Sula pressed two fingers to her throat and mimed triggering a med injector to fire a dose into her carotid. Lamey nodded.
“Overdose,” he said. “She was headed that way, sure enough.”
Sula didn’t want Lamey to know her part in that overdose, of the way she’d encouraged Caro Sula to consume hit after hit of endorphin that night. Or the fight to get the limp, dead body onto the cart so that it could be shuttled to the river and weighted down so that it would never see Spannan’s sun again.
Sula didn’t want Lamey to know of the calculations that she’d made, the way she’d carefully planned to step into the shoes of a sad, lonely, self-destructive young girl who was absolutely no harm to anybody, and no good, either. A girl who happened to be Lady Sula, heir to one of the greatest names in the empire.
A young Peer, blond and green-eyed, doomed by the fact that she happened to look just like her best friend, the gangster’s girl named Gredel.
Sula rubbed the pad of scar tissue on her right thumb. “I’m sure you haven’t looked me up just to relive old times,” she said.
He cocked his head as he looked at her, and a ridiculous grin spread across his face. It was a grin that spoke of self-satisfaction at his own cleverness.
“You’ve obviously done well for yourself,” he said.
“I made some good investments during the war.”
“But you’re not in the High City.”
“I don’t like the High City.” Which was truthful enough.
“But you really can’t afford to shine there. The late Lord and Lady Sula lost all that before you even came on the scene, didn’t they?”
Sula wanted to laugh. She remembered Lamey taking her into boutiques and buying her all the most expensive things he could find, the aesa-leather bags and the jackets with all the zips and the thick-soled boots and the clunky jewelry that all the kids were wearing back then.
“Are you thinking of setting me up in an apartment in the High City?” she asked. “I’m to be your mistress now?”
“You mean again,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, would it?” He pushed out a hand and made a patting gesture, as if reassuring her. “But no, I plan to set you up all right, but not in the way you’re thinking.”
Sula made no response, only lifted an eyebrow. He laughed.
“That’s the manner, all right! By the all, no one would believe you weren’t born to it!”
Sula was irritated. “You’re going to come to the point sooner or later, aren’t you?”
He sighed and twitched again at the fabric over his knees. “The Sulas are an ancient family. As good as Peers get. They had birth, status, money, and vast patronage. But the previous generation got caught defrauding the government, and Lord and Lady Sula were skinned alive and all their money and property confiscated. But”—he held up a finger—“their brilliant daughter”—here he made a generous gesture toward Sula—“redeemed the family name in the war, killed scads of rebels, blew up enemy ships, got decorated, liberated the High City from the Naxids . . .”
He spread his hands. “Why should she be punished for the faults of her parents? Why shouldn’t she”—he sat up straight—“why shouldn’t the name of Sula be restored to the honors and privileges enjoyed by her ancestors?”
She stared at him in speechless disbelief. She tried to find words in the chaos that was her mind and managed to stammer a few.
“You’ll,” she said. “You’ll—you’ll have to—”
“I’ll have to arrange a vote in Convocation,” Lamey said. “It won’t be as hard as you think. We have our friends, but for this all we need is tradition. The most conservative Peers in the assembly will remember Clan Sula in its glory and will want those days to return.” He frowned, tapped his chin. “But we’ll need the right person to introduce the motion. Someone unimpeachable, of a bloodline comparable to the Sulas themselves.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you know anyone like that?”
Lord Chen. Names flashed through her dazzled mind, faces rising one after the other in a kind of mental parade, all without conscious thought. Lord Durward Li. Lord Eldey . . .
“I—I might,” Sula said. She tried to force logic into her astonished brain and took a deliberate sip of her lemonade. The astringent taste awakened her palate, her mind. She gave Lamey a look that she hoped was critical.
“Assuming you can make this happen,” she said, “what do I have to do in return?”
“You’ll have to become a convocate, of course,” Lamey said. “The head of the Sula clan always does. And once you’re in Convocation, you could vote for, say, Spannan’s getting rid of Lady Distchin and replacing her with someone who actually knows how to run a planet. Perhaps even yourself.”
She laughed, just a bit scornful. “Don’t try to hypnotize me. You know Spannan will go to someone more important.”
“It’ll be years before that happens,” Lamey said. “Who knows how important you’ll be then?” He leaned forward, the ice rattling in his drink. “I have confidence in you, Earthgirl. Absolute confidence.”
“Stop calling me that,” she said.
“Very well.” He smiled. “My lady.”
“And you haven’t told me how I’m going to be able to—I believe the word was shine—in the High City.”
“You’ll be a convocate, and you’ll have a vote.”
“Hah. One out of six hundred.”
“You’ll sit on a committee or two, and you’ll have a vote there as well. And maybe you’ll have a chairmanship, because you’re a Sula, and Sulas have always been in charge of one thing or another. And even if in general Convocation you’re only one in six hundred, that’s one of the six hundred who run the entire empire. Six hundred out of hundreds of billions. That’s power.” He shrugged. “Money adheres to power, Earthgi—my lady.”
Sula said nothing. She was thinking hard. Lamey rattled the ice in his drink and looked over his shoulder for a refill.
Conspiracy was thirsty work, apparently.
“We each know things about the other,” Sula said. “Things that could get us in trouble.”
“All the more reason,” said Lamey, “to trust each other. Don’t you think?”
He had an answer for everything. She had obviously been a part of his plans for some time.
But that didn’t mean she wanted him in hers.
Lamey rattled his ice cubes again. “Can you call what’s-his-name? Get me another drink?”
Sula rose abruptly from her chair, stood before him with straight-spine military posture. “No, I don’t think so. I think you should leave now.”
His eyes widened. “You’re turning me down?”
“I didn’t say that. But I’m going to have to think.”
Lamey carefully put his drink on the side table, then rose. He was very close to her. She smelled the earthy tones of his hair, felt his heat prickling on her skin.
“Is there anything I could do,” he said, “to convince you?”
She tried to make her voice brusque. “Not right now. Tell me where I can find you, and I’ll be in touch.”
He looked at her intently, his lips going thin, his eyes hooded in anger and frustration. She sensed danger, and she remembered his moods, his anger. His fists.
I’m not seventeen anymore, she told herself. She wasn’t vulnerable to Lamey’s brand of intimidation any longer.
The moment of tension broke, and it was Lamey who broke it.
“I’m at the Imperial Hotel,” he said.
She had tried to blow up the Imperial Hotel during the war, and failed.
Maybe I should try again, she thought.
“I’ll be in touch,” she repeated.
He turned and made his way to the entry hall. Frustration had caused him to abandon his usual gliding step, and his walk had a jerky, mechanical quality. Sula followed him and summoned the elevator. By the time it arrived, his humor had returned. He stepped into the elevator, turned, and gave a slight bow.
“My lady,�
�� he said.
“Sir.”
The doors closed, and Sula returned to the living area. She looked out the window into the Lower Town and reached for her lemonade with fingers that trembled.
Chapter 4
Sula invited Lamey to join her at a club on her thirtieth birthday. She supposed surviving to thirty was something worthy of a celebration—the odds had been very much in favor of her dying on a scaffold or finding herself reduced to atoms in the vacuum of space.
The club was constructed along the lines of an amphitheater, with the patrons stacked in rising tiers around the small stage. Lamey entered the club with his usual smooth glide, then paused while his eyes adjusted to the dim light. He saw Sula perched on the second tier and climbed the creaking wooden stairs. He looked at the small table in surprise.
“Are we alone tonight?” he asked. “I thought this was a birthday party.”
“It is.”
“And in a place called ‘The Heart and Dagger.’ I wondered if I should bring brass knuckles, but it seems to be peaceful enough.”
“The entertainment’s good.”
Lamey helped himself to a chair. The fact of their being alone with each other seemed to please him. “You’re thirty now? It doesn’t make you feel old, does it?”
“Not at all,” said Sula. “In Earth years, I’m still only twenty-five.”
“I have—” But Sula held up a hand to silence him as the entertainers stepped onto the stage.
“Listen,” she said.
“Oh,” said Lamey, as Sula began to applaud. “Derivoo.”
The derivoo was a Terran woman with face and hands whitened, and high spots of color painted on her cheeks. She wore the traditional flounced skirts, and her dark blond hair was pulled back in a severe style. As she and her two accompanists took their places, the small crowd responded with enthusiasm.
A lone chord rang out, and the derivoo began to sing, the song of a woman who had left her husband for a lover, only to have the lover desert her. The singer enacted the woman’s shattered life, the husband who turned her away, the children who now were strangers. But the song was defiant; the woman scorned the anguish that consumed her and remained unbent even in the face of catastrophe. After the song came to its bitter conclusion, there was a moment of hushed silence in the amphitheater, and then the crowd burst into applause.
Lamey signaled the waitron. “I’m going to need a few drinks if I’m going to listen to any more of this.”
“Hush,” Sula said. The derivoo began again.
She sang of terror and desolation, desertion and violence, the loss of love, the betrayal of hope, death’s final separation. Her whitened hands fluttered to draw raw emotion from the air. Sula watched the performance in rapture, felt the woman’s terror in her losing battle with fate, felt also the defiance that would never permit her to surrender even though her cause was hopeless.
After half an hour of nerve-searing performance, the singer paused and bowed and left the stage for an intermission. Lamey finished his third drink and grinned.
“Now let’s do something fun!” he said.
“This is fun,” said Sula.
Lamey shook his head. “No wonder you’re alone on your birthday.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a brightly wrapped package. “For you, Earthgirl.”
Sula plucked at the wrapping. “May I?”
“Of course.” He was unable to restrain his enthusiasm. “It’s something called a lion dog. From someplace called Newporn, or something.”
She looked at him. “Nippon, you mean?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. From before the conquest, that’s all I really know.”
The package held a fine, small piece of porcelain, a guardian lion playing with a ball, its mouth open in a snarl. Sula looked for the maker’s mark on the underside but couldn’t read it in the dim light.
“Okimoko,” she said. “These were often in pairs—this is the male, with the ball and the open mouth. The female would have a lion pup under its paw, and its mouth closed. Between them the lions are saying ‘Om,’ which has to do with religion, though I don’t know exactly what.”
“You like it then? Even though the girl lion is lost?”
“It’s lovely. Thank you.”
Lamey preened. “I thought you might like it.”
Applause rang out as the singer and her accompanists returned to the stage. Lamey’s face fell. Sula wanted to laugh.
“I like derivoo,” she said, “because it’s true. It’s about death, and desire, and—”
“It’s depressing,” said Lamey.
“Quiet now.”
As the derivoo began to sing of another confrontation with the fates, Sula looked sidelong at Lamey and considered her situation. Anything she did, she thought, anything public, was a risk, and there was nothing more public than being a member of the Convocation. The more she appeared in the public eye, the greater the chance that she—that Gredel—could be exposed as an impostor.
But on the other hand, she was sick of hiding. She’d been doing little other than hiding since her return from Terra to Zanshaa.
Hiding in her tidy little apartment built up against the side of the High City. A comfortable refuge filled with her porcelain, her books, her puzzles and games.
Her hobbies. Hobbies that filled her life, because there was nothing else. Nothing but the ritual trip to the Commandery, every month or so, in hopes of finding a posting that might give a little purpose to her life.
Lamey signaled the waitron for another drink. Blackmail, she thought. He’s trying to blackmail me.
But why? To gain one vote in six hundred? What else could Lamey be up to?
She didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust his offer.
But still something in it spoke to her. She yearned for something other than amusements.
She wondered if she was like one of the women in a song by a derivoo, enticed by a temptation that would destroy her.
Though Sula knew that, as a high-ranking Peer and Lady Convocate, she could be dangerous to more than just herself. She’d had experience with how useless and hidebound the denizens of the High City could be, how locked they were in a world of caste and privilege that amounted to little more than a delusion. It was so strong a delusion that they’d convinced the rest of the empire to share it with them, but Sula figured reality would break in sooner rather than later.
The highest caste would remain in power only so long as they managed to convince others that they deserved it, and then—once the illusion was gone—so long as they were willing to employ violence to stay in power. As soon as their will failed, they were finished.
And when they were gone, who would replace them?
Sula, perhaps. Maybe even Lamey. Why not?
She’d stormed the High City once. Maybe she could do it again.
When the derivoo left for another intermission, she leaned close to Lamey.
“I’m in,” she said. “If you still want me in Convocation.”
She watched delight blossom in his face. “You won’t regret this,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Of course I will.”
The Convocation’s morning business had been to vote its thanks to Lord Naaz Vijana, Lord Mehrang, and Lord Governor Rao Mehrang for the successful suppression of the Yormak Rebellion. Along with its thanks, the Convocation voted in new arrangements for Esley, opening to exploitation vast areas that had previously been held in trust for the ungrateful Yormaks, who would now be penned into reserves much smaller than their native ranges.
Another world, Sula thought, had been opened to speculators. Generally she was all in favor of such speculation, since she had a financial interest in the development of three new worlds near Terra, worlds discovered when she was in command of the Fleet dockyards there.
Though it might take years, decades even, before the newly settled worlds began to return profits to their investors. Sula wouldn’t be building palaces on the
newly discovered worlds anytime soon.
After the vote, Sula felt an air of self-congratulation settle over the Convocation. They had, after all, just settled the affairs of millions of citizens, along with an entire species. Just the moment for the Lord Senior to allow himself to make a small digression.
Lord Saïd rose to his feet and made a gentle, beneficent gesture with the copper-and-silver wand that marked his status as the Lord Senior, the presiding officer of the Convocation. First among equals, he wielded the wand of authority with a firm impartiality and managed debates with an economy that the other convocates appreciated. Nothing, they all knew, was more tedious than one of their number who could not manage to bring himself to the point, and if a convocate wandered too much from the matter at hand, Lord Saïd would cut him off and find someone else to make the argument for him.
Lord Saïd was the most important and powerful Lord Senior in the history of the empire. He was an impressive man, with a swordlike nose, bright eyes, a magnificent gray mane of hair, and a bushy mustache. He was over a hundred years old but carried himself with the firm, erect carriage of a man of eighty. The scarlet brocade cloak that marked his office was worn with a ceremonial grandeur that only underlined his authority.
But it was not Lord Saïd’s appearance that gave him the authority that led the empire so effortlessly, but the prestige that had come with his actions during the Naxid Rebellion. During the very first minutes of the conflict, Saïd had acted against the rebels who were trying to seize control of the chamber of the Convocation. Despite his age he’d thrown a chair at Akzad, the rebel Lord Senior, and led the loyalists in a straight-up brawl, fists and feet and furniture, that resulted in the insurgents being hurled from the cliff behind the Convocation terrace. Then, elected to his current post, he had led the government in the fight against the traitors until the loyalists had finally triumphed.
Since then, radiant in his majestic halo of victory, he had continued unchallenged as Lord Senior and would probably hold the office until he died.
And now the most powerful man in the Convocation was going to speak. And he would speak for Sula.
The Accidental War Page 7