by David Drake
It wasn’t clear to Daniel whether Otto was speaking as a Fleet officer or as Resident when he said “we,” but it didn’t matter until Marshal Belisande said, “Everything captured on Zenobia is our property. We’ll sell the rations to any friendly power which wants to purchase them, of course, but—”
“The Government of Zenobia hereby makes a free gift to the Alliance of all loot captured from the Palmyrene invaders,” said Hergo gruffly. “Jan, make sure the Resident gets whatever he wants. No, come to think.”
He switched his glance from his cousin to the mercenary seated beside him.
“Major, you take charge of the Farm with your troops. And make bloody sure that there’s no delay in getting food or whatever else the Resident asks to Diamond Cay. I want those Palmyrenes to go back home as fast as they can get there, and I’d say travel rations were a bloody cheap price for that.”
“Speaking of necessary supplies,” said von Gleuck, smiling—but not in an entirely friendly fashion—at Daniel. “My destroyers are the major defense of Zenobia against attack by Palmyrene survivors who haven’t gotten the message, but their rigging is badly cut up. When we landed, we found that virtually all the sail fabric in Calvary Harbor has been commandeered by our friends and allies in the Princess Cecile. Including the sails of civilian vessels. I think a redistribution is called for, do you not, Captain Leary?”
“Ah,” said Daniel brightly. Apparently Vesey and the Sissies under her direction had applied in a very literal fashion his direction to make the ship right ASAP . . . which he approved. But he could see Otto’s point.
Daniel paused to frame an answer. He suspected that the patrol sloops, which hadn’t been engaged, could spare some sails, but he wasn’t going to suggest that until he’d had a moment to beg the Admiral’s indulgence.
Posy and Adele rose from the table; Adele was putting away her data unit. They walked toward the grotto with Posy in the lead.
What in heaven’s name are they doing? Daniel wondered. But right now he had more pressing questions to answer.
CHAPTER 30
Calvary on Zenobia
“My dear,” Posy murmured in Adele’s ear. “Would you care to visit the grotto? Since I doubt you’re any more interested in discussions of sails and ration packs than I am.”
“The information may be significant,” Adele said, shutting off her data unit. “But I don’t see that I would gain anything by listening to the decision being arrived at.”
Arrived at by thoroughly childish argument, she thought but did not say. The relative allocations were being treated as matters of honor, not pragmatic questions of need and availability.
She got up and put the data unit away. “This grotto?” she said, nodding minusculely toward the gate in the wall behind them. Because the conference table was in the left corner of the garden, the central entrance was less than twenty feet from their end of the table.
“Yes,” said Posy, leading by a half step. Wood flanked them. Her face had no expression, but Adele read concern in it. Perhaps she was projecting her own puzzlement.
The warrant officer commanding the Alliance guard contingent leaned forward in his folding chair to look down at them. Woetjans had risen to her feet and braced her right hand on the monumental head which would otherwise have blocked her view of what was going on. Adele looked up at the bosun and nodded—reassuringly, she hoped.
Posy touched the gate with an electronic key. The bars were woven from beryllium monocrystal: it would be easier to blast through the stone wall itself than to cut them. Wood started in ahead of her mistress.
“Wood,” said Posy. She didn’t shout, but there was no give in her voice. “Wait outside, if you will, and prevent anyone from disturbing Lady Mundy and myself.”
Wood glanced from Posy to Tovera, then back. She didn’t move from the gateway.
“Wood,” Posy repeated.
“Tovera,” said Adele with a faint smile. “Please keep your colleague company. Perhaps you can talk about old school days with her.”
“Yes, mistress,” said Tovera. “Pillow fights in the dormitory and cheering the field hockey team. Rah rah, eh, Wood?”
Posy lost her composure enough to frown in surprise. Wood, however, broke into a glacial smile and stepped aside. She said, “As Your Ladyship wishes.”
Dim lights built to a glow as Adele walked forward. The path bent sharply to the right and descended, curving around so that in twenty feet they would be below the garden. She heard Posy cling the gate closed, then lock it before walking briskly to join her.
“If we go to the end,” Posy said, nodding the way forward, “I don’t believe any device outside the grating can overhear us. And I had Wood check this morning to be sure that nothing had been concealed within.”
Which is only proof if I trust you, Adele said; but in fact she did trust the younger woman. Besides, Adele had no intention of saying anything that she would mind everyone on Zenobia overhearing.
“All right,” she said. No doubt Posy would explain what this was about in good time; and as an alternative to listening to a wrangle over ship fittings, she would prefer to watch concrete set.
The passageway ended in a circular room which must be directly under the garden’s central fountain. It was amusingly similar to the rotundas onto which starship airlocks opened, including the relatively low ceiling. Faint green glow strips marked the floor and outlined twelve small alcoves—peepholes, really—set into the walls at eye level.
Posy gestured to an alcove. “When this was built in the last century,” she said, “those showed exotic scenes. I don’t suppose they work now.”
Adele walked to the nearest; she couldn’t see anything within. She moved to the next. “The gates looked more recent than that,” she said.
“My uncle, who preceded Hergo as Founder, added the gates,” Posy said. “He used the grotto for private parties. He wasn’t a nice man.”
The second alcove lighted when Adele stepped close. A giant arachnid chased a nude woman with flowing blond hair through a forest glade. Its clawed forelegs gripped her and threw her down.
Adele’s lip curled. The creature’s intention wasn’t to devour the girl after all.
“The person who built this place,” Adele said, facing Posy in the center of the room, “wasn’t a very nice man either. What did you wish to ask me, Lady Belisande?”
The younger woman grinned crookedly. “Posy, I hope still,” she said. “Adele, was Captain Leary telling the truth about why he stopped Autocrator Irene?”
Adele didn’t speak for a moment; her right hand toyed with the outline of her data unit in its thigh pocket. Why would she trust me to tell the truth? She knows I’m a spy.
But Adele would tell the truth. She said, “I think the matter was a little simpler than Daniel made it sound for Admiral Mainwaring’s benefit, Posy. He believes that the Republic needs peace, and he also believed that the Autocrator’s action would lead to a resumption of hostilities between us and the Alliance. If he put it that baldly, though . . .”
She shrugged. “Well, the Admiral could see that Captain Leary’s action might lead to unrest in the region for decades. Whereas the larger questions are speculative and aren’t the concern of the Qaboosh Squadron anyway.”
The greenish cast of the glow strips gave Posy the look of a corpse and presumably did the same to Adele’s appearance. Exactly what kind of parties did the previous Founder hold here?
Adele turned her hands palms-up, then down. She said, “Daniel therefore put the matter in terms of an insult by barbarians to the majesty of the Republic, which made it more palatable to the Admiral.”
“And do you agree that Cinnabar and the Alliance need peace, Adele?” Posy said.
“Yes,” Adele said simply. “I believe human civilization needs peace between us and the Alliance.”
Posy sighed and turned away. Adele waited, trying to keep from frowning. She understood that people sometimes wanted time to thi
nk, though she hadn’t noticed that it helped them very much. She wouldn’t have minded if she could take out her data unit and get on with other business, but that wouldn’t help her learn what Posy actually had in mind.
When the younger woman faced Adele after a moment, she had become Lady Belisande, stiff and imperious. She said, “Are you familiar with Tattersall, a world in the Forty Stars?”
Adele reached for her data unit, though she didn’t switch it on yet. She would have to sit on the floor to use it.
“I’ve heard of it,” she said. “I can become familiar very quickly.”
Posy laughed harshly. “No doubt you can,” she said. “There’ll be time for that shortly. For now, all you need to know is that Tattersall is a Friend of Cinnabar with an RCN squadron stationed there. Her nearest neighbors and trading rivals are Associates of the Alliance, as Zenobia herself is.”
“Go on,” said Adele, though by this point she probably had all the information she needed to start digging for more on her own. She waited because Posy might have a unique insight. More important, it was courteous to let her have her say.
“Soon,” said Posy, “and I don’t know more than that, but I think only a few months. Soon Tattersall will be invaded, and the new government will ask for admission to the Alliance of Free Stars. This hasn’t been planned by, by Pleasaunce; but Guillaume knows about it. There will be a cruiser squadron nearby to protect the new government from outside interference.”
“I see,” said Adele. “You haven’t asked, but I assure you that your name won’t be brought into this, Posy.”
Once you had information, it was easy to find additional pathways to the same point. No one but the two principals would know where Adele’s report had originated.
“I don’t care!” Posy said, her face anguished. “Captain Leary did what was right and honorable. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t everybody?”
Everybody should. But a woman who expects to spend the rest of her life with a former Fleet officer should also have better sense than to do so openly.
Aloud, Adele said, “You’ve done your part, Posy. It’s in my hands now.”
And Daniel’s. Which had been good enough to settle matters in the Qaboosh Region, after all.
Posy looked to be on the verge of tears; in her mind, she had come very close to treason. Adele put her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder and said, “Come along, dear. I doubt that anyone’s missed us. I want to keep it that way.”
And so will Lady Belisande by tomorrow morning.
“So, young master,” Hogg said as Daniel finally rose from his chair. “You going to tell Vesey that she shouldn’t’ve took all those sails from the ships whose asses we saved? Because I don’t have to tell you what was going to happen to everything in the harbor when a gang of wog pirates landed.”
“No, you don’t have to tell me,” said Daniel, smiling. “They ought to be happy that the captains’ liquor wasn’t looted too.”
He’d deliberately waited till everybody else had left the conference table. This way he wouldn’t find himself in private conversations that he didn’t want to have until he’d sorted out the possibilities. Adele would be able to tell him what the sail lockers of the Qaboosh Squadron held, as well as give him an inventory of the stores on Stahl’s World.
“Which they wouldn’t’ve been so lucky if I’d been in charge, but I’m here being a loyal retainer while my master listens to folks talk bumf to hear their own voices,” Hogg said.
He glowered in the direction of Woetjans. From what he’d said earlier, Hogg was aggrieved that the bosun had been allowed to carry a stocked impeller, while personnel except for the guard detachment were unarmed. He added, “Well, at least you got a chance to look pretty in your Whites.”
“Which I will be out of as soon as we get back to my cabin, I assure you,” Daniel said. He might have worn a second-class uniform for this conference, but his best set hadn’t outlived Commander Gibbs by more than a fraction of a second. Whites had been a better choice than ragged Grays, let alone Grays which still showed the marks of blood and brains. “Where—ah, there she is!”
He had missed Adele after the conference. He’d begun to think that she had left the garden, and why shouldn’t she have?
Instead, she was seated on the far curb of the fountain, her feet in the cracked, dry basin. The personal data unit was on her knees, and she was lost in her work, as usual.
Tovera, standing behind her mistress, reached through the top of the holographic display and then withdrew her hand. Adele looked up coldly, then smiled. She shrank her display, but she didn’t shut down the unit and rise as Daniel had more or less expected she would.
Adele wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t have a reason. He sat carefully beside her. The curb was lower than a normal bench, which put additional strains on the knees and seat of his trousers.
It was actually a good place to hold a private discussion. Workmen—only a few of them wore white and purple palace livery—were clearing the conference tables. Members of the gardening staff, identifiable by their grief-stricken expressions, were going over the damage to the hedges and plantings. The eldest, a bent little man with a halo of fine white hair, mopped his eyes with a polka dot bandana.
Some of the attendees were still in the garden, talking in pairs and small groups, but they avoided everyone else rather than trying to overhear conversations. More interestingly, Commissioner Brown skirted the shattered fountain on the way to the Palace and the street beyond, walking between his wife and his little girl. Brown smiled wanly when Daniel gave him a friendly nod, but Hester waved her free hand with enthusiasm.
Clothilde Brown didn’t notice anyone else. She was leaning close to her husband and circled his waist with her left arm.
If Brown survives, Daniel thought, the business with Gibbs will have done his relationship with his wife quite a lot of good. But that’s a big if.
“Daniel,” said Adele, “I’ve been looking at the situation in the Forty Stars, based on information I’ve gathered recently.”
She looked to the right, then the left, seeing where their servants stood. Hogg was watching half the arc around them, his right hand in a pocket and a murderous scowl on his face. Tovera had the rest of the circumference. From a distance her expression might seem blank, but anybody who passed close enough to overhear the conversation would sheer off even more abruptly than they would from Hogg.
“I knew Vondrian in the Academy,” Daniel said. “He has a destroyer in the Tattersall Flotilla, where he’s found slots for two other mutual friends. Ames here was planning to become Vondrian’s Second Lieutenant, and since I haven’t seen Ames since the Fantome landed this morning, I suspect he may already be on his way to Tattersall.”
“Yes,” said Adele crisply. “I believe that Tattersall faces attack by her neighbors with substantial after-the-fact support from the Alliance.”
Daniel opened his mouth, then closed it. If Adele hadn’t been sure, she wouldn’t have spoken. For her, the interrogatories which he would have thrown at anyone else who had made such a statement would be improper and insulting.
“If a substantial RCN squadron were to arrive at Tattersall in the next short while,” Adele continued, “ideally including a battleship . . . ?”
“Two battleships are home-ported to the Sector Base at Kronstadt,” Daniel said carefully. “That’s within five days of Tattersall, perhaps four. But not four for the Schelling, I fear.”
He paused, calculating courses. “Orders would have to come from Xenos, of course,” he said. “But Cinnabar is almost on the shortest route from here to Kronstadt anyway.”
He coughed. “Ah, if Navy House agrees.”
“I think that will be possible,” Adele said. “I will endeavor to pass the information on through channels which will get the prompt attention of Admiral Hartsfeld.”
She turned to face Daniel. “I believe that if an RCN squadron appears over Tattersall before open
trouble breaks out,” she said, “it will be possible for people with the correct skills to root out the plotters there.”
“Right,” said Daniel. “A coup like that depends on speed, which means there has to be an infrastructure on the ground. Just like here.”
“Yes,” Adele said. “Just as happened on Zenobia.”
Her smiles didn’t always mean she was amused at something, but Daniel thought this one did. She said, “Technically, I suppose this information should go by courier vessel, but . . . ?”
Daniel laughed. “On your feet, Officer Mundy,” he said. “We’ll lift in three hours and complete our repairs during the voyage. The day the Sissie can’t better the time of any courier built, I’ll retire to Bantry and fish!”
They strode side by side toward the Palace and transportation to the harbor. At the end of the garden, Daniel turned and bellowed, “RCN forever!”
“I’m not sure that was appropriate,” he muttered to Adele. Everybody present was staring at their backs.
“It’s always appropriate,” said Adele. Daniel rarely heard her express pride, but it was evident in her voice now.