by David Drake
“You’d be talking about Blantyre and Cory, I presume,” Adele said. Hale’s age made the identification certain, but she still had to resist her desire to check Naval Academy class lists. “I’ll remind you that Blantyre’s luck led to her being killed two years ago.”
“You knew Blantyre, then?” Hale said in surprise. “I didn’t realize …”
Adele nodded again. She was wearing a plain civilian business suit in dark blue. The light here wasn’t good enough for anyone but a couturier to realize that the outfit was of top quality. Hale had assumed that she was a private scholar, and Adele hadn’t bothered to correct her. Actually, she supposed she was a private scholar at the moment.
“Blantyre struck me as the best kind of RCN officer,” Adele said. “Competent in astrogation and other technical subjects, and a fighting officer above all else. But as I said, killed in battle.”
“Everybody dies, mistress,” Hale said. “Very few die with a record equal to Blantyre’s.”
She eyed Adele more carefully, but she clearly didn’t see anything more than she had at first glance. Tovera wasn’t the only one who remained unobtrusive under most circumstances.
“Blantyre and I were friends,” Hale said. “I’m not the sort to go put a bouquet on her grave—”
On her cenotaph, Adele corrected silently. Blantyre’s body had been vaporized off Cacique, along with those of fifty-odd of her shipmates.
“—but I figure if I can use her record to learn how to be a better RCN officer, that’s a better memorial anyway. And—”
Hale straightened slightly, as though she were coming to attention for a reviewing officer.
“—you’re right about her. When you beat Blantyre on the Battle Board, you knew you’d done something. But more often than not, she beat me.”
Adele smiled very faintly at the pride in the midshipman’s voice; albeit probably justifiable pride. She wouldn’t have thought anyone could read the expression, but apparently Hale did, because she flushed slightly.
“Please excuse my discourtesy,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Lucinda Hale.”
Adele shook her hand with a carefully gauged polite pressure. “I am Lady Mundy,” she said, using her civilian rank rather than the one Hale might have noticed in the logs of Daniel’s RCN commissions. “I’m pleased to have met you, Mistress Hale.”
Her personal data unit flashed a silent signal. Adele glanced at it, reading the oral message which had been converted to text, as she preferred it. “Yes, all right,” she replied. “I should be there within the hour.”
Tovera was efficiently replacing the set of logs in the file drawer from which they had come. She didn’t know anything about the summons, but she knew that her mistress wouldn’t leave the archive until she had at least restored it to the condition in which she had found it.
Hale looked as though she might be going to speak further, but in the end she merely nodded. She slipped into her reader the first of the logs of the private yacht Princess Cecile, owned and commanded by Captain Daniel Leary. Adele was glad. She didn’t want to insult the young woman, but she didn’t have time for conversation.
As Adele left the Long Room, she started to put her personal data unit away in the thigh pocket tailored into her trousers. Unexpectedly, the clerk snarled, “You know, it’s traditional to leave a little something for the attendant, but I suppose you’re too high and mighty to worry about that.”
Adele stopped and looked at him, then sat on one of the three chairs in the anteroom. They were standard RCN designs of pressed steel and steel mesh, identical to those of any warship save that these were not bolted to the deck. She brought up the data unit.
“Your name is Dozois?” said Adele. She wasn’t in quite as much of a hurry as she had thought. “Yes, Tech Five Dozois.”
The data unit’s holographic screen was a blur to anyone save the user herself. Adele had a control wand in either hand; she found them the quickest and most accurate form of entry and access. She often used her data unit as a remote-control device for other units. She was doing so now with the clerk’s terminal, though he wasn’t aware of the fact yet.
“What do you care what my name is?” the clerk said. He got to his feet. “Hey! Whatta you think you’re doing?”
“Leaving,” Adele said, standing up again and putting the data unit away. She was almost to the stairwell before Tovera turned and followed her.
“I thought he might try to stop us,” said Tovera regretfully. “Well, maybe he’ll be there the next time we visit.”
“I doubt it,” Adele said as her boots scuffed briskly up the concrete steps to the outside entrance. “He just sent a message to his immediate superior, copying the Chief of the Navy Board, detailing his failures of performance and adding that he keeps a bottle of gin in his desk.”
“I didn’t see the gin,” Tovera said. She was in front again so that she could step into the street ahead of her mistress.
“Nor did I,” said Adele, “but I smelled it on his breath when he was shouting at me.”
She gestured toward the tram stop in front of Navy House. “We’re going to the Shippers’ and Merchants’ Treasury to meet Deirdre Leary. I don’t know the intended purpose of the meeting.”
A tram pulled up at the stop, swaying slightly on its overhead monorail as it disgorged men and women in their best RCN uniforms. Those who had enough rank to have afforded a set wore their Whites, often too tight for them now. They would be uncomfortable waiting in the hall for an assignment clerk to call their name … or most likely not to call their name.
Adele and her servant got on when the car had emptied. Tovera punched the address of the bank into the routing computer.
Deirdre Leary was Daniel’s older sister and Adele’s banker. She was also the representative of Corder Leary and the Leary family interests to both Daniel and Adele. Daniel had broken violently with his father at age sixteen. As for Adele, if she ever came face-to-face with the man who had ordered her family’s slaughter, she would shoot him dead.
Adele could imagine many reasons for Deirdre to request a meeting at short notice—no notice, in fact. None of the possibilities were good.
CHAPTER 2
Bantry Estate, Cinnabar
The run back to Bantry village was long and tedious at the best speed the skiff could manage, but Daniel found that he didn’t care. He sat, more comatose than relaxed, in the bow while Hogg held the tiller; not that much guidance was required.
“That was too bloody close,” Hogg said harshly. He didn’t need to detail what he was thinking of.
Even this close to shore on a calm day, the skiff was unsteady when they crossed the inlet through the barrier islands. Bantry’s seawall protected the houses, and the commercial fishing fleet needed the inlet to shuttle between the sea and Bantry’s processing plant.
“I wasn’t afraid at the time,” Daniel said, opening his eyes. “Now, every time I think about that eel’s fangs, they get another inch longer.”
“They were bloody long enough in all truth,” Hogg said. “I don’t guess you could see him, but I bloody could.”
“I didn’t get a good look till you put a spike through his brain,” Daniel agreed. “That was a nice thrust.”
“Nice as I ever made,” Hogg said, but he sounded desperate and angry rather than deservedly triumphant. “I wasn’t bloody sure I could do it.”
“I was sure,” Daniel said; which was the truth, but he’d have said it anyway. Hogg had been afraid because he had nothing to do but wait while death wriggled toward the young master.
Daniel had been busy trying to splash backward with one hand and to guess where the skiff was and where the eel was, while all the time planning how to get himself into the boat while holding the lure in the water with his left hand till the last instant. He hadn’t had time to worry about dying, though if asked he would have said it was probable. Wolf eels weren’t exactly poisonous, but their fangs were so septic with decaying flesh
that the chance of surviving a bite was negligible.
Daniel looked up at the seawall as they puttered toward the Little Harbor, a niche behind a breakwater where small craft could be dragged out of the water. He had thought that Miranda might be waiting up there for him, but the only greeting was a chorus of “Hey, Squire” from Hebney, Colfax, and Riddle, who spent most of their time on the seawall drinking ale. Two of them were crippled and all three were old. They weren’t so much idlers as past the ability to work.
Miranda hadn’t known when he would be back, after all. And she couldn’t have expected an ordinary afternoon’s fishing to lead to—well, what it had.
Hogg nosed them into the Little Harbor. “Daniel!” Miranda cried, springing up from the concrete bench cast into the breakwater. She had been on the dock, not up on the seawall. “Oh, darling, I’m so glad to see you!”
“Got it,” said Hogg, grabbing a bitt to steady the skiff. He waited to tie up until Daniel had stepped out.
Daniel hugged his fiancée. He was a little embarrassed to have thought that Miranda hadn’t come to greet him—and more than a little worried because her greeting was so enthusiastic. Did she know … ?
“Daniel,” Miranda said, stepping back slightly. “I invited Tom Sand to dinner tonight. If I did wrong, I apologize, but it sounded important, and I didn’t know when you would be getting back.”
“Of course it’s all right,” Daniel said heartily as he wondered what was going on. “I’d better get cleaned up. I went swimming to free the lure the last time.”
Which was enough to say about the fishing trip, he decided. Miranda knew his work was dangerous, but there was no need to tell her how dangerous bad luck could make his leisure.
He gestured her ahead of him to the cast staircase. The steps were slippery, so that put him in a position to catch her if she fell; a vanishingly improbable event, but a reflexive matter of courtesy.
“That’s, ah, the builder, you mean,” he added. “Ah, and he’s coming for me, not Adele?”
The only Tom Sand Daniel knew was the major contractor who as a favor—though Daniel wasn’t sure who the favor had been to, exactly—had built the community building which Daniel had given to Bantry. Daniel had gotten on well with Sand the few times they’d met, but they were barely social acquaintances.
Sand was also the husband of Bernis Sand. Daniel knew as little as possible about Adele’s intelligence work, but he couldn’t help making that connection when heard the name.
“Yes,” Miranda said, pausing for Daniel at the top of the seawall. “I told him you were out fishing, so I don’t think he could have thought I meant Lady Mundy.”
“Another woman would have told me that I was treating her as though she were a moron,” Daniel said. “You are far too sweet to say that, even if it’s true—for which I apologize.”
He grinned and kissed her. A pair of housewives chatting on one’s doorway giggled, and a man—one of the trio on the seawall—cackled, “Give her another one, Squire! She’s too pretty to stop there!”
Miranda was tall and fair, attractive by any standard. She wasn’t beautiful at a glance, but even on first meeting she had projected an aliveness that set her apart from the conventionally lovely girls whom Daniel had dated to that moment.
Daniel waved to the idlers but avoided eye contact. He was the Squire whenever he visited Bantry, in fact though not by law. He had the respect of everyone on the estate and their due deference also—but a free citizen’s deference didn’t mean slavish kowtowing. Though Daniel was first among equals, the folk he’d grown up with were his equals as men and women.
“It was a little awkward,” Miranda said in a low voice as they walked toward the manor house. “Chloris”—the housekeeper, Widow Greene—“took the call and told me that Master Sand was calling for the Squire. I picked up the phone and said that you were fishing, but that I’d have you call back as soon as you got in. And I called him Tom, because of course we’ve been introduced.”
“Right,” said Daniel, nodding. He hadn’t seen the problem yet, but he knew there had to be one for Miranda to be agitated.
“He hadn’t planned to tell anyone but you that it was him calling,” Miranda said. “Chloris recognized his voice, and I didn’t realize that he hadn’t identified himself. He was surprised when I called him ‘Tom.’”
Daniel laughed. “Chloris has an ear for voices,” he said. “I doubt she’s heard Tom Sand speak more than half a dozen times in all her life, and that just a few words each. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from him.”
He looked sharply at Miranda as they reached the veranda. “Did he say what it was about?”
“He asked to come to dinner,” Miranda said, entering as Daniel held the door for her. “He said his wife wouldn’t be along. I told him that he was welcome, and that if he liked, I’d leave Bantry.”
She paused in the front room. The rambling old building was being spruced up now that Daniel was spending time at Bantry again, but the air held a cutting hint of the bleach which was being used on the mold.
“He said he wouldn’t think of putting me out, but that yes, he’d appreciate privacy with you during dinner,” she continued, holding Daniel’s eyes. “I know it wasn’t my place to invite him, but he sounded so worried, and I didn’t know how to get you.”
Daniel took her hands. Miranda was as concerned as he’d ever seen her—afraid that she had interfered in his business. Throughout their relationship, she pointedly had tried at all costs to avoid that.
“Thank you, dear,” he said. “You did right. You had to make a decision, and you chose the better of two options. Either was acceptable—and anyway, I wouldn’t be upset if you’d guessed wrong.”
“So it’s three for dinner, Mirandy?” Mistress Greene said, calling across the front room. Daniel and Miranda were still in the entrance hall with old paddles, fishing poles, and yard tools—some of them broken.
“Two, Chloris,” Miranda said, looking over her shoulder with a bright smile. “I’m going to check with Gwen Higgenson”—wife of the head of the fish-processing plant—“to see if they’ve got room at table for me while the men talk business here.”
Mistress Greene snorted. “If she didn’t, she’d put her husband out in the shed to make room,” she said, correctly enough.
“Chloris?” Daniel said. “Hogg and I caught some sprats. Tom Sand and I will have those. But I’ve got to shower! That car of his will make it from Xenos in two hours if he pushes it.”
“I’ve laid clean clothes on the bed,” Miranda said. She caught concern in the slight tenseness at the corners of Daniel’s mouth.
“No, nothing fancy!” she protested. “Just like what you’re wearing”—RCN utilities—“only clean. And a newish pair, one that you haven’t split up the seat.”
Laughing as though he hadn’t momentarily feared that he would find his Dress Whites waiting for him in the bedroom, Daniel walked through the front room on his way to the showers at the back.
Miranda stayed beside him. “I tried to think what Adele would do.”
She grinned, but the expression had a wry tinge. “That didn’t help much,” she said, “because I realized Adele wouldn’t be out of contact.”
Daniel laughed in real humor as he bent to take off his soft boots. A pair of shower shoes waited just inside the door of the large tile room. He was very lucky to have met Miranda Dorst; sorry though he was that the occasion of meeting had been the death of her brother under Daniel’s command.
“Adele isn’t a magician, love,” he said as he stripped off the utilities he’d worn fishing. The fabric dried quickly, but the many pockets were damp—and probably held weed and mud. “I grant that she seems to be one, sometimes.”
Daniel turned on one of the three showerheads. Instead of a drain, the runoff slanted down the floor and through the gap under the outer wall.
One good thing about this Tom Sand business was that Daniel was no longer thinking about the w
olf eel and what hadn’t—quite—happened. He grinned.
Instead I can worry about what Mistress Sand’s husband needs to tell me in secret, and what that means for me and Adele.
Xenos on Cinnabar
The Shippers’ and Merchants’ Treasury had become Adele’s bank shortly after she had returned—returned from exile—to Xenos. It was the first time in her life that she’d had money of her own—a share of the prize money won by Lieutenant Daniel Leary for himself and his crews. Adele, much to her surprise, had been included in the share-out.
As she and Tovera came up the sidewalk, the doorman smiled and opened the bronze-grilled door with a flourish. “Very glad to see you again, Lady Mundy,” he said.
Adele hadn’t entered the bank in several years; she had no call to. Had the doorman been warned to expect her, or was his visual memory really that good?
She smiled, or at least almost smiled, as she gave the doorman a nod of response. Deirdre Leary was in her different way just as able as her brother, so both were probably true.
Adele stepped into the lobby of dark wood, polished stone, and more bronze. She was sure that the Shippers’ and Merchants’ handled its affairs with state-of-the-art technology, but it made a point of looking quaintly old-fashioned. Comfortably old-fashioned, some people would say.
For those who wanted more modern surroundings, there were other Leary enterprises to accommodate them. Adele noted the significance of the fact that Deirdre, who was the managing partner of most of those enterprises, had chosen the Shippers’ and Merchants’ as her personal headquarters.
The majority owner in all cases was almost certainly Corder Leary, the man who had wiped out the other members of Adele’s branch of the Mundy family. If Adele had looked into the matter and found proof of that ownership, she might feel that she had to do something.
She would never look. She wasn’t interested in business.
The tellers’ cages were to her right; on her left, across the lobby from them, was the manager’s office and a conference room. There was also a door in the back wall, under a painting of two men clasping hands over a table. That door opened and Deirdre Leary came out.