by David Drake
Adele watched with cold amusement as her host pawed inexpertly through the drawer. She’d gone through many such agglomerations in her days as an archivist. She’d learned quite quickly that there was no document that was completely without value to some researcher, but there was a limit to what could be catalogued and thus become available for research.
She suspected she could trim the present mass by 99% without doing irreparable harm to posterity. And if it were limited to the Rolfe and Casaubon houses, the percentage saved could be even lower.
“Yes!” cried Rolfe. “Here they are, just as I remembered!”
Adele took the document, a four-foot continuous coil folded to fit into a drawer. It was a printout of the auction listing with numbers, presumably the amounts paid, written in holograph beside them.
“Yes, we had our bailiff, well, my wife’s bailiff really, present at the auction,” Rolfe said as Adele scanned the list. “Our claim was to the real estate alone, but Marina thought we needed to be careful that the auctioneers didn’t try to sell fixtures as well as the personal property.”
His voice was an empty background like the rustle of mating insects; not overtly unpleasant but not of any concern either. Furniture, bedclothes, kitchen utensils. Paintings, electronic equipment, shop tools. The last had probably belonged to Mick Hilmer, the chauffeur and mechanic. Had he survived the Proscriptions? Mick should have been exempt—he was no Mundy by blood or marriage, to be sure—but neither was he the sort to bow meekly when a gang of street toughs burst into his quarters.
“My wife has been responsible for redecorating,” Rolfe burbled. He seemed to have forgotten he was standing in a junk room which once had been a private library equal to any in Xenos. “We have heirlooms from her family and mine both.”
Assorted books/316 florins.
“I had laid out over five thousand florins for the books I’d purchased,” Adele said. No one listening to her could have told from her voice how she felt. “Of course the more valuable items came to me as gifts. Friends of the family found it amusing that the older Mundy girl was a real antiquarian. Many of them had something on a shelf or in a trunk that even my allowance wouldn’t have run to.”
“Pardon, mistress?” Rolfe said. He hadn’t heard the words, and he wouldn’t have understood them anyway.
The Mundy children had been as much a part of the family’s political entertainments as the images of ancestors in the entrance hall were. Agatha hadn’t been any more outgoing than her elder sister, and unlike Adele she hadn’t the taste and intellect to escape into scholarship. She’d buffered herself from the public stress with a parliament of stuffed animals, each of which had a distinct personality as well as a name.
Assorted stuffed toys/Five florins fifty.
Adele’s hand began to tremble. She quickly dropped the auction list on the desktop. She wondered if she could ask to wash her hands.
“I wonder if you wouldn’t be interested in some walnut pudding, Mistress Mundy?” Rolfe said. “My father-in-law has some marvelous trees on his country estate, that’s Silver Oaks in the Varangian Hills.”
Adele forced her mind up from the frozen horror of the past. Noises from downstairs penetrated her awareness. A woman was shouting—screaming—and feet were pounding up the stairs.
“Ah, that must be Marina,” Rolfe said with false brightness. His eyes were glazing and his face looked as rigid as a mummy’s. “I’ll see if I can introduce—”
A woman whose garments were trimmed with off-planet furs burst into the room; the doorkeeper and several other servants followed in her wake. If the entryway mosaic had flattered Ligier Rolfe’s hairline, it had excised at least fifty pounds from his wife. She tended to a naturally ruddy complexion; in her present anger she looked nearly purple.
“Darling,” said Rolfe, “this is—”
Marina Rolfe flung Adele’s card to the floor. “Ligier!” she said. “Get this woman out of here! She has no right to Rolfe House, none! Get her—”
She turned from her stunned-looking husband to Adele. “Get out!” she cried. “The time to protest our claim is past, past years and years ago. It’s Rolfe House now and you have no right to be here!”
“Please, dear!” Rolfe said in obvious embarrassment. “She’s just visiting before—”
“Shut up, you!” his wife said. “If you were any kind of man I wouldn’t have to take care of this myself.”
Her eyes, brown and hysterically wide, returned to Adele. “Now, are you going to get out or—”
“Mister Rolfe,” Adele said. “If you don’t restrain your dog, I will restrain her for you. Do you understand?”
Adele wasn’t certain how Rolfe would react to the whiplash in her voice, though she didn’t doubt what she would do if he reacted the wrong way. The anger leaping within her threatened to burst through her skin and consume everyone present.
Assorted stuffed toys/Five florins fifty.
It shouldn’t have mattered, not against the greater horror of Agatha’s ten-year-old head displayed on the Speaker’s Rock; but it mattered.
“Marina, you’re overwrought!” Rolfe said with a strength Adele hadn’t credited to him. Either he’d understood what he saw in Adele’s eyes or, more likely, he’d just been horrified by his wife’s boorish behavior to a guest. The Rolfes were a noble house, as old as any in the Republic. “Go up and wait in my apartment while I see Mistress Mundy out.”
He pointed at the doorman, perhaps blaming him for the outburst. “You! Escort your mistress to my room. Immediately!”
Mistress Rolfe stepped back, putting her hand to her cheek as though she’d been slapped. The shouted command had much the same effect on her hysteria as a slap might have done; her breathing steadied and the flush began to fade.
“See that you do, Ligier,” she said in a controlled voice. She turned and marched up the stairs, her high-laced shoes whacking the treads in an attempt to sound dignified.
The doorman followed her, looking over his shoulder, but the footmen who’d escorted Rolfe remained on the landing. A step below them, smiling faintly as she watched events in the servants’ lounge, stood Tovera.
Marina Rolfe had been afraid; afraid of the same thing as her husband, now that Adele had leisure to analyze it. The Rolfes thought that the real heir to the Mundy estate had returned to claim her property. How strange. Despite Deirdre Leary’s offer to look into the matter, Adele hadn’t imagined trying to overturn the settlement based on the Edict of Reconciliation twelve years previous.
Not until now.
Rolfe took a deep breath and looked warily at her. The left corner of Adele’s mouth quirked into a smile of sorts. “You needn’t worry, Mister Rolfe,” she said. “I’ll be leaving presently. But I’d appreciate the use of this desk—”
She gestured toward the wreck beside her. One of the legs had broken; that corner was supported by a metal document box.
“—to write a note. It’s on a matter I hadn’t given thought to previously, but I’d like my servant to deliver it before I leave Xenos. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Of course, mistress, of course,” Rolfe said. “You can use my—”
He strangled the rest of the offer. He must suddenly have remembered he’d sent his wife upstairs to his suite, rather than down to her own where Adele would have to pass her on the way out.
“This is quite adequate,” Adele said coolly. She drew out another visiting card and on the back wrote,
Mistress Deirdre Leary:
I would appreciate any support you could provide in the matter of my regaining title to Chatsworth Minor. I will be in touch with you on my next return to Cinnabar.
Mundy
She closed her stylus, then gave the card to Tovera while Rolfe waited with politely averted eyes. “I’ll take my leave now, Mister Rolfe,” Adele said aloud. “I appreciate your hospitality.”
Rolfe looked embarrassed again, but at his quick gesture the footmen started down the stairs. Rolfe bow
ed his guest ahead of him, then followed. The doorman was still with his mistress, but Wormser pulled the outer door open in fine style, then closed it behind Adele and Tovera.
Adele’s skin felt prickly. Her anger was a cold emotion, and it left her feeling like the dirty slush of a winter streetscape.
“I don’t know where you’ll find her,” she said to her servant. “I’d try the office on—”
“I’ll find her, mistress,” the pale woman said. “And I’ll be aboard the ship before it lifts.”
“Yes, that too,” Adele said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Tovera looked at Rolfe House. “It bothers you?” she said.
Adele’s face tightened. Then she remembered who’d asked the question and said, “Yes. It bothers me very much.”
“It leaves me empty,” Tovera said softly. “But then, everything does.”
She strode toward a monorail platform. She was quite unremarkable, an office worker heading home with a briefcase full of work.
Adele sighed and walked to her own stop on the opposite end of the street. The sky was threatening; there’d be rain before sunset, she supposed.
That would fit her mood quite well.
Chapter Nine
The drizzle gave way to a sheet of rain which thundered on the hull of the Princess Cecile and lashed the surface of Bay Ten, the ready slip to which the corvette had been transferred at the completion of her refit. Lightning pulsed continuously, backlighting the thunderheads without ever striking in the cone of Daniel’s vision through the open main hatch.
“Like a cow pissing on a flat rock,” Hogg muttered, though he didn’t sound especially unhappy about it. The rain was blasting itself to mist on the canopy over the walkway from the edge of the pool to the corvette. Watching it, Daniel could imagine he was in one of the metal-roofed hunting cabins deep in the interior of Bantry—
Instead of waiting for the arrival of the courier whom the Navy Office had an hour ago alerted them to expect.
Apparently thinking in the same track, Ellie Woetjans said, “If the RCN don’t teach you nothing else, it’ll teach you to wait.” There was a chorus of, “Amen!” and “Too right!” from the half dozen spacers in the the Princess Cecile’s entranceway.
Woetjans was a rangy, powerful woman who was taller than Daniel by six inches. As bosun she rapped helmets with a length of electrical cord to get the attention of landsmen she was turning into riggers. No need of that with the present crew, of course.
Woetjans was soaking wet, having just come in with the team which had changed out the main hinge of Dorsal 3. The antenna had stuck a few degrees short of closure twice during testing. Daniel had been willing to lift with it—joints loosened in service, after all—but since there were a few minutes unexpectedly available, the bosun had taken five riggers out despite the rain. She hadn’t bothered to change when she returned in case the courier with the Princess Cecile’s orders arrived during those few moments. The crew was even more excited about the corvette’s next deployment than her captain was.
Well, make that as excited. Admiral Anston had called Daniel in personally, after all. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d planned to send the Princess Cecile to the Home Squadron protecting Cinnabar against Alliance raiders—who had last attacked some seventeen years ago. There was every chance that Lt. Leary’s first operational command would be an independent one.
“Daniel?” said Adele’s voice through the earphones of the commo helmet Daniel was wearing along with his utility uniform. “A car and truck have just cleared the main gate with Bay Ten as their announced destination. Over.”
He should have guessed that Adele would be monitoring not only ordinary communications traffic but also intercepting limited-distribution messages that she and her software thought might be of interest to the Princess Cecile. A truck, though? Why on earth would the courier have a truck with him?
“Adele,” Daniel said, “we’re only about three minutes from the gate here. Why don’t you come join me for the courier’s arrival? You can monitor the console through your helmet, you know. Over.”
Adele sniffed. “Can I really?” she said, not angrily but with enough of an edge to remind Daniel who he’d been talking to. “Perhaps I’ll print out the instruction manual for my equipment to read while I’m waiting with you. Signals out.”
Smiling faintly but tense all the same, Daniel said, “He’s on his way from the gate,” loudly enough to be heard by those with him in the entrance. He lifted his equipment belt with his thumbs to settle it more comfortably over his hipbones.
The rain had slackened again, though that was hard to tell because of the water still dripping from the antennas through the flare of the area light above the Princess Cecile’s hatch. Headlights swept down the curving roadway toward Bay Ten in Vs of spray. The lead vehicle, illuminated by the following one, was one of the enclosed two-place scooters used by the Navy Office message service.
Adele came down the companionway from C Level and the bridge. Unconsciously her hand brushed the right cargo pocket where her personal data unit rode. She had no need for special tailoring when wearing a utility uniform.
The vehicles pulled up at the shelter for visitors to Bay Ten. A figure in a close-drawn rain cape got out of the scooter and started down the walkway toward the corvette’s hatch, hunched over against the weather. The rain was coming down harder again. It wasn’t the downpour of minutes earlier, but it still blew under the canopy.
“There’s a driver in the car,” Hogg noticed aloud. “Since when do couriers get drivers?”
Adele frowned, then flipped down the jump seat intended for a sentry at the airlock and took her data unit out. Daniel glanced at her, wondering what in the world she was doing.
The wands flickered. Without looking up Adele said, “I’m finding what department the truck is assigned to. Its vehicle number went into the records when it passed the gate.”
Daniel opened his mouth to say, “Well, we’ll know in a moment… .” But it wasn’t certain that they would learn in a moment; and anyway, that probably didn’t make any difference to Adele. She had more faith in data that she uncovered herself than she did in what somebody from the Navy Office told her; and thinking about it, Daniel too had more faith in what Adele learned in her own fashion. He swallowed his comment unspoken.
The courier reached the hatch and stepped into the entryway, out of the weather. The trousers of his 2nd Class uniform were darkened several shades from the original dove gray where the rain had soaked them.
“Orders for the officer commanding RCS Princess Cecile,” the man said, his voice rough. He coughed to clear his throat.
Daniel stepped forward. “I’m Lieutenant Leary, commanding RCS Princess Cecile,” he said.
The stiffened bill of the courier’s cowl shadowed his face. He brought from beneath his cape a packet closed with the Republic’s seal, a winged sandal, over an embossed RCN.
Daniel broke the seal with his index finger, watching the holographic wings flap three times. If the envelope had been opened before it reached him, the charge would have dissipated whether or not the seal itself were damaged. There was no reason to suspect forgery, but the Matrix makes people—those who survive—careful about details.
He drew out the document and read:
Navy Office, 16 xi 45
Lt. D. O. Leary,
Comdg. RCS Princess Cecile, Harbor Three.
Lieutenant: So soon as the Republic of Cinnabar corvette which you have been appointed to command shall be in all respects ready for space, you will proceed to the Strymon system, touching at such ports as you may think proper.
If possible you will meet at Sexburga the squadron under Commodore Pettin, already en route to Strymon, and place yourself under his command for the remainder of the cruise. If you do not join Commodore Pettin en route, you will report to him in the Strymon system.
During your presence at Strymon you will do all in your power to cherish, on the part
of their government, good feelings toward the Republic of Cinnabar. In addition you will carry out such other duties as are placed on you by competent authorities. You will return to Cinnabar in accordance with the directions of Commodore Pettin.
The courier bearing these orders will provide additional oral instructions which you will carry out as a part of your duties.
You will communicate to all the officers under your command the orders of this Office that no one be concerned in a duel during the course of this cruise.
Commending you and your ship company to the protection of Divine Providence, and wishing you a pleasant cruise and a safe return to your planet and friends, I am,
Very respectfully,
Anston
Frowning slightly, Daniel handed the dispatch to Adele to read. To the courier he said, “You have oral instructions for me?”
The courier undid his cape’s throat catch and shrugged the garment off. It fell on the deck behind him. He was Delos Vaughn. He said, “Indeed I do, Lieutenant.”
Daniel’s face didn’t change. He said nothing while his mind shuffled through possibilities.
“And I have a reserve naval commission,” Vaughn continued in the silence; sharply, a little nervous in the face of Daniel’s lack of reaction. “I have a perfect right to wear this uniform.”
The others present were taking their cue from Daniel. Apart from Adele, none of them saw anything remarkable in the situation.
“All right, Mr. Vaughn,” Daniel said. “Come into my cabin and you can deliver your instructions.”
He turned, catching Adele’s eye. She’d risen to her feet when the courier arrived, but the data unit was still in her hand. She gave a minute shake of her head, her expression guarded.
“There’s no need for privacy, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said. “The further instructions are that you carry me to Strymon aboard your vessel, and that you provide me with such assistance as is commensurate with your duties as an officer of the Republic.”
“Mr. Vaughn …” Daniel said. The storm had resumed in all its elemental fury. Its thunder and actinic glare were anchors for Daniel’s mind, underscoring how trivial human concerns were against the majesty of nature. “An RCN corvette is not a pleasure yacht. Perhaps—”