by David Drake
“Good afternoon, Miranda,” Adele said. “Put those chip files on the floor—”
Or she could hold them in her lap as Daniel had. It was all one to Adele.
“—and sit down.”
Miranda entered, looking about with her usual bright interest. She wore a pantsuit of brown tweed under a short cape which was either tan or gold, depending on the angle of the light. She wore her perfectly tailored garments with grace, as she had done all things of which Adele was aware.
Adele knew that Miranda and her mother, Madeline, continued to make their own clothing. She had never asked whether that was whim or a philosophy on the Dorsts’ part. It certainly wasn’t a matter of necessity anymore. Daniel was a notably openhanded man, and he wasn’t stinting his fiancée and her mother.
“Thank you for receiving me, Adele,” Miranda said. She placed the files on the floor and sat without touching the chair with her hands. “I realize that you’re always busy.”
Adele shrugged. “I’m transcribing logbooks,” she said. “I will often find useful information in primary sources which isn’t carried over into compilations. I need to skim the contents as I copy the logs, however, so that I have an idea of what is in each one. In a crisis, the real index is in my mind.”
She smiled faintly. She saw no reason to pretend to Miranda that she wasn’t good at her job.
Then she said, “What do you want from me?”
Miranda looked blank for a moment, then clapped her hands in delight. She began to laugh.
Adele’s lips stiffened. I was too abrupt. Well, people who knew her didn’t visit for small talk.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Miranda gasped through her gust of laughter. “Please, please—”
The laughter got the better of her again. She stood and unexpectedly took Adele’s hands. Her firm grip was a reminder of Miranda’s comment that she played field hockey at school.
Miranda straightened and released Adele’s hand. “I apologize,” she said. “I realize that was very impolite, but I’ve …”
She backed into her chair again without taking her eyes from Adele’s. “Adele,” she said, “that’s the first time I’ve laughed in, well, since Master Sand came to Bantry in a flurry. I’ve been trying to pretend everything was all right so that Daniel wouldn’t worry about me and I’d make it worse.”
She swallowed, then gave Adele a transfiguring smile. “And then I came here,” Miranda said, “and you were you, and I didn’t have to pretend anymore. About anything. It was such a relief.”
Adele supposed she’d just been complimented. Others might not feel it was a compliment, but—she smiled as broadly as she ever did—that was rather the point of the statement, wasn’t it?
“I can generally be expected to be me,” Adele said. “But since that wasn’t what you came expecting to learn, my question still stands.”
“Is there anything I can do that will help Daniel with whatever he’s preparing to do?” Miranda said primly. “I’m not asking where he’s going or what he’s doing or, or—”
She was losing her careful calm. She paused, swallowed, and resumed, “Or anything I shouldn’t know about. And I came to you, because you’ll tell me the truth.”
“Yes,” said Adele as she considered the situation. “You have to remember that most of Daniel’s previous experience with women—”
All his previous experience, so far as Adele had seen.
“—has been with the type who struggle every day in deciding which color earrings to wear. He knows that you’re different, but when he’s busy he is probably operating by rote rather than thinking.”
Miranda smiled toward her clasped hands, then looked up at Adele. “At parties I’ve met some of Daniel’s previous acquaintances,” she said. Her voice was soft with good humor. “They’re lovely, very lovely. Which explains how their genetic material survives in the human species.”
“I’ve had similar thoughts,” Adele said. Miranda was a remarkably levelheaded person. “As for your question, I don’t know anything you can do for Daniel. Beyond what you’re doubtless doing already, of course. However—”
There had been a hint of disappointment in Miranda’s expression. It vanished at the qualifying “However—”
“—since you’re here, there’s something you can do for me. I’d like to analyze a situation I’m involved in in front of an intelligent neutral party. I don’t care about your opinion.”
“All right,” said Miranda. Her expression was alert; but then, it usually was. “If it’s all right for you to speak to me. Security, I mean.”
“In my experience,” Adele said, “‘security’ is a word people use to conceal information. I’m a librarian. I was trained to make information available to others.”
She felt her lips quirk toward a smile. “If my superior decides she cannot accept the way I handle information,” Adele said, “she can discharge me. Or call me out, I suppose. I’ve seen no indication to date that she feels any concern about my behavior.”
Miranda smiled very broadly, but she did not speak.
“I expect to visit the Ribbon Stars in the near future,” Adele said. She had emptied her glass. She reached for the pitcher, then thought of her guest and said, “Would you like some beer? Or, well, anything—I’m sure the pantry is well stocked.”
The Shippers’ and Merchants’ Treasury rented the use of the second floor of Chatsworth Minor for meetings in a private setting. They stored various entertainment paraphernalia—like wine and liquor—in the cellar against need. While Captain Leary was on Cinnabar, he had the use of the Treasury’s space, which he thought he was renting from Adele directly.
“Beer would be fine,” Miranda said, “if there’s—oh!”
Tovera stepped through the open doorway and handed Miranda a tall glass like Adele’s.
Adele poured. “Ah,” she said.
Adele had no reason to be embarrassed—her visitor was unexpected and would take what she was offered. Still. “I should warn you that this is bitter beer from Owsley County. From Chatsworth Major, in fact, though the estate is no longer in the Mundy family.”
“Thank you,” Miranda said. She sipped, then drank deeply. She didn’t say how delightful the taste was, or how she had always liked bitter, or any one of a dozen other brightly false statements that Adele expected. She just drank.
“Don’t blame Daniel too much, Miranda,” Adele said, speaking what she had just thought. “You’re easy to underestimate.”
She refilled her own glass and said, “The oldest human settlement in the Ribbon Stars is Pantellaria, a First Tier colony. After the Hiatus—”
The thousand-year break in interstellar travel which resulted from the war fought with diverted asteroids by Earth against her original colonies. The wonder was not that the war had ended human star travel but rather that it hadn’t ended the human species.
“—Pantellaria planted colonies of her own in the cluster. One of them, Corcyra, was found to have rich veins of copper.”
Miranda nodded, but she didn’t speak. She was carrying Adele’s statement that her opinion wasn’t desired to the point of not saying anything.
I’ve overreacted again, Adele thought. I’m not a monster that people have to be afraid of!
And as Adele thought that, she realized that it wasn’t true, that she had killed scores, probably hundreds of people, mostly with head shots. She was a monster by the standards of most people.
“Pantellaria was forcibly annexed to the Alliance eighteen years ago,” Adele said. “That set off the most recent period of war between ourselves and the Alliance, the one which just ended with the Treaty of Amiens. Pantellaria regained its independence with the treaty, but there were quite a few citizens, including most of those who had become leaders during Alliance rule, who weren’t happy with the independent government.”
Adele let her eyes travel around the room. She almost never looked at the library’s familiar disorder, though she spent at least hal
f her waking hours in the room. Because Miranda Dorst faced her expectantly, Adele noted that the grain of the bookcases matched that of the moldings of the walls; the wood for both came from Chatsworth Major, and the work had probably been done by the same woodwrights when the townhouse was first built.
The glass fronts were dusty. Everything in the room was dusty. The cleaning staff had been directed not to touch Adele’s books and files, but something had to be done.
“Would you like me to clean while you’re gone?” Miranda said.
She’s reading my mind! But of course she wasn’t doing anything of the sort. Miranda was following Adele’s eyes and probably reading her expression, then coming to the logical conclusion from the evidence.
“I don’t mean ‘straighten up,’ which would be horrible,” Miranda said, “but to remove dust with a very small vacuum. A static broom would be worse than straightening, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Adele. “Careful cleaning would be helpful.”
She remembered the cleaner—he had been male; after the fact Adele realized that he probably never listened to anything a female employer said—who had carefully interfiled chips from two separate files to bring them into order by date. It hadn’t occurred to him that Adele was moving chips from one pile to the other after she had processed them.
“Adele, is something wrong?” Miranda said.
What must my face have looked like? Adele thought. She said, “Not now, thank you. I was talking about Pantellaria. A number of Pantellarians on the losing side politically fled to Corcyra, taking as much movable wealth as they could. There was unrest on Corcyra anyway—the colonists thought far more of the planetary income was going to the homeworld than was justified.”
“Were they correct?” Miranda said. The discussion of cleaning seemed to have put them back on the more equal basis that Adele preferred. So long as the younger woman didn’t decide that her own opinion should matter to Adele.
“Taxation—levies generally—were high while Corcyra was part of the Alliance,” Adele said. “The newly independent Pantellarian government wasn’t showing any sign of reducing them. On the other hand—”
She shrugged.
“—Corcyra might well have gained a reduction by measures short of war. And I don’t know of a historical example of a colony or client state which didn’t think it paid more than a fair proportion of its wealth in taxes or tribute.”
Miranda nodded agreement but didn’t speak aloud.
“With the exiles supporting independence, Corcyra revolted from Pantellaria last year,” Adele said. As she had hoped, the situation on Corcyra was coming into clearer relief in her mind, just as the library had to her eyes. “And three months ago a Pantellarian expeditionary force landed to recover the planet.”
“I’ve always understood that it’s difficult to transport an army from one planet to another,” Miranda said. She sat upright, her hands crossed in her lap, like an obedient student. “How many soldiers did Pantellaria send?”
Adele nodded crisply, a stern teacher acknowledging a student’s intelligent question. She said, “The expeditionary force is of two thousand troops with light armor. They’re accompanied by a naval force of six destroyers, whose crews could provide another thousand personnel if used as ground troops. And an uncertain number of Corcyrans are supporting the Pantellarians as a sort of militia.”
Adele paused to smile thinly, then realized it would be a good time to take a drink. She half filled her glass—all that remained in the pitcher. Before she could put down the empty pitcher, Tovera took it and replaced it with a full one.
Two house servants hovered nervously down the hall, holding trays with more beer and glassware. When Adele glanced toward them, they snatched their eyes away.
“The more difficult question is the strength of the defenders,” she said. “All settlement is along the River Cephisis. The mining region, the Southern Highlands, appears to be entirely hostile to Pantellarian control, though that doesn’t mean all miners are ready to pick up a weapon and march down the river to attack the expeditionary force, which landed near the mouth. Still, there are about thirty thousand miners. Based on similar historical situations—”
Adele smiled grimly. If more politicians knew anything about history, there would be fewer wars. And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
“—most of the miners would shoot at the expeditionary force if it attacked the Highlands. They’re not trained, though, and they don’t have a real leader.”
She cleared her throat, then remembered to drink. “The Pantellarians landed at Harbinger in the Delta,” she said. “The planetary capital was at Brotherhood at the base of the Highlands, the port of the mining region.”
“But the exiles?” Miranda said, leaning forward slightly.
Adele nodded again. A very clever student. “Yes,” she said. “The exiles include some former military officers, and they’ve brought with them enough professionals to provide a training cadre for the Corcyrans whom they’ve hired. They have money. One of the two factions calls itself the Corcyran Navy and defected with a Pantellarian destroyer. The exile factions make up only a few hundred troops each, but such evidence as I have suggests that those are likely to be the equal of a similar number of Pantellarian regulars.”
“Are Pantellarian regulars any good?” Miranda asked.
“I’m sure some of them must be,” Adele said. “I have no record of any, however.”
Miranda’s smile indicated that she understood not only what Adele had said, but also what she meant. Daniel has a real prize here.
“The largest body of trained troops on the rebel side,” Adele said, “is the former Alliance garrison—about a battalion, five or six hundred men. It wasn’t repatriated when Pantellaria became independent, because most of them were recruited on Corcyra. There’s no data about their quality as troops, but they’re trained and equipped. When Corcyra rebelled, they took the name the Corcyran Army. Records from other sources on Corcyra—”
Everything that Adele had gleaned from Mistress Sand’s files.
“—continue to refer to them as the Garrison. They were the instrument of Alliance control until independence, and they’re not well liked by anyone else on Corcyra. They’re nonetheless the strongest single element of the forces opposing the Pantellarians.”
Adele considered whether or not to explain what she would be doing. Why not? she decided. What had held her back was what she considered decent reticence; others seemed to think she was secretive. I don’t hide my personal life; I just don’t see a need to broadcast it to the world.
“My particular interest is in a religious group, the Transformationists,” Adele said. “There are about five hundred of them settled in the valley of a tributary of the Cephisis, fifty miles south of Brotherhood. This is deep into the mining region, but their community is devoted to harmony and mutual support. They don’t appear to have a philosophy or ritual beyond that. I’m not one to come to for explanation of spiritual enlightenment.”
“Do they have soldiers?” said Miranda, filling her glass again.
There’s enough dust here to make anybody thirsty, Adele thought. She’d let things go too long because she didn’t care.
“The Transformationists have a hundred personnel in the siege lines around Harbinger,” Adele said, “but they appear to rotate their troops back and forth from the Pearl Valley frequently. I would judge they must have three hundred people capable of serving, though they may not be able to arm more than half that number.”
She paused and considered. “The Transformationist troops don’t show gender distinctions,” she said. “The Garrison and the local volunteers—the miners, basically—have almost no women.”
Miranda frowned. Though she hadn’t asked, Adele explained. “That sort of prejudice is common on less advanced worlds and among the less educated classes of advanced ones. The classes which provide most miners and professional soldiers, that is.”
> Adele smiled faintly. “Tovera and I have not infrequently found it an advantage,” she said. “But of course, I never expected to like reality.”
“Yes,” said Miranda. “I understand that.” Her expression softened and she added, “Though reality for me has improved a great deal since I met Daniel.”
Adele nodded. She decided not to say that this would change very quickly if Daniel should die violently, which was a probable result of the way he lived his life.
And then she smiled: Miranda knows that. Her brother had been vaporized in a space battle which could as easily have claimed Daniel instead—or Daniel also. Miranda was focused on her present life, which was very good.
As is mine, but somehow I can’t accept that.
“Yes,” Adele said aloud. “I should learn from you.”
She cleared her throat and said, “I will be involved with the Transformationists. Helping them, I suppose, because my principal has business in Pearl Valley, and they’ll expect him to sing for his supper, so to speak. There’s nothing more of importance which I can think to tell you, though I should know more this afternoon, after I speak with a man who just arrived from Corcyra. If anything changes, I will tell you.”
Miranda rose to her feet in a single, smooth motion. “Thank you, Adele,” she said. “I feel better now.”
Adele grimaced. “I can’t imagine why,” she said. “I don’t even know what help I’ll be providing to the cultists—”
She hadn’t meant to use the word, but it was adequately descriptive for the present purpose.
“—since they probably don’t know themselves. People rarely do, I’ve found, though they believe they do.”
Adele realized that she was describing the situation as though she would be assisting Daniel to help Rikard Cleveland. A simple way to carry out her own mission for Deirdre would be to arrange that Arnaud captured Corcyra without Cinnabar assistance.
Would that be treason? And to whom?
Adele smiled sadly. For the first time, she understood the way her parents had made the decisions which had led to their heads being displayed on Speaker’s Rock.