“I’m Chen’s neighbor, yes. Not that he’s ever spoken to me or would cross my threshold.” Cosgrove shook his head, then smiled. “You and the Corona Club made me a packet in that Vandrith race. I had you across the board, and once I saw the odds on Severin I bet him to win and collected thirty-two to one.”
“I wish I’d thought to do that.”
Cosgrove brandished his glass. “Anyone ever offers you thirty-two to one, take it. Tiny risk, giant reward.”
“I’ll certainly bear that in mind.”
Cosgrove finished his hairy roger and returned the glass to the bar. “Another,” he told the waitron. “And at the right temperature this time.”
“Are you here to invest?” Martinez asked.
“Depends on the return I can get.”
“It won’t be thirty-two to one,” Martinez said, “but then you’re betting on an entire habitable world, so you can’t lose over the long run. It’s about as safe an investment as you can make.”
Cosgrove ran a thick, hairy finger along his furry jawline. “The long run, ye-es,” he said. “But if I can make more money by investing right here in Zanshaa, where I can keep an eye on it, then why should I invest in some far-off planet that might not be profitable for fifty years?”
“Chee’s starting to turn profits now,” Martinez said. “But the real reason to invest in Rol-mar is that the bonds are absolutely safe. Nobody’s going to abscond with an entire world. Plus, of course, you could have a city named after yourself, or an ocean, or a mountain.”
Cosgrove seemed as uninterested in eponymous mountains and cities as Lord Altasz. “I wonder,” he said, “if the bonds are so safe, what percentage I’d get for borrowing against them.”
“I don’t know why you shouldn’t do that,” said Martinez. “I could introduce you to Lord Minno, who could answer your quest—” But Cosgrove was already changing the subject.
“You know,” Cosgrove said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your house.”
Martinez was taken aback. “My house?”
Enlightenment had to wait as Cosgrove’s hairy roger appeared. He took a goodly swallow and was apparently satisfied with the temperature. Finally he said, “You have that house on the north side, yes?”
Martinez, Terza, and their family shared a small, cube-shaped palace on the north edge of the High City, perched on a cliff on the northern edge of the granite escarpment. The house was unpretentious as High City palaces went, twelve rooms, pale marble contrasted inside and out by brilliant scarlet carnelian pillars, but it had a beautiful terrace overlooking the Lower Town, with the verdant lawn of a park stretching off into the distance like their own personal bowling green.
The palace was a little small for the sort of entertaining indulged in by prominent Peers, but then he and Terza could always use the Chen Palace, the Corona Club, or for that matter the Martinez Palace, provided they didn’t mind subjecting their guests to Roland’s schemes.
“Yes,” Martinez said, “that’s our palace.”
“I’ll give you seventy thousand for it,” Cosgrove said.
Martinez blinked in surprise. He and Terza had paid thirty-two thousand for their home—but then it had suffered during the Battle of the High City from the effects of machine guns, grenades, and a small but fierce fire that had consumed the kitchens and pantry. The repairs and upgrades had cost thousands.
Even so, Martinez had hardly thought it worth more than forty or forty-five thousand. Still . . .
“We’re not interested in selling,” Martinez said.
“You will if the price is right,” Cosgrove said confidently. “How about seventy-five?”
“Do you plan to live in it?” Martinez asked. “You already have a much larger place.”
“I’d knock yours down,” Cosgrove said. “Then build a newer, bigger palace. A place with real distinction, if you know what I mean.”
Martinez felt a little shock at this, shock followed by indignation as he realized that his home did not meet the financier’s standards.
“If we wanted a new palace,” he said, “we could knock it down and build one ourselves.”
“You could,” Cosgrove said. “But if you don’t do it right, you’d lose a bundle, while if I buy your place, you’re guaranteed a profit and any risk is mine.” He took a gulp of his drink. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll offer you eighty.”
“I’m not interested in selling.”
“I won’t go higher,” Cosgrove warned.
“Thank you,” said Martinez, “but I’m really not interested. Would you like to meet Lord Minno? I see that he’s free.”
Martinez left Cosgrove and Minno together, then remembered the drink in his hand. He finished it in three swallows, then decided he needed another. On the way he encountered an old friend, Lieutenant-Captain Ari Abacha.
“Drink?” he asked.
“Drink?” Abacha said, as if the notion hadn’t ever occurred to him in his life. “By all means, Gare.”
Abacha was a tall, elegant Terran, with deep black skin and an architecturally perfect mustache. He had risen in the Fleet through efficient use of patronage, which was lucky, because he was so naturally indolent that he would never have been promoted on his own merits. He was superb at anything he actually cared about, but he cared only about sports, women, liquor, entertainment, and clothes. These might be viewed as frivolous pursuits, but Abacha didn’t view them frivolously, but with the deep seriousness of a connoisseur.
And he was sometimes useful. Years ago he’d recommended his tailor to Martinez, and the result had been a series of beautiful uniforms that had helped to minimize the anthropoid silhouette caused by Martinez’s short trunk and long arms. Martinez hadn’t been called “troglodyte” in a long time, at least not to his face.
Martinez got Abacha a cocktail and himself another whisky. “What do you think of Andiron’s chances now they’ve lost Tiana?” Abacha asked.
They discussed football for a while, and then Martinez asked if Abacha was here to invest in Rol-mar.
“Virtues, no,” Abacha said. “I have a fellow who handles all that—all I do is sign the papers he sends over.”
“Then why are you here?”
Abacha raised an eyebrow. “Well, you did send me an invitation. And besides, I’m in hope of meeting—ah, here she is!”
Bearing his cocktail, Abacha ambled over to the side of his paramour of the moment, someone Martinez didn’t recognize. Martinez sipped his whisky, stared into the amber depths of his glass, then felt enveloped by a strange sensation of serenity. He wondered for a moment where this perception had come from, and then realized that he’d detected, from several paces away, the scent of vetiver—the “heart notes” of his wife’s perfume. He turned and kissed Terza hello. Her scent caressed his senses. She was dressed in the brown tunic of the civil service, with her long black hair coiled like a sleeping serpent at the back of her neck.
“Meeting run long?” he asked.
“Cost overruns at the shipyards at Comador,” Terza said. “A whole new set this time. We need an inspector general to sort it out, but one of Ong-at’s in-laws is in charge at Comador, and she’s resisting sending anyone.”
“You know,” Martinez said, “if the Ministry would just let my father build all their new ships, they wouldn’t have these problems.”
The Fleet had gone into the Naxid War with under four hundred warships, most of which had been crewed, seized, or destroyed by the Naxids on the first day. Despite a frantic building program, after the last battles the Fleet had been reduced to less than a hundred warships, many of which had been severely damaged.
The Convocation, the Fleet Control Board, and the Ministry of Right and Dominion had decided to increase the Fleet to more than eleven hundred warships, not because they were needed to fight an enemy—there wasn’t one—but because organizing another large mutiny amid an expanded fleet would be exponentially more difficult for a subversive to accomplish. Before
the war, ships had spent most of their time in dock, which was very convenient for the officers’ social schedules, with their receptions, balls, parties, sporting events, hunting or shopping trips to the planet below, and familial duties. Now many of the ships would spend their time in transit from one station to another, again to minimize the chance of subversion within each unit and the Fleet as a whole. Of course, the older officers very much resented being torn away from the comfortable lives they felt they’d earned in the war, and ship duty had become the least popular requirement of the service, though apparently there were still enough balls, receptions, and sport to keep the officer caste at full strength.
Building the new warships, along with the hundreds of support craft necessary to service their needs, was keeping many shipyards busy, happy, and profitable. Though, with the Fleet now consisting of over a thousand ships, the end of this happy time was now in sight, and competition for the last few contracts was fierce. Fortunately, postwar commerce was expanding so rapidly that the dockyards were expected to keep their profits high by building merchant vessels.
Terza approached the bar. “Will I be penalized,” she asked, “if I don’t order something from your father’s distilleries on Laredo?”
“I will quietly disapprove,” said Martinez. “But I will remain silent.”
Terza ordered a wine from Zanshaa. “Have you been enjoying your afternoon?” she asked.
“I’ve discovered that I’m not cut out for a career in bond sales. The job requires an unrelenting optimism that’s completely exhausting.”
“Have you sold any bonds?” Collecting her wine.
He shrugged. “Who knows?” He glanced out over the room, saw Cosgrove and Lord Minno still in conversation, and frowned. “I see that some of the bonds are offering seven and a half percent. That seems high.”
“There’s a lot of competition for investment these days. Lady Gruum has to attract the investor with higher rates—though I imagine those particular bonds have a very long term.”
“Speaking of investment, I was offered eighty thousand zeniths for our house just now.”
Martinez had expected surprise, but Terza’s expression was thoughtful. “Who made the offer?”
“Your father’s neighbor. Mister Cosgrove.”
She looked across the room, in the direction of Cosgrove’s curly head. “I was offered sixty-five the other day, from Lla-la.”
Martinez blinked at her. “Our contractor?” Lla-la ran a construction company that was working for the Meridian Company on Chee, Parkhurst, and now Rol-mar.
“Apparently she’s got a business renovating homes in Zanshaa City,” Terza said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was a casual conversation, and besides, I had no intention of selling.”
Martinez sipped his whisky. “Maybe we ought to sell, if the prices are that high.”
“Then we’d have to buy a new place at these high prices,” Terza said. “We’d lose a packet. Much better to keep our current home and let it appreciate.”
“I suppose.”
“And for all’s sake avoid these bonds.”
Martinez laughed. “I’m the last person to be tempted by my own salesmanship. We learned on Chee who makes the real money from pioneering.”
Patronage of a world might be profitable over time, but when a world was developed, it was the contractors, not the patron, who raked in the cash. All the money from Lady Gruum’s bond sales would go straight to the Chee Company, and from there to Meridian, and from Meridian to all the subcontractors. And when money went from the Chee Company to Meridian, it was the right hand of Clan Martinez paying the left hand, and the family took its cut at every stage.
If the contractors weren’t paid, they sat on their equipment, the planet didn’t get its infrastructure, and the whole venture collapsed. Pay the contractors, and all was possible.
“Gareth. Lady Terza.”
Severin appeared, wearing his blue Exploration Service uniform and carrying a cup of tea.
“Hello, Nikki.” Amusement touched Terza’s lips. “I was just advising Gareth not to buy those bonds he’s selling.”
“Oh.” Lifting the tea to his lips. “I know better than that. I’ve got my money with Meridian.”
“Very wise,” said Terza.
“Lady Marietta was looking for you,” Martinez said.
“I saw her. She wanted to invite me to supper after the puppet show.”
Terza and Martinez exchanged glances. Severin had a knack for appealing to married women of the upper caste who were, if not exactly unhappy in their marriage, certainly restless within its confines. Together these ladies formed a kind of clique of hostesses who had helped him rise in the world of the High City and contributed to making his puppet shows fashionable.
Poor Lord Durward, Martinez thought.
“I also wanted to mention,” Severin said, “that I’ve been given command of the Expedition. I’ll be leaving in a few weeks for Harzapid to supervise the final stages of her construction, so I won’t be flying for Corona in the next season.”
The Fleet wasn’t the only service to be expanded after the war. The Exploration Service was building ship after ship and sending them through wormholes to conduct surveys, find new worlds, and expand the empire.
Martinez found himself intrigued by the news. “Do you know,” he said, “Lord Altasz just told me that he mentioned to a friend that the best way to keep the Coronas from winning in the next season was to put us on active duty. Do you think that’s what happened?”
Severin’s narrow eyes grew narrower still. “If it’s true, we should start winning more races and put the pressure on.”
Martinez raised his glass. “Well. Here’s to your new posting.”
Severin raised his tea. “Thank you.”
“Are you sure you don’t want something stronger?”
“Not till after the puppet show.”
“Of course.”
Martinez looked up over the room and saw Lady Gruum speaking with Lord Altasz and another potential investor whom Martinez didn’t recognize, a Lai-own in a convocate’s wine-red coat. Nearby, he saw his brother, Roland, talking earnestly to a man named Hector Braga. Braga was a new arrival from Spannan, and he dressed with elegance and walked with a distinctive gliding gait. He had the air of someone with a lot of money, so perhaps he was here to invest in Rol-mar.
Braga and Roland seemed to be deep in each other’s counsels. Do I really want to know what they’re up to? Martinez wondered.
He decided that he probably didn’t and turned to order another drink.
Chapter 6
“Well, princess,” said Naveen Patel, “we’ve put another Koridun in his tomb for you.”
“Much appreciated,” said Sula.
Julien Bakshi’s hand made a quick little movement toward a pack of cigarillos, then he remembered Sula hated smoking and retracted his hand. “We’re happy to do these little errands for you,” he said. “But it would be good to know how many more you’re going to ask us to put away. There’s a risk associated with each one, after all.”
Sula wanted to tell them to eradicate the whole family, root and branch. After all, they had tried to kill her, or at least some of them had, and she didn’t know which ones. Best not to take chances.
But she said nothing, because she wanted to find out what Julien and Patel were thinking.
“If I were with the police, I’d begin to wonder about the death toll,” Patel said.
“They’ve all been pronounced accidents,” said Sula.
“Cases can be reopened,” said Julien. “But either way, we can handle the cops. It’s an investigation by the Legion of Diligence we want to avoid.”
That brought Sula up short. The Legion of Diligence were black-clad fanatics who enforced the strictures of the Praxis, and they had little problem with sweeping up the innocent as well as the guilty.
Not that Sula was precisely innocent, in this c
ase.
“How does any of this fall under the Legion’s remit?” she asked.
They sat in Julien’s office above his restaurant, conducting a little private business before going downstairs to attend a reunion of a unit of the Secret Army that Sula had commanded during the war. The room wasn’t styled so much as upholstered, with red leather pinned to the walls and ceiling by brass medallions and echoed by the slightly darker leather of the tall chairs. The brass was echoed as well, by the lamps that sat on Julien’s desk and hung from the ceiling. A window allowed him to view the restaurant below. Even though Julien wasn’t smoking, a harsh tobacco odor tainted the air.
Julien and Patel were leaders of the cliquemen, gangs whose businesses lived in the twilight zone between law and necessity, and members of an unofficial commission that ruled Zanshaa’s underworld. During the war, Sula had needed soldiers unafraid of mayhem and experienced in delivering violence, and the cliquemen had provided the Secret Army’s shock troops. In Julien’s case, his position had been inherited from his father, Sergius, who had taken Sula’s amnesty after the war and retired. Julien had not been given the opportunity to retire: Sergius had made sure that his son was invested with all his own authority before he left.
As for Naveen Patel, he’d been raised to his current prominence at a young age by virtue of everyone senior to him being arrested and executed. Very few cliquemen survived long enough to die in bed.
Patel shook the glossy black hair that fell over the back of his collar. “The Legion make their own rules, of course,” he said.
Chair leather creaked as Julien leaned forward. “But more than that,” he added, “an old Peer family with so many casualties . . . accidents or not, people are talking about it. There was even a piece on the Empire Three broadcast last night. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ambitious Legion investigator took an interest. Aren’t they supposed to be charged with upholding the establishment?”
The Accidental War Page 10