The Accidental War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Julien’s hand made a dance toward the cigarillos again, then again withdrew. His pointed face betrayed a degree of longing.

  “You didn’t used to smoke so much,” Sula said.

  “I’ve got more responsibilities now.”

  “Go ahead and light up. It couldn’t smell any worse in here.”

  Julien rolled his chair toward the window, opened some panes, then returned to his desk. The sounds of assertive voices and clattering glassware came through the window. Julien reached for the packet of cigarillos and a desk lighter in the shape of a stylized Torminel head, the look of relief on his face profound.

  “Look, princess,” said Patel, “we accounted for the Lord Koridun who was leading the charge against you. You took care of the sister yourself. We’ve worked outward from the immediate family into the cousins, at least a couple steps in all directions. We even had to reach into a mental hospital to find one of them. Who knows if the survivors ever learned of the family’s vendetta against you.”

  The Koridun family displayed extreme behavior even for Torminel, and their history was full of madness and violence. Their grudge against Sula had been obscure, and their attempted revenge had been baroque and expensive and had pursued her as far as her posting on Terra. So she couldn’t expect the Koriduns to behave rationally, not even under threat.

  “What you’re asking me to do,” Sula said, “is wait around to see if one of them tries to kill me.”

  “Princess,” said Patel, “we’re not asking you to do anything.”

  Julien blew smoke in the direction of the open window. “We’ll do whatever you want us to do,” he said. “You know that. We’d just like to suggest that you weigh the odds carefully before any further action.”

  “After all,” said Patel, “you’re going to be a convocate now. You’ve got to be careful.”

  Julien grinned, and he gave an expansive wave of his cigarillo. “Our own convocate! Whoever expected that to happen, back when we were all hiding in Riverside from the Urban Patrol?”

  “I’ll be one vote in over six hundred,” Sula said.

  Patel laughed. “Hardly worth bribing, then!” he said.

  Calculations spun through Sula’s mind. She mentally reviewed the family tree of the Koriduns, the dangers of illicit action, the chances of an investigation by the Legion of Diligence. She didn’t think the Legion’s intervention was likely, but it was significant that Patel and Julien had brought it up. They were looking for reasons to reconsider the vendetta against the Koriduns.

  That, not the possibility of Legion intervention, loomed in Sula’s calculations as the most important fact.

  “All right,” she said finally. “Why don’t we let the new Lady Koridun continue to breathe for a while.”

  Julien nodded. “I think it’s for the best. She probably has no idea what her—third cousin, was he?—was up to.”

  “But if they kill me,” Sula said, “you’ll finish them all, won’t you?”

  “It’s a promise!” Patel laughed. “But it won’t come to that. You’ve got more to worry about from your fellow convocates than from the Koriduns.”

  Probably true, Sula thought. The Convocation had never impressed her with their collective intelligence, but they were very good at maintaining their own privileges and sniffing out anyone who seemed out of place in their world, and Sula was certainly in that category. If anyone was likely to catch a whiff of her past, it would be those who were born to the role that Sula had only assumed.

  “Shall we go down?” Julien said. “It sounds as if everyone’s here.”

  Sula rose from her creaking leather chair. She had worn her undress uniform without her medals, not wanting to be too formal for this crowd, and she tugged her tunic into place as Patel opened the door for her.

  They went down the stairs, and a cheer rose as they came into the main dining room. This was a reunion of the Bogo Boys, a unit named after an indestructible toy. They were her most deadly unit, one she’d saved for missions requiring large-scale mayhem. Most of them were cliquemen drawn from Terrans and other species, with the rest being folk who were simply very good at violence, or who had a specialty that was very useful, such as the ability to improvise munitions.

  She was never going to introduce Lamey to any of these people. She was too afraid they might get along.

  Sula walked among them and greeted them all by name and felt a rising sense of comfort and affinity. She had fought with these warriors, and stormed the High City, and shared tragedy, peril, and triumph.

  She felt more at home among the Bogo Boys than she ever would in the Convocation.

  The Lord Senior’s chambers had a sweet woody scent, something like sandalwood. Or perhaps the scent drifted from Lord Saïd himself, the result of some strange botanical longevity treatment—for now that Sula saw the Lord Senior at close range, she saw how ancient the man truly was. His skin was the color of teak and covered by a webwork of fine lines that seemed to be incised across and inside one another, so that no piece of skin larger than a pinhead remained unmarked. He appeared so frail that it seemed a miracle that he could bear the weight of his red ceremonial cloak, and he was so shrunken that his big, beaklike nose seemed not to quite belong to him, but rather to someone far more imposing.

  “Will you have tea with me, Lady Sula?” His voice was soft, very different from the authoritative tones he used when he sat in the Lord Senior’s seat. Sula wondered which of the two was a performance, the gentle host or the powerful leader, and then considered the possibility that they both were.

  “I would be honored, Lord Senior,” she said.

  Lord Saïd waved a hand over a desk carved with fruits and other symbols of abundance. A Cree servant appeared to take the order for tea, and a decrepit Daimong, nearly as old as the Lord Senior himself, came to lift the heavy cloak from Saïd’s shoulders and place it on a stand nearby.

  “Please sit down, my lady.” Saïd sat behind his desk, and the chair adjusted to his body with a soft hydraulic hiss. Sula chose another chair suitable to the Terran physique and faced Saïd across his desk. The Lord Senior leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him.

  “I’m very pleased to report that the Credentials Committee has reported and found no obstacle to your becoming a member of the assembly,” he said. “You will be officially co-opted into the Convocation in three or four days’ time, depending on how quickly we can conclude the debate on Lord Tork’s proposal to build new battleships.”

  Sula wanted to burst into astounded laughter. “Battleships? I hadn’t heard anything about this.”

  She’d seen the Fleet’s battleship squadron die in fire at First Magaria, lost along with thousands of crew, and she had emerged from the battle convinced that the very size of the vessels simply made them bigger targets. While their armament was formidable, a single hit would destroy them just as surely as it destroyed a smaller vessel.

  “The Fleet Control Board issued a recommendation last month,” said the Lord Senior. “They suggest a single battleship at each major Fleet concentration, and a squadron of four here on Zanshaa.”

  Disgust warred in Sula with amusement. She suppressed a bitter laugh. “I’m sure the senior officers would find them very comfortable,” she said. “Luxurious quarters, dining rooms, gymnasiums, steam baths, ballrooms . . . practically a world of their own, a little High City they can carry with them from one post to the next.”

  A smile touched the corners of Saïd’s eyes. “Are you suggesting that the Praxis II-class ships are intended not for a military purpose, but only to feed the fleet commanders’ vanity?”

  “Your lordship expresses my thoughts so well.”

  The Lord Senior shook his head. “Ah. A shame you won’t be able to express your views in Convocation, since you won’t become a member until afterward.”

  “Should your lordship desire it, I can testify as an expert witness.”

  Lord Saïd spread his ancient hands before him on the desk a
nd directed his gaze downward, as if he found his cuticles to be of sudden interest. “I shouldn’t want you to begin your career with two wrangles with the Supreme Commander. Convocates might wonder if they truly want to admit a quarrelsome member. And while others might find these disputes entertaining, I have to watch such things from the podium, and it quickly grows tiresome.”

  Sula shrugged. Lord Saïd might have found it tedious, but she would have enjoyed scuppering Lord Tork’s plans. “I hope someone will speak against the idea.”

  The Lord Senior gave a sigh. “A number will, I’m sure. And you have friends in the assembly—you can give them whatever information you possess.”

  “I will do that, thank you.”

  “Bear in mind, though, that the Control Board asks for no new funds, merely that the funds already in the budget be reallocated. That will make the Convocation less likely to question the measure. Ah. Here is our tea.”

  The tea arrived in a distinctive eight-sided teapot, cobalt blue on a creamy tin oxide glaze, and painted with pictures of languid Terran ladies in centuries-old fashions. The teacups had a different woman’s elegant profile on each of their eight sides. The tea’s smoky aroma, rising into the air as the Cree servant poured, complemented the room’s sandalwood scent.

  “I hope you like the tea,” Saïd said. “A first cutting from my estates in the Lossing Highlands. I find it relaxing after a long day.”

  Sula looked at her cup with interest. “This is an old Guraware pattern, isn’t it?”

  The Lord Senior gave a sagacious nod. “Indeed, yes.”

  “Guraware hasn’t used this pattern in ages. What is it—five or six hundred years old?”

  Saïd’s eyes widened in surprise. “Seven hundred. You are quite the authority.”

  “I have a small collection of old Terran porcelain.”

  “From your posting on Earth, then?”

  “Yes.” She turned to the Cree servant. “More of the honey, please. Unless you have cane syrup?”

  The Cree answered in musical tones. “I’m afraid not, my lady.”

  “Honey then, and lots of it.”

  Sula had to prompt the Cree once more before the tea was sweetened to her satisfaction. Also on offer were two shelves well laden with a variety of pastry. Lord Saïd looked at it in appreciation. “I believe I can recommend the lemon cake,” he said.

  Sula had lemon cake with her tea and expressed appreciation of both. The Cree servant departed, leaving the tea trolley behind.

  Lord Saïd put down his fork with a decisive air. “The reason I asked you to join me,” he said, “is that I wanted to discuss your committee assignments.”

  Sula likewise set down her fork and thereby signified her willingness to engage in serious business. “It seems to me,” she said, “that I could be useful on the Fleet Control Board.”

  Which would be a direct invasion of Supreme Commander Tork’s domain, a challenge to the unquestioned authority he’d assumed since the war. Taking him on in person was something she’d very much enjoy.

  Again the smile touched the corners of Lord Saïd’s eyes. “I’m afraid there are no vacancies on the Control Board at present.”

  “Anything else to do with the Fleet?”

  Lord Saïd made an equivocal motion of his hands. “There are technology subcommittees and so on, but our technology is so standardized, and has been for so many centuries, that the subcommittees meet only once or twice each year. No, I was thinking of the Court of Honor.”

  Sula blinked at him. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar . . .”

  “It’s similar to the Credentials Committee, but for those who have already been issued credentials. The court investigates accusations against convocates and can expel them from the Convocation if the charges are serious enough.”

  Sula probed the idea carefully. “Wouldn’t you want—I don’t know—lawyers? Judges? Legal scholars?”

  “I thought your experience with military courts of inquiry might be of use.”

  “I’m afraid I have no such experience.” She had been promoted so quickly during her service that she’d never had the opportunity to sit on a formal court. In her commands any offenses were straightforward—inebriation and fighting being the two most common—and her summary judgments were equally forthright and included shooting two people in the head and arranging the assassination of the military governor of Zanshaa, her immediate superior. Which was what had led to the problems with the Koridun clan, which in turn had required her to shoot the sister of Lord Koridun, then ask her friends in the cliques to finish off the others.

  All of which, come to think of it, would make interesting charges should she ever be brought up before the Court of Honor.

  She didn’t think she wanted the Court of Honor—it seemed like a good way to make new enemies, for one thing, and for another she didn’t fancy spending her days sorting through reports detailing the squalid doings of convocates.

  Unless, of course, she could catch Tork at something. That could be fun.

  “I think you would be ideal for the court,” Saïd said. “It’s quite informal, and it’s not a court of law, so legal knowledge isn’t necessary—though of course we have legal advisers on staff.”

  Sula decided she might as well concede. “Very well,” she said. “If you think I would suit.”

  “Splendid! I think you’ll do very well.” Saïd looked down at his empty desk as if he were reading the contents of a paper. “Now as for further assignments, I don’t suppose you know anything about agriculture? There’s a vacancy on that committee. Also the Oceanographic and Forestry Committee.”

  “I’m already on one board for which I have no qualifications,” Sula pointed out. “Is there something on ring stations, antimatter and power generation, satellites, or wormholes?”

  “Nothing available, unfortunately.” He raised his eyebrows. “Banking and Exchange?”

  Sula spread her hands. “I suppose I know a little bit more about money than I know about agriculture.”

  Lord Saïd smiled in satisfaction. “The committee doesn’t meet very often, usually only to receive reports from the Imperial Bank. That and the Court of Honor should serve to acquaint you with the workings of the Convocation and give you a little seasoning—and afterwards, as vacancies become available, perhaps we will be better able to take advantage of your expertise.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.” In the last few years Sula had got used to meaningless activity, and now it appeared her work at the Convocation would be equally pointless. At least it would have the virtue of novelty.

  Until it got boring, that is.

  None of this, she thought, was anything like the war. Then, her every decision mattered, and life and death, victory and defeat, hung in the balance.

  In the Convocation, nothing actually seemed to matter. The deliberative body that ruled hundreds of billions of souls seemed to be detached from the reality of the empire it governed, floating in an unreal world of custom, protocol, and privilege. Even to the Lord Senior, the useful employment of a new member was of less importance than the quality of lemon cake.

  It was as if she found herself in a room filled with sleepwalkers.

  But, she thought, it was useful being awake in a room of sleepwalkers. She could get away with a lot.

  Saïd regarded her with his solemn brown eyes and smiled. “I would like to take an old man’s privilege,” he said, “and raise an issue that you might consider impertinent.”

  “My lord,” said Sula, “I can’t imagine you being impertinent. Not ever.”

  Saïd’s smile turned impish. “You be the judge, my lady,” he said. “I would like to raise the issue of your marriage.”

  An astonished laugh burst from Sula. This was the absolute last thing she had expected.

  “Am I getting married?” she asked. “No one told me.”

  “Your duties as a convocate will raise your profile,” Saïd said. “I may be the first to raise this issue,
but I will scarcely be the last. And of course you bear also the duty to have children and continue the Sula line. Normally a husband is required in these circumstances.”

  Sula did not give a damn about the line of the Sula clan, or a husband either. “Your interest in these matters is . . . flattering, I suppose,” she began, “but—”

  “If you will bear with me,” said Lord Saïd. “I have a grand-nephew, Eveleth, whose prospects are good and whose financial situation is secure, in fact nothing short of exemplary.” He cleared his throat and continued in a measured, tactful tone. “I believe your own fortune is, well, not the equal of many in the Convocation, and an alliance with Eveleth would establish your future, and that of your clan—”

  Sula was not willing to be purchased by someone’s grand-nephew, not even if he were the richest lord in the empire. “Lord Senior,” she said. “I have absolutely no interest in marriage at this time.”

  Lord Saïd inclined his head gracefully. “I apologize for any intrusion into your private affairs, Lady Sula. You know best, I’m sure.”

  Sula left the Lord Senior’s office with her head spinning. She had never imagined Lord Saïd as a marriage broker, nor that he would pimp some sad relation of his . . . Did he think her that desperate, that she’d consider such an offer?

  She had hidden herself and her private life away in the Petty Mount, and no one had cared; but now she was going to be a public figure. I may be the first to raise this issue, but I will scarcely be the last . . .

  She would have to give this matter greater thought.

  But not now. She had other worries.

  Two days later, as she listened on her console to a languid debate about Lord Tork’s battleships, she saw Lady Tu-hon walk past her office door. Lord Saïd had assigned Sula an office even though she wasn’t technically a convocate yet, but then it wasn’t much of an office: two airless, sunless rooms in the back of the Convocation complex, equipped with two desks and two terminals. The paneling was scarred, and the carpet smelled of mildew. On the walls were a pair of undistinguished paintings drawn from the imperial collection, one a still life of a platter of food with a roasted Hone-bar phoenix at its center, the other some planet or other viewed from its moon. Neither moon nor planet looked particularly hospitable.