Then the shouting and applause began, a vast sound that came roaring down like an avalanche from the highest rows of the stadium, a sound that seemed to snatch the air from Martinez’s lungs . . . Martinez looked over his shoulder at the podium, to see if Lord Tork had made an appearance and they were cheering him, but he hadn’t and they weren’t. The great howl of the crowd went on and on, and Martinez felt his heart surge along with it. He raised his hand with the Orb and waved it, and the sound grew in volume. His heart raced, and he felt the blood blaze beneath his skin. Terza’s hand tightened on his arm. He was aware that Vipsania had drifted to his side.
“You arranged this?” Martinez said.
Vipsania’s eyes were wide. “I arranged for a claque to lead cheers when you entered the stadium. But there is no possible way I could have arranged this.”
Martinez kept waving and the crowd kept cheering. Terza held his arm and looked up at the crowd, her eyes ablaze with pride. After the cheers had gone on for several minutes, Martinez thought it might be time to try to put an end to the demonstration—the convocates standing braced in his vicinity were showing every sign of impatience at having to remain on their feet—and just as Martinez made up his mind to gesture for everyone to resume their seats the sky was shattered by a vast cracking explosion, and as his nerves leaped as he looked upward, half expecting to see the sky split asunder with antimatter fire . . .
The first report was followed by another, and then a third, and then Martinez realized the city was being overflown by shuttles dropping down from orbit, cracking overhead faster than the speed of sound. He leaned toward Vipsania.
“Now don’t tell me you arranged this?”
She shook her head. He could see her startled pulse beating in her throat.
Cargo shuttles had been common on Zanshaa in the years after the war, for just before the Naxid occupation, the government had blown apart the world’s antimatter-generation ring, which held the upper terminals for Zanshaa’s space elevators. The ring had separated into pieces and floated into higher orbits, and loss of easy transport to and from the surface had severely handicapped the Naxid occupation. After the war, the largely undamaged components of the ring were steered back to their proper orbits and reassembled, and the elevator cables reconnected; but it had taken nearly three years, and during that time Zanshaa’s commercial connections with the rest of the empire had been limited to the cargo capacity of the shuttles.
Before the skyhooks had been repaired, sonic booms were occasionally heard, but they were distant, the shuttles expending their velocity high in the atmosphere before coming to a landing at one of the five airfields surrounding Zanshaa City. The city had never heard anything like this—nothing like these foundation-shaking, window-shattering blasts.
More sonic booms lashed out, seven altogether, one for each year of peace. The falling thunderbolts had stunned the crowd into silence, and Martinez took the opportunity to wave the convocates into their seats. They sat with expressions of relief, and the movement spread from there throughout the arena, the dominoes tumbling again . . . More booms crashed out, but this time it was drums, and a military band marched out onto the stage, Torminel in green uniforms with white piping and tall shakoes, and huge kettledrums on carts drawn by burly recruits, each thumped by three drummers at a time. The show had begun.
Can’t escape the brass bands today, Martinez thought.
He followed Roland to his box, where one of Roland’s aides greeted them and opened the gate to allow them to enter. There were servants to prepare food and drink, and an assortment of Martinez clients and allies. Also present was Martinez and Roland’s second sister, Walpurga, whose presence only served to emphasize the similarities between the siblings: the olive skin, the dark hair and eyes, the sturdy bodies and long arms, and facial features rather more imposing than comely.
Martinez kissed Walpurga on the cheek and chose a chair near Roland. “It’s been thirteen months since Lady Sula was accepted into the Convocation,” he said.
Roland was looking at the band and its kettledrums. “I haven’t been counting.”
“Then, you said that my time would come.” Martinez gestured at the vast crowd. “If not now, when?”
Roland was irritated and made a point of ordering a drink before replying. “They don’t co-opt people based on popularity, you know. Popularity would mitigate against—”
“If not now,” Martinez repeated, “when?”
“Even if you get in the Convocation,” Roland said, “you’ll be bored out of your mind in the first week. You have no idea how dull it is.”
“I’m bored out of my mind now. I’d prefer a new way of being bored to any of the old ones.”
Roland gave him an angry look. “You’re a decorated hero known throughout the empire,” he said, “your yacht club just won its third series trophy in a row, you were just cheered to the echo by two hundred thousand people, and all you can think of at this instant is that Lady Sula got into the Convocation before you?”
“This has nothing to do with Lady Sula,” Martinez said virtuously. And then he looked up and saw the woman herself, Sula, walking past on the arm of Lord Durward Li. Her brilliant green eyes glittered from her pale face as she gazed at him, and his heart leaped into his throat and choked the words that lay poised on his lips.
The air between them seemed to shimmer, perhaps reflecting the light of history.
And then she was past, and Martinez stared after her, aware only of the blood that beat thick in his veins and the shackles of sorrow that had seized his mind with links of unbreakable steel.
Chapter 8
Sula managed not to break stride as her glance crossed with Martinez’s. Heat flared suddenly beneath her collar. She managed a nod, and he half raised a hand in greeting, and then Sula was past.
She hadn’t disgraced herself, Sula thought, because she’d expected to see Martinez here. He had the Golden Orb, after all, and she’d be expected to salute him. He would of course be here along with his grasping, pushing, scheming family, and it had been a matter of course that they might meet at some point.
Obviously Martinez had not given the matter equal consideration. She was gratified by the stunned look on his face, as if she’d just walloped him in the forehead with a mallet.
Reflecting on that moment as she walked with Lord Durward, she found more disquieting the reaction of Terza Chen, who had stood with a drink in her hand toward the back of the box, and whose dark eyes had turned from Sula to her husband, then back again as she absorbed the tableau that fate had spread before her. Terza’s lovely, highly trained face betrayed no change of expression, let alone the gloating triumph that Sula imagined lurked behind her eyes.
“He’s fled on his yacht,” said Lord Durward, “though I can’t imagine where he thinks he can run to.”
Sula’s mind tried to reel in the last few moments of conversation. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The band drowned you out. Who are you talking about?”
“Cosgrove, the seaweed man,” said Lord Durward. “He’s bankrupt, and he’s running for it.” He snorted. “As if that will help. If you ask me, it’s unfortunate that the tradition of honorable suicide seems to be falling into disuse.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Cosgrove,” Sula said. She was still thinking of Terza Chen’s eyes, and what shadows might lie behind them.
“Not a lot to know. Pushy little beast, made a lot of money, then lost it all.” Satisfaction glowed in Lord Durward’s voice.
“Here we are,” Sula said. Macnamara, in dress uniform as a constable first class, opened the gate to Sula’s box and braced in salute as she entered. Her other three servants were present, led by Engineer First Class Shawna Spence, the third member of Action Team 491 that had formed the core of the Secret Army during the bitter ground war fought in the capital. Also on hand was Sula’s Cree chef, offering a tray of canapés, and Master Clerk Ty-fran, a Lai-own veteran who served as her personal secretary.
Though Sula had a firm prejudice against having servants cluttering up her life, the last two had proved necessary as she’d eased into her existence as a convocate. Dinners and receptions were her new way of life, and a cook was a convenient accessory. A secretary had been required to handle, or at least supervise, the vast correspondence entailed by her new position, to file all the documents that passed across her desk, and to keep track of her appointments.
Because she was poor by High City standards and a little sensitive about having to fund her own staff, she was happy to draw the cook and secretary from the Fleet and let the Fleet pay their stipend. They allowed a captain four servants, after all.
The air smelled of sunlit grass and grilled meats. Her guests for the afternoon were largely from the military, though not always from the regular military. Fer Tuga, the elderly Daimong who during the war had achieved a deadly reputation as the Axtattle Sniper. The gaunt survivor Sidney, with his upturned mustachios, deep hacking cough, and his pipe of hashish, who had designed cheap, easily manufactured guns for Sula’s Secret Army. Lieutenant Lady Rebecca Giove, who had served as second officer aboard Sula’s frigate Confidence, and who—without the benefit of service patronage—had been unemployed since the Supreme Commander’s malevolence had sent Confidence into dock for an unnecessary refit.
A new acquaintance was Ming Lin, who as a pigtailed teenager had been a half-crazed bomb thrower for the Secret Army and was now a graduate student at the Zanshaa College of Economics. She wore her pale rose-colored hair in a tangled updo and wore as well the commoner’s black drill college gown with the soft round cap of a graduate student—had she been a Peer, the gown would have been silk and the cap would have had a pompon. The cap was tilted at a stylish angle, and she held a highball in one hand. Sula employed Lin part-time as an adviser for her work on the Committee for Banking and Exchange. She was most useful as a translator, rendering the specialized jargon used in economic reports into a language Sula could actually understand.
A counterpart to Ming Lin, Ashok Suresh served as Sula’s legal adviser on the Court of Honor. He was a law professor who had joined the Secret Army early in the occupation, had been severely wounded escaping a hostage roundup, and had spent the rest of the occupation being shuttled from hospital to clinic to safe house, all under different identities, just ahead of the Urban Patrol. During the course of these wanderings he’d lost both legs to amputation, and his family to the executioner. His medical expenses were ongoing, and he appreciated the stipend Sula sent him for his contributions to her work on the committee.
For reasons of prudence Sula hadn’t invited the cliquemen who had fought alongside her, or Lamey either. A public association with criminals would help her with neither the public nor her fellow convocates.
However, Sula had invited two guests who were not associated with her military career: her client Miss Tiffinwala, a robust and cheerful baker who provided pastry; and Lord Durward, simply because she liked him and at present he seemed very lost. Sula supposed most men of Durward’s age would delight in a young, beautiful wife, but instead Lady Marietta seemed only to unmoor him. Both had answered Sula’s invitation, but only Durward had turned up. Sula didn’t know where Marietta was, and possibly Lord Durward didn’t either.
Lord Durward and his wife—his first wife—had always been kind to Sula, and their son had been a captain whom Sula had admired, and one who (unlike the others) hadn’t tried to get rid of her at the first opportunity, to replace her with relatives or the children of cronies. So, though human warmth wasn’t really her specialty, she did her best to be kind in return.
Except for Lord Durward, everyone in Sula’s box was a member of her official family. Each occupied an assigned orbit around her, and some of those orbits—those of Spence and Macnamara—were close indeed. With those invited within the pickets of her official enclosure, she could relax.
For everyone else she wore her dark red convocate’s jacket, but otherwise cultivated a military appearance. The jacket was cut to resemble an officer’s tunic, and she wore her senior captain’s shoulder boards and—on a day as formal as this—her medals. The public knew her as a military leader, and she preferred to underline that fact rather than appear as a junior member of a body that had generally failed to earn her respect.
Sula got a ginger-and-lime from Spence, who was stationed at the bar, then dumped cane sugar into it until it was sweetened to her liking. Carbonation sparkled on her tongue. She greeted all her guests, then found a seat next to Ming Lin.
“Lord Durward tells me that Cosgrove has gone bankrupt,” she said. “I’m sure that’s a symptom of something, but I don’t know what.”
Lin grinned at her. “I don’t know that much about Cosgrove,” she said, speaking loudly over the blare of the band. “But I imagine it’s a symptom of Cosgrove’s own miscalculation. By all reports he was an arch-speculator, and probably heavily leveraged. A man owing so much money, and with so many projects, wouldn’t have to go very far wrong to have the whole enterprise collapse. But I can look into it, if you like.”
“I’d be obliged,” Sula said, and meant to add, if you could have it before the committee meets in eight days, but Ming Lin was already busy with her hand comm, and it was clear that she was pursuing her research without Sula’s encouragement.
The Torminel band came to a triumphant, booming conclusion, and Sula applauded politely. A Lai-own host appeared on the stage—Sula knew him vaguely from video but couldn’t recall his name—and reminded the audience of the solemnity and significance of the occasion, then turned the show over to an orchestra, which played an overture specially commissioned for the event. There followed a performance by a massed Daimong chorus, a Cree band playing tunes alleged to be popular in the Fleet, a Terran ballet in which dancers impersonated warships battling in elaborate formations, and a series of speakers extolling the Supreme Commander, most in exaggerated, florid terms.
One of the speakers was Lord Chen, who offered praise for Tork’s ability at logistics. Sula knew that Chen was not one of Tork’s admirers, and she had to appreciate his tact, as well as his strict adherence to fact. Tork, or at any rate his staff, had done a first-rate job organizing the Fleet that he’d nearly brought to disaster in battle.
Ming Lin reported that she had found little about Cosgrove’s bankruptcy, but then banks were closed on the holiday, as were libraries and sources of data. She’d check first thing in the morning.
“Thank you,” Sula said. “Ah—here’s food.”
Her chef served up a meal of egg dishes. Eggs were something all the species beneath the Praxis could eat, though some preferred theirs in malodorous sauces that Sula wished well downwind.
At a pause, when the orchestra was tuning in preparation for the next event, Lord Durward appeared. “Lady Koridun would like to meet you.”
Adrenaline surged into Sula’s blood. Her first thought was that Lady Koridun, bent on revenge for the loss of so many of her relatives, might have arranged for Sula’s assassination right here at the greatest public event of the year. This was, after all, a scenario that would certainly suit the extravagant, demented, violent style of the Koridun family.
And then she thought: Well, that would spoil Tork’s day. Grinning, she rose and walked with Lord Durward toward the gate, though she detoured to speak to Macnamara.
“Lady Koridun wants to meet me,” she said. “If she tries anything, feel free to shoot her.”
Macnamara was startled. “I don’t have a sidearm,” he said.
Sula laughed. “Throw a drink in her face, then.”
She joined Lord Durward at the gate to her box. There she found a young Torminel female, barely an adult, with gray-and-cream fur and the unusual blue eyes of the Koridun family. She wore a short jacket in pale blue with a standing collar of lace, and elegant braided shorts.
“Lady Koridun,” said Lord Durward, “may I present Lady Sula.”
“I’m honored to meet you,”
said Lady Koridun. “I’m a very great admirer of yours.”
This was not what Sula expected, and it took a moment for her to respond. “I knew your—cousin? Lady Tari.”
She remembered the shriek that came from Lady Tari as she charged, the fangs that flashed within a finger-joint’s length of Sula’s throat . . .
“You very kindly recommended her for a decoration after she died,” Lady Koridun said. After I shot her in the face, Sula thought.
“She worked very hard through the Manado crisis,” Sula said. “She deserved the commendation.” It had to be admitted, Sula thought, that Tari Koridun had been a hard worker. Just a demented and homicidal one.
“I wonder . . .” said Lady Koridun, and then her voice drifted away, her blue eyes losing focus. Then she gathered herself and asked her question. “Is it true what War of the Naxid Rebellion said about Light Squadron Seventeen?”
Sula wanted to break out into laughter. If this was some kind of revenge plot, it was clearly the most rococo conspiracy in all history.
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” she said, “but for something meant to be entertainment, War of the Naxid Rebellion was quite accurate.”
Which had surprised her. She had cooperated with the project, though once she’d heard the Martinez family was involved she decided her cooperation had been a mistake, and that the purpose of the documentary had been to glorify Gareth Martinez and his kin. Which to be sure it did, but to her surprise the final product had been fair in reporting her contributions to the war, and it supplemented her own recollections with those of people who had fought alongside her, comrades like Fer Tuga, members of the Secret Army, and the Bogo Boys. The documentary had not exactly concealed the way that some of these people made their living but hadn’t sensationalized it either.
The Accidental War Page 15