourself to a man with ancestry as illustrious as your own, and a future as brilliant as yours can be.”

  Terza placed her cup in her saucer, and her saucer on the table. The look of concentration had faded, and her face now bore its usual serenity. A smile touched her lips.

  “I’m perfectly happy in my marriage, Father.”

  “But surely you can see—”

  “You say I should be free,” she said. “I am free, and I choose freely. I choose Gareth.”

  Lord Chen felt his heart sink. “But, Terza,” he said, “you can do so much better.”

  “I think I have done very well.” She removed the napkin from her lap. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I should go home. Gareth is highly favored in the Vandrith race, and it will be broadcast live tonight, and the children are very excited. I should make sure they have their tea, otherwise they’ll be too keyed up to eat.”

  “But, Terza . . .” It was all Lord Chen could do to keep from wailing in despair. That accent! he thought. I’ll have to li
sten to that dreadful accent for the rest of my life.

  “Thank you for your concern,” Terza said. “I know that you want the best for me, but I assure you that the best has already happened.”

  She bent to kiss his cheek and drifted away, a pale erect figure amid the lu-doi blossoms, the tranquility of her slow, measured walk immune to the provocations of the brass band next door.

  Lord Chen leaned back in his chair and looked at his cooling tea in its porcelain cup. He looked at the walls of the Chen Palace around him, and he imagined their ancient halls sullied for centuries by Martinez accents, by Martinez brats. He turned and signaled for Tarn-na, who was waiting in silence on the other side of the glass doors that led to the pantry.

  “Another brandy,” he said. Loss and despair seemed to howl in his soul like a cold north wind around the eaves of his palace.

  “This time,” he added, “you may as well bring the bottle.”

  Chapter 2

  The gas giant Vandrith, with its bands of cinnabar and ochre, loomed close on the overhead display, so vast it seemed just a little bit threatening. Some of its larger moons appeared as crescents, and the rest were brilliant dots, brighter than anything in the starry background.

  The people below, dressed in finery and standing at the glossy, exquisitely appointed table, were slightly diminished by the grandeur over their heads.

  “My lords and ladies,” said Lord Orghoder, as he raised a glass. “I give you the Vandrith Challenge Cup.”

  Orghoder, thought Lord Gareth Martinez, had taken very good care with his diction and had avoided lisping around his fangs. Martinez preferred not to know what was in Orghoder’s glass, though he knew it would be served at the temperature of fresh blood. Because Torminel—squat, powerful, and furred—were descended from solitary carnivores and still liked their meat raw.

  Martinez tried not to shudder as he raised his glass and drank. White wine of some sort. No doubt it was of the finest vintage, though it tasted to Martinez much like other white wine.

  “My lords and ladies,” Orghoder said. “Please be seated.”

  There was a general shuffle as everyone—racing yacht owners, pilots, race officials, relatives, friends—took their seats. Terrans, Torminel, Daimong, and Cree were each at separate tables, arranged in a rectangle beneath the ghostly holographic form of Vandrith. Lai-own, whose hollow bones couldn’t withstand high gravities, didn’t participate in yacht racing, and Naxids—those who had survived the rebellion—refrained out of discretion.

  The dinner was being held on the transport Seven Stars, which was the property of the Seven Stars Yacht Club and carried its members’ racing yachts to competitions. For the last fourteen days, Seven Stars had been flying toward Vandrith in the company of three other transports belonging to the three other yacht clubs competing in the Vandrith Challenge race. Of the four clubs, Seven Stars, the Ion Yacht Club, and the Apogee Club were venerable institutions going back millennia, and with a membership drawn from the most exclusive families in the High City. In fact, the Apogee was so exclusive that it accepted only descendants of previous members whose genetics were verified by the Peers’ Gene Bank.

  The fourth club, Corona, was a newcomer and had been entering races only for the past three years. Its membership was composed exclusively of those who would have been blackballed from the High City clubs if they had ever been so rash as to apply, and during the club’s brief existence the outsiders had made a substantial impact. First, because they existed at all.

  And second, because they kept winning.

  There were two barriers to anyone wishing to enter the world of yacht racing. The first was money, and the second was birth. And the Corona Yacht Club didn’t much care about either.

  That was the way Gareth Martinez had intended it when he founded the club. He had plenty of money with his access to his family’s enormous wealth, and he was as unimpressed by the lineage of the High City Peers as they were impressed with each other.

  Prior to the Naxid War, piloting a small, agile Fleet pinnace had often served as an entry to the world of yacht racing, and high-ranking Peers had competed for the few piloting slots available. The Fleet had held regular regattas and gymkhanas and developed excellent racing pilots. But during the war, casualties among pinnace pilots had reached something like 80 percent, and Peers for the most part decided to let the honor pass to lesser mortals.

  Which was neither here nor there—the desire to avoid dangerous duty was not the sole province of Peers—but it did mean that there was a large well of expertly trained, experienced pinnace pilots who were either commoners or lower-status Peers, and who could be recruited by Martinez for his racing team.

  The soup course arrived—some sort of squash, with a splash of white foam—accompanied by a different white wine that Martinez couldn’t tell from the first white wine.

  “This is absolutely splendid, don’t you think?” said Lady Fitzpatrick. She sat on Martinez’s left; she was a large, hearty, white-haired woman, and a steward of the Apogee Club. “There’s just the right touch of nutmeg—and it’s so easy to overdo the nutmeg, don’t you think?”

  Martinez murmured agreement.

  “I wish we’d been able to get Boutros for the Apogee kitchens,” she said. “But Orghoder snatched him up from under our very noses.”

  The clubs competed in cuisine as well as in racing, and their chefs were renowned. The trip from Zanshaa to Vandrith was one formal banquet after another, as each yacht club entertained the others in turn, and the presentation of a bad dish could be perilous to a club’s prestige.

  Martinez had known better than to trust his own taste in finding staff for Corona’s kitchen, and so he’d relied on his sisters—the two who were still speaking to him—and his wife, Terza. The results had been more than satisfactory, if the praise of the other clubs’ members was to be trusted.

  Martinez ate enough of the soup to reveal the club’s crest on the bottom of the bowl, and then the bowl was swept away, replaced with a small platter that featured three small ochoba beans ringed by a green sauce. Lady Fitzpatrick gave a sigh of pleasure at the sight.

  They’re only beans, Martinez wanted to say.

  Lady Fitzpatrick had never, so far as Martinez knew, piloted a racing yacht. The High City clubs were full of those who gained entry because of celebrity, amusement value, talent in some other sphere, or because some ancestor had won a race eight hundred years ago.

  Possibly one of the qualifications for membership was proper appreciation of beans. Martinez couldn’t say.

  Martinez ate his beans and waited for one of the waitrons to take his plate away.

  “Gareth, dear,” his sister Vipsania called from across the table, to his right. Vipsania shared with Martinez the family genetic inheritance: olive complexion, dark hair and eyes, and—he liked to think—a vast, subtle, and flexible intelligence. Vipsania, though, had managed to polish away her native Laredo accent, and Martinez hadn’t, which made her considerably more acceptable in this company than he.

  Vipsania wasn’t a racing captain but had been accepted into the club because Martinez was too frightened of her to keep her out.

  “Yes?” Martinez said.

  “I was talking to Lieutenant Lam here.” Lam was a fresh-faced young man whose jacket bore the badge of the Ion Club. “He’s on Fleet Commander Pezzini’s staff, and he says that the official Fleet history of the war is about to be released.”

  Martinez raised an eyebrow. “Am I in it?”

  Lam looked a little uneasy. Martinez’s part in the war was the subject of controversy, and he suspected that both Fleet Commander Pezzini and Supreme Commander Tork would write him out of the history if they possibly could.

  The lieutenant made an effort to be tactful. “Your exploits on the Corona are mentioned, my lord, as is your part in the battle at Hone-bar.”

  “Second Magaria? Naxas?”

  “Well . . .” Lam flushed. “You served under other officers at thos
e battles, my lord.”

  Martinez smiled thinly. “So I did.”

  “Since the war is now under review,” Vipsania said, “perhaps it’s time to release our own documentary on the Empire stations.”

  “Ah.” Martinez considered this. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  One of Vipsania’s achievements was her marriage to Lord Oda Yoshitoshi, the nephew and presumed heir of Lord Yoshitoshi. Clan Yoshitoshi owned a majority of Empire Broadcasting, seven channels viewed by the populations of eighty-odd planetary systems, and the family was content to let Vipsania run it. They thought being a media titan was an eccentric hobby for her, but they were willing to indulge her. That she’d increased profits every year since she’d taken over helped her case.

  It was no surprise, then, that Empire’s two sports channels were being very thorough in their coverage of yacht racing, and they emphasized the challenge that the upstart Coronas were mounting to the established clubs. In fact, Empire reporters and cameramen were a constant presence on this trip, interviewing, analyzing, and reporting every possible variation and every possible outcome.

  Nothing like blatant favoritism, Martinez thought, to boost one’s public profile.

  Or to contradict a biased official history.

  But, he thought, Vipsania was mentioning this possible documentary in public, in front of a member of Pezzini’s staff. Which meant she wanted Pezzini to know that Martinez’s sister was prepared to release her very own version of the war, particularly if the official history slighted a member of her family in any way.

  After all, if you were an average citizen of the empire, would you rather read a dry official history, or watch a video documentary filled with action, heroes, villains, and a guaranteed happy ending, where peace and order were restored? With an emphasis, perhaps, on the handsome, brilliant, lantern-jawed young officer who had turned the tide?