"Sit down, Mistress Mundy," said Admiral O'Quinn, gesturing Adele to a place that'd obviously been saved for her on a low circular bench draped with rugs. In the center was a small serving table holding glass carafes of wine and platters heaped with fruit, most of it unfamiliar. Two women and two men besides O'Quinn and Cousin Adrian were already seated. They wore RCN-style dress uniforms with the starburst of the Cluster replacing the winged sandal of Cinnabar; each had a chestful of garish, dangling, medals.
Adele's eyes took a moment to adjust to the lattice-shaded loggia. She kept her face emotionless, but the appearance of the others, the senior officers of the Aristoxenos, shocked her. Certainly it'd been sixteen years—and she herself was no longer the girl who'd just arrived on Bryce to study in the Academic Collections—but the officers gathered here looked not only older but unhealthy.
When Adele last saw her cousin, he'd been a noted fencer; now he was distinctly pudgy and the collar of his formal tunic pinched deep into the fat of his neck. Broken veins spiderwebbed Admiral O'Quinn's nose; he was drinking wine from a twenty-ounce mug. The other four, the surviving members of the battleship's second through sixth lieutenants, were in comparable condition.
Servants stood at both ends of the loggia with more bottles of wine and fruit platters. They wore splashy, well-used clothes, often ill-fitting; cast-offs from their superiors, Adele realized. Adrian glanced at them and said, "Go on, get out of here! We need to talk privately!"
"But Lord Purvis?" said the servant with waxed mustachios who appeared to be the senior of those present. "If you need more—"
"Go on, damn you, get out!" Adrian snarled petulantly. "Do you think I couldn't have you bastinadoed, Aurelio?"
The servants crowded out the doors to the interior of the building, leaving them ajar. If Adrian really thought he was gaining privacy, he was a fool; but the chances were he was just salving his conscience by paying lip service to security concerns.
"Sit down," O'Quinn urged again, "and have some of this wine, mistress. It's nothing like what we had at home, but I find it palatable."
Adele stepped over the bench and seated herself carefully. The central table was low and three feet away, strictly for serving rather than dining. Two officers were eating what looked like miniature pomegranates; they spat the seeds onto the rugs layered over the floor.
Face as stiff as cast iron, Adele took the offered glass. It was a brandy snifter, but O'Quinn had poured it full of the same vintage he was drinking. She sipped. The flavor was interesting, though there was an earthy hint that she suspected would be an unpleasant companion the morning after drinking a quantity of the wine.
There was no likelihood of that, however, since either the vintage was fortified or the sugar-converting bacteria here on Todos Santos were remarkably resistant to poisoning by the ethanol waste product. She didn't think, "You could fuel an engine with this!" because she knew full well that you couldn't; but she also knew that a mug the size of Admiral O'Quinn's would have her comatose before she reached the bottom.
"Tell us frankly, Mistress Mundy . . . ," said Bodo Williams, the Second Lieutenant. Her cheekbones stood out from tight-stretched skin. When her hands began to tremble she clasped them before her, but even that didn't completely control the shaking. "Tell us—did the Senate send you as their emissary to arrange the terms of our repatriation?"
Adele blinked. Good God! But it was a serious question, as serious to them as it seemed absurd to her. The six former RCN officers stared at her with a mixture of hope and desperation.
"Lieutenant Williams," Adele said carefully. "Admiral, all of you. . . ."
She set her glass on the floor beside her and took out her data unit to occupy her hands. The rugs weren't a firm surface, but obviously nobody else cared if the glass spilled.
"I'm not an envoy," Adele said bluntly, sweeping the fearful eyes with her own. She spoke with a hostile edge, an unintended but natural result of these people putting her in a ridiculous position. "Of the Senate, of anybody. I'm Adele Mundy, calling on my closest living relative—my mother's brother's son—when as a result of my private employment I found myself unexpectedly in the city where he lives."
She glared at Commander Purvis. "And Adrian?" she continued, "I'll note that I didn't expect my desire to see a relative would involve me in a conspiracy which was a demonstrably bad idea sixteen years ago!"
Adele hadn't known what she was going to say until the words came out of her mouth. She rose, sliding the data unit away. She'd taken it out to calm her as she gathered her thoughts, but now they blazed in a white fury that might require her to have her hands free. How dare these—
"Adele, we're not conspirators!" Adrian said, stepping toward her with his arms out. Adele jerked backward and the bench caught her knees. She toppled but Adrian grabbed her by the shoulders and held her upright.
"Adele, we're not conspirators," he repeated softly as he leaned away again, one hand still touching her arm. He was breathing hard. The others were on their feet also, all but Williams who'd fallen back to the bench and now braced herself on the serving table for another try. "We . . . when you came, we thought you might be coming for us. That's all."
Adele took a deep breath, then stepped over the bench. "I'm not leaving," she said, noticing the sudden misery on the faces of the gathered officers. "I just needed to get on the other side of this damned barricade."
She tapped the bench with her toe. She'd knocked over the wineglass, all right, and soaked the cuff of the one civilian suit she'd brought with her aboard the Princess Cecile. Not a matter of great moment, she supposed, but typical of other things.
"Forgive me for my discourtesy," Adele continued. Her reaction could have been worse: she hadn't drawn her pistol. "I understand your concern, but to the best of my knowledge—"
Which was very good knowledge indeed.
"—neither the government of Cinnabar nor the RCN more specifically have any active concern with the Aristoxenos and her crew. That's far in the past. You can live your lives in as great an assurance of safety as—"
She smiled with the bleak humor that seasoned the dark parts of her life. Not long ago those parts had been almost all of her life.
"—any of us have in this existence."
"We thought . . . ," said Admiral O'Quinn, holding his big mug in both hands and staring into its empty depths. "That since you were . . . ?"
He looked up without finishing the sentence.
"Yes," said Adele crisply. "But that was coincidence. My stopover is merely because Todos Santos is a nexus for routes into the North, which my foreign employers wish to explore."
She smiled again with her usual quirky humor.
"Much the same reasons that brought you here in times past, I suppose," she added.
"But the captain of your ship is Speaker Leary's son!" said Estaing, who'd been—who probably still was—the battleship's Fourth Lieutenant. "If you're not the emissary, mistress, is he?"
"Mr. Estaing . . . ," Adele said in a cold voice. Estaing was a tall man, rangy and handsome in file imagery. He hadn't run as far to fat as some of the others, but he had the eyes of a ferret and a facial twitch as regular as a metronome. "I said you're safe. No one is searching for you. Not me, not Captain Leary, and not even the three women to whom you apparently promised marriage in the days leading up to the discovery of the Three Circles Conspiracy!"
That was probably more than a former RCN warrant officer, now on the beach, should have known about a man she'd never met. Still, she'd said it and had no real regrets. She'd read the files on the Aristoxenos' officers, not because she'd expected to meet them but because she was Adele Mundy and she liked to know things. Politics aside, Lieutenant Estaing was a pig.
Nobody spoke for a moment; Estaing flushed and turned away.
"Adele," said Adrian. "Please—I think you're misunderstanding. We aren't afraid of the Senate hunting us down. We thought, you see, just possibly . . . that Cinnabar was offering to let us return."
Oh good God, Adele thought, not for the first time in this interview. She had to struggle to restrain a laugh, instinctive protection against the horror of the situation that she'd just uncovered.
"Adrian," she said aloud, speaking as carefully as she'd have chosen her footing across a muddy field. "I can't speak to that, and I assure you Captain Leary has no knowledge of the subject either. He's estranged from his father, and he was never interested in politics anyway."
"But they allowed you back?" Adrian said. "And we thought . . . ?"
"The Edict of Reconciliation was issued over a decade ago," Adele said, speaking sharply so that her words wouldn't be mistaken for agreement. "I had occasion to read it carefully, as you might imagine. The Edict specifically excepts certain categories of people, in particular mutinous members of the RCN and the Land Forces of the Republic who failed to accept the terms of the amnesty within six months of the offer."
"I told you!" said Tetrey, the Sixth Lieutenant; a petite woman in old pictures, a mass of pasty flesh in present reality. "I told you there was no way they'd take us back, but you had to go ahead with this charade!"
"Well, what was the choice, you stupid cow?" Estaing shouted. He raised his hand; Adele, blank-faced, reached into her pocket.
"Mr. Estaing, sit down and be silent!" Adrian snapped. "Now, by God!"
Estaing didn't sit, but he grimaced and drew back from Tetrey. A pig, Adele thought, drawing another deep breath as her hand came out of her pocket empty.
"Sirs and ladies," she said, all eyes on her again. "I don't say that there's no chance of you returning to Cinnabar, just that the question has nothing to do with the arrival of the Princess Cecile on Todos Santos. I, ah, know some persons of influence in Xenos. When I'm next on Cinnabar, I'll make discreet inquiries if you'd like me to. But I can tell you nothing now beyond what you probably know already."
She cleared her throat. "If you'd indulge my curiosity?" she went on. "I don't understand precisely why you'd want to return. Your present situation—"
She let a sweep of her eyes take the place of a gesture.
"—appears comfortable, and at best . . . well, I'm sure you know that your property in the Republic was confiscated. In honesty, I can't imagine much of it would ever be returned; and even if it were, I doubt it would allow you to live in palaces like this one."
"Aye, Corder Leary doesn't have a palace like mine," Admiral O'Quinn said, seating himself heavily on the bench. He raised his mug reflexively, then remembered it was empty. He took the carafe by its handle, found it empty too, and glared. For a moment Adele thought the admiral was going to hurl one or the other across the room, but instead he relaxed and grinned at her sadly.
"I don't need a palace," he said. "Not here in the Cluster, anyhow. I want to go home, Mistress Mundy . . . and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Not unless I want my head to decorate the Speaker's Rock."
"We're RCN!" Estaing said. "They won't humiliate us that way!"
"We were RCN," Adrian Purvis said. "Now we're pirates. And if it comes to that, I don't want to be hung at a formal ceremony in Harbor Three, either."
He turned to Adele. "Thank you for your candor, cousin," he said. "I . . . hope we'll have an opportunity to talk about old times later during your visit to Todos Santos; but not, I think, this afternoon."
"No," Adele said. "Good day, Adrian."
She nodded to include the other officers in her leave-taking, then opened the door and backed onto the stairway again. The bright sun struck her, but she was shivering as she started down toward the silent, watchful Tovera.
The officers of the Aristoxenos lived like princes—now. But the ruler who'd welcomed them was dead, and the battleship whose power they'd wielded was rusting away. Even if the Alliance didn't support the Commonwealth, there'd soon come a time when the wealth granted in former days was worth more to the new Governor than the support of a band of fat, aging foreigners.
"Mistress?" said Tovera, following in echelon as Adele strode for the gate.
"I don't know how we'll get transportation back to the ship," Adele murmured quietly, "but I didn't want to ask them for help. The less association we have with them, the better."
They walked through the archway. The guards rose, and the RCN spacer in charge doffed his cap to Adele.
"It was like being in a tomb," Adele said. She wasn't sure even Tovera could hear her. "It was a tomb. They're just not quite dead, yet."
Daniel, standing on the east-facing balcony of the Governor's Palace, felt the roar of a ship lifting in the harbor behind him. The Sissie's Chief Engineer said over the commo helmet, "I think Converter Three's performing below spec, sir. It's brand new or anyway was when we lifted from Tanais Base, but it's only running at 88%. Over."
The balcony overlooked a canal; beyond a tugboat pushing a line of barges toward the harbor, the city of San Juan rose in irregular terraces. None of the buildings were very high, but three lofty aqueducts fell from the hills and marched across the city to the water plant near the palace.
"I think we'll leave it in place, Mr. Pasternak," Daniel said. "The unit doesn't seem to be failing, just low output. I wouldn't trust anything we found here to replace it. Keep an eye on things, and if necessary we'll take steps when we dock at Radiance or another major port. Out."
The ship had risen high enough above the palace that its exhaust glittered on the black water of the canal. In Xenos window glass would've been flashing also, but most of the houses here made do with lattices and louvers.
"Roger," Pasternak replied. "Out."
Birds no bigger than Daniel's outstretched finger fluttered about the balcony, snapping up crumbs from the snacks other loungers were eating. They had six limbs: four wings, attached at either end of the torso, and a pair of legs in the middle. It'd taken Daniel a moment to realize that the odd fluting he heard wasn't the wind in the rooftiles but rather the birds themselves; he looked forward to checking . . . well, having Adele check . . . the natural history database in the Princess Cecile's computer.
Daniel had expected that being rushed to the palace meant he'd be ushered in to Governor Sakama immediately, but when he'd climbed the broad marble staircase to the Governor's public apartments, the guard at the open door of the Hall of Audience stopped him. He had the choice of standing in the huge circular anteroom which dwarfed the hundred or more military and civilian officials who lounged or strolled in small groups within, or going out onto the balcony which ran the full width of the building.
Daniel went outside and got on with the business of the Princess Cecile. He could oversee Mr. Pasternak as well by spread-band radio as he could looking over the engineer's shoulder, and he simply wasn't going to let this silliness bother him. If he'd been an RCN officer on active service, of course, he might have had to take steps. . . .
He felt the presence of someone approaching and turned his head. He expected it was another of the beggars who seemed to be allowed on the balcony but not the anteroom; instead a soldier with a paunch and a spreading white beard said, "Spacer Leary? The Governor will receive you now."
Daniel raised the visor of his commo helmet as he followed the soldier through the anteroom. If the Governor'd given him time to dress, he'd be wearing more formal headgear than this. Now he wondered whether he should doff it as he would the saucer hat of his Whites, or if it was better to pretend the helmet was just part of his head; which it was, pretty generally, while the Sissie was under weigh. He decided he'd keep the helmet on.
His guide stopped beside the guard at the door to the Hall of Audience. Daniel stopped also. "Go on!" the soldier said with an angry gesture. "The Governor's waiting!"
Daniel stepped through, smiling faintly. These foreigners got themselves into such a state. . . .
The hall's arched ceiling was a good thirty feet high in the center and covered to the clerestory windows with florid paintings. Mythology, Daniel supposed: agreeably fleshy women wearing not much, and men of a similar sort—albeit less agreeable. He could've studied the figures all day in close-up through his face-shield's magnification and they wouldn't have meant any more to him than what he'd gotten with a cursory glance.
He'd bet Adele could tell who the figures were and who painted them besides, though. Quite a remarkable woman, that. He and the RCN—and probably the other people she worked for besides—were damned lucky to have Adele Mundy on their side.
When Daniel looked into the Hall of Audience on his arrival, Governor Sakama had been sitting at the far end of the eighty-foot room, talking with half a dozen locals in uniforms or formal robes. Nothing had changed, save that Sakama and his entourage were all watching Daniel approach at a deliberate pace. Cushioned benches were built into all four sides of the room but save for that group—the Governor seated, his courtiers standing in front of him, and a scattering of servants at a discreet distance—no one else was present.
Because Sakama Hideki had succeeded his father Sakama Iyoshi a few years previous, Daniel had a mental impression of Hideki being a young man; in fact he was in his late fifties: swarthy, thin-featured, and as alert as a hawk. The courtiers were a mixed bag. The civilians, two men and a woman in lace-embroidered robes, looked sharp. One of the men held a portable data unit that from where Daniel stood could've been a duplicate of Adele's.
On the other hand, the three military officials, all male, weren't prepossessing. Daniel noticed that their pistol holsters were empty, but a sub-machine gun of Cinnabar manufacture rested on the bench beside the Governor.
Daniel marched to within six feet of where the Sakama waited, halted, and from instinct—it wasn't anything he'd planned—struck an Academy brace and saluted. "Sir!" he said. "Lieutenant Daniel Leary of Cinnabar, at your service."
When his brain took time to analyze it, Daniel decided it'd been the proper thing to do as well as the right one. The Governor almost certainly had a high military rank as well as the civil title he went by, so a reserve officer of the RCN should salute him on meeting. But when there isn't time for analysis, you have to go by instinct. Daniel's instinct had taken him safe through several battles, and the present situation might not be far short of another one. You couldn't tell with foreigners. . . .
"The Cluster is pleased at your visit, Captain Leary," Sakama said. His voice rasped as though his vocal cords were scarred. "Perhaps you would care for some refreshment? I can summon a boy with wine or perhaps an assortment of nuts? Terran maranha nuts grown here in the soil of Todos Santos are a great delicacy on Cinnabar, I'm told."
"Thank you, your excellency," Daniel said, then went on to the lie, "but I'd just finished eating when your invitation arrived. Your planet appears a marvelous place, and I'm looking forward to sampling its delights as soon as I've accomplished my duties to the vessel I command."
"Yes, it's your duties that my advisors and I wanted to speak with you about, Captain Leary," Sakama said. The female civilian and one of the military officers were staring at Daniel in a combination of rage and loathing, but the remainder of the courtiers kept their eyes averted.
The Governor drew on the long, amber stem of his pipe while he continued to smile at Daniel. "You are the son of Speaker Leary, are you not? It is perhaps not a coincidence that you've come to the Cluster at this time?"
Daniel pursed his lips. He dropped from his brace into Parade Rest, his hands crossed behind his back. The perfumed tobacco smoke tickled his nose, and he didn't want to sneeze.
"My father is Corder Leary, yes, your excellency," he said, keeping his tone mild and completely emotionless. "But my family relationships have nothing to do with my presence on Todos Santos at the moment. I'm in the private employ of two nobles from Novy Sverdlovsk who want to visit unfrequented corners of the Galactic North. I recommended we put into Todos Santos to refit the yacht after her run from Cinnabar."
He didn't mention their intention to put in at Radiance also, though it must be obvious to the Governor. Most of the Galactic North could be described as unfrequented, with few docks other than those of Todos Santos and Radiance capable of performing major repairs to a starship.
Sakama leaned forward. "You know that the Council of the Commonwealth is in league with the Alliance now, don't you?" he said. "That's a threat to the Cluster, certainly; but a threat to you in Cinnabar as well. Not so?"
"Your excellency . . . ," Daniel said, speaking with the careful sincerity of truth. "I don't know anything about such a league. If such a thing is true—"
"It is true!" said the official holding the data unit. "They have a base on Gehenna and will send a huge fleet there shortly. Battleships and many other ships!"
"Do you think we don't know what goes on in Radiance?" the female official said harshly. "But how are we to stop it? This is your fault, your war with the Alliance, but we're the ones who'll pay for your failure to act!"
"Madam," said Daniel, deliberately turning his head and lifting it slightly to look down his nose at her. "If there's information which the Republic needs to know, then I'm sure that the proper parties know it. You'll have to direct your questions elsewhere, however, because I'm not one of those people myself."
But Adele is, unless I'm very badly mistaken.
He fixed Governor Sakama with his gaze. Daniel knew perfectly well that the fellow could have him taken out and shot, or perhaps shoot him personally with that sub-machine gun; it was a working weapon, not a gilded and engraved toy.
Daniel said in a firm voice, "So, your excellency—I'm honored that you requested my presence to clear up that little misconception. If you have questions that I can answer, I'd be more than happy to. Otherwise, I won't impose on your time. Eh?"
It didn't do to show weakness, except with the girls who thought weakness was the same as sensitivity. In Daniel's experience weakness was usually the same as self-absorption, but he was willing to wear any suitable camouflage on a hunt. Which he'd be doing as soon as he got back to the Princess Cecile and made sure she was settled to a degree that allowed her captain to take some liberty himself . . . if he got back alive.
"We didn't request Mr. Leary's presence in order to hector him, Ayesha," the Governor said with a frown. The catch in his throat made the words sound harsher than perhaps they were meant, but Sakama's look wasn't one that Daniel would want an autocrat directing at him.
The woman, Ayesha, must have felt the same way. She fell to her knees and prostrated herself, catching Daniel's ankles before he could jump back. "Your pardon, gracious lord!" she said, speaking into the rug-covered floor. "My life is yours to command."
"Get up, please!" Daniel said, shocked and disgusted. The woman was twice his age, powerful, and—judging from the words if not the tone of her complaint—obviously intelligent. She shouldn't be abasing herself!
To the Governor he added, "Really, your excellency, we in the Republic of Cinnabar pride ourselves on a frank exchange of views. I took no offense."
Neither part of that disclaimer was wholly true. Had the woman as ambassador to Cinnabar used that tone on Speaker Leary, he'd have had her flogged on the Senate floor while his fellow Senators applauded. But Ayesha's fear seemed to be of worse than a flogging, and that was uncalled for.
You could never tell what wogs would do. They might even decided to murder the son of a powerful Cinnabar politician. . . .
Sakama leaned forward slightly, his eyes fixed on Daniel. "Captain Leary?" he said in a whisper that made Daniel think of a cat playing with something alive. "You say you're sure that proper persons are dealing with the matter of the Alliance building a naval base on Gehenna. How are you sure?"
"Your excellency," Daniel said, "I know as little as you do about the workings of the Republic's high political levels. Less, perhaps, because it was never a matter of interest to me even when I was on polite terms with my father. Which I have not been for these past seven years."
He paused for effect. He'd let his voice rise slightly as he fell into the rhythms of a speech to the Sissie's crew, convincing his listeners of the importance of what he was saying and his utter sincerity in saying it.
"But I do know that the Republic of Cinnabar has for a thousand years supported her friends and defeated her enemies," Daniel continued. Sometimes those enemies were the friends of the past who'd found the burdens of friendship with the Republic too onerous; but this was a stump speech, not a lecture. "If there's something that the rulers of the Republic should know, they know it. I have no idea how that's accomplished, but I trust the system that has risen from strength to strength for a millennium!"
If the Governor and his advisors decided Daniel Leary was a rabid Cinnabar patriot with nothing in his head but the formless assurance that his country would triumph, they would send him back to his proper business . . . as Daniel intended they should. If Sakama recognized that Daniel had been speaking cold, rational truth as well—that wasn't a bad thing either.
Sakama leaned back on his cushions with a sigh and a grimace. "You may leave, Captain," he said. He waved a hand in dismissal. "Perhaps another will come from Xenos, who knows more and can say more."
As Daniel turned to return to the door with the same measured stride that brought him to the Governor, he heard the counselor with the data unit say morosely, "Perhaps. But even if it's very soon, it may be too late!"